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Japanese_language | I.e "yamato words ") , which in scholarly contexts is sometimes referred to as ( or rarely , i.e "yamato words " -rrb- , which in scholarly contexts is sometimes referred to as -lrb- or rarely , vp ? ? | null | data/set5/a6 | Japanese_language
IPA: [nʲihoÅÉ¡o] is a language spoken by over 130 million people in Japan and in Japanese emigrant communities. It is related to the Japonic-Ryukyuan languages. Its relationships with other languages remain undemonstrated. It is an agglutinative language and is distinguished by a complex system of honorifics reflecting the hierarchical nature of Japanese society, with verb forms and particular vocabulary to indicate the relative status of the speaker, the listener, and a person mentioned in conversation (regardless of his or her presence). The sound inventory of Japanese is relatively small, and it has a lexically distinct pitch-accent system. It is a mora-timed language.
The Japanese language is written with a combination of three different types of scripts: modified Chinese characters called kanji (æ¼¢å), and two syllabic scripts made up of modified Chinese characters, hiragana (平仮å) and katakana (çä»®å). The Latin alphabet, rÅmaji (ãã¼ãå), is also often used in modern Japanese, especially for company names and logos, advertising, and when entering Japanese text into a computer. Western style Indian numerals are generally used for numbers, but traditional Sino-Japanese numerals are also commonplace.
Japanese vocabulary has been heavily influenced by loanwords from other languages. A vast number of words were borrowed from Chinese, or created from Chinese models, over a period of at least 1,500 years. Since the late 19th century, Japanese has borrowed a considerable number of words from Indo-European languages, primarily English. Because of the special trade relationship between Japan and first Portugal in the 16th century, and then mainly the Netherlands in the 17th century, Portuguese and Dutch have also been influential.
Although Japanese is spoken almost exclusively in Japan, it has been and sometimes still is spoken elsewhere. When Japan occupied Korea, Taiwan, parts of the Chinese mainland, the Philippines, and various Pacific islands before and during World War II, Japanese is listed as one of the official languages of Angaur state, Palau ( Ethnologe, CIA World Factbook). This official status is disputed; there were very few Japanese speakers on Angaur as of the 2005 census. locals in those countries were forced to learn Japanese in empire-building programs. As a result, there are many people in these countries who can speak Japanese in addition to the local languages. Japanese emigrant communities (the largest of which are to be found in Brazil ) sometimes employ Japanese as their primary language. Approximately 5% of Hawaii residents speak Japanese , with Japanese ancestry the largest single ancestry in the state (over 24% of the population). Japanese emigrants can also be found in Peru, Argentina, Australia (especially Sydney, Brisbane, Melbourne and Cairns), the United States (notably California, where 1.2% of the population has Japanese ancestry , and Hawaii), and the Philippines (particularly in Davao and Laguna). Their descendants, who are known as ( , literally Japanese descendants), however, rarely speak Japanese fluently after the second generation.
Japanese is the official language of Japan and in Palau, in the island of Angaur. There is a form of the language considered standard: Standard Japanese, or the common language. The meanings of the two terms are almost the same. or is a conception that forms the counterpart of dialect. This normative language was born after the from the language spoken in the higher-class areas of Tokyo for communicating necessity. is taught in schools and used on television and in official communications, and is the version of Japanese discussed in this article.
Formerly, standard was different from . The two systems have different rules of grammar and some variance in vocabulary. was the main method of writing Japanese until about 1900; since then gradually extended its influence and the two methods were both used in writing until the 1940s. still has some relevance for historians, literary scholars, and lawyers (many Japanese laws that survived World War II are still written in , although there are ongoing efforts to modernize their language). is the predominant method of both speaking and writing Japanese today, although grammar and vocabulary are occasionally used in modern Japanese for effect.
Provincial differences of copula da
Dozens of dialects are spoken in Japan. The profusion is due to many factors, including the length of time the archipelago has been inhabited, its mountainous island terrain, and Japan's long history of both external and internal isolation. Dialects typically differ in terms of pitch accent, inflectional morphology, vocabulary, and particle usage. Some even differ in vowel and consonant inventories, although this is uncommon.
The main distinction in Japanese accents is between and , though KyÅ«shÅ«-type dialects form a third, smaller group. Within each type are several subdivisions. Kyoto-Osaka-type dialects are in the central region, with borders roughly formed by Toyama, KyÅto, HyÅgo, and Mie Prefectures; most Shikoku dialects are also that type. The final category of dialects are those that are descended from the Eastern dialect of Old Japanese; these dialects are spoken in HachijÅ-jima island and few islands.
Dialects from peripheral regions, such as TÅhoku or Tsushima, may be unintelligible to speakers from other parts of the country. The several dialects of Kagoshima in southern KyÅ«shÅ« are famous for being unintelligible not only to speakers of standard Japanese but to speakers of nearby dialects elsewhere in KyÅ«shÅ« as well . This is probably due in part to the Kagoshima dialects' peculiarities of pronunciation, which include the existence of closed syllables (i.e., syllables that end in a consonant, such as or for Standard Japanese "spider"). A dialects group of Kansai is spoken and known by many Japanese, and Osaka dialect in particular is associated with comedy (See Kansai dialect). Dialects of TÅhoku and North KantÅ are associated with typical farmers.
The Ryūkyūan languages, spoken in Okinawa and Amami Islands that are politically part of Kagoshima, are distinct enough to be considered a separate branch of the Japonic family. But many Japanese common people tend to consider the Ryūkyūan languages as dialects of Japanese. Not only is each language unintelligible to Japanese speakers, but most are unintelligible to those who speak other Ryūkyūan languages.
Recently, Standard Japanese has become prevalent nationwide (including the Ryūkyū islands) due to education, mass media, and increase of mobility networks within Japan, as well as economic integration.
All Japanese vowels are pureâthat is, they are Monophthong with no prescence of diphthongs. The only unusual vowel is the high back vowel , which is like , but compressed instead of rounded. Japanese has five vowels, and vowel length is phonemic, so each one has both a short and a long version.
Some Japanese consonants have several allophones, which may give the impression of a larger inventory of sounds. However, some of these allophones have since become phonemic. For example, in the Japanese language up to and including the first half of the twentieth century, the phonemic sequence was palatalized and realized phonetically as , approximately chi ; however, now and are distinct, as evidenced by words like tī "Western style tea" and chii "social status".
The "r" of the Japanese language (technically a lateral apical postalveolar flap), is of particular interest, sounding to most English speakers to be something between an "l" and a retroflex "r" depending on its position in a word. The "g" is also notable; unless it starts a sentence, most speakers pronounce it like the ng in "singer".
The syllabic structure and the phonotactics are very simple: the only consonant clusters allowed within a syllable consist of one of a subset of the consonants plus . These type of clusters only occur in onsets. However, consonant clusters across syllables are allowed as long as the two consonants are a nasal followed by a homorganic consonant. Consonant length (gemination) is also phonemic.
Japanese word order is classified as Subject Object Verb. However, unlike many Indo-European languages, Japanese sentences only require that verbs come last for intelligibility. This is because the Japanese sentence elements are marked with particles that identify their grammatical functions.
The basic sentence structure is topic-comment. For example, ( ). ("this") is the topic of the sentence, indicated by the particle -wa. The verb is , a copula, commonly translated as "to be" or "it is" (though there are other verbs that can be translated as "to be"), though technically it holds no meaning and is used to give a sentence 'politeness'. As a phrase, is the comment. This sentence loosely translates to "As for this person, (it) is Mr./Mrs./Miss Tanaka." Thus Japanese, like Chinese, Korean, and many other Asian languages, is often called a topic-prominent language, which means it has a strong tendency to indicate the topic separately from the subject, and the two do not always coincide. The sentence ã( ) literally means, "As for elephants, (their) noses are long". The topic is "elephant", and the subject is "nose".
Japanese could be considered a pro-drop language, meaning that the subject or object of a sentence need not be stated if it is obvious from context. (Note however that Chomsky's original formulation of this category explicitly excluded languages such as Japanese.) In addition, it is commonly felt, particularly in spoken Japanese, that the shorter a sentence is, the better. As a result of this grammatical permissiveness and tendency towards brevity, Japanese speakers tend naturally to omit words from sentences, rather than refer to them with pronouns. In the context of the above example, would mean "[their] noses are long," while by itself would mean "[they] are long." A single verb can be a complete sentence: "[I / we / they / etc] did [it]!". In addition, since adjectives can form the predicate in a Japanese sentence (below), a single adjective can be a complete sentence: "[I'm] jealous [of it]!".
While the language has some words that are typically translated as pronouns, these are not used as frequently as pronouns in some Indo-European languages, and function differently. Instead, Japanese typically relies on special verb forms and auxiliary verbs to indicate the direction of benefit of an action: "down" to indicate the out-group gives a benefit to the in-group; and "up" to indicate the in-group gives a benefit to the out-group. Here, the in-group includes the speaker and the out-group doesn't, and their boundary depends on context. For example, (literally, "explained" with a benefit from the out-group to the in-group) means "[he/she/they] explained it to [me/us]". Similarly, (literally, "explained" with a benefit from the in-group to the out-group) means "[I/we] explained [it] to [him/her/them]". Such beneficiary auxiliary verbs thus serve a function comparable to that of pronouns and prepositions in Indo-European languages to indicate the actor and the recipient of an action.
Japanese "pronouns" also function differently from most modern Indo-European pronouns (and more like nouns) in that they can take modifiers as any other noun may. For instance, one cannot say in English:
: *The amazed he ran down the street. (grammatically incorrect)
But one can grammatically say essentially the same thing in Japanese:
: (grammatically correct)
This is partly due to the fact that these words evolved from regular nouns, such as "you" ( "lord"), "you" ( "that side, yonder"), and "I" ( "servant"). This is why some linguists do not classify Japanese "pronouns" as pronouns, but rather as referential nouns, much like Spanish usted or Portuguese o senhor. Japanese personal pronouns are generally used only in situations requiring special emphasis as to who is doing what to whom.
The choice of words used as pronouns is correlated with the sex of the speaker and the social situation in which they are spoken: men and women alike in a formal situation generally refer to themselves as ( "private") or (also ), while men in rougher or intimate conversation are much more likely to use the word ( "oneself", "myself") or . Similarly, different words such as , , and ( , more formally "the one before me") may be used to refer to a listener depending on the listener's relative social position and the degree of familiarity between the speaker and the listener. When used in different social relationships, the same word may have positive (intimate or respectful) or negative (distant or disrespectful) connotations.
Japanese often use titles of the person referred to where pronouns would be used in English. For example, when speaking to one's teacher, it is appropriate to use ( , teacher), but inappropriate to use . This is because is used to refer to people of equal or lower status, and one's teacher has allegedly higher status.
For English speaking learners of Japanese, a frequent beginners mistake is to include or at the beginning of sentences as one would with I or you in English. Though these sentences are not grammatically incorrect, even in formal settings it would be considered unnatural and would equate in English to repeatedly using a noun where a pronoun would suffice.
