Exercise 1: Do the following statements agree with the information

given in Reading Passage?

TRUE if the statement agrees with the information
FALSE if the statement contradicts the information
NOT GIVEN if there is no information on this
WILLIAM HENRY PERKIN
The man who invented synthetic dyes
William Henry Perkin was born on March 12,1838, in London, England.
As a boy, Perkin’s curiosity prompted early interests in the arts, sciences,
photography, and engineering. But it was a chance stumbling upon a run-
down, yet functional, laboratory in his late grandfather’s home that solidified
the young man’s enthusiasm for chemistry.
As a student at the City of London School, Perkin became immersed in the
study of chemistry. His talent and devotion to the subject were perceived by
his teacher, Thomas Hall, who encouraged him to attend a series of
lectures given by the eminent scientist Michael Faraday at the Royal
Institution. Those speeches fired the young chemist’s enthusiasm further,
and he later went on to attend the Royal College of Chemistry, which he
succeeded in entering in 1853, at the age of 15.
At the time of Perkin’s enrolment, the Royal College of Chemistry was
headed by the noted German chemist August Wilhelm Hofmann. Perkin’s
scientific gifts soon caught Hofmann’s attention, and within two years, he
became Hofmann’s youngest assistant. Not long after that, Perkin made
the scientific breakthrough that would bring him both fame and fortune.
At the time, quinine was the only viable medical treatment for malaria. The
drug is derived from the bark of the cinchona tree, native to South America,
and by 1856 demand for the drug was surpassing the available supply.
Thus, when Hofmann made some passing comments about the desirability
of a synthetic substitute for quinine, it was unsurprising that his star pupil
was moved to take up the challenge.
During his vacation in 1856, Perkin spent his time in the laboratory on the
top floor of his family’s house. He was attempting to manufacture quinine
from aniline, an inexpensive and readily available coal tar waste product.
Despite his best efforts, however, he did not end up with quinine. Instead,
he produced a mysterious dark sludge. Luckily, Perkin’s scientific training
and nature prompted him to investigate the substance further. Incorporating
potassium dichromate and alcohol into the aniline at various stages of the
experimental process, he finally produced a deep purple solution. And,
proving the truth of the famous scientist Louis Pasteur’s words ‘chance
favours only the prepared mind’, Perkin saw the potential of his unexpected
find.
Historically, textile dyes were made from such natural sources as plants
and animal excretions. Some of these, such as the glandular mucus of
snails, were difficult to obtain and outrageously expensive. Indeed, the
purple colour extracted from a snail was once so costly that in society at
the time only the rich could afford it. Further, natural dyes tended to be
muddy in hue and fade quickly. It was against this backdrop that Perkin’s
discovery was made.
Perkin quickly grasped that his purple solution could be used to colour
fabric, thus making it the world’s first synthetic dye. Realising the
importance of this breakthrough, he lost no time in patenting it. But perhaps
the most fascinating of all Perkin’s reactions to his find was his nearly
instant recognition that the new dye had commercial possibilities.
Perkin originally named his dye Tyrian Purple, but it later became
commonly known as mauve (from the French for the plant used to make
the colour violet). He asked advice of Scottish dye works owner Robert
Pullar, who assured him that manufacturing the dye would be well worth it if
the colour remained fast (i.e. would not fade) and the cost was relatively
low. So, over the fierce objections of his mentor Hofmann, he left college to
give birth to the modern chemical industry.
With the help of his father and brother, Perkin set up a factory not far from
London. Utilising the cheap and plentiful coal tar that was an almost
unlimited by product of London’s gas street lighting, the dye works began
producing the world’s first synthetically dyed material in 1857. The
company received a commercial boost from the Empress Eugenie of
France, when she decided the new colour flattered her. Very soon, mauve
was the necessary shade for all the fashionable ladies in that country.
Not to be outdone, England’s Queen Victoria also appeared in public
wearing a mauve gown, thus making it all the rage in England as well. The
dye was bold and fast, and the public clamoured for more. Perkin went
back to the drawing board.
Although Perkin’s fame was achieved and fortune assured by his first
discovery, the chemist continued his research. Among other dyes he
developed and introduced were aniline red (1859) and aniline black (1863)
and, in the late 1860s, Perkin’s green. It is important to note that Perkin’s
synthetic dye discoveries had outcomes far beyond the merely decorative.
The dyes also became vital to medical research in many ways. For
instance, they were used to stain previously invisible microbes and
bacteria, allowing researchers to identify such bacilli as tuberculosis,
cholera, and anthrax. Artificial dyes continue to play a crucial role today.
And, in what would have been particularly pleasing to Perkin, their current
use is in the search for a vaccine against malaria.

