In May 1987 the Golden Gate Bridge had a 50th birthday party. The bridge was closed to motor traffic so people could enjoy a walk across it. Organizers expected perhaps 50,000 people to show up. Instead, as many as 800, 000 crowded the roads to the bridge. By the time 250,000 were on the bridge, engineers noticed something terrible：the roadway was flattening under what turned out to be the heaviest load it had ever been asked to carry. Worse, it was beginning to sway（晃动）. The authorities closed access to the bridge and tens of thousands of people made their way back to land. A disaster was avoided.
1987年5月，金门大桥迎来了它的50岁生日派对。大桥对机动车关闭，以便人们可以步行穿越。组织者预计可能会有大约50,000人参加。然而，多达800,000人涌向通往大桥的道路。当有250,000人在桥上时，工程师们注意到了一个可怕的事情：路面在承受前所未有的最重负荷下开始变平。更糟糕的是，它开始晃动。当局关闭了通往大桥的通道，成千上万的人返回陆地。一场灾难得以避免。

The story is one of scores in To Forgive Design：Understanding Failure, a book that is at once a love letter to engineering and a paean（赞歌）to its breakdowns. Its author, Dr. Henry Petroski, has long been writing about disasters. In this book, he includes the loss of the space shuttles（航天飞机）Challenger and Columbia, and the sinking of the Titanic.
这个故事收录在《宽恕设计：理解失败》一书中，这本书既是对工程学的情书，也是对其失败的赞歌。其作者，亨利·佩特罗斯基博士，长期以来一直在撰写关于灾难的文章。在这本书中，他包括了挑战者号和哥伦比亚号航天飞机的失事，以及泰坦尼克号的沉没。

Though he acknowledges that engineering works can fail because the person who thought them up or engineered them simply got things wrong, in this book Dr. Petroski widens his view to consider the larger context in which such failures occur. Sometimes devices fail because a good design is constructed with low quality materials incompetently applied. Or perhaps a design works so well it is adopted elsewhere again and again, with seemingly harmless improvements, until, suddenly, it does not work at all anymore.
尽管他承认，工程作品可能会因为设计者或工程师犯了错误而失败，但在这本书中，佩特罗斯基博士扩大了他的视野，考虑了这些失败发生的更大背景。有时，设备会因为使用了低质量的材料，或者设计得很好但执行不力而失败。或者，一个设计工作得如此之好，以至于它被一次又一次地在其他地方采用，伴随着看似无害的改进，直到突然间，它完全不再工作。

Readers will encounter not only stories they have heard before, but some new stories and a moving discussion of the responsibility of the engineer to the public and the ways young engineers can be helped to grasp them.
读者将不仅会遇到他们以前听过的故事，还有一些新的故事，以及对工程师对公众的责任以及如何帮助年轻工程师理解这些责任的感人讨论。

“Success is success but that is all that it is,” Dr. Petroski writes. It is failure that brings improvement.
“成功就是成功，但它仅此而已，”佩特罗斯基博士写道。正是失败带来了改进。

1. What happened to the Golden Gate Bridge on its 50th birthday? （ ）
   A. It carried more weight than it could.
   B. It swayed violently in a strong wind
   C. Its roadway was damaged by vehicles
   D. Its access was blocked by many people.
   答案：A

2. Which of the following is Dr. Petroski’s idea according to paragraph 3? （ ）
   A. No design is well received everywhere
   B. Construction is more important than design.
   C. Not all disasters are caused by engineering design
   D. Improvements on engineering works are necessary.
   答案：C

3. What does the last paragraph suggest? （ ）
   A. Failure can lead to progress. B. Success results in overconfidence
   C. Failure should be avoided. D. Success comes from joint efforts.
   答案：A

4. What is the text? （ ）
   A. A news report B. A short story.
   C. A book review D. A research article.
   答案：C