Modern air transport using craft which is heavier than air requires good deal of power merely to stay in the air. It is for this reason that air transport uses more fuel to carry a ton over a distance of a mile than land or water transport Another drawback of air transport is that whereas a ship, truck or train whose engines break down can stop until they are mended, an aircraft with the same trouble must land. This means that an aircraft must have several engines and this increases its cost. Safety precautions for air transport also tend to make it expensive It cannot be relied upon for regular services in places or seasons with low clouds and mist. The great advantage of air transport being its high speed, all civilized countries try to develop it. If you want to save time, you will naturally fly by air.
Balloons. The earliest form of air transport was balloons which are sometimes called "free balloons" because having no engines they are forced to drift by the wind flow. This fact alone makes balloons not reliable enough for carrying people. If they were safer, they would be used more for transportation, but at present the scientists use balloons mostly for obtaining information about the upper atmosphere, its density, and other scientific subjects. Weather balloons are particularly used by meteorologists. They carry instruments whose readings
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are automatically sent back to the ground by the radio, the position of the balloon
being obtained by radar. Small balloons released from air-fields are observed to
obtain the direction and strength of the wind.
Aeroplanes. The heavier-than-air machines called aeroplanes were rather
slow in being adopted for transport. The first aeroplane flight was made in 1884. World War I quickened the development of aeroplanes enormously. By 1918 they were no longer unreliable things capable of only short flights, but powerful machines able to carry heavy loads at high speeds for long distances. What was more, the ending of the war meant that thousands of aeroplanes and skilled pilots were available.
The first aeroplanes were machines that had been used as bombers. They were quickly converted for use by passengers by fitting extra seats and windows. The first regular public air service from London to Paris was started in August.
During World War II the value of aeroplanes for carrying heavy loads was recognized. This led after the war to an increase in the practice of sending goods by air. Air freight is expensive but is often thought worth while for such goods as early vegetables, fruit and flowers, as well as for things urgently needed such as spare parts for machinery, medical supplies, films and photographs. Some parts of the world are hundreds of miles from a road, railway or waterway, and air transport is the only possible kind of transport. Such places are kept supplied wholly by air. After World War II, bigger and faster airliners were introduced. Jet-propelled aircraft were first used in 1950. Air transport is very valuable for emergency medical work. The most important use of air transport besides carrying passengers is carrying mail. If the letters are sent by air mail, they are not long in coming. Although it is unlikely that aircraft will ever replace ships for carrying heavy and bulky cargoes such as oil, coal, minerals, grain and machinery, air transport is already proving a serious rival to passenger ships on some routes.
Helicopters and Hovercraft.1 Helicopters are very useful in places where there is no room for long, flat runways.2 Modem turbo-jet airliners need a run of nearly two miles long to take off, but helicopters can use small fields, platforms mounted on ships and the flat tops of buildings. Helicopters were first introduced for regular airline service in 1947. Later, helicopters were used for carrying passengers and mail on short routes, and for taking airline passengers between the centres of cities and the main airports.
While helicopters gain in needing very little space for taking-off and landing, they lose because the speed at which they move forward is quite low. So the problem was to develop an aircraft combining the advantages of the helicopter with the high speed of an ordinary aircraft. If the designers could develop such a machine the problem would be solved. So for this purpose the hovercraft was designed.
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Hovercrafts are likely to be useful for ferry services - for example, in ferrying motor cars across the English Channel. They may also be useful for travel in roadless countries.3
NOTES TO THE TEXT
1 hovercraft - машина на воздушной подушке
2 runway - взлетно-посадочная полоса
3 in roadless countries - в условиях бездорожья
Text 24: «TRANSPORT SYSTEM OF THE USA»
The development of transport facilities was very important in the growth of the United States. The first travel routes were natural waterways. No surfaced roads existed until the 1790s, when the first turnpikes were built. Besides the overland roads, many canals were constructed between the late 18th century and 1850 to link navigable rivers and lakes in the eastern United States and in the Great Lakes region. Steam railways began to appear in the East in the 1820s. The first transcontinental railway was constructed between 1862 and 1869 by the Union Pacific and Central Pacific companies, both of which received large subsidies from the federal government. Transcontinental railways were the chief means of transport used by European settlers who populated the West in the latter part of the 19th century. The railways continued to expand until 1917, when their length reached a peak of about 407,000 km. Since then motor transport became a serious competitor to the railway both for passengers and freight.
Air transport began to compete with other modes of transport after World War I. Passenger service began to gain importance in 1920s, but not until the beginning of commercial jet craft after World War II did air transport become a leading mode of travel.
During the early 1990s railways annually handled about 37.5 per cent of the total freight traffic; tracks carried 26 per cent of the freight, and oil pipelines conveyed 20 per cent. Approximately 16 per cent was shipped on inland waterways. Although the freight handled by airlines amounted to only 0.4 per cent of the total, much of the cargo consisted of high-priority or high-value items.
