2020수능특강 영어 19강 본문

 

19강

1

William Allingham, poet and editor, is known mainly through a small group of poems that regularly appear in anthologies of Irish verse. In his own day, however, Allingham was well known to poets such as Robert Browning, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, and Alfred Tennyson, and his work inspired later Irish poets, including W. B. Yeats and John Hewitt. He was born in Ballyshannon, County Donegal, Ireland and his first job was in the local bank, where his father was manager. In 1846, he took a post with the national excise service and spent the next twenty‑four years working as a customs officer. He first visited England in 1843 and eventually settled there in 1863. He befriended the influential poet, critic, and editor, Leigh Hunt, to whom he dedicated his first book of poems in 1850. His most ambitious work was the verse novel, Laurence Bloomfield in Ireland, in which he tried to promote reform of land ownership and tenants' rights.

 

2

The first tunnel built under the Thames was designed by Marc Isambard Brunel (1769–1849). Brunel fled the French Revolution for New York and then London, and at one point found himself in debtor's prison. While in prison, he watched a shipworm bore a hole through a piece of wood by passing the chewed‑up wood pulp through its body and excreting it as it progressed. Once released, Brunel worked on his observation, and eventually constructed a huge drill with corkscrew blades that passed dug‑up material down its length as it moved forward, which was used to bore a tunnel from Wapping to Rotherhithe. The tunnel took 18 years to build, and 10 men died during its construction. When it opened, it was at first targeted by thieves who would lie in wait in the shadows for unsuspecting pedestrians. The East London Railway took over the tunnel in 1869, and it now carries the East London Underground line across the river.

 

3

At Greenwich in 1796, the astronomer Maskelyne dismissed Kinnebrook, his assistant, because Kinnebrook observed the times of stellar transits almost a second later than he did. Maskelyne was convinced that all through 1794 there had been no discrepancy between the two of them. Then in August, 1795, Kinnebrook was found to be recording times about half a second later than Maskelyne. His attention was called to the “error,” and it would seem that he must have striven to correct it. Nevertheless, it increased during the succeeding months until, in January, 1796, it had become about eight tenths of a second. Then Maskelyne dismissed him. The error was serious, for upon such observations depended the calibration of the clock, and upon the clock depended all other observations of place and time.

 

4

When her grandmother didn't answer right away, Kay got worried and started to say something, but before she could she watched as Teresa reached into the drawer by her bed and to Kay's astonishment, pulled out a tape recorder. What was her grandmother up to now? Where could she have gotten a tape recorder? And from the looks of it, she knew exactly how to use it. Kay had never seen her grandmother with anything like that. Teresa didn't even like using the phone. She once told Kay that she was allergic to the stuff the world made. She never said manmade. She always said “world made” so how and why ..., as the question was beginning to form Teresa said, “I made this recording so I won't forget anything. I need you to listen closely.” Teresa looked at Kay to make sure she was listening. Too shocked to say anything, Kay nodded as she sat down in the chair facing her grandmother's wheelchair as Teresa played the tape.