1. Michael Faraday was the first person to recognize Perkin’s ability as

a student of chemistry.
2. Michael Faraday suggested Perkin should enrol in the Royal College
of Chemistry.
3. Perkin employed August Wilhelm Hofmann as his assistant.
4. Perkin was still young when he made the discovery that made him
rich and famous.
5. The trees from which quinine is derived grow only in South America.
6. Perkin hoped to manufacture a drug from a coal tar waste product.
7. Perkin was inspired by the discoveries of the famous scientist Louis
Pasteur.

Exercise 2: Answer the questions below. Choose NO MORE THAN

TWO WORDS from the passage for each answer.

1. Before Perkin’s discovery, with what group in society was the colour purple
associated?
→
2. What potential did Perkin immediately understand that his new dye had?
→
3. What was the name finally used to refer to the first colour Perkin invented?
→
 4. What was the name of the person Perkin consulted before setting up his own
dye works?
→
5. In what country did Perkin’s newly invented colour first become
fashionable?
→
6. According to the passage, which disease is now being targeted by
researchers using synthetic dyes?
→

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William Henry Perkin was born on March 12, 1838, in London, England. At school, Thomas
Hall was the first person to recognize Perkin’s talent and devotion to the study of chemistry. It
was his teacher that encouraged him to attend a series of lectures given by the (1)__________
Michael Faraday at the Royal Institution. Those speeches fired his enthusiasm further, and he
later went on to attend the Royal College of Chemistry, at the age of 15.

Not long after that, Perkin made the (2)________that would bring him both fame and fortune. At
the time, quinine was the only (3)__________for malaria. The drug is derived from the bark of a
tree, native to South America. The demand for the drug was surpassing the (4)_________. Perkin
took up the challenge to look for a (5)_________for quinine.

At first, Perkin spent his time in the laboratory on the top floor of his family’s house. He was
attempting to manufacture quinine from aniline, an inexpensive and readily available coal tar
waste product. He did not end up with quinine. Luckily, Perkin’s scientific training and nature
(6)__________him to investigate the substance further. He finally produced a deep purple
solution.

Perkin quickly grasped that his purple solution could be used to colour fabric, thus making it the
world’s first synthetic dye. Historically, textile dyes were made from such natural sources as
plants and animal excretions. In fact, the purple color extracted from a snail was once so costly
that in society at the time only the rich could afford it. In addition, natural dyes tended to be
muddy in hue and fade quickly. He instantly knew that the new dye had (7)___________.

Perkin originally named his dye Tyrian Purple, but it later became commonly known as
(8)__________. He asked advice of Scottish dye works owner Robert Pullar, who assured him
that manufacturing the dye would be well worth it if the colour remained fast (i.e. would not
fade) and the cost was relatively low. So, over the fierce objections of his mentor Hofmann, he
left college to give birth to the modern chemical industry.

Perkin’s synthetic dye discoveries had outcomes far beyond the merely decorative. The dyes also
became vital to medical research in many ways. For instance, they were used to stain previously
invisible microbes and bacteria, allowing researchers to identify such bacilli as tuberculosis,
cholera, and anthrax. Artificial dyes continue to play a crucial role today. And, in what would
have been particularly pleasing to Perkin, their current use is in the search for a
(9)____________.

Ex1: T/F/NOT GIVEN

THE MIT FACTOR: CELEBRATING 150 YEARS OF

MAVERICK GENIUS
The musician Yo-Yo Ma’s cello may not be the obvious starting point for a journey into one of
the world’s great universities. But, as you quickly realise when you step inside the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, there’s precious little going on that you would normally
see on a university campus. The cello, resting in a corner of MIT’s celebrated media laboratory
– a hub of creativity – looks like any other electric classical instrument. But it is much more.
Machover, the composer, teacher and inventor responsible for its creation, calls it a
‘hyperinstrument’, a sort of thinking machine that allows Ma and his cello to interact with one
another and make music together. ‘The aim is to build an instrument worthy of a great musician
like Yo-Yo Ma that can understand what he is trying to do and respond to it,’ Machover says.
The cello has numerous sensors across its body and by measuring the pressure, speed and
angle of the virtuoso’s performance it can interpret his mood and engage with it, producing
extraordinary new sounds. The virtuoso cellist frequently performs on the instrument as he tours
around the world.

