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本文是一篇介绍美国早期发明创造热的文章。

Middle Atlantic states

文中6s处有破折号；

19s处、22s处、25s处有分号



What accounts for the great outburst of major inventions in early America -- breakthroughs such as the telegraph, the steamboat and the weaving machine? Among the many shaping factors, I would single out the country's excellent elementary schools; a labor force that welcomed the new technology; the practice of giving premiums to inventors; and above all the American genius for nonverbal, 'spatial' thinking about things technological. Why mention the elementary schools? Because thanks to these schools our early mechanics, especially in the New England and Middle Atlantic states, were generally literate and at home in arithmetic and in some aspects of geometry and trigonometry.
在早期美国，像电报、汽船和织布机这样重大的发明突破纷涌而出，其原因何在？ 在诸多形成因素中，我想特别指出如下因素：这个国家优异的小学教育；欢迎新技术的劳动大军；对发明者进行奖励的做法；尤其是美国人在处理技术性事物时所具有的非语言的空间思维才能。 为什么要提小学教育？正是因为有了这些学校，我们的早期技工才普遍能读会写，并精通算术及部分几何和三角，这种情况在新英格兰和大西洋中部各州尤为可见。