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  3. Among the most powerful engines of modern economic growth have been technological changes that raise output relative to inputs.

Among the most powerful engines of modern economic growth have been technological changes that raise output relative to inputs.

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问题     Among the most powerful engines of modern economic growth have been technological changes that raise output relative to inputs. But compared with those of the nineteenth century, technological changes remained minor and sporadic in the colonial period. It preceded the era of the cotton gin, steam power, and the many metallurgical advances that vastly increased the tools available to workers. In iron production, learning by doing and adapting remained the key source of labor and fuel saving in the late colonial period------learning to reduce the fuel input to minimal levels saved on labor needed to gather charcoal and work the forges. Technology remained static and forged sizes constant, however. The evidence in agriculture also indicates no significant leaps in technology------old ways prevailed and farming was typically stable and uniform.
    In shipping, the same conclusion is reached. This period preceded the era of iron ships and steam, and both ship material and the power source of ships remained unchanged. Even increasingly complex sails and rigs and the alterations of hull shapes failed to increase ship speed and, in any case, did not represent fundamental advances in knowledge.
    As a matter of fact, during the early 17th century, Dutch shipping had already displayed many of the essential characteristics of design, manning, and other input requirements that were found on the most advanced vessels in the western Atlantic in the 1760s and 1770s. The Dutch first introduced the flyboat, or flute, a specialized merchant vessel designed go carry bulk commodities. The flyboat was exceptionally long compared with its width, had a flat bottom, and was lightly built In addition its rig was simple, and its crew size was small. In contrast, English and colonial vessels were built, gunned, and manned more heavily to meet the dual purpose of trade and defense. Their solid construction and armaments were costly------not only in materials but in manpower. Larger crews were needed to handle the more complex riggings on these vessels as well as their guns.
    It became evident that the flyboat could be used advantageously in certain bulk trades where the danger of piracy was low. However, in the rich but dangerous trades into the Mediterranean and the West Indies, more costly ships were required. In general, high risks in all colonial waters led to one of the most notable features of 17th century shipping? ------the widespread use of cannons and armaments on trading vessels. Such characteristics were still observed in certain waters throughout much of the 18 th century. Until a-round 1750 in the Caribbean, especially near Jamaica, vessels weighing more than 100 tons were almost always armed and even small vessels usually carried some guns.
    Privateering also added to the disorder. As a common practice, nation-states often gave private citizens license to harass the ships of rivals states. These privateering commissions or "letters of marque" were issued without constraint in wartime, and even in peacetime they were occasionally given to citizens who had suffered losses due to the actions of subjects from an offending state. Since privateers frequently ignored the constraints of their commissions, privateering was often difficult to distinguish from common piracy.
    Other government policies also tended to aggravate existing sea hazards. Adding to the supply of privateer and pirates, some of the island were deliberately peopled with convicts. Of course, piracy was not confined to the Caribbean. Pirates lurked safely in the inlets of North Carolina, from which they regularly raided vessels trading at Charleston. In 1718 it was exclaimed that "every month brought intelligence of renewed outrages of vessels sacked on the high seas, burned with their cargo, or seized and converted to the nefarious uses of the outlaws. " Local traders, shippers, and government officials in the Carolinas repeatedly solicited the Board of Trade for protection. In desperation, Carolina’s Assembly appropriated funds in 1719 to support private vessels in the hope of driving the pirates from their seas. These pleas and protective actions were mostly in vain, but finally, as the benefits of assuring safe trade lanes rose relative to the costs of eliminating piracy, the Royal Navy took action. By the early 1740s, piracy had been eliminated from the western Atlantic.
    The fall of piracy was paralleled by the elimination of ship armaments and the reduction of crew sizes. As such, this was a process of technical diffusion. Without piracy, specialized cargo-carrying vessels similar to the flyboat were designed, thereby substantially reducing the costs of shipping.
The best title for the passage is______.
选项 A、Technological change.
B、Pirates, Vessels and Technological Change.
C、Pirates and Vessels.
D、The Historical Development of Vessels.
答案D
解析 虽然本文第一段讨论的是技术变革，但是其作用是引领下文。文章集中阐述了船舶的发展历史，首先介绍的是丹麦的“flyboat”，由于其功能有限而发展成为武装船队，海盗被赶走后有了专门的运送货物的船只。
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