Chapter Twenty-Seven: A Changing World / 第二十七章：变化的世界

Imagine that you're walking行走/ˈwɔːkɪŋ/ along a dusty dirt road道路/roʊd/, between two rows of poplar白杨树/ˈpɑpləər/ trees. The branches树枝/ˈbræntʃɪz/ that stretch over the road are just beginning to bud with pale green spring leaves叶子/livz/.

A bird鸟/bɜrd/ sings high above you, the sound carried to you on a chilly morning breeze微风/briz/. Just ahead of you lies an English village村庄/ˈvɪlɪdʒ/. The church bell钟/bɛl/ is ringing: eight clear tones.

At the edge of the village, the trees open up into fields田地/fildz/. Two oxen公牛/ˈɑksən/ pull a plow犁/plaʊ/ near the road's edge. Further off in the distance, you can just see a single horse马/hɔrs/ pulling a seed drill. Farmers农民/ˈfɑrmərs/ walk behind their machines, keeping the animals in a straight line.

Stone walls close off the fields; against the rough gray of the nearest wall, two young men are shearing a flock of unhappy sheep羊/ʃip/. A pile of wool羊毛/wʊl/ grows nearby. Three small children儿童/ˈtʃɪldrən/ scurry back and forth, carrying the wool in baskets篮子/ˈbæskɪts/.

You hear a gentle thump, thump, thump from a cottage小屋/ˈkɑtɪdʒ/ that sits beside the road. You peer through a window窗户/ˈwɪndoʊ/. A woman sits spinning纺纱/ˈspɪnɪŋ/ wool into heavy thread. On the other side of the room, her husband bends over a loom织布机/lum/, weaving cloth from the wool thread.

A fire火/faɪər/ burns on the hearth. Beside the house, a young boy is chopping up stumps; each swing of the axe斧头/æks/ splits off another piece of firewood柴火/ˈfaɪərwʊd/. A clang, clang, clang sounds from further down the street. A blacksmith铁匠/ˈblæksmɪθ/ is making horseshoes.

Muscle肌肉/ˈmʌsəl/ power makes the machines and tools in this village work! All over England, human and animal muscles produce the goods and food食物/fud/ that Englishmen eat and use. Together, the people of a village can also harness the power of the wind风/wɪnd/; a village near a stream might be able to use a waterwheel instead.

A new source of power—neither muscle, wind, or water—will soon change village life. In 1769, a Scotsman named James Watt詹姆斯·瓦特/dʒeɪmz wɑt/ perfected a machine called a steam engine蒸汽机/stim ˈɛndʒɪn/.

The steam engine works in a very simple way. Water水/ˈwɔtər/ is heated in a closed metal bowl called a boiler锅炉/ˈbɔɪlər/. When the water boils, it turns into steam蒸汽/stim/. Steam takes up more space than water, so the steam pushes to get out of the bowl.

The only way out of the bowl is through a narrow pipe called a cylinder气缸/ˈsɪlɪndər/, but the cylinder is blocked by a circular piece of metal called a piston活塞/ˈpɪstən/. When the steam tries to go through the cylinder, it pushes the piston up. Then the steam cools off, condenses back into water, and falls back down into the boiler.

The steam engine changed the West just as much as ideas about liberty自由/ˈlɪbərti/ and equality平等/ɪˈkwɑləti/ did. Steam could run so many more machines so much more quickly than human muscles, windmills, or waterwheels! People grow tired, wind dies down, and drought dries up streams. But steam engines would run as long as they had coal煤/koʊl/.

As steam engines became more popular, more and more coal was needed to feed them. But although steam engines ran machines faster than ever, coal was still mined开采/maɪnd/ by hand. Miners矿工/ˈmaɪnərz/ had to dig tunnels隧道/ˈtʌnəlz/ down into the ground where coal lay and chop it out by hand.

