Table of Contents
BEST IELTS General Reading Test 507
IELTS GENERAL READING TEST 507 – PASSAGE – 1
IELTS GENERAL READING TEST – 507
READING PASSAGE – 1
THE FIRST COCO COLA BOTTLE
More than 100 years ago, designers went back and forth quite a bit coming up with the perfect design for the glass Coca-Cola bottle. The only known, intact model of one of those discarded prototypes is now on the block, at Morphy Auctions in Las Vegas, Nevada, where it is expected to sell this month for at least 100,000 dollars.
The story goes all the way back to 1915, when the Coca-Cola Bottling Company of Atlanta, Georgia, solicited proposals for a bottle design, requiring all entries to include not only a description, but an actual sample bottle. According to Morphy of Morphy Auctions, a “committee of several bottlers” joined Coca-Cola’s lawyers in Atlanta, in August 1915, to evaluate the eight Submissions the company had received.
IELTS General Reading Test
The winning entry was by Earl R. Dean, of the Root Glass Company-but it still needed some work. Dean’s design was incompatible with the machinery that the company would use to bottle its soda, it was too wide for the conveyor belt, so Mr. Root himself helped slim the design down to a version sized appropriately for the machines. As a matter of fact, Coca-Cola’s iconic curved bottle wasn’t introduced until 1917 when the company was desperate to come up with a design that would distinguish themselves from other soda producers.
“We need a bottle which a person can recognize as a Coca-Cola bottle when he feels it in the dark,” Coca-Cola Bottling Company co-founder Benjamin Thomas said in his design brief. Designer Earl R. Dean was reportedly inspired by the shape of cacao pods, the fruit of the cacao tree which become chocolate. To keep their curvaceous scheme a secret, all of the previous prototypes were destroyed.
IELTS General Reading Test
Coca-Cola proceeded to conduct a round of testing on the refined design, producing test bottles from plants in Alabama, Georgia, and Tennessee. Though the tests were successful, the company destroyed its test bottles-all of them, apparently, except for this one. The bottle is embossed with the date November 15, 1915; the test-proof design was patented the following day.
Why just this bottle survived may forever remain a mystery of the bottling arts and sciences. People, after all, had tried to find others. In preparing this lot for auction, Morphy consulted the bottle scholar Dennis Smith, who “conducted a bottle dig” more than 40 years ago in a Birmingham, Alabama, dump where the local test plant had disposed of its samples. Despite his noble efforts, Smith came up with nothing but fragments. This bottle-along with a 1933 model – discovered in a retired Coca-Cola employee’s collection of company paraphernalia. It is the only known, unbroken survivor from that original test run.
IELTS General Reading Test
Questions 1-6
Do the following statements agree with the information given in the text? Write:
TRUE If the statement agrees with the information
FALSE If the statement contradicts the information
NOT GIVEN If there is no information on this.
1. Morphy was involved in the design of the Coco Cola bottle prototype.
2. The Coco Cola Company evaluated more than half a dozen designs of a glass bottle based upon a brief given by Benjamin Thomas.
3. Benjamin Thomas felt that people would prefer to drink Coco Cola in the dark and hence the bottle should be so designed that one could make out it is a Coco Cola bottle just by feeling it.
4. Designer Earl Dean made the bottle in the shape of the cacao pod.
5. The design of the bottle was patented on November 16, 1915.
6. Mr. Root was the owner of Root Glass Company.
IELTS General Reading Test
Read the text below and answer Questions 7- 13.
RACING PIGEONS
In many cities around the world, feral pigeons are a dime a dozen. They roost on roofs, they coo from wires, and they peck outside bakeries, waiting for day-old hand-outs. Pigeons that bred for racing are birds of a fancier feather-and one buyer recently shelled out $1.4 million to add a little guy named Armando to their roster of winged competitors.
A Belgian breeder put Armando up for sale on the pigeon auction site PIPA, where several bidders scrambled to nab him. When bidding closed, Armando’s price had inched above ¬1.2 million (more than $1.4 million, in U.S. dollars). Seven of Armando’s offspring were also up for sale, and they’ll fan out across Belgium, Turkey, Germany, The Netherlands, and China. Armando will head to China, too, where the sport of pigeon racing has boomed in recent years. On the mainland, where most forms of gambling are prohibited, pigeon racing gets a pass, and there are at least 100,000 pigeon breeders in Beijing alone, CNN reported.
IELTS General Reading Test
Many wildlife groups and rehabilitators are fundamentally opposed to pigeon racing, arguing that the birds face a barrage of challenges before, during, and after the events, which sometimes span hundreds of miles. “We think this is a flawed situation right from the beginning,” says Elizabeth Young, founding director of Palomacy, a pigeon rescue organization in the San Francisco Bay Area. Young’s group works with domestic pigeons who find themselves in the wild, including ones that were grounded during races, often because they were struck by hawks, outmatched by the wind, or ran out of energy.
From a purchasers perspective, this bird had several things working in his favour, says Tim Heidrich, secretary of the National Pigeon Association, a bird fanciers’ group. Armando has already soared past the competition in several long-distance races, and delivered sterling performances in Belgium, Heinrich says, where competition is stiff. Selecting a racing pigeon can be similar to selecting champion dogs or thoroughbred race horses, says Deone Roberts, sport development manager at the American Racing Pigeon Union. “Pedigree can be important for the owner who may be hoping for genetic transmission of the most desired qualities,” Roberts says. Armando is also young enough to be bred several times over the years, Heidrich says, “thus maximizing the investment in him.”
IELTS General Reading Test
While other top birds have sold for hundreds of thousands of dollars in the past-and despite Armando’s bona fides-“I think the price got very much out of hand,” Heidrich writes in an email. “You probably had a couple of billionaires bidding with their egos instead of their brains.” Still, Heidrich adds, “Like a great race horse, he’s worth what someone is willing to pay.
Questions 7-13
Fill in the blanks in the following sentences, using words from the box below.
7. It is very common to see hordes of ………………. pigeons in many cities around the world.
8. Some people ………………. pigeons for racing as these birds fetch very high prices.
9. Pigeon racing as a ………………. has greatly increased over the last few years.
10. In mainland China, many kinds of ………………. are not permitted.
11. The ………………. of a bird is seen to be important when it comes to selecting one for purchase.
12. In bidding for Armando, people were swayed more by their ………………. rather than logic.
13. There are several bodies that do not ………………. pigeon racing as a sport.
IELTS General Reading Test
| like | conceit | sport | track-record |
| racing | untamed | pride | keep |
| speed | lineage | competitions | gambling |
| support | speculation | domesticated | breed |
IELTS General Reading Test
IELTS General Reading Test
ANSWERS
1. FALSE
2. TRUE
3. NOT GIVEN
4. NOT GIVEN
5. TRUE
6. NOT GIVEN
7. UNTAMED
8. BREED
9. SPORT
10. GAMBLING
11. LINEAGE
12. PRIDE
13. SUPPORT
IELTS General Reading Test