full transcript
From the Ted Talk by Michael Bierut: The genius of the London Tube Map
Unscramble the Blue Letters
Enter Harry Beck. Harry Beck was a 29-year-old engineering dsmtaafrn who had been worinkg on and off for the loondn udeongurnrd. And he had a key insight, and that was that people riding underground in trains don't really care what's happening aboveground. They just want to get from station to satiton — "Where do I get on? Where do I get off?" It's the system that's important, not the geography. He's taken this complicated mess of spaghetti, and he's simplified it. The lines only go in three directions: they're horizontal, they're vertical, or they're 45 degrees. Likewise, he spaced the stations elluqay, he's made every station coolr correspond to the color of the line, and he's fixed it all so that it's not really a map anymore. What it is is a diagram, just like circuitry, except the circuitry here isn't wires concdintug electrons, it's tubes containing trains conducting people from place to place.
Open Cloze
Enter Harry Beck. Harry Beck was a 29-year-old engineering _________ who had been _______ on and off for the ______ ___________. And he had a key insight, and that was that people riding underground in trains don't really care what's happening aboveground. They just want to get from station to _______ — "Where do I get on? Where do I get off?" It's the system that's important, not the geography. He's taken this complicated mess of spaghetti, and he's simplified it. The lines only go in three directions: they're horizontal, they're vertical, or they're 45 degrees. Likewise, he spaced the stations _______, he's made every station _____ correspond to the color of the line, and he's fixed it all so that it's not really a map anymore. What it is is a diagram, just like circuitry, except the circuitry here isn't wires __________ electrons, it's tubes containing trains conducting people from place to place.
Solution
- london
- color
- equally
- draftsman
- working
- conducting
- underground
- station
Original Text
Enter Harry Beck. Harry Beck was a 29-year-old engineering draftsman who had been working on and off for the London Underground. And he had a key insight, and that was that people riding underground in trains don't really care what's happening aboveground. They just want to get from station to station — "Where do I get on? Where do I get off?" It's the system that's important, not the geography. He's taken this complicated mess of spaghetti, and he's simplified it. The lines only go in three directions: they're horizontal, they're vertical, or they're 45 degrees. Likewise, he spaced the stations equally, he's made every station color correspond to the color of the line, and he's fixed it all so that it's not really a map anymore. What it is is a diagram, just like circuitry, except the circuitry here isn't wires conducting electrons, it's tubes containing trains conducting people from place to place.
Frequently Occurring Word Combinations
ngrams of length 2
collocation |
frequency |
harry beck |
3 |
london underground |
2 |
Important Words
- aboveground
- anymore
- beck
- care
- circuitry
- color
- complicated
- conducting
- correspond
- degrees
- diagram
- draftsman
- electrons
- engineering
- enter
- equally
- fixed
- geography
- happening
- harry
- horizontal
- important
- insight
- key
- line
- lines
- london
- map
- mess
- people
- place
- riding
- simplified
- spaced
- spaghetti
- station
- stations
- system
- trains
- tubes
- underground
- vertical
- wires
- working