Ford’s Assembly Line
When it comes to singling out those who have made a difference in all our lives, you cannot overlook Henry Ford. A historian a century from now might well conclude that it was Ford who most influenced all manufacturing, everywhere, even to this day, by introducing a new way to make cars—one, strange to say, that originated in slaughterhouses (屠宰场).
Back in the early 1900%, slaughterhouses used what could have been called a "disassembly line". Ford reversed this process to see if it would speed up production of a part of an automobile engine called a magneto. Rather than have each worker completely assemble a magneto, one of its elements was placed on a conveyer, and each worker, as it passed, added another component to it, the same one each time. Professor David Hounshell of the University of Delaware, an expert on industrial development, tells what happened:
"The previous day, workers carrying out the
A. He introduced a new way of production.
B. He influenced all manufacturing.
C. He inspired other auto makers.
D. He changed the minds of historians.
To the professional linguist, there is no superiority of any language. Therefore, it is well-accepted in the field of linguistics that there exist no higher or lower grades among languages.
People once thought of the languages of backward groups as undeveloped forms of speech, consisting largely of rough and simple sounds. It is possible that language in general began as a series of simple sounds. But it is a fact established by the study of "backward" languages that no spoken tongue answers that description. Most languages of "backward" groups are extremely complex pieces of tool for the transfer of ideas. They "fall behind" the western languages not in their sound pattern or grammatical structures hut only in their vocabularies. The sound pattern or grammatical structures usually are fully adequate for all language needs. The vocabulary reflects the objects and activities known to their speakers.
There are two things to be noted. Fi
A. their languages were difficult to understand
B. the history of their languages was not long
C. the sounds of their languages were very easy to understand
D. their languages mainly contained rough and simple sounds
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