Japanese nouns have no grammatical number, gender or article aspect. The noun ( ) may refer to a single book or several books; ( ) can mean "person" or "people"; and ( ) can be "tree" or "trees". Where number is important, it can be indicated by providing a quantity (often with a counter word) or (rarely) by adding a suffix. Words for people are usually understood as singular. Thus usually means Mr./Ms. Tanaka. Words that refer to people and animals can be made to indicate a group of individuals through the addition of a collective suffix (a noun suffix that indicates a group), such as , but this is not a true plural: the meaning is closer to the English phrase "and company". A group described as may include people not named Tanaka. Some Japanese nouns are effectively plural, such as "people" and "we/us", while the word "friend" is considered singular, although plural in form.
Verbs are conjugated to show tenses, of which there are two: past and present, or non-past, which is used for the present and the future. For verbs that represent an ongoing process, the -te iru form indicates a continuous (or progressive) tense. For others that represent a change of state, the form indicates a perfect tense. For example, means "He has come (and is still here)", but means "He is eating".
Questions (both with an interrogative pronoun and yes/no questions) have the same structure as affirmative sentences, but with intonation rising at the end. In the formal register, the question particle is added. For example, ( ) "It is OK" becomes ( ) "Is it OK?". In a more informal tone sometimes the particle ( ) is added instead to show a personal interest of the speaker: "Why aren't (you) coming?". Some simple queries are formed simply by mentioning the topic with an interrogative intonation to call for the hearer's attention: "(What about) this?"; ( ) "(What's your) name?".
Negatives are formed by inflecting the verb. For example, ( ) "I will eat bread" or "I eat bread" becomes ( ) "I will not eat bread" or "I do not eat bread".
The so-called verb form is used for a variety of purposes: either progressive or perfect aspect (see above); combining verbs in a temporal sequence ( "I'll eat breakfast and leave at once"), simple commands, conditional statements and permissions ( "May I go out?"), etc.
The word (plain), (polite) is the copula verb. It corresponds approximately to the English be, but often takes on other roles, including a marker for tense, when the verb is conjugated into its past form (plain), (polite). This comes into use because only adjectives and verbs can carry tense in Japanese. Two additional common verbs are used to indicate existence ("there is") or, in some contexts, property: (negative ) and (negative ), for inanimate and animate things, respectively. For example, "There's a cat", "[I] haven't got a good idea". Note that the negative forms of the verbs and are actually i-adjectives and inflect as such, e.g. "There was no cat".
The verb "to do" ( , polite form ) is often used to make verbs from nouns ( "to cook", "to study", etc.) and has been productive in creating modern slang words. Japanese also has a huge number of compound verbs to express concepts that are described in English using a verb and a preposition (e.g. "to fly out, to flee," from "to fly, to jump" + "to put out, to emit").
There are three types of adjective (see also Japanese adjectives):
# , or adjectives, which have a conjugating ending ( ) (such as "to be hot") which can become past ( "it was hot"), or negative ( "it is not hot"). Note that is also an adjective, which can become past ( "it was not hot").
#: "a hot day".
# , or adjectives, which are followed by a form of the copula, usually . For example (strange)
#: "a strange person".
# , also called true adjectives, such as "that"
#: "that mountain".
Both and may predicate sentences. For example,
: "The rice is hot."
: "He's strange."
Both inflect, though they do not show the full range of conjugation found in true verbs.
The in Modern Japanese are few in number, and unlike the other words, are limited to directly modifying nouns. They never predicate sentences. Examples include "big", "this", "so-called" and "amazing".
Both and form adverbs, by following with in the case of :
: "become strange",
and by changing to in the case of :
: "become hot".
The grammatical function of nouns is indicated by postpositions, also called particles. These include for example:
* for the nominative case. Not necessarily a subject.
: "He did it."
* for the dative case.
: "Please give it to Mr. Tanaka."
It is also used for the lative case, indicating a motion to a location.
: "I want to go to Japan."
* for the genitive case, or nominalizing phrases.
: "my camera"
: "(I) like going skiing."
* for the accusative case. Not necessarily an object.
: "What will (you) eat?"
* for the topic. It can co-exist with case markers above except , and it overrides and .
: "As for me, Thai food is good." The nominative marker after is hidden under . (Note that English generally makes no distinction between sentence topic and subject.)
Note: The difference between and goes beyond the English distinction between sentence topic and subject. While indicates the topic, which the rest of the sentence describes or acts upon, it carries the implication that the subject indicated by is not unique, or may be part of a larger group.
: "As for Mr. Ikeda, he is forty-two years old." Others in the group may also be of that age.
Absence of often means the subject is the focus of the sentence.
: "It is Mr. Ikeda who is forty-two years old." This is a reply to an implicit or explicit question who in this group is forty-two years old.
Unlike most western languages, Japanese has an extensive grammatical system to express politeness and formality.
Most relationships are not equal in Japanese society. The differences in social position are determined by a variety of factors including job, age, experience, or even psychological state (e.g., a person asking a favour tends to do so politely). The person in the lower position is expected to use a polite form of speech, whereas the other might use a more plain form. Strangers will also speak to each other politely. Japanese children rarely use polite speech until they are teens, at which point they are expected to begin speaking in a more adult manner. See uchi-soto.
Whereas ( ) (polite language) is commonly an inflectional system, ( ) (respectful language) and ( ) (humble language) often employ many special honorific and humble alternate verbs: "go" becomes in polite form, but is replaced by in honorific speech and or in humble speech.
The difference between honorific and humble speech is particularly pronounced in the Japanese language. Humble language is used to talk about oneself or one's own group (company, family) whilst honorific language is mostly used when describing the interlocutor and his/her group. For example, the suffix ("Mr" "Mrs." or "Miss") is an example of honorific language. It is not used to talk about oneself or when talking about someone from one's company to an external person, since the company is the speaker's "group". When speaking directly to one's superior in one's company or when speaking with other employees within one's company about a superior, a Japanese person will use vocabulary and inflections of the honorific register to refer to the in-group superior and his or her speech and actions. When speaking to a person from another company (i.e., a member of an out-group), however, a Japanese person will use the plain or the humble register to refer to the speech and actions of his or her own in-group superiors. In short, the register used in Japanese to refer to the person, speech, or actions of any particular individual varies depending on the relationship (either in-group or out-group) between the speaker and listener, as well as depending on the relative status of the speaker, listener, and third-person referents. For this reason, the Japanese system for explicit indication of social register is known as a system of "relative honorifics." This stands in stark contrast to the Korean system of "absolute honorifics," in which the same register is used to refer to a particular individual (e.g. one's father, one's company president, etc.) in any context regardless of the relationship between the speaker and interlocutor. Thus, polite Korean speech can sound very presumptuous when translated verbatim into Japanese, as in Korean it is acceptable and normal to say things like "Our Mr. Company-President..." when communicating with a member of an out-group, which would be very inappropriate in a Japanese social context.
Most nouns in the Japanese language may be made polite by the addition of or as a prefix. is generally used for words of native Japanese origin, whereas is affixed to words of Chinese derivation. In some cases, the prefix has become a fixed part of the word, and is included even in regular speech, such as 'cooked rice; meal.' Such a construction often indicates deference to either the item's owner or to the object itself. For example, the word 'friend,' would become when referring to the friend of someone of higher status (though mothers often use this form to refer to their children's friends). On the other hand, a polite speaker may sometimes refer to 'water' as in order to show politeness.
Most Japanese people employ politeness to indicate a lack of familiarity. That is, they use polite forms for new acquaintances, but if a relationship becomes more intimate, they no longer use them. This occurs regardless of age, social class, or gender.
The original language of Japan, or at least the original language of a certain population that was ancestral to a significant portion of the historical and present Japanese nation, was the so-called ( or infrequently , i.e. "Yamato words"), which in scholarly contexts is sometimes referred to as ( or rarely , i.e. the words"). In addition to words from this original language, present-day Japanese includes a great number of words that were either borrowed from Chinese or constructed from Chinese roots following Chinese patterns. These words, known as ( ), entered the language from the fifth century onwards via contact with Chinese culture. According to a Japanese dictionary Shinsen-kokugojiten (æ°é¸å½èªè¾å
¸), Chinese-based words comprise 49.1% of the total vocabulary, Wago is 33.8% and other foreign words are 8.8%. æ°é¸å½èªè¾å
¸, éç°ä¸äº¬å©, å°å¦é¤¨, 2001, ISBN 4095014075
Like Latin-derived words in English, words typically are perceived as somewhat formal or academic compared to equivalent Yamato words. Indeed, it is generally fair to say that an English word derived from Latin/French roots typically corresponds to a Sino-Japanese word in Japanese, whereas a simpler Anglo-Saxon word would best be translated by a Yamato equivalent.
A much smaller number of words has been borrowed from Korean and Ainu. Japan has also borrowed a number of words from other languages, particularly ones of European extraction, which are called . This began with borrowings from Portuguese in the 16th century, followed by borrowing from Dutch during Japan's long isolation of the Edo period. With the Meiji Restoration and the reopening of Japan in the 19th century, borrowing occurred from German, French and English. Currently, words of English origin are the most commonly borrowed.
In the Meiji era, the Japanese also coined many neologisms using Chinese roots and morphology to translate Western concepts. The Chinese and Koreans imported many of these pseudo-Chinese words into Chinese, Korean, and Vietnamese via their kanji in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. For example, ("politics"), and ("chemistry") are words derived from Chinese roots that were first created and used by the Japanese, and only later borrowed into Chinese and other East Asian languages. As a result, Japanese, Chinese, Korean, and Vietnamese share a large common corpus of vocabulary in the same way a large number of Greek- and Latin-derived words are shared among modern European languages, although many academic words formed from such roots were certainly coined by native speakers of other languages, such as English.
In the past few decades, (made-in-Japan English) has become a prominent phenomenon. Words such as ( Book of Song é å¸ææäºå¹´ï¼é£ä½¿ä¸è¡¨æ°ï¼å°ååé ï¼ä½è©äºå¤ï¼èªæç¥ç¦°ï¼èº¬æç²åï¼è·æ¸å±±å·ï¼ä¸é寧èãæ±å¾æ¯äººäºååï¼è¥¿æè¡å¤·å
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¶é¤å¸ååæï¼ä»¥å¸å¿ ç¯ã After the ruin of Baekje, Japan invited scholars from China to learn more of the Chinese writing system. Japanese Emperors gave an official rank to Chinese scholars (ç¶å®è¨/è©å¼æ ¼/ Nihon shoki Chapter 30:æçµ±äºå¹´ ä¹æ己巳æ壬ç³ãè³é³å士大åç¶å®è¨ãè©å¼æªãæ¸å士ç¾æ¸æ«å£«åä¿¡ãé人äºå両ã Nihon shoki Chapter 30:æçµ±å
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é³ãçºå¤§å¦é³å士ãæ¼å¾ãæ´å¤§å¦é å®æ¿å®ã ) and spread the use of Chinese characters from the 7th century to the 8th century.
The table of Kana. (Hiragana top, Katakana in the center and Romaji on the bottom.)
