VOA标准英语2010年-Technology Keeps Astounding and Amazin

But what's new and hot today will be antiquated¹ before you know it

Ted² Landphair | Washington, DC 23 June 2010
 Millions of American adults might recall phonograph records, cameras with flashbulbs and telephones with rotary³ dials, but their children won't.

Paul Harris, a Missouri broadcaster who writes a popular personal Web log, published a column in the Saint Louis Post-Dispatch newspaper in which he listed some of the things in his life that his 12-year-old daughter will grow up knowing nothing about.

Little things, mostly.

Cranking up the windows in the family car, for instance. There are no cranks in today's automobiles⁴. Electric buttons and digital displays control everything.

This is, or was, an ice box, in which a huge block of ice was placed in a zinc-lined portion of the cabinet. A drainage hose carried the water away as the ice melted.

Like millions of other American adults, Harris recalls phonograph records, cameras with flashbulbs, telephones with rotary dials, long-distance calls that only an operator could place, motels that proudly advertised their air-conditioned rooms, and gas stations where a rubber hose would go ding-ding when entering cars drove over it. The bell alerted the attendant that someone needed gas and a window-cleaning. These days, customers fill their own tanks and clean their own windows, since there are no attendants in most stations.

Paul Harris's column got us thinking of some other things that American kids are missing, such as slide rules; defrosting the refrigerator with pans of hot water, or chipping out the build-up with a sharp ice pick; buying a vacuum cleaner from a door-to-door salesman; televisions that brought in just three or four fuzzy stations; double-features, cartoons, and multi-part short adventure stories at the movies; and driving around without seat belts.

Note the window crank on the driver's-side door of this 1946 DeSoto. No automatic up-down button. No digital control. If you wanted air, you had to roll down the window yourself.

You couldn't buckle⁵ up if you wanted to, since before the 1960s, there were no belts in the car.

Just as we can't expect today's children to understand what it means to crank up the window, you'd best not ask them to meet you at quarter past five. You need an analog⁶ watch with moving hands to get a quarter of the way around the dial. It's a digital world now. A more comfortable and convenient world.

But maybe not as simple a one.

 

1 antiquated   

adj.陈旧的，过时的

参考例句：

• Many factories are so antiquated they are not worth saving.很多工厂过于陈旧落后，已不值得挽救。
• A train of antiquated coaches was waiting for us at the siding.一列陈旧的火车在侧线上等着我们。

2 ted   

vt.翻晒，撒，撒开

参考例句：

• The invaders gut ted the village.侵略者把村中财物洗劫一空。
• She often teds the corn when it's sunny.天好的时候她就翻晒玉米。

3 rotary   

adj.(运动等)旋转的；轮转的；转动的

参考例句：

• The central unit is a rotary drum.核心设备是一个旋转的滚筒。
• A rotary table helps to optimize the beam incidence angle.一张旋转的桌子有助于将光线影响之方式角最佳化。

4 automobiles   

n.汽车( automobile的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• When automobiles become popular,the use of the horse and buggy passed away. 汽车普及后，就不再使用马和马车了。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• Automobiles speed in an endless stream along the boulevard. 宽阔的林荫道上，汽车川流不息。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》

5 buckle   

n.扣子，带扣；v.把...扣住，由于压力而弯曲

参考例句：

• The two ends buckle at the back.带子两端在背后扣起来。
• She found it hard to buckle down.她很难专心做一件事情。

6 analog   

n.类似物，模拟

参考例句：

• The analog signal contains high-frequency video information,which helps make up the picture.模拟信号包括有助于构成图像的高频视频信息。
• The analog computer measures continuously,without proceeding step by step.模拟计算机不是一步一步地进行，而是连续地进行量度。