VOA常速英语:托马斯.爱迪生遗址震撼公园旅人

Thomas Alva Edison is considered America’s greatest inventor.He’s best known for creating the first long-lasting electric lightbulb in 1879.But he also invented -- and perfected -- more than 1,000 other products.
托马斯.阿尔瓦.爱迪生被公认为美国最伟大的发明家。他最出名的就是在1879年发明了第一个耐用电灯泡。但他还发明并完善了其他1000多个物品。

His favorite, historians say, was the phonograph, the first machine that could capture sound and play it back.
历史学家说他最喜欢的是留声机，第一个能录制并播放声音的机器。

His 1888 recording is believed to be the earliest existing recording of Thomas Edison’s voice.
他1888年的录音被认为是现存最早记录托马斯.爱迪生声音的录音。

Edison was also one of the first inventors of the motion picture camera.
爱迪生还是首批发明电影摄像机的发明家之一。

“I’m here at the Thomas Edison National Historical Park in New Jersey,right behind me is a three-story lab that helped produce some of Edison’s most famous inventions.”
“我现在在新泽西州的托马斯.爱迪生国家历史公园，我身后是一个三层的实验室，爱迪生在这里制作了一些他最出名的发明作品。”

National parks traveler Mikah Meyer spent a day immersing himself in Edison history at the inventor’s home and laboratory.
国家公园旅行家米卡.迈耶在这个发明家的家和实验室里待了一整天，沉浸在爱迪生的历史之中。

“It’s a fitting place to take a video on a cell phone.Because if it wasn’t for Edison’s invention, this phone and the electricity that charges it wouldn’t exist.”
“在这里用手机拍摄一段视频再合适不过了。因为，如果不是因为爱迪生的发明，这个手机和它充的电都不会存在。”

Much of the site has been kept intact.
古迹的大部分地区都保持了原样。

“They had this amazing library there that kept all his records,and then you live right next door in the factory, everything was in-house.So they were designing, they were building, they were shipping, all from this one location.”
“那儿有一个非常惊人的图书馆，保存了爱迪生所有的记录。人们就住在工厂里图书馆的隔壁，所有东西都是内设的，所以他们就在这一个地方设计、建造并运送物品。”

With 400,000 artifacts and over five million pages of documents,the site looks very much as it did when Edison was working here.
古迹里有40万件手工产品，以及超过500万页的文献，和爱迪生当时在此工作的环境十分相似。

Also on the property is The Black Maria,considered to be the world’s first building constructed solely for the production of movies.
遗迹中还有一个“黑囚车”，被认为是世界上第一个纯粹为了电影制作而建造的建筑。

“It was designed on a pivot-and-turn system so that it could capture the direct sunlight as easily as possible to make the films.”
“它是根据支点旋转体系而设计的，目的是尽可能简单的获取制作电影所需的直射阳光。”

Edison’s early attempts at movie-making helped set the stage for the remarkable achievements that have been made in film-making since then,and made possible just about every form of digital media that permeates modern culture today.
爱迪生有关电影制作的早期尝试，为以后的电影制作取得惊人成就打下了坚实的基础，也是贯穿于当代文明中的各种数字媒体形式成为可能的前提。

Julie Taboh, VOA news, Washington.
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