At first, the Japanese wrote in Classical Chinese, with Japanese names represented by characters used for their meanings and not their sounds. Later, during the seventh century CE, the Chinese-sounding phoneme principle was used to write pure Japanese poetry and prose (comparable to Akkadian's retention of Sumerian cuneiform), but some Japanese words were still written with characters for their meaning and not the original Chinese sound. This is when the history of Japanese as a written language begins in its own right. By this time, the Japanese language was already distinct from the Ryukyuan languages. What leaves a mark should no longer stain: Progressive erasure and reversing language shift activities in the Ryukyu Islands, 2005, citing Hattori, Shiro (1954) 'Gengo nendaigaku sunawachi goi tokeigaku no hoho ni tsuite' [âConcerning the Method of Glottochronology and Lexicostatisticsâ], Gengo kenkyu [Journal of the Linguistic Society of Japan] v26/27
The Korean settlers and their descendants used Kudara-on or Baekje pronunciation (ç¾æ¸é³), which was also called Tsushima-pronunciation (対馬é³) or Go-on (åé³).
An example of this mixed style is the Kojiki, which was written in 712 AD. They then started to use Chinese characters to write Japanese in a style known as , a syllabic script which used Chinese characters for their sounds in order to transcribe the words of Japanese speech syllable by syllable.
Over time, a writing system evolved. Chinese characters (kanji) were used to write either words borrowed from Chinese, or Japanese words with the same or similar meanings. Chinese characters were also used to write grammatical elements, were simplified, and eventually became two syllabic scripts: hiragana and katakana.
Modern Japanese is written in a mixture of three main systems: kanji, characters of Chinese origin used to represent both Chinese loanwords into Japanese and a number of native Japanese morphemes; and two syllabaries: hiragana and katakana. The Latin alphabet is also sometimes used. Arabic numerals are much more common than the kanji when used in counting, but kanji numerals are still used in compounds, such as ("unification").
Hiragana are used for words without kanji representation, for words no longer written in kanji, and also following kanji to show conjugational endings. Because of the way verbs (and adjectives) in Japanese are conjugated, kanji alone cannot fully convey Japanese tense and mood, as kanji cannot be subject to variation when written without losing its meaning. For this reason, hiragana are suffixed to the ends of kanji to show verb and adjective conjugations. Hiragana used in this way are called okurigana. Hiragana are also written in a superscript called furigana above or beside a kanji to show the proper reading. This is done to facilitate learning, as well as to clarify particularly old or obscure (or sometimes invented) readings.
Katakana, like hiragana, are a syllabary; katakana are primarily used to write foreign words, plant and animal names, and for emphasis. For example "Australia" has been adapted as ( ), and "supermarket" has been adapted and shortened into ( ). The Latin alphabet (in Japanese referred to as RÅmaji ( ), literally "Roman letters") is used for some loan words like "CD" and "DVD", and also for some Japanese creations like "Sony".
Historically, attempts to limit the number of kanji in use commenced in the mid-19th century, but did not become a matter of government intervention until after Japan's defeat in the Second World War. During the period of post-war occupation (and influenced by the views of some U.S. officials), various schemes including the complete abolition of kanji and exclusive use of rÅmaji were considered. The ("common use kanji", originally called [kanji for general use]) scheme arose as a compromise solution.
Japanese students begin to learn kanji from their first year at elementary school. A guideline created by the Japanese Ministry of Education, the list of ("education kanji", a subset of ), specifies the 1,006 simple characters a child is to learn by the end of sixth grade. Children continue to study another 939 characters in junior high school, covering in total 1,945 . The official list of was revised several times, but the total number of officially sanctioned characters remained largely unchanged.
As for kanji for personal names, the circumstances are somewhat complicated. and (an appendix of additional characters for names) are approved for registering personal names. Names containing unapproved characters are denied registration. However, as with the list of , criteria for inclusion were often arbitrary and led to many common and popular characters being disapproved for use. Under popular pressure and following a court decision holding the exclusion of common characters unlawful, the list of was substantially extended from 92 in 1951 (the year it was first decreed) to 983 in 2004. Furthermore, families whose names are not on these lists were permitted to continue using the older forms.
Many writers rely on newspaper circulation to publish their work with officially sanctioned characters. This distribution method is more efficient than traditional pen and paper publications.
Many major universities throughout the world provide Japanese language courses, and a number of secondary and even primary schools worldwide offer courses in the language. International interest in the Japanese language dates from the 1800s but has become more prevalent following Japan's economic bubble of the 1980s and the global popularity of Japanese pop culture (such as anime and video games) since the 1990s. About 2.3 million people studied the language worldwide in 2003: 900,000 South Koreans, 389,000 Chinese, 381,000 Australians, and 140,000 Americans study Japanese in lower and higher educational institutions.
In Japan, more than 90,000 foreign students study at Japanese universities and Japanese language schools, including 77,000 Chinese and 15,000 South Koreans in 2003. In addition, local governments and some NPO groups provide free Japanese language classes for foreign residents, including Japanese Brazilians and foreigners married to Japanese nationals. In the United Kingdom, studies are supported by the British Association for Japanese Studies. In Ireland, Japanese is offered as a language in the Leaving Certificate in some schools.
The Japanese government provides standardised tests to measure spoken and written comprehension of Japanese for second language learners; the most prominent is the Japanese Language Proficiency Test (JLPT), which features 4 levels of exams, ranging from elementary (4) to advanced (1). The Japanese External Trade Organization JETRO organizes the Business Japanese Proficiency Test which tests the learner's ability to understand Japanese in a business setting.
When learning Japanese in a college setting, students are usually first taught how to pronounce romaji. From that point, they are taught the two main syllabaries, with kanji usually being introduced in the second semester. Focus is usually first on polite (distal) speech, as students who might interact with native speakers would be expected to use. Casual speech and formal speech usually follow polite speech, as well as the usage of honorific.
* Classification of Japanese
* Culture of Japan
* Eurasiatic languages
* Henohenomoheji
* Japanese counter word
* Japanese dialects
* Japanese dictionaries
* Japanese language and computers
* Japonic languages
* Japanese literature
* Japanese name
* Japanese numerals
* Japanese orthography issues
* Japanese words and words derived from Japanese in other languages at Wiktionary, Wikipedia's sibling project
* Late Old Japanese
* Old Japanese
* Rendaku
* Romanization of Japanese
** Hepburn romanization
* Ryūkyūan languages
* Sino-Japanese vocabulary
* Yojijukugo
* Bloch, Bernard. (1946). Studies in colloquial Japanese I: Inflection. Journal of the American Oriental Society, 66, pp. 97 130.
* Bloch, Bernard. (1946). Studies in colloquial Japanese II: Syntax. Language, 22, pp. 200 248.
* Chafe, William L. (1976). Giveness, contrastiveness, definiteness, subjects, topics, and point of view. In C. Li (Ed.), Subject and topic (pp. 25 56). New York: Academic Press. ISBN 0-12-447350-4.
* Kuno, Susumu. (1973). The structure of the Japanese language. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. ISBN 0-262-11049-0.
* Kuno, Susumu. (1976). Subject, theme, and the speaker's empathy: A re-examination of relativization phenomena. In Charles N. Li (Ed.), Subject and topic (pp. 417 444). New York: Academic Press. ISBN 0-12-447350-4.
* Martin, Samuel E. (1975). A reference grammar of Japanese. New Haven: Yale University Press. ISBN 0-300-01813-4.
* McClain, Yoko Matsuoka. (1981). Handbook of modern Japanese grammar: [ ]. Tokyo: Hokuseido Press. ISBN 4-590-00570-0; ISBN 0-89346-149-0.
* Miller, Roy. (1967). The Japanese language. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
* Miller, Roy. (1980). Origins of the Japanese language: Lectures in Japan during the academic year, 1977 78. Seattle: University of Washington Press. ISBN 0-295-95766-2.
* Mizutani, Osamu; & Mizutani, Nobuko. (1987). How to be polite in Japanese: [ ]. Tokyo: Japan Times. ISBN 4789003388 ;
* Shibatani, Masayoshi. (1990). Japanese. In B. Comrie (Ed.), The major languages of east and south-east Asia. London: Routledge. ISBN 0-415-04739-0.
* Shibatani, Masayoshi. (1990). The languages of Japan. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-36070-6 (hbk); ISBN 0-521-36918-5 (pbk).
* Shibamoto, Janet S. (1985). Japanese women's language. New York: Academic Press. ISBN 0-12-640030-X. Graduate Level
* Tsujimura, Natsuko. (1996). An introduction to Japanese linguistics. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell Publishers. ISBN 0-631-19855-5 (hbk); ISBN 0-631-19856-3 (pbk). Upper Level Textbooks
* Tsujimura, Natsuko. (Ed.) (1999). The handbook of Japanese linguistics. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers. ISBN 0-631-20504-7. Readings/Anthologies
* Jim Breen's dictionary and translation server
* Nihongoresources Various dictionaries and worked out textbook grammar.
* Denshi Jisho Find words, example sentences and kanji (through words or radicals). Kanji also contain references to various dictionaries and textbooks.
* Tangorin.com Japanese Dictionary, standard dictionary and Kanji search with example sentences.
* Tatoeba Project, collaborative project that aims to collect example sentences. Has mostly Japanese and English sentences. The sentences can be downloaded.
* JapanOD.com, Japanese-English, English-Japanese dictionary with support for browsers without Japanese fonts
* OmegaJi: Free, opensource (GNU GPL) Japanese-English dictionary program with 190'000 expressions, based on the JMdict project.
* Eijiro Very complete Japanese-English and English-Japanese dictionary, with many example sentences.
* Sanseido Web Dictionary
* Basic verb conjugation search
* A free Japanese lesson finder
*
* Japanese phrasebook on WikiTravel
* Japanese Online Talk
* Tae Kim's guide to Japanese grammar
* Video lectures from York University
* Japanese - a Category III language Languages which are exceptionally difficult for native English speakers
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Japanese_language | Are japanese personal pronouns generally used only in situations requiring special emphasis as to who is doing what to whom ? | null | data/set5/a6 | Japanese_language
IPA: [nʲihoÅÉ¡o] is a language spoken by over 130 million people in Japan and in Japanese emigrant communities. It is related to the Japonic-Ryukyuan languages. Its relationships with other languages remain undemonstrated. It is an agglutinative language and is distinguished by a complex system of honorifics reflecting the hierarchical nature of Japanese society, with verb forms and particular vocabulary to indicate the relative status of the speaker, the listener, and a person mentioned in conversation (regardless of his or her presence). The sound inventory of Japanese is relatively small, and it has a lexically distinct pitch-accent system. It is a mora-timed language.
The Japanese language is written with a combination of three different types of scripts: modified Chinese characters called kanji (æ¼¢å), and two syllabic scripts made up of modified Chinese characters, hiragana (平仮å) and katakana (çä»®å). The Latin alphabet, rÅmaji (ãã¼ãå), is also often used in modern Japanese, especially for company names and logos, advertising, and when entering Japanese text into a computer. Western style Indian numerals are generally used for numbers, but traditional Sino-Japanese numerals are also commonplace.
Japanese vocabulary has been heavily influenced by loanwords from other languages. A vast number of words were borrowed from Chinese, or created from Chinese models, over a period of at least 1,500 years. Since the late 19th century, Japanese has borrowed a considerable number of words from Indo-European languages, primarily English. Because of the special trade relationship between Japan and first Portugal in the 16th century, and then mainly the Netherlands in the 17th century, Portuguese and Dutch have also been influential.
