A. MINUTE B. SECOND C. HOUR D. TIMEREAD THE FOLLOWING PASSAGE AND...

27. A. minute

B. second

C. hour

D. time

Read the following passage and mark the letter A, B, C or D on your answer sheet

to indicate the correct answer to each of the questions

In the early 1800s, the paper industry was still using rags as its basic source of fiber as it

had for many centuries. However, the rag supply couldn’t keep up with the growing

demand for paper. The United States alone was using 250 thousand tons of rags each year.

And a quarter of that had to be imported. It was clear that a new source of fiber was

needed to keep up with the demand for paper. The answer to this problem turned out to

be paper made from wood pulp, something that was abundantly available in North

America. In Canada, the first wood pulp mill was set up in 1866, and it was immediately

successful. But while wood pulp solved the problem of quantity, it created a problem of

quality. Wood contains a substance called lignin. The simplest way to make large

quantities of cheap paper involves leaving the lignin in the wood pulp. But lignin is acidic

and its presence in paper has shorted the life expectancy of paper from several centuries

for rag paper to less than a century for paper made from wood pulp. This means that

books printed less than a hundred years ago are already turning yellow and beginning to

disintegrate, but rag paper books printed much earlier may be in fine condition. This is

bad enough for the older books on your bookshelf, and it poses a huge problem for

libraries and the collections of government documents.