A n s w e r k e y test 1, Paper 1, Reading

Part 4: The way we worked
20 
B: ‘Search your high street for a typewriter repairman and your 
chances of a result at all are ribbon-thin.’
21 
D: ‘The craze for buying newly available arts and crafts from Japan 
was at its height in the second half of the nineteenth century.’
22 
A: ‘Mention them to people and they’ll look quizzical,’ Roberts says, 
‘but next time they see you, they’ll have started to spot them.’ 
(‘them’ = the work done by sign-painters).
23 
C: ‘In 1888, thousands of matchgirls at the Bryant and May factory 
in London famously went on strike to protest over conditions.’
24 
B: They serve ‘septuagenarian retirees’, ‘technophobes’, ‘novelists’ 
and ‘people weaned on digital keyboards who see typewriters as 
relics of a distant past’. 
25 
D: When warned that someone might steal his techniques, he says 
that ‘no one wants to’ copy him or learn to do what he does. 
26 
C: ‘Over subsequent decades, the long hours, tiny pay packets and 
exposure to toxic chemicals were addressed’.
27 
A: His father told him ‘these things will come back’ and ‘the more 
technology comes into it, the more you’ll be seen as a specialist’ 
and his words showed ‘a lot of foresight’.
28 
B: They repair typewriters by using ‘the vast collection of spare parts 
they’ve accumulated over the years’.
29 
C: ‘The majority of staff are still female’; ‘it’s still mainly female’.
30 
D: ‘Shiny, affordable substitutes, like shellac, began to eat away 
its aura’ – cheaper alternative materials contributed to making 
lacquerwork less appealing and popular.
31 
A: As his trade is a ‘rare one’, people employ him in all sorts
of places.
32 
B: ‘It amazes us the price the old manual machines sell for on
the internet’.