Although Japanese is spoken almost exclusively in Japan, it has been and sometimes still is spoken elsewhere. When Japan occupied Korea, Taiwan, parts of the Chinese mainland, the Philippines, and various Pacific islands before and during World War II, Japanese is listed as one of the official languages of Angaur state, Palau ( Ethnologe, CIA World Factbook). This official status is disputed; there were very few Japanese speakers on Angaur as of the 2005 census. locals in those countries were forced to learn Japanese in empire-building programs. As a result, there are many people in these countries who can speak Japanese in addition to the local languages. Japanese emigrant communities (the largest of which are to be found in Brazil ) sometimes employ Japanese as their primary language. Approximately 5% of Hawaii residents speak Japanese , with Japanese ancestry the largest single ancestry in the state (over 24% of the population). Japanese emigrants can also be found in Peru, Argentina, Australia (especially Sydney, Brisbane, Melbourne and Cairns), the United States (notably California, where 1.2% of the population has Japanese ancestry , and Hawaii), and the Philippines (particularly in Davao and Laguna). Their descendants, who are known as ( , literally Japanese descendants), however, rarely speak Japanese fluently after the second generation.
Japanese is the official language of Japan and in Palau, in the island of Angaur. There is a form of the language considered standard: Standard Japanese, or the common language. The meanings of the two terms are almost the same. or is a conception that forms the counterpart of dialect. This normative language was born after the from the language spoken in the higher-class areas of Tokyo for communicating necessity. is taught in schools and used on television and in official communications, and is the version of Japanese discussed in this article.
Formerly, standard was different from . The two systems have different rules of grammar and some variance in vocabulary. was the main method of writing Japanese until about 1900; since then gradually extended its influence and the two methods were both used in writing until the 1940s. still has some relevance for historians, literary scholars, and lawyers (many Japanese laws that survived World War II are still written in , although there are ongoing efforts to modernize their language). is the predominant method of both speaking and writing Japanese today, although grammar and vocabulary are occasionally used in modern Japanese for effect.
Provincial differences of copula da
Dozens of dialects are spoken in Japan. The profusion is due to many factors, including the length of time the archipelago has been inhabited, its mountainous island terrain, and Japan's long history of both external and internal isolation. Dialects typically differ in terms of pitch accent, inflectional morphology, vocabulary, and particle usage. Some even differ in vowel and consonant inventories, although this is uncommon.
The main distinction in Japanese accents is between and , though KyÅ«shÅ«-type dialects form a third, smaller group. Within each type are several subdivisions. Kyoto-Osaka-type dialects are in the central region, with borders roughly formed by Toyama, KyÅto, HyÅgo, and Mie Prefectures; most Shikoku dialects are also that type. The final category of dialects are those that are descended from the Eastern dialect of Old Japanese; these dialects are spoken in HachijÅ-jima island and few islands.
Dialects from peripheral regions, such as TÅhoku or Tsushima, may be unintelligible to speakers from other parts of the country. The several dialects of Kagoshima in southern KyÅ«shÅ« are famous for being unintelligible not only to speakers of standard Japanese but to speakers of nearby dialects elsewhere in KyÅ«shÅ« as well . This is probably due in part to the Kagoshima dialects' peculiarities of pronunciation, which include the existence of closed syllables (i.e., syllables that end in a consonant, such as or for Standard Japanese "spider"). A dialects group of Kansai is spoken and known by many Japanese, and Osaka dialect in particular is associated with comedy (See Kansai dialect). Dialects of TÅhoku and North KantÅ are associated with typical farmers.
The Ryūkyūan languages, spoken in Okinawa and Amami Islands that are politically part of Kagoshima, are distinct enough to be considered a separate branch of the Japonic family. But many Japanese common people tend to consider the Ryūkyūan languages as dialects of Japanese. Not only is each language unintelligible to Japanese speakers, but most are unintelligible to those who speak other Ryūkyūan languages.
Recently, Standard Japanese has become prevalent nationwide (including the Ryūkyū islands) due to education, mass media, and increase of mobility networks within Japan, as well as economic integration.
All Japanese vowels are pureâthat is, they are Monophthong with no prescence of diphthongs. The only unusual vowel is the high back vowel , which is like , but compressed instead of rounded. Japanese has five vowels, and vowel length is phonemic, so each one has both a short and a long version.
Some Japanese consonants have several allophones, which may give the impression of a larger inventory of sounds. However, some of these allophones have since become phonemic. For example, in the Japanese language up to and including the first half of the twentieth century, the phonemic sequence was palatalized and realized phonetically as , approximately chi ; however, now and are distinct, as evidenced by words like tī "Western style tea" and chii "social status".
The "r" of the Japanese language (technically a lateral apical postalveolar flap), is of particular interest, sounding to most English speakers to be something between an "l" and a retroflex "r" depending on its position in a word. The "g" is also notable; unless it starts a sentence, most speakers pronounce it like the ng in "singer".
The syllabic structure and the phonotactics are very simple: the only consonant clusters allowed within a syllable consist of one of a subset of the consonants plus . These type of clusters only occur in onsets. However, consonant clusters across syllables are allowed as long as the two consonants are a nasal followed by a homorganic consonant. Consonant length (gemination) is also phonemic.
Japanese word order is classified as Subject Object Verb. However, unlike many Indo-European languages, Japanese sentences only require that verbs come last for intelligibility. This is because the Japanese sentence elements are marked with particles that identify their grammatical functions.
The basic sentence structure is topic-comment. For example, ( ). ("this") is the topic of the sentence, indicated by the particle -wa. The verb is , a copula, commonly translated as "to be" or "it is" (though there are other verbs that can be translated as "to be"), though technically it holds no meaning and is used to give a sentence 'politeness'. As a phrase, is the comment. This sentence loosely translates to "As for this person, (it) is Mr./Mrs./Miss Tanaka." Thus Japanese, like Chinese, Korean, and many other Asian languages, is often called a topic-prominent language, which means it has a strong tendency to indicate the topic separately from the subject, and the two do not always coincide. The sentence ã( ) literally means, "As for elephants, (their) noses are long". The topic is "elephant", and the subject is "nose".
Japanese could be considered a pro-drop language, meaning that the subject or object of a sentence need not be stated if it is obvious from context. (Note however that Chomsky's original formulation of this category explicitly excluded languages such as Japanese.) In addition, it is commonly felt, particularly in spoken Japanese, that the shorter a sentence is, the better. As a result of this grammatical permissiveness and tendency towards brevity, Japanese speakers tend naturally to omit words from sentences, rather than refer to them with pronouns. In the context of the above example, would mean "[their] noses are long," while by itself would mean "[they] are long." A single verb can be a complete sentence: "[I / we / they / etc] did [it]!". In addition, since adjectives can form the predicate in a Japanese sentence (below), a single adjective can be a complete sentence: "[I'm] jealous [of it]!".
While the language has some words that are typically translated as pronouns, these are not used as frequently as pronouns in some Indo-European languages, and function differently. Instead, Japanese typically relies on special verb forms and auxiliary verbs to indicate the direction of benefit of an action: "down" to indicate the out-group gives a benefit to the in-group; and "up" to indicate the in-group gives a benefit to the out-group. Here, the in-group includes the speaker and the out-group doesn't, and their boundary depends on context. For example, (literally, "explained" with a benefit from the out-group to the in-group) means "[he/she/they] explained it to [me/us]". Similarly, (literally, "explained" with a benefit from the in-group to the out-group) means "[I/we] explained [it] to [him/her/them]". Such beneficiary auxiliary verbs thus serve a function comparable to that of pronouns and prepositions in Indo-European languages to indicate the actor and the recipient of an action.
Japanese "pronouns" also function differently from most modern Indo-European pronouns (and more like nouns) in that they can take modifiers as any other noun may. For instance, one cannot say in English:
: *The amazed he ran down the street. (grammatically incorrect)
But one can grammatically say essentially the same thing in Japanese:
: (grammatically correct)
This is partly due to the fact that these words evolved from regular nouns, such as "you" ( "lord"), "you" ( "that side, yonder"), and "I" ( "servant"). This is why some linguists do not classify Japanese "pronouns" as pronouns, but rather as referential nouns, much like Spanish usted or Portuguese o senhor. Japanese personal pronouns are generally used only in situations requiring special emphasis as to who is doing what to whom.
The choice of words used as pronouns is correlated with the sex of the speaker and the social situation in which they are spoken: men and women alike in a formal situation generally refer to themselves as ( "private") or (also ), while men in rougher or intimate conversation are much more likely to use the word ( "oneself", "myself") or . Similarly, different words such as , , and ( , more formally "the one before me") may be used to refer to a listener depending on the listener's relative social position and the degree of familiarity between the speaker and the listener. When used in different social relationships, the same word may have positive (intimate or respectful) or negative (distant or disrespectful) connotations.
Japanese often use titles of the person referred to where pronouns would be used in English. For example, when speaking to one's teacher, it is appropriate to use ( , teacher), but inappropriate to use . This is because is used to refer to people of equal or lower status, and one's teacher has allegedly higher status.
For English speaking learners of Japanese, a frequent beginners mistake is to include or at the beginning of sentences as one would with I or you in English. Though these sentences are not grammatically incorrect, even in formal settings it would be considered unnatural and would equate in English to repeatedly using a noun where a pronoun would suffice.
Japanese nouns have no grammatical number, gender or article aspect. The noun ( ) may refer to a single book or several books; ( ) can mean "person" or "people"; and ( ) can be "tree" or "trees". Where number is important, it can be indicated by providing a quantity (often with a counter word) or (rarely) by adding a suffix. Words for people are usually understood as singular. Thus usually means Mr./Ms. Tanaka. Words that refer to people and animals can be made to indicate a group of individuals through the addition of a collective suffix (a noun suffix that indicates a group), such as , but this is not a true plural: the meaning is closer to the English phrase "and company". A group described as may include people not named Tanaka. Some Japanese nouns are effectively plural, such as "people" and "we/us", while the word "friend" is considered singular, although plural in form.
Verbs are conjugated to show tenses, of which there are two: past and present, or non-past, which is used for the present and the future. For verbs that represent an ongoing process, the -te iru form indicates a continuous (or progressive) tense. For others that represent a change of state, the form indicates a perfect tense. For example, means "He has come (and is still here)", but means "He is eating".
Questions (both with an interrogative pronoun and yes/no questions) have the same structure as affirmative sentences, but with intonation rising at the end. In the formal register, the question particle is added. For example, ( ) "It is OK" becomes ( ) "Is it OK?". In a more informal tone sometimes the particle ( ) is added instead to show a personal interest of the speaker: "Why aren't (you) coming?". Some simple queries are formed simply by mentioning the topic with an interrogative intonation to call for the hearer's attention: "(What about) this?"; ( ) "(What's your) name?".
Negatives are formed by inflecting the verb. For example, ( ) "I will eat bread" or "I eat bread" becomes ( ) "I will not eat bread" or "I do not eat bread".
The so-called verb form is used for a variety of purposes: either progressive or perfect aspect (see above); combining verbs in a temporal sequence ( "I'll eat breakfast and leave at once"), simple commands, conditional statements and permissions ( "May I go out?"), etc.
