托福阅读事实信息题是阅读考试中比较常见的一种题型，tpo则是托福阅读备考最权威的材料，所以托福小编综合二者，为大家集中整理了tpo阅读中考察的事实信息题及其对应的解析，供大家参考使用。本文带来的是TPO30-3的事实信息题，一起来看看吧。
TPO30-3 The Invention of the Mechanical Clock
Paragraph 2:
Medieval Europe gave new importance to reliable time. The Catholic Church had its seven daily prayers, one of which was at night, requiring an alarm arrangement to waken monks before dawn. And then the new cities and towns, squeezed by their walls, had to know and order time in order to organize collective activity and ration space. They set a time to go to sleep. All this was compatible with older devices so long as there was only one authoritative timekeeper; but with urban growth and the multiplication of time signals, discrepancy brought discord and strife. Society needed a more dependable instrument of time measurement and found it in the mechanical clock.
3. According to paragraph 2, why did the medieval church need an alarm arrangement?
O The alarm warned the monks of discord or strife in the town.
O The church was responsible for regulating working hours and market hours.
O The alarm was needed in case fires were not put out each night.
One of the church’s daily rituals occurred during the night.
解题：对应原文的第二句话，可根据alarm arrangement定位，前文说one of which was at night，后面说to waken monk before dawn，这两个都可以算是原因，选项中符合的只有D。
【2】中世纪欧洲使得可靠的时间变得更重要。天主教堂每天有七次的祷告，有一个是在晚上，它要求设定闹钟以便在破晓前叫醒布道师。另外新的城市和小镇，由于其空间的限制，他们必须要知道并且安排时间去组织集体活动和分配空间。他们设定时间睡觉。所有这些用老的仪器都是可以一致的，只要只有一个权威的时间记录者。但是随着城市的发展和报时信号的倍增，时间错乱导致了不和与争吵。社会需要一个更加可靠的工具去衡量时间，这个仪器就是机械钟表。
Paragraph 4:
Ironically, the new machine tended to undermine Catholic Church authority. Although church ritual had sustained an interest in timekeeping throughout the centuries of urban collapse that followed the fall of Rome, church time was nature’ s time. Day and night were divided into the same number of parts, so that except at the equinoxes, days and night hours were unequal; and then of course the length of these hours varied with the seasons. But the mechanical clock kept equal hours, and this implied a new time reckoning. The Catholic Church resisted, not coming over to the new hours for about a century. From the start, however, the towns and cities took equal hours as their standard, and the public clocks installed in town halls and market squares became the very symbol of a new, secular municipal authority. Every town wanted one; conquerors seized them as especially precious spoils of war; tourists came to see and hear these machines the way they made pilgrimages to sacred relics.
7. According to paragraph 4, how did the Catholic Church react to the introduction of mechanical clocks?
O Its used mechanical clocks through the period of urban collapse
O It used clocks to better understand natural phenomena, like equinoxes
O It tried to preserve its own method of keeping time, which was different from mechanical-clock time.
O It used mechanical clocks to challenge secular, town authorities.
解题：可定位至红色标注部分，关键词为resisted，not coming over，所以证明church在拒绝新的计时方法，也就是在试着保护自己的方法。因此选C
【4】讽刺的是，新仪器有破坏天主教堂权威性的倾向。虽然几世纪以来，尽管城市瓦解，罗马没落，但教堂仪式一直保持着对时间记录的兴趣，教堂时间是自然的时间。白天和黑夜被分为均等的部分，所以除去昼夜平分点，白天和黑夜时间是不均等的;当然因此，这些时间的长度也随着季节变化。但是，机械时钟时间间隔相等，这意味着新的时间计算法。天主教会进行反抗，将近一个世纪都不肯转化到新的时间。但一开始，城镇都接受了均等时间作为他们的标准，并且安装公共的时钟在城镇大楼和市场变成了新的世俗市政权威的标志。每个城镇都想要一个;胜利者视它们为珍贵的战利品，在游人去神圣古迹朝圣的路上，他们专程去看并听这些钟表。
Paragraph 5:
The clock was the greatest achievement of medieval mechanical ingenuity. Its general accuracy could be checked against easily observed phenomena, like the rising and setting of the sun. The result was relentless pressure to improve technique and design. At every stage, clockmakers led the way to accuracy and precision; they became masters of miniaturization, detectors and correctors of error, searchers for new and better. They were thus the pioneers of mechanical engineering and served as examples and teachers to other branches of engineering.
10. Paragraph 5 answers which of the following questions about mechanical clocks.
O How did early mechanical clocks work?
O Why did the design of mechanical clocks affect engineering in general?
O How were mechanical clocks made?
O What influenced the design of the first mechanical clock?
解题：第五段主要说clockmaker引领了准确，精准工程的发展，他们是master，teacher等等，然后说他们是先锋，但这些都是因为他们是制表人。所以这道题选B。 ACD原文都没提到
【5】钟表是中世纪机械精巧装置的最大成就。它的正确性的可以通过简单地可观察日出日落等常见现象来证明。这样的结果是对技术和设计进步的残酷的压力。在每个阶段，制表人引领者准确与精度，他们成为了微型化的大师，错误的探测器和校正者，更新更好的搜寻者。因此他们是机械工程的先驱，是工程学其它分支的典范和老师。
Paragraph 6:
The clock brought order and control, both collective and personal. Its public display and private possession laid the basis for temporal autonomy: people could now coordinate comings and goings without dictation from above. The clock provided the punctuation marks for group activity, while enabling individuals to order their own work (and that of others) so as to enhance productivity. Indeed, the very notion of productivity is a by-product of the clock: once on can relate performance to uniform time units, work is never the same. One moves from the task-oriented time consciousness of the peasant (working on job after another, as time and light permit) and the time-filling busyness of the domestic servant (who always had something to do) to an effort to maximize product per unit of time.
12. According to paragraph 6, how did the mechanical clock affect labor?
O It encouraged workers to do more time-filling busywork.
O It enabled workers to be more task oriented.
O It pushed workers to work more hours every day.
It led to a focus on productivity.
解题：定位到原文最后一句，说使人们从task-oriented和 time-filling busyness的模式变为maximize product per unit of time，从而提高了productivity，所以选择D。A，B原文都提到了，但是是转化前的状态，C没提到。
【6】钟表带来了秩序和控制，既有集体的也有个人的。它的公开展示和私人拥有铺设了短期自治的基础：人们现在可以不用根据上层的命令来调整去留。钟表也为集体活动提供了时间提示，同时使个人能够安排他们自己的工作，以加强生产力。事实上，生产力的准确概念是时钟的副产物，一旦一个人可以将其表现用统一的时间单位衡量，那么工作就永远都不会一样了。人们从农民以任务为导向的工作方式(在时间和光线条件允许的情况下，一件工作接着一件的干)和家奴以时间为导向的工作方式(总有事情做)中转变到了将单位时间的生产量达到最大化的努力中。
以上就是托福阅读TPO30-3中的事实信息题及其解析，大家可以在备考的时候参考复习，希望能够帮助大家的考前准备。最后前程百利祝大家都能取得理想的托福考试成绩。
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