四、閱讀測驗
       Reuben Garret Lucius Goldberg was born on July 4th 1883 in San Francisco. By the end of his lifetime inDecember 7th 1970, he was known as an inventor, sculptor, author, engineer and cartoonist. At a young age, heloved drawing, tracing and being creative, but this was discouraged by his parents. In 1904, he graduated with adegree in engineering from the University of California, Berkeley. He was then hired as an engineer by the cityof San Francisco but eventually quit to become a sports cartoonist for the San Francisco Chronicle. In 1907 hemoved to New York where he worked for several newspapers. He soon became famous as an artist.
       His cartoon strips were popular, but the work that gave him unforgettable lifelong fame was the characterhe created—Professor Lucifer Gorgonzola Butts. Using the character, he would illustrate inventions that laterbecame known as the “Rube Goldberg Machine”. A “Rube Goldberg Machine” is an extremely complicateddevice that performs a very simple task in a complex, indirect way. This is now used as an expression to describeany system that's confusing or complicated and came from Goldbergʼs illustrations of ridiculous machines. Thefirst illustration showing a “Rube Goldberg Machine” was an Automatic Weight Reducing Machine in 1914using components such as a donut, bomb, wax, balloon and hot stove to trap an overweight person in a soundand food proof prison. The overweight person had to lose weight before freeing himself. He used many simplesubjects and made them humorous yet very complicated. This included scratching insect bites, scrubbing yourback in a bath, opening a window, collecting mail and finding a ball.
        Throughout his career, Goldberg was fascinated by the advancement of technology and thought ithumorous that people either embraced the benefits technology brought or were unwilling to accept newtechnology as it seemingly increased dependency and laziness. He personally believed people preferredchoosing a more difficult route instead of completing a goal simply and directly. As he said, “the machines are asymbol of manʼs capacity for making maximum effort to achieve minimal results”. His inventions wereinteresting because he did the complete opposite of what most machines do—instead of making difficult thingseasy, he made easy things difficult.
【題組】21. What is the passage mainly about?
(A) A new term and its multiple meanings.
(B) A funny machine that everyone liked.
(C) A cartoon character that became famous.
(D) A talented man and his interesting inventions.