初中英语牛津九年级下03

[09:23.84]He had a very big family
[09:26.74]his parents had seventeen children
[09:30.94]He was a man of many  talents and interests.
[09:34.50]Among other things,he was a scientist and an inventor.
[09:38.81]He was naturally curious about the way things worked
[09:37.81]and was always search-ing for ways to make them work better
[09:42.30]In 1747,Benjamin began his experiments on electricity
[09:49.82]with some very simple equipment.
[09:52.13]Although these experi-ments led to the dis-covery
[09:56.33]of some very important findings on electricity,
[10:00.43]Benja-min did not actually invent it.
[10:04.09]However, he did invent the lightning conduc-tor,
[10:08.87]which protects buildings and ships from damage
[10:13.68]caused by lightning.
[10:15.95]Benjamin had poor vi-sion and needed glasses.
[10:20.83]He was tired of always taking them on and off
[10:25.62]so he decided to in-vent a pair of glasses
[10:30.21]that would let him see both near
[10:33.50]and far things at the same time.
[10:37.29]He took the two different types of glasses,
[10:42.10]cut each lens in half,
[10:44.55]and then put half of each lens into another frame.
[10:50.35]Nowadays, this type of glasses is known as bifocals.
[10:57.66]During his lifetime,
[11:00.12]he travelled across the Atlantic Ocean eight times.
[11:04.14]These long journeys gave him a lot of time
[11:08.50]to learn about how ships worked.
[11:11.87]He developed a way to make them safer
[11:15.48]and more efficient by inventing watertight bulkheads.
[11:20.60]Other developments in safety that he made
[11:24.36]included establishing the first fire company in Philadelphia, USA
[11:30.68]and improving the city's street paving and lighting.