The first books printed in England

For hundreds of years after King Alfred’s time very few people were taught how to read. The people who could read, like the priests, told them sometimes stories from history; but they had no books, and could not read for themselves. Even the people who could read had very few books, and these were not books written in by men. These books took a long time to make; but a clever man found out how to print books with machines; and while the Wars of the Roses were still going on a man called William Caxton brought a printing-press to London, and he printed very beautiful books, which rich people could buy and read. Later on, people found out how to print books much more quickly, and then they could sell them for less money. Now even poor people are able to buy nice books for themselves.

TOWER BRIDGE

This year London has a special birthday to celebrate; in fact Tower Bridge was 100 years old on 30 June 1994! During the reign of Queen Victoria from 1838 to 1901 engineers and scientists competed with each other to make the greatest progress. They had a tremendous confidence that science and engineering could solve all the world's problems. Tower Bridge is probably the most important product of this optimism and confidence demonstrating the best of the engineering skills of the Victorian architects. It didn't have an easy existence as it was threatened over the years by heavy bombings in the first and later in the Second World War. Nevertheless, it managed to survive and is still in use. Since the inauguration of the Bridge in 1894 till 1955, the Bridge was opened 325358 times. Over the years, since then, the number of "lifts" has dropped because of the closure of wharf’s in Inner London, which means that large ships don't need to go under the Bridge. Nevertheless, the average number of "lifts" is 14 a day over a hundred years. The architectural style of the Tower Bridge is the Victorian gothic, very typical of the nineteenth century England. Indeed, the architects succeeded in designing a unique bridge, the only one of its kind in the world.

The features that give it a distinctive elaboration, which remind us of gothic character are pointed conical pinnacles and decorative cathedrals and castles. Of the twin towers, the north tower (the one nearest to the Tower of London) is the entrance to the recently opened, glass-covered Tower Bridge Walkways which are accessible by a lift or stairs and afford a superb view of the Thames river and the London skyline. The walkways over the bridge itself are 140 feet above the river and JO feet wide. Special displays in the walkway show the skycap as it was 100 years ago, and during the Blitz in World War Two. The south tower is enlivened by an exhibition of the history of the Bridge. "The Celebration Story", as the exhibition is called is, a multimedia presentation, which transports the visitors back to the 1890s. In tells how and why the Bridge was built and then goes through various stages of the Bridge's history. In 1993 a new exhibition was inaugurated. On display are the original Victorian steam engines in their engine House. Those engines worked the mechanisms that lifted the roadway so that ships could pass beneath. In short, Tower Bridge, with its amazing and admirable characteristics, and the symbol of the glory and splendor of England, needs to be seen.

 

The ENGLISH LANGUAGE

The world is various stages of social, economic, and demographic transition. Economically and politically, the world has changed more rapidly in the past few years than at any time since 1945. The emerging global economy is both competitive and interdependent. It reflects the availability of modern communications and production technologies in most parts of the world. So, do we need to be concerned about the future of the English language in the 21^st century? English continues to be the world standard language, and there is no major threat to the language or to its global popularity. But, changes are coming.

The global spread of English over the last 40 years is remarkable. It is unprecedented in several ways: by the increasing number of users of the language; by its depth of penetration into societies; by its range of functions.

Worldwide over 1.4 billion people live in countries where English has official status. One out of five of the world’s population speaks English with some degree of competence. And one in five – over one billion people is learning English. Over 70 % of the world’s scientists read English. About 85 % of the world’s mail is written in English. And 90 % of all information in the world’s electronic retrieval systems is stored in English. By 2010, the number of people who speak English as a second or foreign language will exceed the number of native speakers. This trend will certainly affect the language.

English is used for more than ever before. Vocabularies, grammatical forms, and ways of speaking and writing have emerged influenced by technological and scientific developments, economics and management, literature and entertainment genres. What began some 1.500 years ago as a rude language, originally spoken by obscure germanic tribes who invaded England, now encompasses the globe.

When Mexican pilots land their airplanes in France, they and the group controllers use English. When German physicists want to alert the international scientific community to new discoveries, they first publish their findings in English. When Japanese executives conduct business with Scandinavian entrepreneurs, they often use lyrics or phrases in English. When demonstrators want to alert the world to their problems, they display sings in English.

