|Question 17Verbal

Source Texts

Text
Blaise Pascal's Pascaline device—conceived, like William Oughtred's earlier Circular Slide Rule, amid the seventeenth-century push to replace manual calculations with faster and more accurate machine-based methods—_______ among the first reproducible calculating machines.
Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?
being
A
were
B
was
C
are
D