The steam car - IELTS Reading with Practice Test, Answers And Explanation
Luyện tập đề IELTS Reading Practice với passage The steam car được lấy từ cuốn sách IELTS CAM Inspired 18 - Test 3 - Passage 2 với trải nghiệm thi IELTS trên máy và giải thích đáp án chi tiết bằng Linearthinking.
The steam car - IELTS Reading with Practice Test, Answers And Explanation
❓ Câu hỏi (questions)
Question 1 - 7
Reading Passage 2 has seven paragraphs, A-G.
Choose the correct heading for each paragraph from the list of headings below.
Write the correct number, i-viii, in boxes on your answer sheet.
List of Headings
I
Buyers are let down
II
Testing begins after a spell in the cold
III
A superior alternative emerges
IV
Sales and promotion failings cause the collapse
V
A conceivable answer to modern problems
VI
Both benefits and drawbacks are carried over
VII
Favourable press for a silent, clean and rapid machine
VIII
Refinements bring in paying customers
1
Paragraph A
2
Paragraph B
3
Paragraph C
4
Paragraph D
5
Paragraph E
6
Paragraph F
7
Paragraph G
Question 8 - 10
Choose the correct letter, A, B, C or D.
Write the correct letter in boxes on your answer sheet.
8
In Paragraph B, what does the writer suggest about steam-powered cars?
A
Manufacturers struggled to find buyers for them.
B
They were difficult for owners to control.
C
Their popularity lasted only a short time.
D
Too few of them were ever built.
9
In the course of creating their earliest steam car, the Reyburn brothers
A
made all the components from scratch.
B
kept written records of each stage of the work.
C
consulted seasoned figures from the motor trade.
D
needed several tries before they had a car able to compete.
10
To get the Mark III into production, the Reyburn brothers
A
obtained funding for the venture.
B
relocated their operation to another city.
C
took on an extra member of staff.
D
discarded the designs they had used before.
Question 11 - 13
Complete the summary below.
Choose ONE WORD AND/OR A NUMBER from the passage for each answer.
The Mark V
The National Motoring Club tested the Mark V on the road in 1921 and judged it easy to handle despite its weight, to the admiration of those watching. On a later version, engineers coaxed the car to more than
11.
miles an hour without letting its pollution rise. Because it cost so much and its design was forever being altered, few were sold: under
12.
had been built by the time the company shut down. Even today, however, Mark Vs can be seen on British roads. They give little trouble to look after, and they are clean enough to pass the
13.
controls on exhaust gases that London now applies. Perhaps modern materials and computing could bring the steam car back.
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📖 Bài đọc (reading passage)
THE STEAM CAR
How the Reyburn brothers rose and fell with their steam-powered motor cars
A
A. The earliest motor cars, which took to the roads during the nineteenth century, drew their power from steam. Steam had already proved itself over decades on the railways, so shrinking that technology into a road-going machine, detached from any train, seemed a logical next step. What the new vehicles gained from steam, though, came bundled with its drawbacks. A driver had to light the boiler by hand and then wait roughly twenty minutes while pressure built up, and even once the car was moving, its water tanks ran dry after about thirty miles and needed topping up. Even so, the cars caught on: they carried people at a decent pace, and by the opening years of the twentieth century the sight of one ferrying a well-to-do passenger through the streets was hardly unusual.
B
Yet steam's moment in the sun did not last. Before long a rival had arrived, the internal combustion engine, whose great advantage was that a car fitted with one could be driven away within seconds of starting. Petrol cars did not win people over at once: they were loud, fiddlier to handle, and the hand cranks used to start them were known to snap drivers' arms whenever an engine backfired. That objection fell away around 1911, when a leading manufacturer brought out the electric self-starter, and from then on steam was slowly squeezed out of the market.
C
With the industry already in retreat, four brothers set out to breathe life back into steam. Cornelius Reyburn and his three siblings, still schoolboys, put together their first steam car between 1903 and 1906 in the cellar of the family home in Yorkshire. It was assembled from parts salvaged from a scrapped early steamer, rebuilt to power an engine of the brothers' own design. This first attempt ran poorly, but the Reyburns pressed on, producing a second and then a third prototype over the next few years. That third car, which they called the Mark II, still could not match the convenience of a petrol engine; even so, the many advances it showed over earlier steam vehicles earned it write-ups in the motoring trade press. In several respects it simply outdid its petrol-driven rivals. Where combustion engines rattled and gave off the smell of burnt fuel, the Reyburns' high-pressure steam turned the pistons almost soundlessly. Most striking was its speed: from a standstill it could reach fifty miles an hour in roughly eighteen seconds, described as 'acceleration of a remarkable order' by The Carriage and Motor Gazette in 1911.
D
A year later, Cornelius Reyburn drove the Mark II the length of the country, from Yorkshire down to Coventry, hoping to attract backers; the money he raised there let him set up the Pennine Engineering Company. Work on a successor, the Mark III, began at once, the aim being to build further on everything the Mark II had introduced. Among the additions was a key-operated ignition in the cabin, which did away with the old chore of lighting the boiler by hand. On the strength of such refinements, the young firm pledged a steam car as convenient as any petrol model, yet far faster, far easier to control and near enough silent. Orders poured in: by the following April the company was holding 4,720 deposits for the Reyburn Meteor, with first deliveries promised for early 1915.
E
The good news did not hold. Before the year was out, Reyburn had to disappoint the many customers waiting for their sleek new vehicles. The few who took delivery of a finished car found it slow and unpredictable, for it would now and then lurch backwards just when it was meant to go forward. Inventive though the new engine was, it remained dogged by serious faults.
