Questions 31-40
Complete the notes below.
Write ONE WORD ONLY for each answer.
History of the umbrella
19th-century mass market:
The correct answer is status. The lecture says the earliest umbrellas were held over people of authority and were used as markers of high social status, not primarily for rain protection.
Associated Text:
The early umbrella was, above all, a marker of high social status; its original purpose was display, not keeping off rain.
The correct answer is umbrella. The speaker says that through ancient Persia, umbrella culture moved westward into the Greek and Roman worlds.
Associated Text:
Persia acted as a kind of cultural bridge: it took in the older Egyptian and Mesopotamian umbrella tradition, and through ancient Persia umbrella culture moved westward into the Greek and the Roman worlds.
The correct answer is oiled. Chinese craftsmen treated paper umbrellas with vegetable oils, so the surface shed water. This means the umbrellas were oiled.
Associated Text:
Chinese craftsmen treated paper umbrellas with vegetable oils so that the surface shed water. The oiled paper umbrella, as it is still called, became the standard everyday umbrella across China and from there spread to Korea, Japan and Vietnam.
The correct answer is silk. For high-status Chinese occasions, umbrellas were covered with silk rather than paper.
Associated Text:
For high status occasions, however, for the imperial household, for officials of senior rank, Chinese umbrellas were not made of paper at all. They were covered with silk, often elaborately embroidered, and the silk umbrella signalled exactly the same kind of high status that the Egyptian umbrella had signalled three thousand years earlier
The correct answer is France. The lecture states that the umbrella was reintroduced into Western Europe through fashionable circles in seventeenth-century France.
Associated Text:
The reintroduction happened through the fashionable circles of seventeenth century France, Parisian women in particular took up the parasol enthusiastically, and it spread from France across the rest of Western Europe over the following century
The correct answer is women. The speaker says the umbrella had been firmly associated with women through most of European history.
Associated Text:
Throughout most of European history the umbrella, like the parasol, had been associated firmly with women.
The correct answer is steel. Samuel Fox patented U-section steel ribbing in 1852, and the notes ask for the material used in the lightweight ribs.
Associated Text:
The technology that made the modern umbrella possible came in 1852, when Samuel Fox of Sheffield patented the U section steel ribbing that we still use today.
The correct answer is factories. After the steel-ribbed umbrella was patented, new factories in the English Midlands produced large numbers of cheap umbrellas.
Associated Text:
New factories sprang up in the English Midlands, particularly around Birmingham, turning out hundreds of thousands of umbrellas a year, and the umbrella moved within twenty years from a luxury accessory into a piece of everyday equipment for nearly every adult in the country.
The correct answer is nylon. The lecturer says silk and cotton umbrella covers were displaced by nylon after the Second World War.
Associated Text:
From the late 1940s onwards, both were displaced by nylon, light, strong, water shedding and quick drying, and nylon has remained the dominant cover material to this day.
The correct answer is cover. The note asks where the frequently changing design is located, and the lecturer says the cover design changes every few months.
Associated Text:
the rain shedding job has not really changed in seventy years, but the cover design now changes every few months.
