General Training Reading sample task – Flow-chart completion
ROBOTS AT WORK
A
The newspaper production process has come a long
way from the old days when the paper was written,
edited, typeset and ultimately printed in one building
with the journalists working on the upper floors and
the printing presses going on the ground floor. These
days the editor, subeditors and journalists who put the
paper together are likely to find themselves in a
totally different building or maybe even in a different
city. This is the situation which now prevails in
Sydney. The daily paper is compiled at the editorial
headquarters, known as the prepress centre, in the
heart of the city, but printed far away in the suburbs at
the printing centre. Here human beings are in the
minority as much of the work is done by automated
machines controlled by computers.
day’s paper and the publishing order are determined
at head office, the information is punched into the
computer and the LGVs are programmed to go about
their work. The LGVs collect the appropriate size
paper reels and take them where they have to go.
When the press needs another reel its computer alerts
the LGV system. The Sydney LGVs move busily
around the press room fulfilling their two key
functions to collect reels of newsprint either from the
reel stripping stations, or from the racked supplies in
the newsprint storage area. At the stripping station
the tough wrapping that helps to protect a reel of
paper from rough handling is removed. Any
damaged paper is peeled off and the reel is then
weighed.
E
B
Once the finished newspaper has been created for the
next morning’s edition, all the pages are transmitted
electronically from the prepress centre to the printing
centre. The system of transmission is an update on the
sophisticated page facsimile system already in use on
many other newspapers. An imagesetter at the
printing centre delivers the pages as film. Each page
takes less...