F
One last effort was made to bring a workable steam car to market. Early in 1921 a Mark V was sent north to Glasgow, where the National Motoring Club had agreed to road-test it. Left out overnight in freezing conditions, it was rolled onto the road the next morning and allowed to stand for more than an hour in the icy air. When the key was turned, the boiler caught and reached its working pressure in under fifty seconds. Once it was moving, the testers were struck by how well such a heavy machine held the road, the credit going to the even spread of its weight. With further development, the Mark V's top speed was eventually driven beyond 110 miles per hour, while it returned around eighteen miles to the gallon of paraffin and gave off almost no emissions.
G
For all its brilliance, the Reyburns' steam car never made money. At something like 3,200 pounds in 1921 it lay within reach only of the very rich. Nor did it help that no two examples of the Mark V were ever quite alike, since Cornelius Reyburn could never stop adjusting the design. Fewer than forty of these remarkable cars had left the works by the time the firm closed in 1928. Reyburn himself never wavered: right up to his death in 1958 he insisted that steam was every bit the equal of petrol, and quite possibly better. The evidence rather supports him. Many of the surviving Mark Vs still run perfectly well, a few having covered more than half a million miles on nothing but routine servicing. Remarkably, an unaltered Mark V burns cleanly enough to meet the emission limits now enforced in London, rules with a reputation for being rigorous. The technology is not without its awkward problems, yet it is hard not to wonder what a steam car might achieve with modern materials and computers. With so much pressure nowadays to make vehicles perform better and pollute less, the return of the steam car is not so far-fetched an idea.
B. Yet steam's moment in the sun did not last. Before long a rival had arrived, the internal combustion engine, whose great advantage was that a car fitted with one could be driven away within seconds of starting. Petrol cars did not win people over at once: they were loud, fiddlier to handle, and the hand cranks used to start them were known to snap drivers' arms whenever an engine backfired. That objection fell away around 1911, when a leading manufacturer brought out the electric self-starter, and from then on steam was slowly squeezed out of the market.
C. With the industry already in retreat, four brothers set out to breathe life back into steam. Cornelius Reyburn and his three siblings, still schoolboys, put together their first steam car between 1903 and 1906 in the cellar of the family home in Yorkshire. It was assembled from parts salvaged from a scrapped early steamer, rebuilt to power an engine of the brothers' own design. This first attempt ran poorly, but the Reyburns pressed on, producing a second and then a third prototype over the next few years. That third car, which they called the Mark II, still could not match the convenience of a petrol engine; even so, the many advances it showed over earlier steam vehicles earned it write-ups in the motoring trade press. In several respects it simply outdid its petrol-driven rivals. Where combustion engines rattled and gave off the smell of burnt fuel, the Reyburns' high-pressure steam turned the pistons almost soundlessly. Most striking was its speed: from a standstill it could reach fifty miles an hour in roughly eighteen seconds, described as 'acceleration of a remarkable order' by The Carriage and Motor Gazette in 1911.
D. A year later, Cornelius Reyburn drove the Mark II the length of the country, from Yorkshire down to Coventry, hoping to attract backers; the money he raised there let him set up the Pennine Engineering Company. Work on a successor, the Mark III, began at once, the aim being to build further on everything the Mark II had introduced. Among the additions was a key-operated ignition in the cabin, which did away with the old chore of lighting the boiler by hand. On the strength of such refinements, the young firm pledged a steam car as convenient as any petrol model, yet far faster, far easier to control and near enough silent. Orders poured in: by the following April the company was holding 4,720 deposits for the Reyburn Meteor, with first deliveries promised for early 1915.
E. The good news did not hold. Before the year was out, Reyburn had to disappoint the many customers waiting for their sleek new vehicles. The few who took delivery of a finished car found it slow and unpredictable, for it would now and then lurch backwards just when it was meant to go forward. Inventive though the new engine was, it remained dogged by serious faults.
F. One last effort was made to bring a workable steam car to market. Early in 1921 a Mark V was sent north to Glasgow, where the National Motoring Club had agreed to road-test it. Left out overnight in freezing conditions, it was rolled onto the road the next morning and allowed to stand for more than an hour in the icy air. When the key was turned, the boiler caught and reached its working pressure in under fifty seconds. Once it was moving, the testers were struck by how well such a heavy machine held the road, the credit going to the even spread of its weight. With further development, the Mark V's top speed was eventually driven beyond 110 miles per hour, while it returned around eighteen miles to the gallon of paraffin and gave off almost no emissions.
G. For all its brilliance, the Reyburns' steam car never made money. At something like 3,200 pounds in 1921 it lay within reach only of the very rich. Nor did it help that no two examples of the Mark V were ever quite alike, since Cornelius Reyburn could never stop adjusting the design. Fewer than forty of these remarkable cars had left the works by the time the firm closed in 1928. Reyburn himself never wavered: right up to his death in 1958 he insisted that steam was every bit the equal of petrol, and quite possibly better. The evidence rather supports him. Many of the surviving Mark Vs still run perfectly well, a few having covered more than half a million miles on nothing but routine servicing. Remarkably, an unaltered Mark V burns cleanly enough to meet the emission limits now enforced in London, rules with a reputation for being rigorous. The technology is not without its awkward problems, yet it is hard not to wonder what a steam car might achieve with modern materials and computers. With so much pressure nowadays to make vehicles perform better and pollute less, the return of the steam car is not so far-fetched an idea.