The word (plain), (polite) is the copula verb. It corresponds approximately to the English be, but often takes on other roles, including a marker for tense, when the verb is conjugated into its past form (plain), (polite). This comes into use because only adjectives and verbs can carry tense in Japanese. Two additional common verbs are used to indicate existence ("there is") or, in some contexts, property: (negative ) and (negative ), for inanimate and animate things, respectively. For example, "There's a cat", "[I] haven't got a good idea". Note that the negative forms of the verbs and are actually i-adjectives and inflect as such, e.g. "There was no cat".
The verb "to do" ( , polite form ) is often used to make verbs from nouns ( "to cook", "to study", etc.) and has been productive in creating modern slang words. Japanese also has a huge number of compound verbs to express concepts that are described in English using a verb and a preposition (e.g. "to fly out, to flee," from "to fly, to jump" + "to put out, to emit").
There are three types of adjective (see also Japanese adjectives):
# , or adjectives, which have a conjugating ending ( ) (such as "to be hot") which can become past ( "it was hot"), or negative ( "it is not hot"). Note that is also an adjective, which can become past ( "it was not hot").
#: "a hot day".
# , or adjectives, which are followed by a form of the copula, usually . For example (strange)
#: "a strange person".
# , also called true adjectives, such as "that"
#: "that mountain".
Both and may predicate sentences. For example,
: "The rice is hot."
: "He's strange."
Both inflect, though they do not show the full range of conjugation found in true verbs.
The in Modern Japanese are few in number, and unlike the other words, are limited to directly modifying nouns. They never predicate sentences. Examples include "big", "this", "so-called" and "amazing".
Both and form adverbs, by following with in the case of :
: "become strange",
and by changing to in the case of :
: "become hot".
The grammatical function of nouns is indicated by postpositions, also called particles. These include for example:
* for the nominative case. Not necessarily a subject.
: "He did it."
* for the dative case.
: "Please give it to Mr. Tanaka."
It is also used for the lative case, indicating a motion to a location.
: "I want to go to Japan."
* for the genitive case, or nominalizing phrases.
: "my camera"
: "(I) like going skiing."
* for the accusative case. Not necessarily an object.
: "What will (you) eat?"
* for the topic. It can co-exist with case markers above except , and it overrides and .
: "As for me, Thai food is good." The nominative marker after is hidden under . (Note that English generally makes no distinction between sentence topic and subject.)
Note: The difference between and goes beyond the English distinction between sentence topic and subject. While indicates the topic, which the rest of the sentence describes or acts upon, it carries the implication that the subject indicated by is not unique, or may be part of a larger group.
: "As for Mr. Ikeda, he is forty-two years old." Others in the group may also be of that age.
Absence of often means the subject is the focus of the sentence.
: "It is Mr. Ikeda who is forty-two years old." This is a reply to an implicit or explicit question who in this group is forty-two years old.
Unlike most western languages, Japanese has an extensive grammatical system to express politeness and formality.
Most relationships are not equal in Japanese society. The differences in social position are determined by a variety of factors including job, age, experience, or even psychological state (e.g., a person asking a favour tends to do so politely). The person in the lower position is expected to use a polite form of speech, whereas the other might use a more plain form. Strangers will also speak to each other politely. Japanese children rarely use polite speech until they are teens, at which point they are expected to begin speaking in a more adult manner. See uchi-soto.
Whereas ( ) (polite language) is commonly an inflectional system, ( ) (respectful language) and ( ) (humble language) often employ many special honorific and humble alternate verbs: "go" becomes in polite form, but is replaced by in honorific speech and or in humble speech.
The difference between honorific and humble speech is particularly pronounced in the Japanese language. Humble language is used to talk about oneself or one's own group (company, family) whilst honorific language is mostly used when describing the interlocutor and his/her group. For example, the suffix ("Mr" "Mrs." or "Miss") is an example of honorific language. It is not used to talk about oneself or when talking about someone from one's company to an external person, since the company is the speaker's "group". When speaking directly to one's superior in one's company or when speaking with other employees within one's company about a superior, a Japanese person will use vocabulary and inflections of the honorific register to refer to the in-group superior and his or her speech and actions. When speaking to a person from another company (i.e., a member of an out-group), however, a Japanese person will use the plain or the humble register to refer to the speech and actions of his or her own in-group superiors. In short, the register used in Japanese to refer to the person, speech, or actions of any particular individual varies depending on the relationship (either in-group or out-group) between the speaker and listener, as well as depending on the relative status of the speaker, listener, and third-person referents. For this reason, the Japanese system for explicit indication of social register is known as a system of "relative honorifics." This stands in stark contrast to the Korean system of "absolute honorifics," in which the same register is used to refer to a particular individual (e.g. one's father, one's company president, etc.) in any context regardless of the relationship between the speaker and interlocutor. Thus, polite Korean speech can sound very presumptuous when translated verbatim into Japanese, as in Korean it is acceptable and normal to say things like "Our Mr. Company-President..." when communicating with a member of an out-group, which would be very inappropriate in a Japanese social context.
Most nouns in the Japanese language may be made polite by the addition of or as a prefix. is generally used for words of native Japanese origin, whereas is affixed to words of Chinese derivation. In some cases, the prefix has become a fixed part of the word, and is included even in regular speech, such as 'cooked rice; meal.' Such a construction often indicates deference to either the item's owner or to the object itself. For example, the word 'friend,' would become when referring to the friend of someone of higher status (though mothers often use this form to refer to their children's friends). On the other hand, a polite speaker may sometimes refer to 'water' as in order to show politeness.
Most Japanese people employ politeness to indicate a lack of familiarity. That is, they use polite forms for new acquaintances, but if a relationship becomes more intimate, they no longer use them. This occurs regardless of age, social class, or gender.
The original language of Japan, or at least the original language of a certain population that was ancestral to a significant portion of the historical and present Japanese nation, was the so-called ( or infrequently , i.e. "Yamato words"), which in scholarly contexts is sometimes referred to as ( or rarely , i.e. the words"). In addition to words from this original language, present-day Japanese includes a great number of words that were either borrowed from Chinese or constructed from Chinese roots following Chinese patterns. These words, known as ( ), entered the language from the fifth century onwards via contact with Chinese culture. According to a Japanese dictionary Shinsen-kokugojiten (æ°é¸å½èªè¾å
¸), Chinese-based words comprise 49.1% of the total vocabulary, Wago is 33.8% and other foreign words are 8.8%. æ°é¸å½èªè¾å
¸, éç°ä¸äº¬å©, å°å¦é¤¨, 2001, ISBN 4095014075
Like Latin-derived words in English, words typically are perceived as somewhat formal or academic compared to equivalent Yamato words. Indeed, it is generally fair to say that an English word derived from Latin/French roots typically corresponds to a Sino-Japanese word in Japanese, whereas a simpler Anglo-Saxon word would best be translated by a Yamato equivalent.
A much smaller number of words has been borrowed from Korean and Ainu. Japan has also borrowed a number of words from other languages, particularly ones of European extraction, which are called . This began with borrowings from Portuguese in the 16th century, followed by borrowing from Dutch during Japan's long isolation of the Edo period. With the Meiji Restoration and the reopening of Japan in the 19th century, borrowing occurred from German, French and English. Currently, words of English origin are the most commonly borrowed.
In the Meiji era, the Japanese also coined many neologisms using Chinese roots and morphology to translate Western concepts. The Chinese and Koreans imported many of these pseudo-Chinese words into Chinese, Korean, and Vietnamese via their kanji in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. For example, ("politics"), and ("chemistry") are words derived from Chinese roots that were first created and used by the Japanese, and only later borrowed into Chinese and other East Asian languages. As a result, Japanese, Chinese, Korean, and Vietnamese share a large common corpus of vocabulary in the same way a large number of Greek- and Latin-derived words are shared among modern European languages, although many academic words formed from such roots were certainly coined by native speakers of other languages, such as English.
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é³ãçºå¤§å¦é³å士ãæ¼å¾ãæ´å¤§å¦é å®æ¿å®ã ) and spread the use of Chinese characters from the 7th century to the 8th century.
The table of Kana. (Hiragana top, Katakana in the center and Romaji on the bottom.)
At first, the Japanese wrote in Classical Chinese, with Japanese names represented by characters used for their meanings and not their sounds. Later, during the seventh century CE, the Chinese-sounding phoneme principle was used to write pure Japanese poetry and prose (comparable to Akkadian's retention of Sumerian cuneiform), but some Japanese words were still written with characters for their meaning and not the original Chinese sound. This is when the history of Japanese as a written language begins in its own right. By this time, the Japanese language was already distinct from the Ryukyuan languages. What leaves a mark should no longer stain: Progressive erasure and reversing language shift activities in the Ryukyu Islands, 2005, citing Hattori, Shiro (1954) 'Gengo nendaigaku sunawachi goi tokeigaku no hoho ni tsuite' [âConcerning the Method of Glottochronology and Lexicostatisticsâ], Gengo kenkyu [Journal of the Linguistic Society of Japan] v26/27
The Korean settlers and their descendants used Kudara-on or Baekje pronunciation (ç¾æ¸é³), which was also called Tsushima-pronunciation (対馬é³) or Go-on (åé³).
An example of this mixed style is the Kojiki, which was written in 712 AD. They then started to use Chinese characters to write Japanese in a style known as , a syllabic script which used Chinese characters for their sounds in order to transcribe the words of Japanese speech syllable by syllable.
Over time, a writing system evolved. Chinese characters (kanji) were used to write either words borrowed from Chinese, or Japanese words with the same or similar meanings. Chinese characters were also used to write grammatical elements, were simplified, and eventually became two syllabic scripts: hiragana and katakana.
Modern Japanese is written in a mixture of three main systems: kanji, characters of Chinese origin used to represent both Chinese loanwords into Japanese and a number of native Japanese morphemes; and two syllabaries: hiragana and katakana. The Latin alphabet is also sometimes used. Arabic numerals are much more common than the kanji when used in counting, but kanji numerals are still used in compounds, such as ("unification").
Hiragana are used for words without kanji representation, for words no longer written in kanji, and also following kanji to show conjugational endings. Because of the way verbs (and adjectives) in Japanese are conjugated, kanji alone cannot fully convey Japanese tense and mood, as kanji cannot be subject to variation when written without losing its meaning. For this reason, hiragana are suffixed to the ends of kanji to show verb and adjective conjugations. Hiragana used in this way are called okurigana. Hiragana are also written in a superscript called furigana above or beside a kanji to show the proper reading. This is done to facilitate learning, as well as to clarify particularly old or obscure (or sometimes invented) readings.
Katakana, like hiragana, are a syllabary; katakana are primarily used to write foreign words, plant and animal names, and for emphasis. For example "Australia" has been adapted as ( ), and "supermarket" has been adapted and shortened into ( ). The Latin alphabet (in Japanese referred to as RÅmaji ( ), literally "Roman letters") is used for some loan words like "CD" and "DVD", and also for some Japanese creations like "Sony".
Historically, attempts to limit the number of kanji in use commenced in the mid-19th century, but did not become a matter of government intervention until after Japan's defeat in the Second World War. During the period of post-war occupation (and influenced by the views of some U.S. officials), various schemes including the complete abolition of kanji and exclusive use of rÅmaji were considered. The ("common use kanji", originally called [kanji for general use]) scheme arose as a compromise solution.
