READING PASSAGE 1

The Introduction of Gas and Electricity to the US

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 1–13.

Until the late 1700s, illumination in US households was limited to candles and whale oil lamps, but both were inefficient — it would take a hundred candles to create as much light as a single modern lightbulb — and so expensive as to be beyond the means of most households. For the middle classes, illumination improved dramatically with the invention, in 1783, of the Argand lamp (named after its Swiss creator), which had greater intensity and less flicker. The next step forward was the invention of the oil-based fuel kerosene in 1858, and of petroleum a year later. But the big transformation came with gas. Initially, gas was used to light streets — Baltimore had gas lamps as early as 1816, before Paris or Berlin — but the dirt, odours and volatility of gas meant it could not be relied on for domestic purposes until the late 1860s. Once some attempt to deal with these problems had been made, gas swept the nation. Each gas outlet provided as much light as a dozen candles. By 1895, the average middle-class home was twenty times better lit than it had been at mid-century.

But, even cleaned up and made more stable, gas remained dirty and dangerous. It emitted unpleasant, potentially lethal fumes that required special vents to clear the air. Even then, the carbonic acid and smoke that the lamps produced were harmful to books, curtains, wallpaper and soft furniture, as well as the eyes, lungs and clothes of the inhabitants.

In 1882, domestic electricity at last became a possibility when Thomas Edison’s company started providing electricity on a commercial basis. By mid-decade, 200 of New York City’s grandest households were enjoying the illumination from lightbulbs manufactured by the company. Only the very wealthiest could afford such an indulgence. It was unsurprising, therefore, that household electricity was not an immediate hit with everyone. Outdoors, however, it was another matter. Almost overnight, the US became the most illuminated country in the world. By the 1890s, Broadway in New York was already being described as ‘the Great White Way’ because of its dazzling theatre lights and advertising signs. People came from all over just to see the lights, which included the world’s first flashing sign, for Manhattan Beach and its hotels. In 1910, Broadway got a sign that was a wonder of electrical engineering. Rising the equivalent of seven storeys above the rooftop of the Hotel Normandie and incorporating 20,000 coloured lightbulbs, it offered in intricate detail the illusion of a 30-second chariot race, complete with cracking whips and flying dust. People were so amazed by it that police had to be assigned to the area to keep pedestrians and traffic moving.

By 1896, electricity had become such an accepted part of life that people began referring to it as ‘juice’. By 1930, 70 per cent of US households, some 20 million homes, were electrified up from ten per cent in 1910, and more than the rest of the world combined at that point in time. The proportion would have been higher still except that rural electrification took so long to complete; even by 1946, as little as half of US farms had electricity.

As electricity became more widely available, electrical products began to come onto the market, starting with the electric sewing machine in 1889. The electric iron appeared in 1893, the electric vacuum cleaner in 1901, the electric washing machine in 1909, and the electric dishwasher in 1918. By 1917, the US householder could choose between 50 types of electrical appliances — and eagerly did so. In that year, people spent $175 million on them. Within a little over a decade, that figure would rise to no less than $2.4 billion a year.

The new and fast-changing market for electrical appliances often gave small companies a chance to thrive. After a major manufacturing rival turned down the idea of a washing machine which ran automatically, a small outfit named Bendix, which had no experience of manufacturing household appliances, took up the idea in 1937 and within a decade had become one of the US’s biggest manufacturers of appliances. Much the same happened with a small company called Frigidaire, founded in 1918, which saw an opening for a refrigerator designed for the home and so successfully seized the opportunity that the name almost became generic, although it took until 1927 for General Electric to produce the first million selling model.

However, no product was more successful in this period than the radio. In just three years, beginning in 1922, over four million were sold, at a typical cost of $55. By 1926, there was a radio in five per cent of homes, and by the end of that decade, with almost every household owning at least one, market saturation was practically complete.

Questions 1–6

Do the following statements agree with the claims of the writer?

Write:

• YES if the statement agrees with the writer

• NO if the statement contradicts the writer

• NOT GIVEN if it is impossible to say

1. In the late 1700s, the majority of families used candles and whale oil lamps regularly.

2. The light created by the Argand lamp was superior to that of a candle.

3. Gas was unsuitable for use in homes when it was first developed as a source of light.

4. By 1895, a number of different companies competed to provide domestic gas.

5. Gas lighting was found to damage the contents of the home.

6. The electric lightbulbs manufactured by Edison’s company in the 1880s broke very easily

Questions 7–13

Complete the table below.

