What the railway passage implies — Aptitude Question
What the railway passage implies: Railways were the first industry to require a single national time. Answer and worked solution on CodeKairo.
- Topic: Reading Comprehension
- Section: Verbal Ability
- Difficulty: Hard
- Time target: 105 seconds
Question
Railways were the first industry to require a single national time. Before them, every town kept its own clock by the sun, and a difference of a few minutes between neighbouring places troubled nobody. A timetable made those minutes intolerable. Within a generation, the railway companies had imposed a standard time across whole countries — not because anyone had argued for it, but because the trains could not run without it.
Which statement can be inferred from the passage?
Options
- Technical requirements can change social conventions without public debate.
- Railways were unpopular in the nineteenth century.
- Standard time was adopted worldwide at the same moment.
- Local time was more accurate than standard time.
Show the answer and the worked solution
Correct answer: A. Technical requirements can change social conventions without public debate.
Worked solution
- The passage describes a convention changing because a technology required it, explicitly not because it was argued for.
- Generalising that gives the first option.
- The others go beyond or against the text.
Answer: Technical requirements can change social conventions without public debate.
The idea
A valid inference generalises what the passage demonstrates. Options that add facts the passage never mentions are not inferences.
Shortcut. Find the option that restates the final sentence in general words: 'the trains could not run without it' is a technical requirement, and 'not because anyone had argued for it' is 'without public debate'.
Common trap. "Local time was more accurate than standard time." — sun time feels like the 'true' time, but the passage never compares accuracy; that idea comes from outside knowledge.