Japanese students begin to learn kanji from their first year at elementary school. A guideline created by the Japanese Ministry of Education, the list of ("education kanji", a subset of ), specifies the 1,006 simple characters a child is to learn by the end of sixth grade. Children continue to study another 939 characters in junior high school, covering in total 1,945 . The official list of was revised several times, but the total number of officially sanctioned characters remained largely unchanged.
As for kanji for personal names, the circumstances are somewhat complicated. and (an appendix of additional characters for names) are approved for registering personal names. Names containing unapproved characters are denied registration. However, as with the list of , criteria for inclusion were often arbitrary and led to many common and popular characters being disapproved for use. Under popular pressure and following a court decision holding the exclusion of common characters unlawful, the list of was substantially extended from 92 in 1951 (the year it was first decreed) to 983 in 2004. Furthermore, families whose names are not on these lists were permitted to continue using the older forms.
Many writers rely on newspaper circulation to publish their work with officially sanctioned characters. This distribution method is more efficient than traditional pen and paper publications.
Many major universities throughout the world provide Japanese language courses, and a number of secondary and even primary schools worldwide offer courses in the language. International interest in the Japanese language dates from the 1800s but has become more prevalent following Japan's economic bubble of the 1980s and the global popularity of Japanese pop culture (such as anime and video games) since the 1990s. About 2.3 million people studied the language worldwide in 2003: 900,000 South Koreans, 389,000 Chinese, 381,000 Australians, and 140,000 Americans study Japanese in lower and higher educational institutions.
In Japan, more than 90,000 foreign students study at Japanese universities and Japanese language schools, including 77,000 Chinese and 15,000 South Koreans in 2003. In addition, local governments and some NPO groups provide free Japanese language classes for foreign residents, including Japanese Brazilians and foreigners married to Japanese nationals. In the United Kingdom, studies are supported by the British Association for Japanese Studies. In Ireland, Japanese is offered as a language in the Leaving Certificate in some schools.
The Japanese government provides standardised tests to measure spoken and written comprehension of Japanese for second language learners; the most prominent is the Japanese Language Proficiency Test (JLPT), which features 4 levels of exams, ranging from elementary (4) to advanced (1). The Japanese External Trade Organization JETRO organizes the Business Japanese Proficiency Test which tests the learner's ability to understand Japanese in a business setting.
When learning Japanese in a college setting, students are usually first taught how to pronounce romaji. From that point, they are taught the two main syllabaries, with kanji usually being introduced in the second semester. Focus is usually first on polite (distal) speech, as students who might interact with native speakers would be expected to use. Casual speech and formal speech usually follow polite speech, as well as the usage of honorific.
* Classification of Japanese
* Culture of Japan
* Eurasiatic languages
* Henohenomoheji
* Japanese counter word
* Japanese dialects
* Japanese dictionaries
* Japanese language and computers
* Japonic languages
* Japanese literature
* Japanese name
* Japanese numerals
* Japanese orthography issues
* Japanese words and words derived from Japanese in other languages at Wiktionary, Wikipedia's sibling project
* Late Old Japanese
* Old Japanese
* Rendaku
* Romanization of Japanese
** Hepburn romanization
* Ryūkyūan languages
* Sino-Japanese vocabulary
* Yojijukugo
* Bloch, Bernard. (1946). Studies in colloquial Japanese I: Inflection. Journal of the American Oriental Society, 66, pp. 97 130.
* Bloch, Bernard. (1946). Studies in colloquial Japanese II: Syntax. Language, 22, pp. 200 248.
* Chafe, William L. (1976). Giveness, contrastiveness, definiteness, subjects, topics, and point of view. In C. Li (Ed.), Subject and topic (pp. 25 56). New York: Academic Press. ISBN 0-12-447350-4.
* Kuno, Susumu. (1973). The structure of the Japanese language. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. ISBN 0-262-11049-0.
* Kuno, Susumu. (1976). Subject, theme, and the speaker's empathy: A re-examination of relativization phenomena. In Charles N. Li (Ed.), Subject and topic (pp. 417 444). New York: Academic Press. ISBN 0-12-447350-4.
* Martin, Samuel E. (1975). A reference grammar of Japanese. New Haven: Yale University Press. ISBN 0-300-01813-4.
* McClain, Yoko Matsuoka. (1981). Handbook of modern Japanese grammar: [ ]. Tokyo: Hokuseido Press. ISBN 4-590-00570-0; ISBN 0-89346-149-0.
* Miller, Roy. (1967). The Japanese language. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
* Miller, Roy. (1980). Origins of the Japanese language: Lectures in Japan during the academic year, 1977 78. Seattle: University of Washington Press. ISBN 0-295-95766-2.
* Mizutani, Osamu; & Mizutani, Nobuko. (1987). How to be polite in Japanese: [ ]. Tokyo: Japan Times. ISBN 4789003388 ;
* Shibatani, Masayoshi. (1990). Japanese. In B. Comrie (Ed.), The major languages of east and south-east Asia. London: Routledge. ISBN 0-415-04739-0.
* Shibatani, Masayoshi. (1990). The languages of Japan. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-36070-6 (hbk); ISBN 0-521-36918-5 (pbk).
* Shibamoto, Janet S. (1985). Japanese women's language. New York: Academic Press. ISBN 0-12-640030-X. Graduate Level
* Tsujimura, Natsuko. (1996). An introduction to Japanese linguistics. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell Publishers. ISBN 0-631-19855-5 (hbk); ISBN 0-631-19856-3 (pbk). Upper Level Textbooks
* Tsujimura, Natsuko. (Ed.) (1999). The handbook of Japanese linguistics. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers. ISBN 0-631-20504-7. Readings/Anthologies
* Jim Breen's dictionary and translation server
* Nihongoresources Various dictionaries and worked out textbook grammar.
* Denshi Jisho Find words, example sentences and kanji (through words or radicals). Kanji also contain references to various dictionaries and textbooks.
* Tangorin.com Japanese Dictionary, standard dictionary and Kanji search with example sentences.
* Tatoeba Project, collaborative project that aims to collect example sentences. Has mostly Japanese and English sentences. The sentences can be downloaded.
* JapanOD.com, Japanese-English, English-Japanese dictionary with support for browsers without Japanese fonts
* OmegaJi: Free, opensource (GNU GPL) Japanese-English dictionary program with 190'000 expressions, based on the JMdict project.
* Eijiro Very complete Japanese-English and English-Japanese dictionary, with many example sentences.
* Sanseido Web Dictionary
* Basic verb conjugation search
* A free Japanese lesson finder
*
* Japanese phrasebook on WikiTravel
* Japanese Online Talk
* Tae Kim's guide to Japanese grammar
* Video lectures from York University
* Japanese - a Category III language Languages which are exceptionally difficult for native English speakers
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Japanese_language | : give "please Japanese language to Mr ? | null | data/set5/a6 | Japanese_language
IPA: [nʲihoÅÉ¡o] is a language spoken by over 130 million people in Japan and in Japanese emigrant communities. It is related to the Japonic-Ryukyuan languages. Its relationships with other languages remain undemonstrated. It is an agglutinative language and is distinguished by a complex system of honorifics reflecting the hierarchical nature of Japanese society, with verb forms and particular vocabulary to indicate the relative status of the speaker, the listener, and a person mentioned in conversation (regardless of his or her presence). The sound inventory of Japanese is relatively small, and it has a lexically distinct pitch-accent system. It is a mora-timed language.
The Japanese language is written with a combination of three different types of scripts: modified Chinese characters called kanji (æ¼¢å), and two syllabic scripts made up of modified Chinese characters, hiragana (平仮å) and katakana (çä»®å). The Latin alphabet, rÅmaji (ãã¼ãå), is also often used in modern Japanese, especially for company names and logos, advertising, and when entering Japanese text into a computer. Western style Indian numerals are generally used for numbers, but traditional Sino-Japanese numerals are also commonplace.
Japanese vocabulary has been heavily influenced by loanwords from other languages. A vast number of words were borrowed from Chinese, or created from Chinese models, over a period of at least 1,500 years. Since the late 19th century, Japanese has borrowed a considerable number of words from Indo-European languages, primarily English. Because of the special trade relationship between Japan and first Portugal in the 16th century, and then mainly the Netherlands in the 17th century, Portuguese and Dutch have also been influential.
Although Japanese is spoken almost exclusively in Japan, it has been and sometimes still is spoken elsewhere. When Japan occupied Korea, Taiwan, parts of the Chinese mainland, the Philippines, and various Pacific islands before and during World War II, Japanese is listed as one of the official languages of Angaur state, Palau ( Ethnologe, CIA World Factbook). This official status is disputed; there were very few Japanese speakers on Angaur as of the 2005 census. locals in those countries were forced to learn Japanese in empire-building programs. As a result, there are many people in these countries who can speak Japanese in addition to the local languages. Japanese emigrant communities (the largest of which are to be found in Brazil ) sometimes employ Japanese as their primary language. Approximately 5% of Hawaii residents speak Japanese , with Japanese ancestry the largest single ancestry in the state (over 24% of the population). Japanese emigrants can also be found in Peru, Argentina, Australia (especially Sydney, Brisbane, Melbourne and Cairns), the United States (notably California, where 1.2% of the population has Japanese ancestry , and Hawaii), and the Philippines (particularly in Davao and Laguna). Their descendants, who are known as ( , literally Japanese descendants), however, rarely speak Japanese fluently after the second generation.
Japanese is the official language of Japan and in Palau, in the island of Angaur. There is a form of the language considered standard: Standard Japanese, or the common language. The meanings of the two terms are almost the same. or is a conception that forms the counterpart of dialect. This normative language was born after the from the language spoken in the higher-class areas of Tokyo for communicating necessity. is taught in schools and used on television and in official communications, and is the version of Japanese discussed in this article.
Formerly, standard was different from . The two systems have different rules of grammar and some variance in vocabulary. was the main method of writing Japanese until about 1900; since then gradually extended its influence and the two methods were both used in writing until the 1940s. still has some relevance for historians, literary scholars, and lawyers (many Japanese laws that survived World War II are still written in , although there are ongoing efforts to modernize their language). is the predominant method of both speaking and writing Japanese today, although grammar and vocabulary are occasionally used in modern Japanese for effect.
Provincial differences of copula da
Dozens of dialects are spoken in Japan. The profusion is due to many factors, including the length of time the archipelago has been inhabited, its mountainous island terrain, and Japan's long history of both external and internal isolation. Dialects typically differ in terms of pitch accent, inflectional morphology, vocabulary, and particle usage. Some even differ in vowel and consonant inventories, although this is uncommon.
The main distinction in Japanese accents is between and , though KyÅ«shÅ«-type dialects form a third, smaller group. Within each type are several subdivisions. Kyoto-Osaka-type dialects are in the central region, with borders roughly formed by Toyama, KyÅto, HyÅgo, and Mie Prefectures; most Shikoku dialects are also that type. The final category of dialects are those that are descended from the Eastern dialect of Old Japanese; these dialects are spoken in HachijÅ-jima island and few islands.