Choose ONE WORD AND/OR A NUMBER from the passage for each answer.

READING PASSAGE 2

Farmers Centenary Celebration

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 14–26.

Passage

A

In 1909 Robert Laidlaw establishes mail-order company Laidlaw Leeds in Fort Street, Auckland. Then, Branch expansion: purchase of Green and Colebrook chain store; further provincial stores in Auckland and Waikato to follow. Opening of first furniture and boot factory. In 1920, Company now has 29 branches; Whangarei store purchased. Doors open at Hobson Street for direct selling to the public. The firm establishes London and New York buying offices. With permission from the Harbour Board, the large FARMERS electric sign on the Wyndham Street frontage is erected.

B

In 1935, if the merchandise has changed, the language of the catalogues hasn’t. Robert Laidlaw, the Scottish immigrant who established the century-old business, might have been scripting a modern-day television commercial when he told his earliest customers: Satisfaction, or your money back. “It was the first money back guarantee ever offered in New Zealand by any firm,” says Ian Hunter, business historian. “And his mission statement was, potentially, only the second one ever found in the world.” Laidlaw’s stated aims were simple: to build the greatest business in New Zealand, to simplify every transaction, to eliminate all delays, to only sell goods it would pay the customer to buy.

C

This year, the company that began as a mail-order business and now employs 3500 staff across 58 stores turns 100. Its centenary will be celebrated with the release of a book and major community fundraising projects. Hunter, who is writing the centenary history, says, “Coming to a Farmers store once a week was a part of the New Zealand way of life.” By 1960, one in every 10 people had an account with the company. It was the place where teenage girls shopped for their first bra, where newlyweds purchased their first dinner sets, where first paycheques were used to pay off hire purchase furniture, where Santa paraded every Christmas.

D

Gary Blumenthal’s mother shopped there, and so does he. The fondest memory for the Rotorua resident? “We were on holiday in Auckland… I decided that up on the lookout tower on top of the Farmers building would be a unique place to fit the ring on my new fiancee’s finger.” The lovebirds, who had to wait for “an annoying youth” to leave the tower before they could enjoy their engagement kiss, celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary in June.

E

Farmers, says Hunter, has always had a heart. This, from a 1953 North & South interview with a former board chairman, Rawdon Busfield: “One day I was in the Hobson Street shop and I saw a woman with two small children. They were clean and tidily dressed, but poor, you could tell. That week we had a special on a big bar of chocolate for one shilling. I heard the woman say to her boy, ‘No, your penny won’t buy that.’ He wasn’t wearing shoes. So I went up to the boy and said, ‘Son, have you got your penny?’ He handed it to me. It was hot; he’d had it in his hand for hours. I took the penny and gave him the chocolate.”

F

Farmers was once the home of genteel tearooms, children’s playgrounds, and an annual sale to celebrate the birthday of Hector the Parrot (the store mascot died, aged 131, in the 1970s; his stuffed remains still occupy pride of place at the company’s head office). You could buy houses from Farmers. Its saddle factory supplied the armed forces, and its upright grand overstrung Pianos offered “the acme of value” according to those early catalogues hand-drawn by Robert Laidlaw himself. Walk through a Farmers store today and get hit by bright lights and big brands. Its Albany branch houses 16 international cosmetics companies. It buys from approximately 500 suppliers, and about 30% of these are locally owned.

G

“Eight, 10 years ago,” says current chief executive Rod McDermott, “lots of brands wouldn’t partner with us. The stores were quite distressed. We were first price point focused, we weren’t fashion focused.” Remove the rose-tinted nostalgia, and Farmers is, quite simply, a business doing business in hard times. Dancing with the Stars presenter Candy Lane launches a clothing line? “We put a trial on, and we thought it was really lovely, but the uptake wasn’t what we thought it would be. It’s got to be what the customer wants,” says McDermott.

