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21.ANSWERS AND EXPLANATIONS Explanation for Correct Answer D : Choice (D) is correct. The author describes the Wright brothers as having started out making bicycles and as a result knowing about "thin-wall steel tubes, wire-spoked wheels, chain drives and whatever else it took to construct efficient machines that weighed as little as possible" (lines 13-16). Thin-wall steel tubes, wire-spoked wheels, and chain drives are effective but were certainly not particularly sophisticated or advanced technology, even at that time. So by calling the Wright brothers "practical engineers at the cheap end of the market" (lines 16-17), the author is emphasizing their modest technological beginnings. Explanation for Incorrect Answer A : Choice (A) is incorrect. There is no reference in the passage to people who hindered aviation's progress. The Wright brothers and others who built the early airplanes may have used relatively inexpensive and unsophisticated technology, but there is no indication that they had little concern for quality. Explanation for Incorrect Answer B : Choice (B) is incorrect. The passage does suggest that early airplanes were built using relatively inexpensive materials. But nowhere in the passage is there any mention at all of the practical use of the airplane as a means of transportation, or of the cost of flying. Explanation for Incorrect Answer C : Choice (C) is incorrect. The only aviators discussed in the passage are the Wright brothers. The passage makes it extremely clear that they were widely admired. There is no mention of their being criticized in any way. Explanation for Incorrect Answer E : Choice (E) is incorrect. Nineteenth-century engineering is discussed only to provide a contrast with the approach to engineering that produced the bicycle and, eventually, the airplane. No judgment is either made or implied about the relative merits of the two approaches. 22
22.ANSWERS AND EXPLANATIONS Explanation for Correct Answer E : Choice (E) is correct. Before quoting Marvell's poem, the author talks about "humanity's ancient dream of freeing itself from gravity" (lines 25-26) and says that before the first airplanes "the body was earthbound, but it enclosed a soul that flew" (lines 26-27). Marvell's poem shows this deep longing to fly. Explanation for Incorrect Answer A : Choice (A) is incorrect. At the beginning of the paragraph containing Marvell's poem, the author states "[t]his is the point at which engineering intersects with the imagination" (lines 24-25). The poem is used to show that flight had long captured the imagination of people. The poem also allows the author to imply that flight engineering was the practical result of years of imagination. Explanation for Incorrect Answer B : Choice (B) is incorrect. The poem expresses human longing for a solution to the mystery of flight. But since at the time the poem was written, humans were not able to fly, the poem cannot be used to illustrate a solution to the mystery of flight. Explanation for Incorrect Answer C : Choice (C) is incorrect. The passage is not concerned with either the advantages or the dangers of flight. Its focus is on how people responded to early aviation. The poem is included to show that people had long wished to fly. Explanation for Incorrect Answer D : Choice (D) is incorrect. The poem does show that people had long associated flight with beauty. But the author cannot have intended the poem to say anything about those who analyze the mechanics of flight because there is no mention of any such people in the passage. 23
23.ANSWERS AND EXPLANATIONS Explanation for Correct Answer A : Choice (A) is correct. The same writer who is quoted in lines 41-42 is also quoted immediately before as saying that "machinery is our new art form" (line 40). The praise is for "the engineers whose poetry is too deep to look poetic"―that is, engineers are also poets, but they make machines rather than poems―is meant to reinforce this idea. Explanation for Incorrect Answer B : Choice (B) is incorrect. Neither the writer quoted in lines 41-42 nor the author of the passage says anything to suggest that either poetry or technology is misunderstood. The point is rather that, with "the new light engineering," technology began to be perceived of as a kind of poetry. Explanation for Incorrect Answer C : Choice (C) is incorrect. The quotation in lines 41-42 makes the point that, thanks to "the new light engineering," it became possible to see science and art as two sides of the same coin. The quotation is not included to suggest anything about the relative importance of practicality and creativity. Explanation for Incorrect Answer D : Choice (D) is incorrect. It is the machines built by engineers, not their technical language, that are said to have a poetic or lyrical quality. The quote could be paraphrased as follows: "engineers are also poets, but they make machines rather than poems." The poetry of engineers that the quotation mentions is to be found in the airplanes they built, not in the technical language of engineering. Explanation for Incorrect Answer E : Choice (E) is incorrect. To say that people have artistic pretensions is to criticize them for regarding themselves as artists when they are not. The writer being quoted, however, considers engineers to be artists and praises them as such. 24
24.ANSWERS AND EXPLANATIONS Explanation for Correct Answer B : Choice (B) is correct. In lines 47-48 one of Wright's biographers is quoted as saying that Wright was "deeply middle-class and unheroic." That quotation follows a quotation from one of Wright's admirers, who called him a poet and compared his soul to that of a mystic on an inaccessible mountain peak. In that context, the effect of quoting the biographer's remark is to deflate the extravagant picture of Wright as a glamorous, mysterious artist. Explanation for Incorrect Answer A : Choice (A) is incorrect. The biographer's remarks amount to a criticism of the thinking of some of Wright's admirers, who were so obsessed with the glamour of flight that they failed to notice how unglamourous a person Wright himself actually was. But the criticism is not that their thinking was unimaginative. Rather, the criticism is that they were being too imaginative, too fanciful, and too willing to blind themselves to the truth of things. Explanation for Incorrect Answer C : Choice (C) is incorrect. The passage makes it clear that Wright's contemporaries were very excited by Wright's inventions and regarded him as something of a hero. Therefore, it seems unlikely that the generally accepted view of Wright was as a "middle-class and unheroic" person. Explanation for Incorrect Answer D : Choice (D) is incorrect. The biographer's remarks were included to counter a view of Wright as mysterious and glamorous. They are about Wright the man, not Wright the inventor. The importance of Wright's invention is not questioned anywhere in the passage. Explanation for Incorrect Answer E : Choice (E) is incorrect. Pointing out that someone is "middle-class and unheroic" is not calculated to help perpetuate, or keep alive, the legacy of that person as a scientific hero. | 
