Thomas Alva Edison was an American inventor, scientist and businessman who invented many things that greatly influenced life around the world, such as the phonograph, the motion picture camera, and a long-lasting, practical electric light bulb. Edison has been recognized as the creator of the first industrial research laboratory. It is he who came up with the concept of providing electricity for home. His first power station was on Manhattan Island, New York.

Edison was born in Milan, Ohio, and grew up in Port Huron, Michigan. He was the seventh and last child of his family. When he was young, Edison stayed at home and was taught by his mother. Edison recalled later, “My mother was the making of me. She was so true, so sure of me; and I felt I had someone to live for, someone I must not disappoint.” During his childhood, he suffered from scarlet fever which affected his hearing.

Young Edison sold candy and newspapers on trains running from Port Huron to Detroit, and he sold vegetables to supplement his income. These jobs, though insignificant, inspired him greatly. He realized that he had a talent for business. These talents eventually made him founder of 14 companies, including General Electric, which is still in existence and is the largest publicly traded company in the world.

Edison started as a telegraph operator and this was the field in which he came up with the first invention. The invention which first gained him fame was the phonograph in 1877. The invention seemed magical, as nothing similar had ever been thought of before. Funded by the successful sale of the telegraph at a price of $10,000, Edison built his own research laboratory in Menlo Park, New Jersey.

The laboratory expanded rapidly over the decade. In 1892, it was confirmed that Edison was the official inventor of the carbon microphones, which was used in all telephones. Although he attempted to make use of X-rays to take radiographs, he quit the project and admitted his fear of X-rays in public.

Thomas Edison died of diabetes at his home in New Jersey, on October 18, 1931 and in honor of his contributions, Life magazine (USA), in a special double issue in 1997, placed Edison first in the list of the “100 Most Important People in the Last 1000 Years”, noting that the light bulb he promoted “lit up the world”.

Title: Thomas Edison—an influential person in the American history

Burn rate is the speed at which a startup business consumes money. My rate was $ 75,000  a month. Four months after my company was set up, I had only a quarter of the starting capital left in the bank.
Looking for guidance, I went to talk to my friend, Arthur Walworth about my new venture. “Times of great change always bring out the risk-takers,” he said. “And they leave winners and losers. My grandfather invested a lot of money in a project of Thomas Edison’ s that ended up in failure. ”
I was lost in thought at the notion(an idea or belief about something) of a Thomas Edison project ending in failure. Damn. It could happen to anybody! I must continue.
At that time CD-ROM sales had bombed, so investors were fleeing from the field. I didn’t turn away from mine entirely, but instead linked it to the internet.
My plan was to offer consumers descriptions of home-design products by using a special software and let them modify the designs. Then we can enable them to get online professional and constructional help to have their houses built, decorated and furnished according to their own choice.
To realize my plan I needed investors, so I continued to meet regularly with venture capitalists. One said I had a great idea. But I needed to test it. Get the money somewhere. To get this money from a venture capitalist is going to cost my wife and my children! He turned down my request.
Wife? Children? I hardly remembered them.
I was working nonstop---struggling to turn the key in the lock, to find the right way ahead. The pressure was terrible. It was just at this time that my parents and sisters stepped up. Two hundred thousand dollars. A lot of money to them, invested in this crazy son and brother without a moment’s hesitation. Dad and Mom had driven out from Chicago and seen the passion in my little office and the trouble at home.
With their help my company survived and has been prospering ever since.
【小题1】When the author’s company started operation, he had _______ .

A．rely on famous people all be time	B．invest as much money as possible
C．face the risks of possible failure	D．think about nothing but success

