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.