1 . Rosie the Riveter was a World War II nickname for women who worked in factories and shipyards all across the country. The two women talked about here were not like Rosie. They, and four others, were working on a machine at the University of Pennsylvania, called ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer). It was designed to do difficult calculations related to ballistics (弹道), but the war ended before ENIAC was put into use.

Work on it continued, though. The room-sized computer was completely electronic, so it should have been far faster than the other big war-time calculator, the Mark I, developed by IBM. The Mark I, driven by electricity, had moving parts that slowed it down but its instructions could be stored on a paper tape, which gave it a big advantage. In ENIAC, however, every calculation involved putting cables (电缆) into a board.

To program ENIAC, the women had to first analyze hundreds of equations (公式) involved in a particular calculation. Then, they determined which cables should go where, so the machine would do the right steps in the right order. They understood both mathematics and the machine.

Programming was in its early stage in the 1940s; in fact, the term, “to program95 came from the ENIAC team. Women held many of these early jobs. The six ENIAC programmers had been selected from a group of women with degrees in mathematics who worked on other big war-time calculators. Today, computer jobs are controlled by men. Women hold only a quarter of the tech jobs in the United States, though they account for half the workforce. Only 18 percent of computer science graduates today are women. Often the explanation is that girls don't like math, or don't do well in it, but the experience of these earlier women proves otherwise.

1. What can we learn about ENIAC from the first two paragraphs?

A．It was much more advanced than the Mark I.

B．It could do calculations of ballistics all by itself.

C．It was invented by the University of Pennsylvania.

D．It never served its original purpose during the war.

2. What did the women programmers do when working with ENIAC?

A．They stored instructions on a paper tape.

B．They corrected errors of a particular board.

C．They learned hundreds of equations by heart.

D．They decided where to put cables in calculations.

3. Which of the following will the author probably agree with?

A．Women were not so interested in computer science.

B．Women are good at computer programming like men.

C．Women are always in the minority of the workforce in US.

D．Women were not as well-accepted as men in programming jobs.

2 . During his years, American author Mark Twain noted that "life would be surely happier if we could only be born at the age of 80 and gradually approach 18". Twain's words were only one of many complaints about aging that have been recorded for as long as humans have feared the downside of a long life. The ancient Greek poet Homer called old age"hateful", and William Shakespeare termed it "terrible winter".

Alexander the Great, who conquered most of the known world before he died around 323 BC, may have been looking for a river that treated the damage of age. During the 12th century AD, a king known as Prester John ruled a land that had a river of gold and a fountain of youth.

But the name linked most closely to the search for a fountain of youth is 16th-century Spanish explorer Juan Ponce de León, who thought it would be found in Florida. In St. Augustine, the oldest city in the US, there's a tourist attraction that purports(标榜) to be the fountain of youth that Ponce de León discovered soon after he arrived in what is now Florida in 1513. However,elderly visitors who drink the spring's water don't turn into teenagers.

But the tale of the search for a fountain of youth is so attracting that it survives anyway, says Ryan K. Smith, a professor of history. "People are more interested by the story of looking and not finding it than they are by the idea that the fountain might be out there somewhere."

Still, a few grains of truth have helped the story. Kathleen Deagan, a professor,says a cemetery(墓地) and the remains of a Spanish mission dating back to St. Augustine's founding in 1565 have been discovered near the so-called fountain of youth. Michelle Reyna, a spokesperson for the Fountain of Youth Archaeological Park in St. Augustine, says the fountain has been a tourist attraction since at least the 1900s and may have been attracting visitors since the 1860s.

1. Who is the most famous to look for the fountain of youth?

A．A king known as Prester John.

B．Ryan K. Smith,a professor of history.

C．Alexander the Great.

D．Spanish explorer Juan Ponce de León.

2. What is the attitude of people towards the fountain of youth?

A．People find much pleasure in looking for it.

B．People believe the existence of it.

C．People have no interest in searching for it.

D．People consider the idea of the fountain of youth to be absurd.

3. The earliest city was built in America in _____.

A．1901	B．1565
C．1860	D．1513

4. The passage is mainly about ______.

A．where the fountain of youth comes from

B．why some famous people hate becoming old

C．how people can remain young forever

D．whether the fountain of youth exists