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Name________________

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Reading Comprehension – Informational Passages

(5)

Directions: Read the passage. Then answer questions about the passage below.

Many people worked to create television. In 1862, Abbe Giovanna Caselli

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d a machine called the

Pantelograph. Caselli was the first person to send a picture over wires. By the 1880s, Alexander Graham Bell
invented a machine that

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d pictures and sound over wires. His machine was called the Photophone.

The World’s Fair was held in Paris, France, in the year 1900. The first International Congress of Electricity was
held at the World’s Fair. That was when the word television was first used – by a Russian named Constantin
Perskyi. That name stuck, and is now shortened to “TV.”

At the beginning of TV history, there were several types of TV technology. One system was a

mechanical model based on a

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g disc. (Rotating discs are discs that spin like CDs.) The other system was

an electronic model. In 1906, Boris Rosing built the first working mechanical TV in Russia. In the 1920s, John
Logie Baird in England and Charles Francis Jenkins in the United States

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improved mechanical

systems. Philo Taylor Farnsworth also showed an electronic

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m in San Francisco in 1927. His TV was the

forerunner of today’s TV, which is an electronic system based on his ideas.

Now TV is everywhere. Before 1947, there were only a few thousand televisions in the U.S. By the

1990s, there were televisions in 98% of American homes.

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?

?

A.

Boris Rosing

B.

John Logie Baird

C.

Abbe Giovanna Caselli

D.

Alexander Graham Bell

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…

…

A. 1862.
B.

1880.

C.

1900.

D.

1906.

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Moscow, Russia.

B.

London, England.

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Paris, France.

D.

New York, United States.

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Abbe Giovanna Caselli

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Charles Francis Jenkins

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Alexander Graham Bell

D.

Philo Taylor Farnsworth

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made for the first time.

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moved to a different country.

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sent over wires.

D. sent through television.

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used.

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sent.

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held.

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going up and down.

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going back and forth.

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spinning.

D.

None of the above

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based.

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called.

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showed.

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worked.

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…

…

A.

parts that make up a unified whole.

B.

parts that are used to make TVs.

C.

broken pieces.

D.

pieces of a machine.