Read the following passage about the world’s first GPS and mark the letter A, B, C or D on your answer sheet to indicate the best answer to each of the following questions from 31 to 40.
THE WORLD’S FIRST GPS
On a stormy night in 1707, four ships struck rocks off the south coast of England and sank. One thousand, four hundred sailors were drowned. [I]The ships had crashed because they had no way of knowing how far they had travelled in a particular direction; they could not calculate their longitude, which required accurate time measurement. [II] It was the most serious in a series of accidents at sea, and a stunned British government decided to act. [III] In such difficult circumstances, they believed that the best response to the disaster was a competition: the Longitude Prize. [IV]
The Longitude Prize was an exceptional contest. To claim victory, a person needed to find a method for determining the distance a ship had traveled east or west from its point of departure. Geniuses such as Sir Isaac Newton had failed to find a solution, so to ensure the interest of Britain's greatest scientific minds, the government offered a prize of £20,000 - the equivalent of £2.6 million in today's money. However, to everyone's surprise, it wasn't a famous academic who solved the problem, but an unknown carpenter. When John Harrison wasn't engaged in woodworking, he was making clocks. An accurate clock would enable sailors to ascertain their position, but at the time it was believed that making a mechanical clock capable of operating on a ship was impossible. The movement of the sea and the changes in temperature destroyed the delicate parts. However, after three frustrated attempts, Harrison's fourth sea clock, H4, finally triumphed. Its mechanics were so good that the H4 worked better than most clocks on land.
The Longitude Prize and Harrison's success generated a lot of interest in the 18th century, but it was soon forgotten. However, in 2013, the British government created a new Longitude Prize, offering £10 million to the person who could solve a great challenge to humanity. An enthralled public then took part in a TV programme where viewers chose one challenge from a list of six for scientists to focus on. The question now is, will someone be able to solve it just as well as Harrison solved the challenge presented to him?
(Adapted from Friend Global 12 – SGK)