第二节 完形填空（共20小题；每小题1.5分，满分30分）
阅读下面短文，从短文所给各题的四个选项（A、B、C、D）中，选出可以填入空白处的最佳选项，并在答题卡上将该项涂黑。
Growing up on a remote Michigan farm, Henry Ford, the founder of the Ford Motor Company, knew little of farming. Like most pioneer farmers, his father, William, hoped that his eldest son would   36  him on the farm, enable it to expand, and eventually take it  37  . But Henry proved a   38  . He hated farm work and did everything he could to   39   it. It was not that he was lazy.   40   from it! Give him a mechanical job to do, from mending a gate to sharpening tools,  41  he would set to work eagerly. It was the daily life of the farm, with its dull tasks, 42  upset him.
Henry was excited by the development in technology that could __43  farmers like his father from wasteful and   44  labor. But these developments, in Henry’s boyhood, had touched farming   45  at all and farmers went on doing things in the way they had always done. So Henry   46   his attention elsewhere. When he was twelve, he became 47  in clocks and watches. Soon he was repairing them for friends, working at a bench he built in his bedroom.
In 1876, Henry suffered a serious   48 . His mother died in childbirth.  49   was no reason for him to stay on the farm, and he 50   to get away as soon as he could. Three years later, he took a job as a mechanic in Detroit.  51 this time steam engines had joined clocks and watches as objects of Henry’s fascination. Making and installing them was the business of the Detroit workshop that he joined at the age of sixteen.
A chance meeting with an old co-worker    52   a job for Henry as an engineer at the Edison Detroit Electricity Company. When he quickly learned the ropes of his new job, his interest in fuel engines had come to control his life.
Henry learned  53   a slow, painstaking business it was to build an engine by hand. Every piece of every part had to be made individually, checked and rechecked, and tested.  54   the burden, he joined forces with another mechanic, Jim Bishop. Even so, it was two years  55   they succeeded in building a working car. Henry called it “Quadricycle.”(四轮驱动脚踏车)
36. A. learn                       B. find                               C. Work        D. join
37. A. away                        B. down                             C. Over        D. off
38. A. success                     B. discouragement               C. Surprise     D. disappointment
39. A. do                         B. avoid                             C. Work        D. make
40. A. Apart                        B. Far                                C. Free         D. Aside
41. A. and                       B. or                                  C. Otherwise    D. so
42. A. that                        B. which                            C. what        D. where
43. A. prevent                     B. free                               C. Take         D. bring
44. A. boring                      B. exciting                          C. Funny        D. inspiring
45. A. almost                      B. sometimes                      C. Hardly        D. always
46. A. drew                        B. caught                            C. turned       D. attracted
47. A. worried                    B. interested                       C. Upset        D. bored
48. A. disease                      B. blow                           C. Beat          D. defeat
49. A. It                             B. There                             C. This          D. That
50. A. decided                     B. avoided                          C. Stuck         D. took
51. A. At                            B. After                              C. In           D. By
52. A.attended to                 B. related to                        C. turned to       D. led to
53. A. how                         B. what                        C. why          D. where
54. A. To reduce                 B.To bear                         C. To carry        D. To place
55. A. when                        B. before                            C. After           D. unless

As a young girl, Margaret “Mattie” Knight never played with dolls, preferring to make toys for her brothers instead. In 1849, Knight went to work in a cotton factory where she witnessed a “shuttle,” a device that carries thread back and forth across a textile loom（纺布机）, fly off the machine when the thread broke, striking and killing a young boy about her own age.

The 12-year-old Knight developed a safety mechanism that made it impossible for a shuttle to leave the loom. The design was so effective, soon virtually every new power loom carried her invention, saving countless workers from injury or death. Being so young, she didn’t bother to patent the device, so she never received payment.

Knight wouldn’t make the same mistake later in life when she invented a machine that could produce flat-bottomed paper bags. Knight had built a small wooden model in her home, but she needed a metal version to show it could hold up to the stress of mass production. So she hired Charles Annan to make the full-sized machine for her, only to have him try to claim the patent for himself. When Knight sued（起诉）, Annan’s argument was that the design had to be his, because no woman could possibly understand the complex mechanics. Knight proved him wrong when she brought back her wooden prototype and explained how every part worked. She won the case in 1871, making her the second woman to hold an American patent. Over a hundred years later, her design is still used as the basis for many modern flat-bottom bag machines.

But that wasn’t the last the world heard of Mattie Knight. During her lifetime, she made about 90 inventions and received 26 patents, becoming one of the most productive female inventors of the 19th century.

1.We can learn from Paragraph 1 that ________.

2.What do we know about Knight’s first invention?

3.Knight sued Charles Annan because he _______.

4.What would be the best title for the text?