Question

Barcodes (條形碼) aren’t given much thought by the majority of consumers, but these codes were fairly recently applied in a working fashion in 1970.

A small food store owner decided one day that keeping records of the inventory (存貨) of his stock and the associated prices were an extremely laborious process, and so, in 1948, he contacted the The Drexel Institute of Technology in a bid to work towards a solution. Bernard Sliver rose to the challenge and set out to study the problem, and began working on a solution involving an automatic way of keeping track of items that had been sold. Silver and a group of students from the institute realized their answer in the form of ultraviolet light (紫外線), ink and a scanner.

The system worked initially, but possessed some negatives. It was incredibly costly to carry out on a large scale and the system was also unstable. If the invention was to become commonplace (尋常的事) in grocery stores, these two problems had to be solved.

The patent (專利)for the bar code system was filed by Sliver and one of his students, Woodland. The patent was not granted immediately; in fact it took three years for the patent agency to grand their invention patent for the barcode, occurring on 7^th October, 1952.

Despite the patent being issued, the system was still not welcomed by the majority of store owners. It was not until 1966 that the system began moving its way into more and more grocery stores. This system was soon criticised, as there was no central mechanism for controlling uniformly coded items. In 1970, Logicorn developed the Universal Grocery Products Identification code (UGOIC), soon shortened to Universal Identification Number (UPC). It was Marsh’s superstore, in Troy, which was the very first store to install this complex barcode reading system, and its popularity has soared (升溫) ever since, and is obviously now commonplace in all types of stores worldwide.

1.What is stressed in the second paragraph?

A．The heavy work of store owners.

B．The function of ultraviolet light, ink and a scanner.

C．The origination of barcodes

D．Bernard Silver’s education background.

2.Which of the following was NOT a drawback of Silver’s system?

A．It was expensive to be applied on a large scale.

B．It was a laborious process.

C．The system was not stable.

D．It lacked a central mechanism.

3.What is the purpose of the text?

A．To tell people that failure is the mother of success.

B．To praise scientists’ efforts in making people’s lives easier.

C．To describe shop owners’ opinions of barcodes.

D．To provide information about the development of barcodes.

 

Answer 1

【答案】

1.C

2.B

3.D

【解析】

試題分析：文章主要講述了條形碼的起源，剛開始的系統缺陷及其后期不斷的改進，最終能夠被廣大的商店主們運用的發展經歷。

1.細節題。從第二自然段可知，一個店主覺得自己的商品的存貨和價錢的標簽匹配是非常費時的工作，所以決定發明一種解決方法，故只要是講條碼的起源，故選C

2.細節題。從It was incredibly costly to carry out on a large scale and the system was also unstable.和This system was soon criticised, as there was no central mechanism for controlling uniformly coded items. 可知他的系統有這三方面的缺陷，而只有能夠解決繁瑣的工作不是他的缺點，故選B

3.主旨題。文章主要講述了條形碼的起源，剛開始的系統缺陷及其后期不斷的改進，最終能夠被我們大家接受的這樣的一個發展歷程，故選D

考點：社會歷史類說明文

點評：本文不難，結構清晰，題目設置合理。屬于說明文中較容易的文體。說明文是歷年高考很常見的文體，對于科技類的說明文比較難，而對于介紹事物的文體較容易。本文中，把握好是對條形碼的歷史發展的描述。同時，此類文章對于細節題，在對文章看懂了的基礎再仔細對比選項和文章，即可得出答案。