一封108岁的瓶中信

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·比德把一个瓶子从一艘船上丢进了北海。这个有重量的玻璃瓶几乎沉没到海底，然后缓慢漂移了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年当玛丽安·温克勒发现瓶子的时候，它的旅程结束了。当时温克勒正在阿姆鲁姆岛上度假。当它被冲上海滩时，她把瓶子捡了起来。她看到有一张纸在里面，但她没有把瓶子砸开。她能看出瓶子是很旧的，所以她不想毁了它。

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.

最后她把那张纸从瓶子里拿出来了。她发现那张纸实际上是一张明信片。卡的背面有这样的信息：海洋生物学协会将为瓶子支付一先令。一先令是一个货币单位，在上世纪七十年代初在英国使用。

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.

温克勒填好了这张卡片寄了出去。该协会意外地收到一张寄给乔治·比德的明信片，寄明信片的人是该协会1939年至1945年的主席。该协会的工作人员在互联网上搜索寻找一个先令，找到一个之后把它送给温克勒作为奖励。

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发现的最古老的信息。为此，玛丽安·温克勒获得了吉尼斯世界纪录。她打破了瓶子里最古老的信息的记录。

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.

温克勒的瓶子不是唯一一个被比德扔到海里的瓶子。在1904年至1906年之间，他扔了一千多个瓶子到海里。他把明信片放在里面。这些瓶子是研究标示北海洋流的项目之一。这是当时最好的方法。但是，协会是否能把瓶子拿回来取决于找到它们的人。该协会报告说，大约有55%的瓶子被归还。他们补充说，这项实验是成功的，因为它显示出了北海东西方向的洋流。