Improvements in technology often happen overnight. Some gadgets get smaller and faster. Others are replaced (代替) by newer things like smartphones. They can do hundreds of things. Here are some old gadgets that people used to use.
①________
Do you have a landline at home? These are phones that people plug (插入) into their living room walls. Mobile phones didn’t use to be so common at that time, so most families had a landline. But landlines only worked at home. What did people do when they were outside and needed to call someone? They looked for a pay phone! Then, most people had their own mobile phones and many homes no longer had landlines.
②________
People today store plenty of information online, or on SD cards. But in the 1980s and 1990s, people used to use floppy disks. The first floppy disks were large, expensive, and not very useful — each disk could store just 175 KB of information! Later, floppy disks got smaller and better. But even the best ones could only hold 1.44 MB. You would need three or four disks just for one song, and about 22,000 disks to match the storage (储存空间) available on a 32 GB phone!
③________
It’s easy to take photos today. People often have thousands just on their phones! But photos used to be expensive, and people took fewer of them. To take a photo, you had to buy a roll of film. This allowed you to take about 30 photos. After finishing the roll, you left it at a shop. The shop developed the photos to make them be seen, which you could collect after a few days.
Technology changes all the time, and the gadgets we use today will one day be old. What do you think will be next to disappear?
(1). What does the underlined word “gadgets” mean in Paragraph 1?
A. |
Toys. |
B. |
Tools. |
C. |
Games. |
D. |
Phones. |
(2). Match the title with each paragraph.
a. Goodbye Disks b. Music to My Ears c. Picture This d. Call Me e. Film Development
A. |
①-d, ②-b, ③-e |
B. |
①-d, ②-a, ③-c |
C. |
①-c, ②-a, ③-b |
D. |
①-c, ②-b, ③-e |
(3). What were the first floppy disks like?
A. |
They could store much. |
B. |
They were very useful. |
C. |
They cost a lot of money. |
D. |
They were easy to carry. |
(4). What can we get from the passage?
A. |
It was convenient to take photos with film. |
B. |
People outside used landlines to call someone. |
C. |
Improvements in technology change people’s life. |
D. |
For a time, many people had pay phones at home. |
(5). What would be the best title for the passage?
A. |
The Changing Phones. |
B. |
The Products of Tomorrow. |
C. |
Old Things We Use Today. |
D. |
The Things We Used to Use. |