Deep down in the ground, there wasn't enough air空气/ɛr/ for the miners to breathe. The miners called this lack of air "chokedamp窒息性气体/ˈtʃoʊkdæmp/." Even worse than chokedamp was "firedamp." Coal puts out a gas called methane甲烷/ˈmɛθeɪn/. When methane built up in corners of coal mines, it would explode with a little bang.

Miners could be killed by suffocation, explosion, or tunnel collapse. But even those who survived often died later from a disease called "blacklung黑肺病/blækˌlʌŋ/." After years of breathing coal dust into their lungs, miners couldn't breathe properly any more.

Steam ran pumps and bellows, ships and trains. Over in America, it would soon run a new kind of machine: the cotton gin轧棉机/ˈkɑtən dʒɪn/. The warm, damp fields of the southern United States were perfect for cotton棉花/ˈkɑtən/ plants.

Thread spun from cotton was used all over the world! Plantation种植园/plænˈteɪʃən/ owners could grow huge, healthy cotton plants covered with valuable cotton blooms. When the cotton fields were ready to harvest, slaves奴隶/sleɪvz/ and hired men moved along the rows, plucking the fluffy cotton balls and dropping them into huge sacks.

But the cotton balls weren't soft and smooth like the ones you can now buy at a drugstore. They were filled with seeds种子/sidz/. And the seeds were covered with little hooks, like sharp pieces of Velcro. Before the cotton could be used, all of the seeds had to be pulled out of the cotton balls, one at a time.

A college boy from Massachusetts named Eli Whitney伊莱·惠特尼/ˈilaɪ ˈwɪtni/ came south, after the American Revolution, and set up his workshop near a plantation. Eli liked machines, and he liked solving problems. He watched the slaves struggle to pull the clinging, hooked seeds out of cotton blossoms.

According to a story told afterward, Eli was sitting on the back porch of a nearby plantation, idly watching chickens鸡/ˈtʃɪkənz/ in a wire pen. A cat猫/kæt/ sat next to the pen, watching the chickens and hoping to make a meal of one of them. When a careless chicken wandered over to the edge of the pen, the cat pushed his paw through the wire and extended his claws.

He went back to his workshop and built a metal roller with teeth that rubbed up against a metal grill. The roller, turned by a handle, pulled up cotton and scraped it across the grill. The seeds dropped away. Now, a slave who turned the handle of this new machine, called a cotton gin, could clean fifteen or twenty pounds of cotton per day.

With the help of the cotton gin, cotton growers could make more money than they ever dreamed. Plantation owners planted larger fields and bought more slaves. In the years to come, cotton would become the biggest industry工业/ˈɪndəstri/ of the South—and increase slavery a hundredfold.

Whitney wasn't finished inventing. The United States government wanted the United States Army to have better guns枪支/gʌnz/. Guns were made by hand, one at a time. The parts of each gun fit only that gun—no other! If a trigger broke or a barrel twisted, the soldier who owned the gun would have to take it to a gunsmith and wait for a new part to be made.

This is called standardization标准化/ˌstændərdɪˈzeɪʃən/. Standardization means that parts are interchangeable可互换的/ˌɪntərˈtʃeɪndʒəbəl/. A light bulb from General Electric can be interchanged with a light bulb made by another company. Both will work!

But back in 1797, standardization was a brand new idea. Eli Whitney had to show a group of American government officials a whole stack of his new gun parts and invite them to put together a gun, using any of the parts. The officials—including Thomas Jefferson托马斯·杰斐逊/ˈtɑməs ˈdʒɛfərsən/—chose their parts and started to fit them together.

Eli Whitney claimed that his system of interchangeable parts was "unknown in Europe." Soon this way of making parts was called the "American system美国制造体系/əˈmɛrɪkən ˈsɪstəm/." Actually, a French inventor had already thought of this—but it was Whitney's factory that became famous. Soon, interchangeable parts were used for all sorts of goods: clocks, farm machinery, and cotton gins!