English Audio Request

30.
Ever since the coming of television, there has been a rumor that the novel is dying, if not already dead. Indeed, print-oriented novelists seem doomed to disappear, as electronic media and computer games are becoming more influential. Nowadays, many young people seem to prefer surfing the Internet to reading books. And often what they seek is not so much profound knowledge as quick information. One may wonder if literary fiction is destined to become an old-fashioned genre to be preserved in a museum like an extinct species.

31.
Painting restorers are highly trained in their techniques, but they would have to be the original painter to know exactly what to do with the work at hand. Technical aspects of the work, such as dirt removal, are quite straightforward. What is important is to bring a painting back to an artist’s original intent. In order to do so, they have to decide if they should add something to the painting or leave it as it is. They admit it is extremely difficult to determine what should and should not be retouched. “Our goal is to respect the artist’s intent, but at the same time to make it a visually coherent work of art,” says Michael Duffy of the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

32.
For centuries, sundials and water clocks inaccurately told us all we needed to know about time. Mechanical clocks started appearing on towers in Italy in the 14th century, but their timekeeping was less impressive than their looks, wandering up to 15 minutes a day. By the 17th century some geniuses, including Galileo and Pascal, had theorized about, but failed to build, better timepieces. Then, in 1656, Dutch astronomer Christian Huygens constructed the first pendulum clock, revolutionizing timekeeping. The precision of Huygens’ clock allowed scientists to use it for their physics experiments, and shopkeepers to open and close at fixed hours. In 1761, Englishman John Harrison perfected a clock that worked at sea and put accurate time in a navigator’s pocket.