A patent is an official document 【小题1】(give)to an inventor by a government. This document 【小题2】(general) gives inventors the right to stop anyone else from copying, using or selling the invention without their permission.

Inventions are the result of hard work. It may only take a moment of inspiration to think of a good idea but it takes a lot of research and experimentation to turn it into a(n) 【小题3】(use)and working invention. So, inventors deserve a reward for the amount of time they spend 【小题4】(develop)their ideas. They also need the 【小题5】(secure) of knowing that if they share the invention with 【小题6】rest of the world, nobody will steal it, use it or copy it without their permission.

Patents also benefit the society 【小题7】 return for patent protection. Inventors agree 【小题8】(show)all the technical information about their invention. This information is available to everyone and has enough details 【小题9】can be used by people with basic knowledge to produce the invention. In this way, patents help to spread new knowledge, which can in turn help people find 【小题10】(solve)to different problems or to make further advances in science and technology.

The Father of Cool

It is evening, near freezing. The city is practically empty. Fog 【小题1】 the Pittsburgh Railroad Station. A young engineer walks the platform, his brain occupied with a problem that has obsessed him for months. And then it 【小题2】 him—the Archimedean lightning bolt (闪电) of inspiration. The answer is literally all around him: It’s the fog itself!

The young man’s name is Willis Haviland Carrier. On that foggy night in 1902, he hit upon the theory that became the 【小题3】 for modern air-conditioning technology.

Carrier graduated from university as a mechanical engineer in June 1901. A month later, he began working for the Buffalo Forge Company, a firm that   produced heating and exhaust systems 【小题4】. The summer of 1901 was 【小题5】 hot. A printing company became frustrated with varying humidity (湿度) levels when trying to print in color. The same paper had to be printed four times in four colors, and if the humidity changed between print runs, the paper would slightly expand or 【小题6】. Even a millimeter’s misalignment (错位) looked awful.

Early the following year, the printing company 【小题7】 Buffalo Forge, asking it to devise a system to control humidity in the air as well as the temperature. The firm turned to the 25-year-old Carrier.

By the early 1850s, two 【小题8】 in cooling had been achieved: a French engineer designed the first absorption refrigerator; and an American physician was 【小题9】 a patent for a machine to make ice. From then on, the challenge would lie in controlling humidity instead of lowering temperature.

Carrier’s partial solution involved circulating cold water and then balancing their temperature with the rate of air flow. It was at the Pittsburgh Railroad Station that the solution came to him. Few other inventors have had such an impact on modern life and yet remained so little-known. Air conditioning, in a sense, has become 【小题10】. And for most of us, the simple ability to cool our homes amid the summer’s heat is more than enough reason to be grateful for Carrier’s fogbound moment of genius.

The Father of 3D Printing

About twenty years ago, the surgeons at the Wilford Hull medical center working to separate a pair of conjoined(连体的) twins thought that only one would be able to walk after the operation. After a model of the girls’ bone structure was 【小题1】 using 3D printing, however, they found a shared upper leg bone to be bigger than expected and split it successfully, 【小题2】 in both twins being able to walk. Now eighty and still working as chief technology officer of 3D Systems. Chuck Hull is enjoying some minor 【小题3】 31 years after he first printed a small black eye-wash cup using a new method of manufacturing known as 3D printing.

At the time, he was working for a company that used UV light to put thin layers of plastic coats on tabletops and 【小题4】. He had an idea that if he could place thousands of thin layers of plastic on top of each other and then cut their shape using light, he would be able to form three dimensional objects. After a year, he 【小题5】 a system where light was shone into a bottle of photopolymer – a material which changes from liquid to plastic-like solid when light shines on it – and traces the shape of one level of the object. Subsequent layers are then printed until it is 【小题6】.

After patenting the invention, he set up 3D Systems, 【小题7】 getting $6m (£3.5m) from a Canadian investor. The first 【小题8】 product came out in 1988 and proved a hit among car manufacturers, in the aerospace sector and for companies designing medical equipment. The possibilities appear endless – from home-printed food and medicine to 【小题9】 that pictures of objects be able to be taken in shops and then recreated using plans downloaded from the Internet Although deliberate in his responses, there is one moment when the 【小题10】 spoken Chuck Hull tells of his surprise about what exactly his creation was capable of achieving.