单选题 Many reasons have been adduced for the rise of the Leica. There is the hectic progress of the illustrated press, avid for photographs to fill its columns; there is the increased mobility, spending power, and leisure time of the middle class, who wished to preserve a record of these novel blessing, if not for posterity, then at least for show. Yet the great inventions, more often than not, are triggered less by vast historical movements than by the pressures of individual change—or in Leica"s case, by asthma. Every Leica employee who drives down Oscar-Barnack-Strasse is reminded of corporate glory, for it was Barnack, a former engineer at Carl Zeiss, the famous lens makers in Jena, who designed the Leica I. He was an amateur photographer, and the camera had first occurred to him, as if in a vision, in 1905, twenty years before it actually went on sale; "Back then I took pictures using a camera that tool 13 by 18 plates, with six double-plate holders and a large leather case similar to a salesman"s sample case. This was quite a load to haul around when I set off each Sunday through the Thuringer Wald, while I struggled up the hillsides(bearing in mind that I suffer from asthma)an idea came to me. Couldn"t this be done differently?" Five years later, Barnack was invited to work for Ernst Leitz, a rival optical company, in Watzlar.(The company stayed there until 1988, when it was sold, and the camera division, renamed Leica, shifted to Solms, fifteen minutes away.)By 1909-14, he had developed what became known as the ur-Leica; a tough, squat rectangular metal box, not much bigger than a spectacles case, with rounded corners and a retractable brass lens. You could tuck it into a jacket pocket, wander around the Thuringer woods all weekend, and never gasp for breath. The extraordinary fact is that, if you were to place it next to today"s Leica MP, the similarities would far outweigh the differences; stand a young man beside his own great-grand father and you get the same effect. Barnack took a picture on August 2, 1914, using the new device. Reproduced in Alessandro Pasi"s comprehensive study Leica: Witness to a Century(2004), it shows a helmeted soldier turning away from a column on which he has just plastered the imperial order for mobilization. This was the first hint of the role that would fall to Leica above all other cameras; to be there in history"s face. Not until the end of the hostilities did Barnack resume work on the Leica, as it came to be called.(His own choice of name was Lilliput, but wiser counsels prevail. Whenever you buy a 35-milimeter camera, you pay homage to Barnack.)

单选题 Leica most probably is______.

单选题 Leica was invented thanks to______.

单选题 The "illustrated press" appearing in this article most probably refers to______.

单选题 "His own choice of name was Lilliput, but wiser counsels prevail. " This sentence means______.

单选题 "Stand a young man beside his own great-grand father and you get the same effect. " This metaphor is cited to show that______.