Three factors continue to contribute to this spread of English: English usage in science, technology and commerce; the ability to incorporate vocabulary from other languages; and the acceptability of various English dialects.

In science, English replaced German after World War II. With this technical and dominance came the beginning of overall linguistic dominance, first in Europe and then globally.

Today, the information age has replaced the industrial age and has compressed time and distance. This is transforming world economics from industrial production to information-based goods and services.

Ignoring geography and borders, the information revolution is redefining our world. In less than 20 years, information processing, once limited to the printed word, has given way to computers and the Internet. Computer-mediated communication is closing the gap between spoken and written English. It encourages more informal conversational language, and has resulted in the Internet English replacing the authority of language institutes and practices.

English, like many languages, uses a phonetic alphabet and fairly basic syntax. But most importantly, it has a large and extensive vocabulary, of about 80 % is foreign. Therefore, it has cognates from virtually every language in Europe and as borrowed and continues to borrow words from Spanish and French, Hebrew and Arabic, Hindi-Urdu and Bengali, Malay and Chinese, as well as languages from West Africa and Polynesia. This language characteristic makes it unique in history.

Finally, no English language central authority guards the purity of the language, therefore, many dialects have developed: American, British, Canadian, Indian, and Australian, to name a few. There is no standard pronunciation. But within this diversity is a unity of grammar and one set of core vocabulary. Thus, each country that speaks the language can inject aspects of its own culture into the usage and vocabulary.

However, the future is unpredictable, as there are no precedents to help us predict what happens to a language when it achieves genuine world status.

The world is in transition, and the English language will take new forms. The language and how it is used will change, reflecting patterns of contact with other languages and the changing communication needs of people.

One question that arises about the future role of the English language is whether a single world standard English will develop. This could result in a supranational variety that all people would have to learn.

The widespread use of English as a language of wider communication will continue to exert pressure toward global uniformity. This could result in declining standards, language changes, and the loss of geolinguistic diversity.

On the other hand, because English is the vehicle for international communication and because it forms the basis for constructing cultural identities, many local varieties could instead develop. This trend may lead to fragmentation of the language and threaten the role of English as a lingua franca. However, there have always been major differences between varieties of English.

There is no reason to believe that any one other language will appear within the next 50 years to replace English. However, it is possible that English will not keep its monopoly in the 21st century. Rather, a small number of languages may form an oligopoly — each with a special area of influence. For example, Spanish is rising because of expanding trade and the increase of the Latino population in the United States. This could create a bilingual English-Spanish region.

A language shift, in which individuals change their linguistic allegiances, is another possibility. These shifts are slow and difficult to predict. But within the next 50 years, substantial language shifts could occur as economic development affects more countries.

Because of these shifts in allegiance, more languages may disappear. Those remaining will rapidly get more native speakers. This includes English. Internal migration and urbanization may restructure areas, thereby creating communities where English becomes the language of interethnic communication — a neutral language.

English has been an international language for only 50 years. If the pattern follows the previous language trends, we still have about 100 years before a new language dominates the world. However, this does not mean that English is replacing or will replace other languages as many fear. Instead, it may supplement or co-exist with languages by allowing strangers to communicate across linguistic boundaries. It may become one tool that opens windows to the world, unlocks doors to opportunities, and expands our minds to new ideas.

 

ECOLOGY IS A PRIORITY

The ecological problem, which is also very much a social one, is one of the pressing problems of our days. It is closely linked to the problems of economic growth, progress in science and technology, natural resources, energy and food supplies. In many cases the environmental problem has become a dominant one in relation to many others.

The pollution of the environment, the destruction of ecosystems, the destruction of mane species of plants and animals have now reached threatening proportions. An increasing influence on nature and the application of new technological processes may cause catastrophic results. Negative anthropogenic influence threaten to disrupt nature’s basic cycles and to undermine the self-regenerating capacities of the biosphere and of its individual components.

This is illustrated by the following data. By comparison with the beginning of the twenties century the accumulation of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, as well as of aerosols, has increased dozens of times in many cities, and has increased globally by 20 per cent. As a result of the formation of a layer of carbon dioxide around the Earth which encloses it like a glass cover the threat of unfavourable changes in climate has arisen that may transform our blue planet into an enormous greenhouse during the next decades, with possibly catastrophic effects. Those include changes in its energy balance and a gradual increase in temperature that will transform fertile regions into arid ones, raise the level of water in the ocean and produce a flooding of great numbers of coastal lands and cities. The threat of a disruption in oxygen balance has arisen through the destruction of the ozone screen in the lower stratosphere as a result of the flights of supersonic aircraft. Pollution of the ocean has increased at a rate that threatens to make it global.

