英文报刊翻译：千年里程碑式的发明

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Landmark Inventions of the Millennium
By Herb Brody
翻译: becool

You get up in the morning and put on your glasses, snap on the radio, and grab the morning paper. Already you have directly benefited from three of the greatest inventions of the last 1,000 years: the glass lens, wireless communications, and the printing press. Later you ride the subway to work, where you use a computer and make telephone calls-three more developments made possible by scientific breakthroughs during the fertile millennium that is now coming to an end.

你在早上醒来，戴上眼镜，打开收音机，拿起早报。不知不觉之间，你已经享受到了过去千年中最伟大发明中的三样：玻璃镜片，无线通信和印刷机。然后你搭地铁上班。在地铁里面，你开始使用电脑和打电话。这又是另外三样最伟大的发明。

The last 1,000 years have produced an incredible number and variety of scientific and technological breakthroughs-but which of these were the most important? Narrowing a list of the thousands of inventions made since the year 1000 to the ten greatest requires some stringent criteria. The qualifying inventions either provided radically new ways to do an important job, or they made possible tasks that were previously unimagined. Their impact was felt, if not right away then eventually, by a large portion of humanity. These developments have enabled significant new technological innovations and scientific discoveries. And finally, they have had an enduring effect on the world.

The inventions that meet these criteria, in chronological order, are the compass, the mechanical clock, the glass lens, the printing press, the steam engine, the telegraph, electric power, wireless communications, antibiotics, and the transistor.

过去一千年里有数也数不清的科学和技术突破，但是哪些是最伟大的呢？要千千万万发明中甄选出十个，没有严格的标准可不行。首先，能上榜的发明必须能极大地改进人们做重要事情的方式，或者让以前想都不敢想的事情变为可能。其次，它们的影响必须能被大多数人感受到，即使现在没有，以后也一定会。另外，它们要能激发新的重大技术革新和科学发现。最后，它们必须能长久地影响我们的生活。
按照时间顺序排列，符合这些标准的发明是：指南针，机械钟表，玻璃镜片，印刷机，蒸汽机，电报机，电力，无线通信，抗生素和晶体管。

Fundamental Breakthroughs 基础突破
Missing from this list are many extremely significant technological advances, including the airplane, telephone, automobile, and computer. In many cases these inventions were omitted because they are based on earlier developments or breakthroughs that are included in this discussion. While a device that could artificially transmit the human voice was clearly significant, the telephone was not really a fundamental leap when it was developed in the 1870s. That came decades earlier, when the first telegraph machine ushered in our present era of instantaneous communications. Indeed, American inventor Alexander Graham Bell was working on ways to improve the telegraph when he devised the telephone. The phone was, in origin and in practice, an improvement on existing technology.

Similarly, the steam engine brought for the first time the possibility of rapid transportation. Before that, no person could travel on land faster or farther than an animal could hold out. After the invention of the steam engine, the only limits were the amount of fuel and the reliability of the machine-both factors that people could control. The airplane, the automobile, and even the rocket are based on this basic idea of deriving huge amounts of propulsive power by burning fuel. Once the steam engine put that idea into practice, developments such as the internal-combustion engine-which now powers the world's millions of automobiles-came as almost inevitable refinements.

同样的，蒸汽机第一次把快速运输变成了可能。在有蒸汽机之前，没有人能比动物跑的更快，也没人能比它跑的更远。发明蒸汽机以后，唯一的限制就是燃料的多寡和机器的可靠程度。而这两者都是人类可以控制的。飞机，汽车，甚至火箭的动力都是燃料燃烧产生的巨大推进力。当蒸汽机把理想变成了现实，那么驱动了现在世界上数以百万计的汽车的内燃机就是一种必然技术进步。

In considering the ten most significant inventions of the past 1,000 years, a subtle distinction must be made: The difference between "invention" and "discovery" is not as clear as one might think. A discovery can be as simple as the observation of a previously unnoticed phenomenon, while an invention is a human-devised machine, tool, or apparatus that did not previously exist. For example, ancient people discovered that drops of water and certain gemstones distorted light in a predictable way. However, it was not until medieval times that others tried to reproduce this effect by applying new glass-shaping technology to the formation of lenses-the basic elements of spectacles, microscopes, telescopes, and cameras. Similarly, people knew about and studied electricity as a force of nature for thousands of years, but it was the technological leap of mass-producing electricity and delivering it to homes and factories in the early 20th century that transformed the world.

在考虑过去一千年中十大最伟大发明的时候，一定要注意"发明"和"发现"之间微妙的区别。很多人都不清楚这个。发现也许是简单地观察到了前人未曾注意到的现象，而发明是设计了某种以前未曾有过的机器，工具或者设备。例如，古人观察到了水滴和某些雕琢过的宝石可以把光按照一定的方向折射出去。然而，直到中世纪人们才试着用将玻璃做成镜片的方式来重现这种现象，而镜片是眼镜，显微镜，望远镜和相机的基本组成部分。同样地，人们在几千年前就知道电并且还把它当成自然的力量来研究，但是只有在20世纪初期，人们能大量发电而且把电送到千家万户和工厂的时候，这项改变世界的技术飞跃才算最终达成。

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