Lesson 1 5 UNIT
5
SCIENCESCIENCE AND PROGRESS AND PROGRESS
INVENTORS AND INVENTIONS – What famous inventors do you know? What were their inventions? – Do you think a time machine will ever be invented? Would you like to do some time travelling? What time would you like to visit, what event would you like to witness?
READING 1. Do you know who Leonardo Da Vinci was? What is he most famous for? Look at the pictures and give ideas about Leonardo Da Vinci not only as an artist, name the machines shown. Leonardo da Vinci is famous for creating some of the most incredible works of art. But besides being a brilliant artist, Da Vinci was also a scientist, engineer, and inventor. He may well have been the greatest inventor in history. Da Vinci drew sketches and diagrams of his inventions, which he preserved in his notebooks. Unfortunately, almost none of Da Vinci’s inventions were built during his lifetime. And, because he never published his diagrams, nobody else knew about them until his notebooks were discovered long after his death. That’s a pity, because da Vinci’s designs were spectacularly ahead of his time. If they had been built, they might have revolutionized the history of technology. In recent years, however, engineers have begun to construct models of da Vinci’s amazing machines and most of them actually work. PARACHUTE The invention of the parachute is traditionally credited to Leonardo da Vinci although he wasn’t the first to come up with the concept. However, Leonardo’s parachute was more sophisticated and in 2000, the British skydiver Adrian Nicholas proved that it works by jumping with a parachute built according to da Vinci’s sketches. ORNITHOPTER Da Vinci came up with plans for a number of flying machines including ornithopters. Inspired by birds and bird flight, Leonardo’s ornithopter was to be lifted and operated by flapping wings which in turn would be “powered” by muscle energy. ROBOTS What da Vinci built were not robots in the modern sense. He built a self-operating machine called automaton which, however, was capable of moving without human help. MACHINE GUN Leonardo’s machine gun was nothing like the modern machine guns. Rather than firing bullets rapidly from a belt, it was meant to fire bullets from individual guns that were connected in three rows, with each row containing 11 guns.
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