All this exerts a substantial adverse influence on the health of individuals, their labour productivity, and their creative activities. The pollution of the environment through chemical, physical and biological agents together with increases in the volume and types of ionizing radiation, produce, among other things, an increase in their mutagenic influence on individuals, that is, in pathological changes in heredity, and a greater number of hereditary defects, diseases, genetically determined forms of vulnerability to serious and chronic diseases. These impede the vital activities and reproductive functions of individuals and cause their genetic degeneration. Calculations of researchers indicate that increases in natural background radiation by only 10 rads may lead to the birth of 6 million hereditary defective persons in each generation. Already now, according to UN experts, 10.5 per cent of people are born with hereditary (genetic) defects. Data concerning deaths from cancer published by the National Cancer Institute of the U.S. indicate that 60 per cent or more of the cases (500,000 cases of cancer per year) are caused by various cancer-producing factors in the environment.

 

PRESERVING THE ENVIRONMENT

Recently more and more attention has been focused on the problem of preserving the environment. Over the past few decades or so the quality of many people’s lives has deteriorated in some respects because of technological progress. Those people living near airports are constantly attacked by noise of increasingly larger and more powerful jet aircraft taking off and landing. We have ugly buildings which have appeared in towns and cities. Some of these are blocks of flats-high-rise buildings built because of the high price of land.

The motor car has been responsible for many changes in the environment. On the one hand it has brought mobility of millions of people but on the other it has led to the construction of more and more noisy and dangerous roads and has polluted

the atmosphere with exhaust fumes.

While towns and cities have become larger and uglier and more densely populated, the rural areas have lost most of their population owing to the need for fewer workers in agriculture. The countryside has also been affected by the large-scale use of insecticides. For one thing the killing insects has resulted in a loss of balance in the ecology. Insects provide food for birds. Many people are afraid that fruit and vegetables sprayed with chemicals may have some poisonous effect upon the people who eat them.

Recently, however, certain counter measures against the destruction of the environment have been introduced. One of the first acts of Parliament to counter pollution was the Clean Air Act, which opened the way to smokeless zones in large towns and cities. This followed a very bad winter in which many people with bronchial complaints became very ill or died through the effects of a mixture of smoke, fog and fumes known as “smog”. Rivers which are fouled up with industrial chemical waste are now being cleaned, and fish which could not live there a few years ago can be caught again.

 

NOISE POLLUTION

People everywhere have become aware of a new kind of pollution – noise pollution. The problem has been brought into sharp focus by the discovery that many teenagers have suffered permanent hearing loss following long exposures to amplified rock music, and by public concern about the effects of sonic booms that would be caused by supersonic transports (SST) if they were put into commercial service.

Noise is usually measured in decibels. A tenfold increase in the strength of sound adds 10 units on the decibel scale, a 100-fold increase adds 20. The human threshold of hearing is represented by zero decibels.

Even a brief exposure to intense noise can cause temporary loss of hearing acuity. Permanent loss of hearing follows chronic exposure to high noise levels. Noise levels as low as 50-55 decibels may delay or interfere with sleep and result in a feeling of fatigue on awakening. There has been growing evidence that noise in the 90-decibel range may cause irreversible changes in the nervous system. These forms of damage, including permanent hearing loss such as that suffered by fans of rock music, can occur at noise level well below those that are painful. Noise may be a factor in many stress-related diseases, such as peptic ulcer (язва желудка) and hypertension, although present evidence is only circumstantial. In any case noise pollution is clearly a growing threat to our health and happiness.

 

WATER POLLUTION

Ever since man progressed from a hunting to an agricultural society, with the corresponding development of stable communities, the phenomenon of water pollution has been his constant companion. As agricultural methods improved, a smaller percentage of the population produced all the food needed; larger communities and diverse secondary industries developed and grew into the present modern society. Concurrent with this growth, however, was the increasing percentage of waste materials and the problems of disposal. When the total volume of waste from a community was relatively small, the easiest method of disposal was to “throw it away”, usually into the nearest receptacle. Since man cannot exist without water, community development and city growth centered in area where the water supplies were adequate and continuous. Initially this meant development in river valleys, and thus the nearest receptacle for wastes was the river.

