Сборник текстов и упражнений по внеаудиторному чтению для студентов факультета культуры и искусств, изучающих английский язык. Полторак Д.Л. - 26 стр.

       The first news picture was shown in 1897; it was a documentary               6. The two brothers soon made a camera and projector that
film about a boxing match. Other events were sometimes shown, too.           worked at about 16 photographs per minute.
       In 1903 one of Edison's cameramen made a new long picture. It                7. In November 1895 the Lumiere brothers gave the world's first
was called The Life of an American Fireman. People liked it and asked        real cinematograph show.
for more; and so more films of this kind were made. More cinemas                    8. The first film had wonderful sound.
were built.
       These first films had no sound. When it was necessary, printed
words were thrown on the screen to explain what was happening or                              THE CAPITOLINE VENUS
what people were saying. Usually music was played during the show-                        (by Mark Twain, slightly abridged)
ing of a film. If the film was showing moonlight on the sea, the music
was gentle and sweet. If there was a fight or a storm, the music was               Mark Twain
loud and noisy.                                                                    1835–1910

                              Exercises                                              Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) was born on November 30,
                                                                             1835, in a tiny settlement in Missouri not far from the little town of
      1. Answer the questions:                                               Hannibal on the banks of the Mississippi River. The family soon moved
      1. What kind of research work did Roget carry out?                     to Hannibal and there young Sam spent the first fourteen years of his
      2. In two sentences say what Muybridge and Friese-Green did in         life – the years in which the writer's character and outlook on life be-
helping to develop the cinema.                                               gan to be formed. Much later Twain wrote: "All that goes to make the
      3. Discuss whose contribution was more important – Edison's or         me in me was in a Missourian village."
the Lumiere brothers'.                                                               His father died when Sam was not yet twelve years old and the
      4. Why do you think the first films were documentary?                  boy had to work to help the family: he became a printer's apprentice.
      5. Why were some people frightened while watching the film                     All his life Twain was very fond of reading. While he was a
about the arrival of the train?                                              printer he spent his spare time in libraries, and so it came about that
      6. Have you ever seen silent films? What is your impression?           he read the works of Рое, Shakespeare, Goldsmith, Dickens, Cervantes,
                                                                             Voltaire and Tom Paine in his early youth.
       2. Find mistakes in these sentences and correct them:                         It was also while he was a printer that Twain began to write for
       1. The eye sees an object for about a fifth of a second after the     newspapers and other publications, sending travel letters to them as he
object has disappeared.                                                      journeyed about the country from job to job.
       2. It was a cylinder with pictures on the inside wall. Each picture           One of Sam Clemens's dreams as a boy had been to pilot a
was similar to the one before it.                                            steamboat on the Mississippi. His boyhood dream came true. In his
       3. In 1972 Edward Muybridge, an English photographer living in        "Life on the Mississippi" (1883) Mark Twain, in his humorous manner,
America, made an experiment which became well-known.                         tells how he became a steamboat pilot.
       4. About ten years after this many .men were studying moving                  The breaking out of the Civil War brought river traffic on the
pictures, but now they were using one camera instead of thirty-four.         Mississippi to a stop, and Clemens found himself out of job. Mark
       5. Friese-Green did a lot of work in developing the cinema, and       Twain's career as a journalist began some years later. His material
he made a lot of money.
                                                                             began to appear in the papers regularly, and on February 2, 1863, the

                                   51                                                                          52