H

He acknowledges retailers suffer in a recession: “We’re celebrating 100 years because we can and because we should.” Farmers almost didn’t pull through one economic crisis. By the mid-1980s, it had stores across the country: It had acquired the South Island’s Calder Mackay chain of stores and bought out Haywrights. Then, with sales topping $375 million, it was taken over by Chase Corporation. Lincoln Laidlaw, now aged 88, remembers the dark days following the stock market crash and the collapse of Chase. “I think, once, Farmers was like a big family… then the business was being divided up and so that kind of family situation was dispelled and it hasn’t been recovered.” For a turbulent few years, the stores were controlled by various corporations. In 2003, it went back to “family” ownership, with the purchase by the James Pascoe Group. “Sheer power of the brand,” says McDermott, “pulled Farmers through and now we’re becoming the brand it used to be again.” Farmers was the company that, during World War II, topped up the wages of any staff member disadvantaged by overseas service. Robert Laidlaw concluded his original mission statement with the words, “All at it, always at it, wins success.” Next week, 58 Farmers stores will announce the local charities they will raise funds for in their centenary celebration. Every dollar raised by the community will be matched by the company.

Questions 14–18

Reading Passage 2 has paragraphs A–H.

Which paragraph contains the following information?

Write the correct letter A–H.

14. Generosity offered on an occasion

15. Innovative offer made by the head of the company

16. Fashion was not its strong point

17. A romantic event on the roof of Farmers

18. Farmers were sold to a privately owned company

Questions 19–23

Complete the sentences below.

Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the passage.

19. Farmers was first founded as a __________ in Auckland by Mr. Laidlaw.

20. Farmers developed fast and bought one __________ then another.

21. During overseas expansion, Farmers set up __________ in cities such as London.

22. Farmers held a __________ once a year for the well-known parrot.

23. In the opinion of Lincoln Laidlaw, Farmers was like a __________ for employees, and beneficial not just for the employees themselves but for the whole country.

Questions 24–26

Match each statement with the correct expert A–C.

Experts:

A. Lincoln Laidlaw
B. Rod McDermott
C. Ian Hunter

24. Product became worse as the wrong aspect was focused.

25. An unprecedented statement made by Farmers in New Zealand.

26. Character of the company was changed.

READING PASSAGE 3

The Ingenuity Gap

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 27–40.

Passage

Ingenuity, as I define it here, consists not only of ideas for new technologies like computers or drought-resistant crops but, more fundamentally, of ideas for better institutions and social arrangements, like efficient markets and competent governments. How much and what kinds of ingenuity a society requires depends on a range of factors, including the society’s goals and the circumstances within which it must achieve those goals — whether it has a young population or an aging one, an abundance of natural resources or a scarcity of them, an easy climate or a punishing one, whatever the case may be. How much and what kinds of ingenuity a society supplies also depend on many factors, such as the nature of human inventiveness and understanding, the rewards an economy gives to the producers of useful knowledge, and the strength of political opposition to social and institutional reforms. A good supply of the right kinds of ingenuity is essential, but it isn’t, of course, enough by itself. We know that the creation of wealth, for example, depends not only on an adequate supply of useful ideas but also on the availability of other, more conventional factors of production, like capital and labor. Similarly, stability and justice usually depend on the resolution, or at least the containment, of major political struggles over wealth and power.

The past century’s countless incremental changes in our societies around the planet, in our technologies and our interactions with our natural environment, have created a qualitatively new world. Because these changes have accumulated slowly, it’s often hard for us to recognize how profound and sweeping they have been. They include far larger and denser human populations; much higher per capita consumption of natural resources; and far better and more widely available technologies for the movement of people, materials, and especially information. In combination, these changes have sharply increased the density, intensity, and pace of our interactions with each other; they have greatly increased the burden we place on our natural environment; and they have helped shift power from national and international institutions to individuals and subgroups, such as political special interests and ethnic factions. The management of our relationship with the new world requires immense and ever-increasing amounts of social and technical ingenuity.

When we enhance the performance of any system, from our cars to the planet’s network of financial institutions, we tend to make it more complex. Many of the natural systems critical to our well-being, like the global climate and the oceans, are extraordinarily complex to begin with. We often can’t predict or manage the behavior of complex systems with much precision because they are often very sensitive to the smallest of changes and perturbations, and their behavior can flip from one mode to another suddenly and dramatically. Over the last 100 years as the human-made and natural systems we depend upon have become more complex, and as our demands on them have increased, the institutions and technologies we use to manage them must become more complex too, which further boosts our requirement for ingenuity.

