单元检测（十七） Great People and Great Inventions of Ancient China

　　Ⅰ.阅读理解

　　A

　　Called "the man who shaped America" and "the father of modern industrial design"， Raymond Loewy must be one of the most influential designers of all time. He revolutionized the industry, working as an adviser for more than 200 companies and creating designs for everything from packaging to refrigerators, from cars to the insides of spaceships.

　　Loewy's designs all had one thing in common. They were shaped by the MAYA principle - Most Advanced Yet Acceptable. His idea was that people will not accept solutions to design problems if the solutions are too different from current designs.

　　Loewy started his career in industrial design in 1929 by re­designing a copying machine for the British manufacturer, Sigmund Gestetner. The 28­year­old designer completed the task in three days and the design of the machine lasted for the next 40 years.

　　The Gestetner copying machine was the beginning of many designs which used streamlining (流线型). He described this as "beauty through function and simplification". He spent the next 50 years streamlining everything from postage stamps and company logos (商标) to the insides of stores. The famous Greyhound bus and Studebaker car show his use of streamlining in action.

　　He is perhaps most famous for his re­design of the Lucky Strike packaging. In 1940, the President of the Lucky Strike Manufacturing Company, George Washington Hill, bet Loewy ＄50,000 that he could not improve the appearance of the green and red Lucky Strike packets. Loewy accepted the challenge. He changed the background of the packet from green to white. Then he put the red lucky strike target on both sides of the packet. This made it more eye­catching and greatly increased sales. It is now recognized as a design classic.

　　Loewy's logo design aimed at "visual retention (视觉保持)". He wanted to make sure that anyone who saw the logo, even for a short while, would never forget it. He designed many highly visible logos for famous companies such as Shell Oil, Exxon, Greyhound and Nabisco.

　　By the mid 20th century, his industrial design firm was so famous that he could say "the average person, leading a normal life ... is bound to be in daily contact with some of the things, services or structures" designed by his firm.

语篇解读：本文是一篇记叙文。文章主要介绍了20世纪最著名的美国工业设计师之一与美国工业奠基人雷蒙德·罗维。