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【高校英語】共通テストの英文解釈 vol.1165
≪2022年共通テスト第5問≫ 2022/3/14配信
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今回は2022年共通テスト第5問を解説します。
■ 問題
第5問
In your English class, you will give a presentation about a great
inventor. You found the following article and prepared notes for your
presentation.
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| Who invented television? It is not an easy question to answer. In |
|the early years of the 20th century, there was something called a |
|mechanical television system, but it was not a success. Inventors were|
|also competing to develop an electronic television system, which later|
|became the basis of what we have today. In the US, there was a battle |
|over the patent for the electronic television system, which attracted |
|people's attention because it was between a young man and a giant |
|corporation. This patent would give the inventor the official right to|
|be the only person to develop, use, or sell the system. |
| Philo Taylor Farnsworth was born in a log cabin in Utah in 1906. His|
|family did not have electricity until he was 12 years old, and he was |
|excited to find a generator--a machine that produces electricity--when|
|they moved into a new home. He was very interested in mechanical and |
|electrical technology, reading any information he could find on the |
|subject. He would often repair the old generator and even changed his |
|mother's hand-powered washing machine into an electricity-powered one.|
| One day, while working in his father's potato field, he looked |
|behind him and saw all the straight parallel rows of soil that he had |
|made. Suddenly, it occurred to him that it might be possible to create|
|an electronic image on a screen using parallel lines, just like the |
|rows in the field. In 1922, during the spring semester of his first |
|year at high school, he presented this idea to his chemistry teacher, |
|Justin Tolman, and asked for advice about his concept of an electronic|
|television system. With sketches and diagrams on blackboards, he |
|showed the teacher how it might be accomplished, and Tolman encouraged|
|him to develop his ideas. |
| On September 7, 1927, Farnsworth succeeded in sending his first |
|electronic image. In the following years, he further improved the |
|system so that it could successfully broadcast live images. The US |
|government gave him a patent for this system in 1930. |
| However, Farnsworth was not the only one working on such a system. A|
|giant company, RCA(Radio Corporation of America), also saw a bright |
|future for television and did not want to miss the opportunity. They |
|recruited Vladimir Zworykin, who had already worked on an electronic |
|television system and had earned a patent as early as 1923. Yet, in |
|1931, they offered Farnsworth a large sum of money to sell them his |
|patent as his system was superior to that of Zworykin's. He refused |
|this offer, which started a patent war between Farnsworth and RCA. |
| The company took legal action against Farnsworth, claiming that |
|Zworykin's 1923 patent had priority even though he had never made a |
|working version of his system. Farnsworth lost the first two rounds of|
|the court case. However, in the final round, the teacher who had |
|copied Farnsworth's blackboard drawings gave evidence that Farnsworth |
|did have the idea of an electronic television system at least a year |
|before Zworykin's patent was issued. In 1934, a judge approved |
|Farnsworth's patent claim on the strength of handwritten notes made by|
|his old high school teacher Tolman. |
| Farnsworth died in 1971 at the age of 64. He held about 300 US and |
|foreign patents, mostly in radio and television, and in 1999, TIME |
|magazine included Farnsworth in Time 100: The Most Important People of|
|the Century. In an interview after his death, Farnsworth's wife Pem |
|recalled Neil Armstrong's moon landing being broadcast. Watching the |
|television with her, Farnsworth had said, "Pem, this has made it all |
|worthwhile." His story will always be tied to his teenage dream of |
|sending moving pictures through the air and those blackboard drawings |
|at his high school. |
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