However, we should not jump to the conclusion that the supply of ingenuity always increases in lockstep with our ingenuity requirement: while it’s true that necessity is often the mother of invention, we can’t always rely on the right kind of ingenuity appearing when and where we need it. In many cases, the complexity and speed of operation of today’s vital economic, social, and ecological systems exceed the human brain’s grasp. Not many of us have more than a rudimentary grasp of how these systems work. They remain fraught with countless ‘unknowns,’ which makes it hard to supply the ingenuity we need to solve problems associated with these systems. In this book, I explore a wide range of other factors that will limit our ability to supply the ingenuity required in the coming century. For example, the crush of information in our everyday lives is shortening our attention span, limiting the time we have to reflect on critical matters of public policy, and making policy arguments more superficial.

Modern markets and science are an important part of the story of how we supply ingenuity. Markets are critically important, because they give entrepreneurs an incentive to produce knowledge. As for science, although it seems to face no theoretical limits, at least in the foreseeable future, practical constraints often slow its progress. The cost of scientific research tends to increase as it delves deeper into nature. And science’s rate of advance depends on the characteristics of the natural phenomena it investigates, simply because some phenomena are intrinsically harder to understand than others, so the production of useful new knowledge in these areas can be very slow. Consequently, there is often a critical time lag between the recognition of a problem and the delivery of sufficient ingenuity, in the form of technologies, to solve that problem. Progress in the social sciences is especially slow, for reasons we don’t yet fully understand; but we desperately need better social scientific knowledge to build the sophisticated institutions today’s world demands.

Questions 27–30

Complete each sentence with the correct ending, A–F, below.

Endings

A. does not depend on ingenuity alone.
B. depends in part on the successful management of certain disputes.
C. has often been misunderstood.
D. is not limited to the creation of new inventions.
E. frequently increases in accordance with the material successes achieved.
F. is linked to factors such as the weather.

27. The author’s definition of ingenuity

28. The type of ingenuity required by a society

29. The creation of wealth

30. The stability of a society

Questions 31–33

Choose the correct letter, A, B, C, or D.

31. What point does the author make about the incremental changes of the last century?
    A. Their effect on the environment has been positive.
    B. They have not affected all parts of the world.
    C. Their significance may not be noticed.
    D. They have had less impact than those of previous centuries.

32. According to the author, one effect of the combined changes is that life has become
    A. easier.
    B. faster.
    C. more interesting.
    D. more enjoyable.

33. What observation does the author make about complex natural systems?
    A. They can be greatly affected by minor alterations.
    B. They cannot be compared to human-made systems.
    C. Their performance cannot be improved by human intervention.
    D. Their behaviour is better understood than ever before.

Questions 34–40

Do the following statements agree with the claims of the writer?

Write:

• YES if the statement agrees with the writer

• NO if the statement contradicts the writer

• NOT GIVEN if it is impossible to say

34. Changes in the last 100 years have increased the need for human ingenuity.

35. The amount of ingenuity available is strictly related to the demand which exists for it.

36. Although ingenuity may be available, it may be inappropriate for the tasks that need solutions at the time.

37. Few people today truly understand the way the modern world works.

38. Access to more and more information is improving our grasp of current affairs.

39. Future generations will be critical of the way today’s governments have conducted themselves.

40. It is inevitable that some areas of scientific study advance more quickly than others.

ANSWERS:

READING PASSAGE 1

The Introduction of Gas and Electricity to the US

Questions 1–13

1. YES

2. YES

3. YES

4. NOT GIVEN

5. YES

6. NOT GIVEN

7. 1882

8. dishwasher

9. 1910

10. 1917

11. refrigerator

12. farms

13. radio

READING PASSAGE 2

Farmers Centenary Celebration

Questions 14–26

14. E

15. B

16. G

17. D

18. H

19. mail-order company

20. chain store

21. buying offices

22. annual sale

23. big family

24. B

25. C

26. A

READING PASSAGE 3

The Ingenuity Gap

Questions 27–40

27. D

28. F

29. A

30. B

31. C

32. B

33. A

34. YES

35. NO

36. YES

37. YES

38. NO

39. NOT GIVEN

40. YES