一封108歲的瓶中信

On November 30， 1906， George Bidder dropped a bottle from a boat into the North Sea. The weighted glass bottle sank almost to the sea floor， and then it moved slowly for 108 years and 138 days.

1906年11月30日，喬治·比德把一個瓶子從一艘船上丟進了北海。這個有重量的玻璃瓶幾乎沉沒到海底，然后緩慢漂移了108年138天。

Its journey ended when Marianne Winkler found the bottle in 2015. Winkler was then on vacation on Amrum Island. She picked up the bottle when it was washed up onto the beach. She saw a piece of paper inside， but didnt break it open. She could tell that the bottle was old， so she didnt want to damage it.

2015年當瑪麗安·溫克勒發現瓶子的時候，它的旅程結束了。當時溫克勒正在阿姆魯姆島上度假。當它被沖上海灘時，她把瓶子撿了起來。她看到有一張紙在里面，但她沒有把瓶子砸開。她能看出瓶子是很舊的，所以她不想毀了它。

Finally， she got the piece of paper out of the bottle. She found that the paper was actually a postcard. On the back of the card there was this message： The Marine Biological Association would pay a shilling1 for the bottle. A shilling was a unit of money that was used in Great Britain before the early 1970s.

最后她把那張紙從瓶子里拿出來了。她發現那張紙實際上是一張明信片。卡的背面有這樣的信息：海洋生物學協會將為瓶子支付一先令。一先令是一個貨幣單位，在上世紀七十年代初在英國使用。

Winkler filled out the card and posted it. The association was surprised to get a postcard addressed to George Bidder， the president of the association2 from 1939 to 1945. The workers of the association searched on the Internet to find a shilling. They found one and sent it to Winkler as a reward3.

溫克勒填好了這張卡片寄了出去。該協會意外地收到一張寄給喬治·比德的明信片，寄明信片的人是該協會1939年至1945年的主席。該協會的工作人員在互聯網上搜索尋找一個先令，找到一個之后把它送給溫克勒作為獎勵。

The message in the bottle was the oldest ever rediscovered. For this reason Marianne Winkler got a place in “Guinness World Records”. She broke the record for the oldest message in a bottle.

瓶子里的信息是迄今重新發現的最古老的信息。為此，瑪麗安·溫克勒獲得了吉尼斯世界紀錄。她打破了瓶子里最古老的信息的記錄。

Winklers bottle was not the only one Bidder sent to the sea. Between 1904 and 1906， he sent away more than one thousand bottles. He placed postcards inside them. The bottles were part of a research project to map currents4 in the North Sea. This was the best method at that time. But whether the association could get the bottles back depended on the people who found them. The association reported that about 55 percent of the bottles were returned. They added that the experiment was a success as it showed the east to west flow of the North Seas currents.

溫克勒的瓶子不是唯一一個被比德扔到海里的瓶子。在1904年至1906年之間，他扔了一千多個瓶子到海里。他把明信片放在里面。這些瓶子是研究標示北海洋流的項目之一。這是當時最好的方法。但是，協會是否能把瓶子拿回來取決于找到它們的人。該協會報告說，大約有55%的瓶子被歸還。他們補充說，這項實驗是成功的，因為它顯示出了北海東西方向的洋流。