Dialects from peripheral regions, such as TÅhoku or Tsushima, may be unintelligible to speakers from other parts of the country. The several dialects of Kagoshima in southern KyÅ«shÅ« are famous for being unintelligible not only to speakers of standard Japanese but to speakers of nearby dialects elsewhere in KyÅ«shÅ« as well . This is probably due in part to the Kagoshima dialects' peculiarities of pronunciation, which include the existence of closed syllables (i.e., syllables that end in a consonant, such as or for Standard Japanese "spider"). A dialects group of Kansai is spoken and known by many Japanese, and Osaka dialect in particular is associated with comedy (See Kansai dialect). Dialects of TÅhoku and North KantÅ are associated with typical farmers.
The Ryūkyūan languages, spoken in Okinawa and Amami Islands that are politically part of Kagoshima, are distinct enough to be considered a separate branch of the Japonic family. But many Japanese common people tend to consider the Ryūkyūan languages as dialects of Japanese. Not only is each language unintelligible to Japanese speakers, but most are unintelligible to those who speak other Ryūkyūan languages.
Recently, Standard Japanese has become prevalent nationwide (including the Ryūkyū islands) due to education, mass media, and increase of mobility networks within Japan, as well as economic integration.
All Japanese vowels are pureâthat is, they are Monophthong with no prescence of diphthongs. The only unusual vowel is the high back vowel , which is like , but compressed instead of rounded. Japanese has five vowels, and vowel length is phonemic, so each one has both a short and a long version.
Some Japanese consonants have several allophones, which may give the impression of a larger inventory of sounds. However, some of these allophones have since become phonemic. For example, in the Japanese language up to and including the first half of the twentieth century, the phonemic sequence was palatalized and realized phonetically as , approximately chi ; however, now and are distinct, as evidenced by words like tī "Western style tea" and chii "social status".
The "r" of the Japanese language (technically a lateral apical postalveolar flap), is of particular interest, sounding to most English speakers to be something between an "l" and a retroflex "r" depending on its position in a word. The "g" is also notable; unless it starts a sentence, most speakers pronounce it like the ng in "singer".
The syllabic structure and the phonotactics are very simple: the only consonant clusters allowed within a syllable consist of one of a subset of the consonants plus . These type of clusters only occur in onsets. However, consonant clusters across syllables are allowed as long as the two consonants are a nasal followed by a homorganic consonant. Consonant length (gemination) is also phonemic.
Japanese word order is classified as Subject Object Verb. However, unlike many Indo-European languages, Japanese sentences only require that verbs come last for intelligibility. This is because the Japanese sentence elements are marked with particles that identify their grammatical functions.
The basic sentence structure is topic-comment. For example, ( ). ("this") is the topic of the sentence, indicated by the particle -wa. The verb is , a copula, commonly translated as "to be" or "it is" (though there are other verbs that can be translated as "to be"), though technically it holds no meaning and is used to give a sentence 'politeness'. As a phrase, is the comment. This sentence loosely translates to "As for this person, (it) is Mr./Mrs./Miss Tanaka." Thus Japanese, like Chinese, Korean, and many other Asian languages, is often called a topic-prominent language, which means it has a strong tendency to indicate the topic separately from the subject, and the two do not always coincide. The sentence ã( ) literally means, "As for elephants, (their) noses are long". The topic is "elephant", and the subject is "nose".
Japanese could be considered a pro-drop language, meaning that the subject or object of a sentence need not be stated if it is obvious from context. (Note however that Chomsky's original formulation of this category explicitly excluded languages such as Japanese.) In addition, it is commonly felt, particularly in spoken Japanese, that the shorter a sentence is, the better. As a result of this grammatical permissiveness and tendency towards brevity, Japanese speakers tend naturally to omit words from sentences, rather than refer to them with pronouns. In the context of the above example, would mean "[their] noses are long," while by itself would mean "[they] are long." A single verb can be a complete sentence: "[I / we / they / etc] did [it]!". In addition, since adjectives can form the predicate in a Japanese sentence (below), a single adjective can be a complete sentence: "[I'm] jealous [of it]!".
While the language has some words that are typically translated as pronouns, these are not used as frequently as pronouns in some Indo-European languages, and function differently. Instead, Japanese typically relies on special verb forms and auxiliary verbs to indicate the direction of benefit of an action: "down" to indicate the out-group gives a benefit to the in-group; and "up" to indicate the in-group gives a benefit to the out-group. Here, the in-group includes the speaker and the out-group doesn't, and their boundary depends on context. For example, (literally, "explained" with a benefit from the out-group to the in-group) means "[he/she/they] explained it to [me/us]". Similarly, (literally, "explained" with a benefit from the in-group to the out-group) means "[I/we] explained [it] to [him/her/them]". Such beneficiary auxiliary verbs thus serve a function comparable to that of pronouns and prepositions in Indo-European languages to indicate the actor and the recipient of an action.
Japanese "pronouns" also function differently from most modern Indo-European pronouns (and more like nouns) in that they can take modifiers as any other noun may. For instance, one cannot say in English:
: *The amazed he ran down the street. (grammatically incorrect)
But one can grammatically say essentially the same thing in Japanese:
: (grammatically correct)
This is partly due to the fact that these words evolved from regular nouns, such as "you" ( "lord"), "you" ( "that side, yonder"), and "I" ( "servant"). This is why some linguists do not classify Japanese "pronouns" as pronouns, but rather as referential nouns, much like Spanish usted or Portuguese o senhor. Japanese personal pronouns are generally used only in situations requiring special emphasis as to who is doing what to whom.
The choice of words used as pronouns is correlated with the sex of the speaker and the social situation in which they are spoken: men and women alike in a formal situation generally refer to themselves as ( "private") or (also ), while men in rougher or intimate conversation are much more likely to use the word ( "oneself", "myself") or . Similarly, different words such as , , and ( , more formally "the one before me") may be used to refer to a listener depending on the listener's relative social position and the degree of familiarity between the speaker and the listener. When used in different social relationships, the same word may have positive (intimate or respectful) or negative (distant or disrespectful) connotations.
Japanese often use titles of the person referred to where pronouns would be used in English. For example, when speaking to one's teacher, it is appropriate to use ( , teacher), but inappropriate to use . This is because is used to refer to people of equal or lower status, and one's teacher has allegedly higher status.
For English speaking learners of Japanese, a frequent beginners mistake is to include or at the beginning of sentences as one would with I or you in English. Though these sentences are not grammatically incorrect, even in formal settings it would be considered unnatural and would equate in English to repeatedly using a noun where a pronoun would suffice.
Japanese nouns have no grammatical number, gender or article aspect. The noun ( ) may refer to a single book or several books; ( ) can mean "person" or "people"; and ( ) can be "tree" or "trees". Where number is important, it can be indicated by providing a quantity (often with a counter word) or (rarely) by adding a suffix. Words for people are usually understood as singular. Thus usually means Mr./Ms. Tanaka. Words that refer to people and animals can be made to indicate a group of individuals through the addition of a collective suffix (a noun suffix that indicates a group), such as , but this is not a true plural: the meaning is closer to the English phrase "and company". A group described as may include people not named Tanaka. Some Japanese nouns are effectively plural, such as "people" and "we/us", while the word "friend" is considered singular, although plural in form.
Verbs are conjugated to show tenses, of which there are two: past and present, or non-past, which is used for the present and the future. For verbs that represent an ongoing process, the -te iru form indicates a continuous (or progressive) tense. For others that represent a change of state, the form indicates a perfect tense. For example, means "He has come (and is still here)", but means "He is eating".
Questions (both with an interrogative pronoun and yes/no questions) have the same structure as affirmative sentences, but with intonation rising at the end. In the formal register, the question particle is added. For example, ( ) "It is OK" becomes ( ) "Is it OK?". In a more informal tone sometimes the particle ( ) is added instead to show a personal interest of the speaker: "Why aren't (you) coming?". Some simple queries are formed simply by mentioning the topic with an interrogative intonation to call for the hearer's attention: "(What about) this?"; ( ) "(What's your) name?".
Negatives are formed by inflecting the verb. For example, ( ) "I will eat bread" or "I eat bread" becomes ( ) "I will not eat bread" or "I do not eat bread".
The so-called verb form is used for a variety of purposes: either progressive or perfect aspect (see above); combining verbs in a temporal sequence ( "I'll eat breakfast and leave at once"), simple commands, conditional statements and permissions ( "May I go out?"), etc.
The word (plain), (polite) is the copula verb. It corresponds approximately to the English be, but often takes on other roles, including a marker for tense, when the verb is conjugated into its past form (plain), (polite). This comes into use because only adjectives and verbs can carry tense in Japanese. Two additional common verbs are used to indicate existence ("there is") or, in some contexts, property: (negative ) and (negative ), for inanimate and animate things, respectively. For example, "There's a cat", "[I] haven't got a good idea". Note that the negative forms of the verbs and are actually i-adjectives and inflect as such, e.g. "There was no cat".
The verb "to do" ( , polite form ) is often used to make verbs from nouns ( "to cook", "to study", etc.) and has been productive in creating modern slang words. Japanese also has a huge number of compound verbs to express concepts that are described in English using a verb and a preposition (e.g. "to fly out, to flee," from "to fly, to jump" + "to put out, to emit").
There are three types of adjective (see also Japanese adjectives):
# , or adjectives, which have a conjugating ending ( ) (such as "to be hot") which can become past ( "it was hot"), or negative ( "it is not hot"). Note that is also an adjective, which can become past ( "it was not hot").
#: "a hot day".
# , or adjectives, which are followed by a form of the copula, usually . For example (strange)
#: "a strange person".
# , also called true adjectives, such as "that"
#: "that mountain".
Both and may predicate sentences. For example,
: "The rice is hot."
: "He's strange."
Both inflect, though they do not show the full range of conjugation found in true verbs.
The in Modern Japanese are few in number, and unlike the other words, are limited to directly modifying nouns. They never predicate sentences. Examples include "big", "this", "so-called" and "amazing".
Both and form adverbs, by following with in the case of :
: "become strange",
and by changing to in the case of :
: "become hot".
The grammatical function of nouns is indicated by postpositions, also called particles. These include for example:
* for the nominative case. Not necessarily a subject.
: "He did it."
* for the dative case.
: "Please give it to Mr. Tanaka."
It is also used for the lative case, indicating a motion to a location.
: "I want to go to Japan."
* for the genitive case, or nominalizing phrases.
: "my camera"
: "(I) like going skiing."
* for the accusative case. Not necessarily an object.
: "What will (you) eat?"
* for the topic. It can co-exist with case markers above except , and it overrides and .
: "As for me, Thai food is good." The nominative marker after is hidden under . (Note that English generally makes no distinction between sentence topic and subject.)
Note: The difference between and goes beyond the English distinction between sentence topic and subject. While indicates the topic, which the rest of the sentence describes or acts upon, it carries the implication that the subject indicated by is not unique, or may be part of a larger group.
: "As for Mr. Ikeda, he is forty-two years old." Others in the group may also be of that age.
Absence of often means the subject is the focus of the sentence.
: "It is Mr. Ikeda who is forty-two years old." This is a reply to an implicit or explicit question who in this group is forty-two years old.
Unlike most western languages, Japanese has an extensive grammatical system to express politeness and formality.
