评论
打印
MACHINES ARE OUR SERVANTS
机器是我们的仆人
Have you ever watched in wonder some great, throbbing steam locomotive or a roaring printing press? Surely you have ridden a bicycle, and perhaps you have run a sewing machine. Maybe you have a toy motor or an electric train. These are all machines—machines to give us pleasure or to do our work.
你是否曾惊奇地看到过某种巨大的、搏动的蒸汽机车或轰鸣的印刷机？你肯定骑过自行车，也许还开过缝纫机。也许你有一个玩具发动机或电动火车。这些都是机器——给我们快乐或做我们的工作的机器。
You will be surprised if you count the number of machines you see and use every day. And if these machines were suddenly taken away, you would be very much upset. You turn a faucet to get water, and it is a machine that pumps the water to your faucet. Machines make the electricity that lights your home. The milk that you drink is probably put into the bottle by a bottling-machine. Even an egg beater is a machine.
如果你每天都数一数你看到和使用的机器的数量，你会感到惊讶的。如果这些机器突然被拿走，你会非常难过。你打开水龙头取水，它是一个机器，把水泵到你的水龙头。机器产生的电可以点亮你的家。你喝的牛奶可能是由装瓶机装进瓶里的。甚至打蛋器也是个机器。
So, you see, machines are really our servants. They help us to do things in easier ways, and they make it possible to do things faster. Machines, we say, do the work of the world.
所以，你看，机器实际上是我们的仆人。它们帮助我们以更简单的方式做事，使我们能够更快地做事。机器，我们说，做世界的工作。
But we must never forget that all these machines we enjoy came from the careful, patient work of men. Even though you and I cannot possibly understand how some powerful or delicate machine works; even though no person could possibly do what the machine does, yet some man or group of men made that great or delicate machine that means so much to us all.
但我们绝不能忘记，我们所享受的所有这些机器都来自于人类的细心和耐心工作。即使你和我都不可能理解某个强大或精密的机器是如何工作的；尽管没有人能做这台机器所能做的事，但一些人或一群人制造出了这台对我们所有人都意义重大的伟大或精致的机器。
Some of the most interesting stories to read are those that tell how machines work and how men have thought, and planned and studied to invent machines which make life easier for us all.
其中一些最有趣的故事讲述了机器是如何工作的，人类是如何思考的，并计划和研究发明机器，使我们所有人的生活更容易。
