In 1801 thousands of people stood on the banks of a river in France. They ware watching an odd-looking boat. It had no sails. It had no cabins. It was just a bare shell of a boat. Inside ware two men, Robert Fulton and his helper. Before the eyes of everyone, the boat went under water.

Would the boat come up again? The people waited five minutes-ten minutes-fifteen minutes. But the boat was still out of sight. No men could stay under water for so long and live.

Five more minutes passed. Then many feet from where the boat had gone down something was coming up! It was the odd-looking boat. The top of the boat opened up and two men looked out. Robert Fulton had shown everyone that a boat could stay under water for a long time. He also proved that it could move under water.

What made the boat go under water and come up again? Robert Fulton had opened a small door. The water came in fast and filled a large tank inside the boat. This made the boat heavy enough to go under. When Fulton was ready to come up again, he pumped the water out of the tank. Now the tank had only air in it and the boat was light enough to rise. The submarines of today go down and come up in the same way.

Fulton made his boat move under water by pushing a rod back and forth. Today, of course, motors and unclear power make submarines move.

Just six years later, in 1807 many people were watching another strange boat. This time it was on the Hudson River in New York. This boat had a long pipe sticking up in the air. From the pipe came heavy black smock. On each side of the boat was a large wheel. On each wheel were paddles. Stream would make the wheels turns and make the boat move.

Hardly anyone believed that the boat would work. They made fun of Fulton and his boat. On board were many fine people. Most of them were afraid and wished they had not come.

Soon the wheels began to turn. Quietly and smoothly the boat started up the river against the water and wind. The people cheered Fulton had done it again!

One day more than fifty years ago, a young man had an accident on his motor bike in which he suffered a few apparently minor injuries. There was a bruise on the left side of his forehead and some slight bleeding from his left ear. He was taken to hospital for examination but X-ray did not reveal any other injuries.

Nevertheless, the doctor who was treating him decided to keep him in hospital for further observation because the young man was having difficulty in speaking and seemed very confused.
At the time of the accident, the young man was 22 years old, and the date was August. 1993. A week later, he was able to carry on what seemed a perfectly normal conversation. However, he told the doctor that he was only 11 years old and that the date was February, 1992. What is more, he could not recall having spent five years in Australia, or coming back to England and working for two years on a golf course.

Bridging the Gap

How savants perform such tricks is as puzzling to the medical world as it is to Jackie and the others like her. Certain common characteristics have, however, emerged. Strangest of all, perhaps, is the fact that about 85 percent of all recorded cases are male. What no one knows either is why the range of savants skills is so restricted. These include music (usually the piano), calendrical or other mathematical calculation, art, extra-sensory perception, extraordinary sensitivity of touch or small and (more unusually) mechanical ability.
It has been suggested that autistic people do not suffer; that they are perfectly happy to remain in their own world and that a cure is only necessary in order to reduce the terrible pain of rejection felt by the victims' families. This controversial option is, however, only held by a few.

The subject became the focus of particular media interest after Dustin Hoffman won an Oscar for his brilliant performance in the film Rain Man, where he plays the part of an autistic savant. This has increased public awareness of the disease and hopefully will result in more money begin given to research and a cure begin found sooner rather than later.

There is a place on our earth where hot water and stream come up from under the ground. It is a large island in the Pacific Ocean. The island is North Island, in New Zealand.

The planet on which we live is a ball of very hot rock. It is a good thing for us that the outside shell is cold. If it were not, no one could live here. What if our earth were only as big as an egg? Then the outside part would be as deep as the egg's shell.

The earth's shell has cracks in it in some place. In New Zealand this shell seems to here more cracks than in other places on the earth. There are spots where the ground is so hot that it burns the bottom of your shoes. In some place, hot water shoots into the air from time to time. At other points, you can see steam coming up from pools of hot water.

The people who live in these places make use of the heat that comes from inside the earth. Some of them cook in the hot pools. They put food into a basket and place it in the water. Washing clothes is done in much the same way.

Many people bring the hot water from below the earth into their homes. They do this by putting a pipe a hundred feet or more into the ground. In this way they get hot water and steam for cooking and washing, and for heating their homes.

For most of us, the heat under our feet is too far away to use. We must make our heat by burning coal, oil, or gas. The people who get heat from inside the earth are lucky. It takes money to pay for coal, oil, or gas.

Reading English

Leslie Lemake only has to hear a piece of music once and he can play it back on the piano note-perfect. Yet he has never had any formal musical training, is blind and with an IQ of only 58 is typical of the majority of autistic savants, who have well-below-average intelligence quotients. If you ask Richard the route of any bus in the London district, he will give you an answer immediately. Stephen Wiltshire has exceptional artistic talents and, like both Leslie and Richard, combines this talent with a remarkable memory, and can draw buildings with complete architectural accuracy, sometimes only hours after seeing them for the first time. Other savants are able to carry out amazing mathematical computations in their heads, but cannot add up simple numbers.

Autism is a mental disease which prevents those who suffer from it from communicating with the outside world. Victims seem to live in a world of their own which, even now, doctors are unable to penetrate. The illness was first given a name in 1943, and yet doctors have made very little progress in their understanding of the disease since then. According to statistics, between two and four children out of every 10,000 are born autistic.

Often victims are not able to speak, read or write. But what is most extraordinary about the illness is the fact that in other areas many of the children can use their brains in ways which are almost superhuman. One of the more common skills these so-called autistic savants have is calendrical calculation, that is the ability to say which day of the week a particular date falls on. Jackie, for instance, who is now 42, could do this from the age of six, when she first began to talk. She can tell you what day of the week it was on 1 April 1993 with scarcely a moment's hesitation. But if you ask her how she does it, she'll say she doesn't know.

Source: Bridging the Gap