Listening audioscript

6. WHAT IS THE LECTURE MAINLY ABOUT? 
7. ACCORDING TO THE LECTURE, WHY DID POLITICIANS FROM
THE SOUTHERN STATES NOT WANT NEW YORK CITY TO BE
THE CAPITAL CITY? 
8. ACCORDING TO THE LECTURE, HOW WAS THE LOCAL
GOVERNMENT CHOSEN WHEN WASHINGTON, D.C. WAS FIRST 
ESTABLISHED?
 
 
9. ACCORDING TO THE LECTURE, WHAT TWO POINTS
MAKE WASHINGTON, D.C. DIFFERENT FROM OTHER U.S. CITIES? 
10. IS EACH STATEMENT TRUE ABOUT WASHINGTON, D.C. AND
THE STATE OF VIRGINIA? FOR EACH ANSWER, CLICK IN THE YES OR NO 
COLUMN. 
11. WHAT IS STATED IN THE LECTURE ABOUT THE CAPITOL BUILDING? 

---

LPREP IBT 3 E AS 
FINAL 11/22/14
11/22/14 
160
Page 522
[ mp3 256-257] 
Questions 12 through 17. 
Listen to a discussion in a history class. 
(Professor)
The reason that we know a great deal about life in Medieval Europe is in 
large part due to the durability of the material that was used in producing 
manuscripts: parchment. Before the invention of the printing press by 
Guttenberg, all manuscripts, all books were hand-copied on pages of 
parchment. In the late Middle Ages, parchment was largely replaced by 
paper. New techniques in the production of paper allowed it to be made 
more cheaply and abundantly than parchment. With the advent of 
movable type in the fifteenth century, the demand for parchment 
increased so greatly that the supply of animal skin was insufficient to 
produce enough parchment. But also because of some of the particular 
qualities of parchment, it has given us some unexpected insights into 
earlier periods. Parchment is durable, much more so than paper, and it 
could be reused, which was practical since it was an expensive material 
to produce. 
OK, so now let’s talk a little about the production of parchment; 
parchment is made from animal skins and making it is a rather labor-
intensive process. First, the skin had to be cleaned and then stretched. 
The skin was soaked in water to remove any remaining blood for about a 
day and then it was soaked in another liquid made from rotting 
vegetables and quicklime, to remove the hair. The skins would stay in 
this hair-removing liquid for about eight days. The vat was stirred several 
times a day to ensure the solution's deep and uniform penetration of the 
skin. However, if the skins were soaked in the solution for too long, the 
skin would become too weak for the next step in the process, stretching.
After soaking, the skins would be placed on a wooden frame and 
attached to the frame by strings to stretch the skin out. Then after the 
skin was stretched, craftsmen scraped the skin with a sharp knife to 
remove any remaining hair and to get the skin to a uniform thickness that 
left a relatively smooth surface for writing. After all this, the parchment 
would be cut into rectangular sheets from each skin depending on the 
size of the skin. The rectangular shape seems to have been chosen 
primarily because the producers of manuscripts did not want to waste 
any of this valuable commodity. When they folded the sheets of 
parchment in half and bound them together at the fold to produce a book, 
the books ended up being a little taller than they were wide. In fact, this is 
why books today are shaped the way they are. 
Like I said before, parchment had a relatively smooth surface, but it was 
not a perfect medium for writing; it had little flaws such as bumps and 
creases, so it didn’t have a completely flat surface, which made writing 
on parchment sometimes a bit challenging. Despite this drawback, the 
durability of parchment is unsurpassed when compared to paper that 
often disintegrates after a few hundred years. Books made of parchment 
that are over a thousand years old have been found in pristine condition. 
. Now, remember before the printing press, books were copied by hand 
by scribes and often they reused parchment that had been used for 
earlier manuscripts. A manuscript or book that is made of recycled 

---

LPREP IBT 3 E AS 
FINAL 11/22/14
11/22/14 
161
parchment is called a palimpsest. There were two methods that were 
used for removing ink from parchment in the preparation of a palimpsest.
During the seventh through the ninth centuries, it was customary for 
earlier parchment manuscripts to be scrubbed and scoured with an 
abrasive that completely wiped out any writing that was there. But earlier 
in the Middle Ages the original ink was usually removed by washing the 
used parchment with milk. That removed the ink, but not permanently. 
With the passing of hundreds of years, miraculously the original writing 
might reappear. In fact, it might reappear to the extent that scholars 
could make out and even decipher the original text. And now improved 
technology and methods such as the use of x-ray imaging, ultraviolet 
light, and the use of digital images has greatly enhanced researchers’ 
ability to decipher previously unreadable palimpsests. These 
technological innovations have not only given us a greater insight into 
Medieval Europe, but have also given us new understanding of earlier 
periods due to the fact that a number of lost ancient works have survived 
only as palimpsests.