$课文29 气垫船

523. Many strange new means of transport have been developed in our century,

本世纪已研制出许多新奇的交通工具，

524. the strangest of them being perhaps the hovercraft.

其中最新奇的要数气垫船了。

525. In 1953, a former electronics engineer in his fifties, Christopher Cockerell,

1953年，有一位50多岁名叫克里斯托弗.科克雷的原电子工程师，

526. who had turned to boat-building on the Norfolk Broads,

改行在诺福克郡的湖泊地区从事造船业，

527. suggested an idea on which he had been working for many years to the British Government and industrial circles.

他向英国政府和工业界提出了他研究多年的一项计划。

528. It was the idea of supporting a craft on a ’pad’, or cushion, of low-pressure air, ringed with a curtain of higher pressure air.

他的设想是：用一个低压空气或软垫来支撑船体，软垫周围用高压空气环绕。

529. Ever since, people have had difficulty in deciding whether the craft should be ranged among ships, planes, or land vehicles -- for it is something in between a boat and an aircraft.

自那以后，人们很难决定是否应该将这种运载工具列为轮船、飞机，或是陆上交通工具，因为它是介于船和飞机之间。

530. As a shipbuilder, Cockerell was trying to find a solution to the problem of the wave resistance which wastes a good deal of a surface ship’s power and limits its speed.