Private cars about 81 per cent of passengers. Airlines are the second leading mover of people, carrying more than 17 per cent of passengers. Buses are responsible for 1.1 per cent, and railways carry 0.6 per cent of passengers.
Roads and Railways
The transport network spreads into all sections of the country, but the web of railways and highways is much more dense in the eastern half of the United States.
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In the early 1990s the United States had about 6.24 million km of streets, roads, and highways. The National Interstate Highway System, 68,449 km in length in the early 1990s, connected the nation's principal cities and carried about one-fifth of all the road and street traffic.
More than 188 million motor vehicles were registered in the early 1990s. More than three-quarters were cars - one for every two persons in the country. About one-fifth of the vehicles were lorries. Amtrak (the National Railroad Passenger Corporation), a federally subsidized concern, operates almost all the inter-city passenger trains in the United States; it carried more than 22 million passengers annually in the early 1990s.
4.
БИБЛИОГРАФИЯ
Полякова Т.Ю. и др. Английский язык для инженеров, М.: Высш. шк.
2000.
Агабекян И.П., Коваленко П.И. Английский для технических вузов,
Высшее образование, Ростов-на-Дону, 2002.
Цветкова И.В., Клепальченко И.А., Мальцева Н.А. Английский язык для поступающих в вузы (тексты для чтения), М., 2004. Ощепкова В.В., Шустилова И.И. О Британии вкратце (тексты для чтения), М.: Просвещение, 1998.
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Содержание
Часть 1. ПОЯСНИТЕЛЬНАЯ ЗАПИСКА..................................................................... 3
Часть 2. КОНТРОЛЬНАЯ РАБОТА 1 .......................................................................... 7
ВАРИАНТ 1 ............................................................................................................ 9
ВАРИАНТ 2........................................................................................................... И
ВАРИАНТ 3........................................................................................................... 13
ВАРИАНТ 4........................................................................................................... 15
ВАРИАНТ 5........................................................................................................... 17
Часть 3. РАЗГОВОРЫЕ ТЕМЫ.................................................................................... 19
I. GREETINGS, ACQUAINTANCE AND SAYING GOOD-BYE
(ПРИВЕТСТВИЕ, ЗНАКОМСТВО И ПРОЩАНИЕ)...................................... 19
И. MY FAMILY AND MYSELF
(О СЕБЕ И СВОЕЙ СЕМЬЕ)........................................................................... 22
III. MY ACADEMY
(МОЯ АКАДЕМИЯ)........................................................................................ 25
IV. MY NATIVE TOWN (NOVOSIBIRSK)............................................................. 27
IV. RUSSIA (THE RUSSIAN FEDERATION)........................................................ 28
Часть 4. ТЕКСТЫ ДЛЯ ЧТЕНИЯ И ПЕРЕВОДА....................................................... 30
TEXT I: «THE UNITED KINGDOM»..................................................................... 30
TEXT2: «HISTORYOF LONDON»......................................................................... 31
TEXT 3: «HIGHER EDUCATION IN THE UK».................................................... 32
TEXT 4: «THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA»................................................ 33
TEXT 5: "AUSTRALIA"......................................................................................... 34
TEXT 6: "CANADA"............................................................................................... 35
TEXT 7: "WHAT IS A COMPUTER?".................................................................... 36
TEXT 8: «TYPES OF SOFTWARE»........................................................................ 38
TEXT 9: "HARDWARE"......................................................................................... 39
TEXT 10: "INTRODUCTION TO THE WWW AND THE INTERNET" 41
TEXT 11: "HISTORY AND FUTURE OF THE INTERNET".................................. 42
TEXT 12: "OPERATING SYSTEMS"...................................................................... 43
TEXT 13: "HISTORY OF ROBOTICS"................................................................... 44
TEXT 14: "ENGINEERING AS A PROFESSION"................................................... 45
TEXT 15: "DIRECT-CURRENT (DC) GENERATORS".......................................... 47
TEXT 16: "AC MOTORS"....................................................................................... 48
TEXT 17: "MEASUREMENTS"............................................................................... 50
TEXT 18: "CONSTRUCTION OF AN AUTOMOBILE".......................................... 51
TEXT 19: "THE HISTORY OF LAND TRANSPORT"............................................ 54
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TEXT 20: "THE WHEEL, STEAM CARRIAGES AND RAILWAYS" ...55
TEXT 21: "WATER TRANSPORT"............................................................................ 56
TEXT 22: "INTERESTING FACTS ABOUT CANALS"............................................. 58
TEXT 23: "AIRTRANSPORT"................................................................................... 59
TEXT 24: «TRANSPORT SYSTEM OF THE USA» .................................................. 61
БИБЛИОГРАФИЯ........................................................................................................... 63
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УЧЕБНОЕ ИЗДАНИЕ
Дементьева Елена Александровна Симушкина Наталья Юрьевна Жигалкина Елена Витальевна
АНГЛИЙСКИЙ ЯЗЫК
Методические указания для студентов 1 курса заочного обучения
Ответственный за выпуск: Дементьева Е.А. Компьютерная верстка: ШуликаИ.В.
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