Machover’s passion for pushing at the boundaries of the existing world to extend and unleash
human potential is not a bad description of MIT as a whole. This unusual community brings
highly gifted, highly motivated individuals together from a vast range of disciplines, united by a
common desire: to leap into the dark and reach for the unknown.

The result of that single unifying ambition is visible all around. For the past 150 years, MIT has
been leading the world into the future. The discoveries of its teachers and students have
become the common everyday objects that we now all take for granted. The telephone,
electromagnets, radars, high-speed photography, office photocopiers, cancer treatments,
pocket calculators, computers, the Internet, the decoding of the human genome, lasers, space
travel ... the list of innovations that involved essential contributions from MIT and its faculty goes
on and on.
From the moment MIT was founded by William Barton Rogers in 1861, it was clear what it was
not. While Harvard stuck to the English model of a classical education, with its emphasis on
Latin and Greek, MIT looked to the German system of learning based on research and hands-
on experimentation. Knowledge was at a premium, but it had to be useful.

This down-to-earth quality is enshrined in the school motto, Mens et manus – Mind and hand –
as well as its logo, which shows a gowned scholar standing beside an ironmonger bearing a
hammer and anvil. That symbiosis of intellect and craftsmanship still suffuses the institute’s
classrooms, where students are not so much taught as engaged and inspired.

Take Christopher Merrill, 21, a third-year undergraduate in computer science. He is spending

most of his time on a competition set in his robotics class. The contest is to see which student
can most effectively program a robot to build a house out of blocks in under ten minutes. Merrill
says he could have gone for the easiest route – designing a simple robot that would build the
house quickly. But he wanted to try to master an area of robotics that remains unconquered–
adaptability, the ability of the robot to rethink its plans as the environment around it changes, as
would a human. “I like to take on things that have never been done before rather than to work in
an iterative way just making small steps forward,” he explains.

Merrill is already planning the start-up he wants to set up when he graduates in a year’s time.
He has an idea for an original version of a contact lens that would augment reality by allowing
consumers to see additional visual information. He is fearful that he might be just too late in
taking his concept to market, as he has heard that a Silicon Valley firm is already developing
something similar. As such, he might become one of many MIT graduates who go on to form
companies that fail. Alternatively, he might become one of those who go on to succeed in
spectacular fashion. And there are many of them. A survey of living MIT alumni found that they
have formed 25,800 companies, employing more than three million people, including about a
quarter of the workforce of Silicon Valley.

What MIT delights in is taking brilliant minds from around the world in vastly diverse disciplines
and putting them together. You can see that in its sparkling new David Koch Institute for
Integrative Cancer Research, which brings scientists, engineers and clinicians under one roof.
Or in its Energy Initiative, which acts as a bridge for MIT’s combined work across all its five
schools, channelling huge resources into the search for a solution to global warming. It works to
improve the efficiency of existing energy sources, including nuclear power. It is also forging
ahead with alternative energies from solar to wind and geothermal, and has recently developed
the use of viruses to synthesise batteries that could prove crucial in the advancement of electric
cars.

In the words of Tim Berners-Lee, the Briton who invented the World Wide Web, ‘It’s not just
another university. Even though I spend my time with my head buried in the details of web
technology, the nice thing is that when I do walk the corridors, I bump into people who are
working in other fields with their students that are fascinating, and that keeps me intellectually
alive.’

1. The activities going on at the MIT campus are like those at any other university.

2. Harvard and MIT shared a similar approach to education when they were founded.

3. The school motto was suggested by a former MIT student.

4. MIT’s logo reflects the belief that intellect and craftsmanship go together.

5. Silicon Valley companies pay higher salaries to graduates from MIT.

Ex2: Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the passage for each answer.

Question 1: What proportion of workers at Silicon Valley are employed in companies set up by
MIT graduates?
⇒
Question 2: What problem does MIT’s Energy Initiative aim to solve?
⇒
Question 3: Which ‘green’ innovation might MIT’s work with viruses help improve?
⇒
Question 4: In which part of the university does Tim Berners-Lee enjoy stimulating
conversations with other MIT staff?
⇒