The term “pollution” has been variously defined by many people, but if it may be described here as “the detrimental effects on a localized ecological structure by the addition of the waste products of a society”, then it is apparent that the first noticeable pollution problems should have involved the supply of drinking water.

It is in this particular area that the question of pollution takes on a new meaning. Is a body of water polluted when it directly affects man, or should it be classified as polluted when the ecological structure is first upset? The hydrosphere is a dynamic system containing physiochemical and biological equilibria, and there is no doubt that a normally active waterway has a large capacity of to assimilate wastes. However, in many areas this capacity is now being reached or exceeded so that many waterways are becoming increasingly contaminated. Before this contamination becomes readily noticeable however, equilibria are changed and the ecological structure may be seriously affected. Some examples of water systems where the effects of pollution have become or are becoming increasingly apparent are the Adriatic, Baltic, and Mediterranean seas; the Thames, Rhine, and Seine rivers; and the Great Lakes in America and Canada. But dynamic systems have a remarkable capacity for regeneration, and with careful planning even the most seriously polluted waterways may be brought back into full use. An example of river regeneration on a large scale is the successful attempt to restore the Thames estuary.

 

A LOT AND LITTLE ENOUGH

Ours is a unique planet in the solar system. Oceans and seas cover two-thirds of its surface and perhaps it should have been named Water than Earth. Water is not a rarity even on land: lakes sparkle, ribbons of rivers wind across the continents, glaciers and the vast ice-and-snow shields of Greenland and the Antarctica glitter in the sun. In the northern hemisphere every winter snow and ice cover more than third of all land surfaces.

Scientists hold that water was born in the earth’s entrails at the dawn of its life. Somewhere in its depth the birth of water continuous to this day. Together with lava, volcanoes annually eject 40 million tones of water. Thus, little by little, the amount of water on the earth’s surface increases.

Unfortunately, 97.5 per cent of all water reserves are claimed to be salt water. Consequently, fresh water resources account for only 2.5 per cent and the most accessible as little as 0.3 per cent. Moreover, the natural distribution is extremely uneven. The annual fresh water discharge into the ocean is the greatest in Asia and South America – 31 and 25 per cent of the total amount respectively. North America amounts for 17, Africa 10, Antarctica 5 and Australia 4 per cent.

The river watermark is also uneven during the year. From May to October all rivers discharge 63 per cent of their annual runoff, leaving only 37 per cent the rest of the year.

The scientists estimate that the annual satisfaction of human requirements runs to something like 2,600 cubic kilometers of water – about 6 per cent of the earth’s annually renewable fresh water resources. Our planet has sufficient water. Why then should scores of countries face a tight water balance? The reason is that the unevenness of water distribution is aggravated by the still greater unevenness of the geographical distribution of people.

 

AIR POLLUTION

Air pollution is one of the main problems all over the world. Millions of chimneys, buses, cars, plants, factories and other industrial enterprises exhaust fumes and harmful substances into the atmosphere. Poisoned air is the main reason why it is hard to breath in large cities with big amount of plants and transport (example - Nijnii Tagil in the Urals).

Human activity has been increasing the concentration of such gases like carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide and water vapor in the atmosphere. Scientists expect to see a doubling of carbon dioxide over pre-industrial levels around the year 2065.

Every year the atmosphere is polluted by about one thousand (1000) tons of industrial dust. Among industries especially toxic wastes are made by enterprises of colour metallurgy, chemical, petrochemical, black metallurgy, woodworking, pulp paper industry etc. Big cities suffer from smog.

«Leaders» of wastes of harmful substances in an atmosphere in Russia during three last years are Krasnoyarsk region, the Tyumen, Sverdlovsk, Chelyabinsk, Kemerovo area and it is necessary to attribute this areas to a zone of the ecological catastrophe. The most contaminated regions are economic centers of Russian Federation and most populated. Now 2/3 population of Russia continues to live in conditions of dangerous air contamination.

Various chemical elements are intensively absorbed by our organism during breathing, it is harmful for our health. Air pollution is especially harmful for quality of genofond.

Scientists say that air pollution is the cause of acid rains, global warming and of greenhouse effect.