Direction: Read the given passage and answer the questions that follow.

Reuter was born in 1816 to Jewish parents in the German city of Cassel. His father died when he was thirteen, and he had to find work in his uncle's bank at Gottingen. The Professor of Astronomy at the University of that city was the famous mathematician and physicist, Gauss, who at that time was carrying out experiments with the electric telegraph.

In 1845 , Reuter married the daughter of a banker. Two years later, with borrowed money, he became a partner in a firm of booksellers. But selling books was not exciting enough for this young man.

Bankers and financiers, who trade in money, attach a great deal of importance to hearing news before other people. By doing this, they get opportunities of doing business and making large sums of money. For example, thirty years before, the Rothschilds had made a great sum of money because they employed a special messenger, who brought them news of the fall of Napoleon before anyone else heard about it.

Reuter knew all this, having trained in a bank, and the idea came to him that, if he could provide advance news, businessmen would be only too glad to pay him for it. In 1849 , therefore, he sold his interest in the bookshop and took a small office at Aix-la-Chapelle (now Aachen). Then, he went to a local bird fancier and bought twenty pairs of carrier pigeons.

Reuter then took a friend into his confidence. This man was a stockbroker who worked at the Brussels Stock Exchange and could, therefore, provide the news which businessmen in Aix required. Each day, Reuter put on the Brussels mail-coach a cage containing a pair of pigeons, addressed to his friend. When the birds were delivered to him, the friend set them free after fastening to their legs silk bags containing the stock prices

The pigeons arrived home three hours before the mail-coach, and immediately Reuter and his wife made many copies of the messages and delivered them to the businessmen who paid for the service. Brussels had been connected by telegraph with Paris and Berlin, and the pigeon post was used to connect Aix-la-Chapelle with the system.

At that time England was, as far as business was concerned, the leading country in Europe. She alone had not been laid waste by the armies of Napoleon, and during the long war, her allies and even her enemies had bought their munitions and supplies from her. Long before any other state, she had developed her coal mines and had built factories and railways. Now, when the European countries were doing likewise, they turned to her to supply them with money and materials. Thus, it was that, in the middle of the 19th century, London- 'the workshop of the world' as it was called-was the principal business city, not only of Europe, but of the entire world.