Most relationships are not equal in Japanese society. The differences in social position are determined by a variety of factors including job, age, experience, or even psychological state (e.g., a person asking a favour tends to do so politely). The person in the lower position is expected to use a polite form of speech, whereas the other might use a more plain form. Strangers will also speak to each other politely. Japanese children rarely use polite speech until they are teens, at which point they are expected to begin speaking in a more adult manner. See uchi-soto.
Whereas ( ) (polite language) is commonly an inflectional system, ( ) (respectful language) and ( ) (humble language) often employ many special honorific and humble alternate verbs: "go" becomes in polite form, but is replaced by in honorific speech and or in humble speech.
The difference between honorific and humble speech is particularly pronounced in the Japanese language. Humble language is used to talk about oneself or one's own group (company, family) whilst honorific language is mostly used when describing the interlocutor and his/her group. For example, the suffix ("Mr" "Mrs." or "Miss") is an example of honorific language. It is not used to talk about oneself or when talking about someone from one's company to an external person, since the company is the speaker's "group". When speaking directly to one's superior in one's company or when speaking with other employees within one's company about a superior, a Japanese person will use vocabulary and inflections of the honorific register to refer to the in-group superior and his or her speech and actions. When speaking to a person from another company (i.e., a member of an out-group), however, a Japanese person will use the plain or the humble register to refer to the speech and actions of his or her own in-group superiors. In short, the register used in Japanese to refer to the person, speech, or actions of any particular individual varies depending on the relationship (either in-group or out-group) between the speaker and listener, as well as depending on the relative status of the speaker, listener, and third-person referents. For this reason, the Japanese system for explicit indication of social register is known as a system of "relative honorifics." This stands in stark contrast to the Korean system of "absolute honorifics," in which the same register is used to refer to a particular individual (e.g. one's father, one's company president, etc.) in any context regardless of the relationship between the speaker and interlocutor. Thus, polite Korean speech can sound very presumptuous when translated verbatim into Japanese, as in Korean it is acceptable and normal to say things like "Our Mr. Company-President..." when communicating with a member of an out-group, which would be very inappropriate in a Japanese social context.
Most nouns in the Japanese language may be made polite by the addition of or as a prefix. is generally used for words of native Japanese origin, whereas is affixed to words of Chinese derivation. In some cases, the prefix has become a fixed part of the word, and is included even in regular speech, such as 'cooked rice; meal.' Such a construction often indicates deference to either the item's owner or to the object itself. For example, the word 'friend,' would become when referring to the friend of someone of higher status (though mothers often use this form to refer to their children's friends). On the other hand, a polite speaker may sometimes refer to 'water' as in order to show politeness.
Most Japanese people employ politeness to indicate a lack of familiarity. That is, they use polite forms for new acquaintances, but if a relationship becomes more intimate, they no longer use them. This occurs regardless of age, social class, or gender.
The original language of Japan, or at least the original language of a certain population that was ancestral to a significant portion of the historical and present Japanese nation, was the so-called ( or infrequently , i.e. "Yamato words"), which in scholarly contexts is sometimes referred to as ( or rarely , i.e. the words"). In addition to words from this original language, present-day Japanese includes a great number of words that were either borrowed from Chinese or constructed from Chinese roots following Chinese patterns. These words, known as ( ), entered the language from the fifth century onwards via contact with Chinese culture. According to a Japanese dictionary Shinsen-kokugojiten (æ°é¸å½èªè¾å
¸), Chinese-based words comprise 49.1% of the total vocabulary, Wago is 33.8% and other foreign words are 8.8%. æ°é¸å½èªè¾å
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Like Latin-derived words in English, words typically are perceived as somewhat formal or academic compared to equivalent Yamato words. Indeed, it is generally fair to say that an English word derived from Latin/French roots typically corresponds to a Sino-Japanese word in Japanese, whereas a simpler Anglo-Saxon word would best be translated by a Yamato equivalent.
A much smaller number of words has been borrowed from Korean and Ainu. Japan has also borrowed a number of words from other languages, particularly ones of European extraction, which are called . This began with borrowings from Portuguese in the 16th century, followed by borrowing from Dutch during Japan's long isolation of the Edo period. With the Meiji Restoration and the reopening of Japan in the 19th century, borrowing occurred from German, French and English. Currently, words of English origin are the most commonly borrowed.
In the Meiji era, the Japanese also coined many neologisms using Chinese roots and morphology to translate Western concepts. The Chinese and Koreans imported many of these pseudo-Chinese words into Chinese, Korean, and Vietnamese via their kanji in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. For example, ("politics"), and ("chemistry") are words derived from Chinese roots that were first created and used by the Japanese, and only later borrowed into Chinese and other East Asian languages. As a result, Japanese, Chinese, Korean, and Vietnamese share a large common corpus of vocabulary in the same way a large number of Greek- and Latin-derived words are shared among modern European languages, although many academic words formed from such roots were certainly coined by native speakers of other languages, such as English.
In the past few decades, (made-in-Japan English) has become a prominent phenomenon. Words such as ( Book of Song é å¸ææäºå¹´ï¼é£ä½¿ä¸è¡¨æ°ï¼å°ååé ï¼ä½è©äºå¤ï¼èªæç¥ç¦°ï¼èº¬æç²åï¼è·æ¸å±±å·ï¼ä¸é寧èãæ±å¾æ¯äººäºååï¼è¥¿æè¡å¤·å
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¶é¤å¸ååæï¼ä»¥å¸å¿ ç¯ã After the ruin of Baekje, Japan invited scholars from China to learn more of the Chinese writing system. Japanese Emperors gave an official rank to Chinese scholars (ç¶å®è¨/è©å¼æ ¼/ Nihon shoki Chapter 30:æçµ±äºå¹´ ä¹æ己巳æ壬ç³ãè³é³å士大åç¶å®è¨ãè©å¼æªãæ¸å士ç¾æ¸æ«å£«åä¿¡ãé人äºå両ã Nihon shoki Chapter 30:æçµ±å
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é³ãçºå¤§å¦é³å士ãæ¼å¾ãæ´å¤§å¦é å®æ¿å®ã ) and spread the use of Chinese characters from the 7th century to the 8th century.
The table of Kana. (Hiragana top, Katakana in the center and Romaji on the bottom.)
At first, the Japanese wrote in Classical Chinese, with Japanese names represented by characters used for their meanings and not their sounds. Later, during the seventh century CE, the Chinese-sounding phoneme principle was used to write pure Japanese poetry and prose (comparable to Akkadian's retention of Sumerian cuneiform), but some Japanese words were still written with characters for their meaning and not the original Chinese sound. This is when the history of Japanese as a written language begins in its own right. By this time, the Japanese language was already distinct from the Ryukyuan languages. What leaves a mark should no longer stain: Progressive erasure and reversing language shift activities in the Ryukyu Islands, 2005, citing Hattori, Shiro (1954) 'Gengo nendaigaku sunawachi goi tokeigaku no hoho ni tsuite' [âConcerning the Method of Glottochronology and Lexicostatisticsâ], Gengo kenkyu [Journal of the Linguistic Society of Japan] v26/27
The Korean settlers and their descendants used Kudara-on or Baekje pronunciation (ç¾æ¸é³), which was also called Tsushima-pronunciation (対馬é³) or Go-on (åé³).
An example of this mixed style is the Kojiki, which was written in 712 AD. They then started to use Chinese characters to write Japanese in a style known as , a syllabic script which used Chinese characters for their sounds in order to transcribe the words of Japanese speech syllable by syllable.
Over time, a writing system evolved. Chinese characters (kanji) were used to write either words borrowed from Chinese, or Japanese words with the same or similar meanings. Chinese characters were also used to write grammatical elements, were simplified, and eventually became two syllabic scripts: hiragana and katakana.
Modern Japanese is written in a mixture of three main systems: kanji, characters of Chinese origin used to represent both Chinese loanwords into Japanese and a number of native Japanese morphemes; and two syllabaries: hiragana and katakana. The Latin alphabet is also sometimes used. Arabic numerals are much more common than the kanji when used in counting, but kanji numerals are still used in compounds, such as ("unification").
Hiragana are used for words without kanji representation, for words no longer written in kanji, and also following kanji to show conjugational endings. Because of the way verbs (and adjectives) in Japanese are conjugated, kanji alone cannot fully convey Japanese tense and mood, as kanji cannot be subject to variation when written without losing its meaning. For this reason, hiragana are suffixed to the ends of kanji to show verb and adjective conjugations. Hiragana used in this way are called okurigana. Hiragana are also written in a superscript called furigana above or beside a kanji to show the proper reading. This is done to facilitate learning, as well as to clarify particularly old or obscure (or sometimes invented) readings.
Katakana, like hiragana, are a syllabary; katakana are primarily used to write foreign words, plant and animal names, and for emphasis. For example "Australia" has been adapted as ( ), and "supermarket" has been adapted and shortened into ( ). The Latin alphabet (in Japanese referred to as RÅmaji ( ), literally "Roman letters") is used for some loan words like "CD" and "DVD", and also for some Japanese creations like "Sony".
Historically, attempts to limit the number of kanji in use commenced in the mid-19th century, but did not become a matter of government intervention until after Japan's defeat in the Second World War. During the period of post-war occupation (and influenced by the views of some U.S. officials), various schemes including the complete abolition of kanji and exclusive use of rÅmaji were considered. The ("common use kanji", originally called [kanji for general use]) scheme arose as a compromise solution.
Japanese students begin to learn kanji from their first year at elementary school. A guideline created by the Japanese Ministry of Education, the list of ("education kanji", a subset of ), specifies the 1,006 simple characters a child is to learn by the end of sixth grade. Children continue to study another 939 characters in junior high school, covering in total 1,945 . The official list of was revised several times, but the total number of officially sanctioned characters remained largely unchanged.
As for kanji for personal names, the circumstances are somewhat complicated. and (an appendix of additional characters for names) are approved for registering personal names. Names containing unapproved characters are denied registration. However, as with the list of , criteria for inclusion were often arbitrary and led to many common and popular characters being disapproved for use. Under popular pressure and following a court decision holding the exclusion of common characters unlawful, the list of was substantially extended from 92 in 1951 (the year it was first decreed) to 983 in 2004. Furthermore, families whose names are not on these lists were permitted to continue using the older forms.
Many writers rely on newspaper circulation to publish their work with officially sanctioned characters. This distribution method is more efficient than traditional pen and paper publications.
Many major universities throughout the world provide Japanese language courses, and a number of secondary and even primary schools worldwide offer courses in the language. International interest in the Japanese language dates from the 1800s but has become more prevalent following Japan's economic bubble of the 1980s and the global popularity of Japanese pop culture (such as anime and video games) since the 1990s. About 2.3 million people studied the language worldwide in 2003: 900,000 South Koreans, 389,000 Chinese, 381,000 Australians, and 140,000 Americans study Japanese in lower and higher educational institutions.
In Japan, more than 90,000 foreign students study at Japanese universities and Japanese language schools, including 77,000 Chinese and 15,000 South Koreans in 2003. In addition, local governments and some NPO groups provide free Japanese language classes for foreign residents, including Japanese Brazilians and foreigners married to Japanese nationals. In the United Kingdom, studies are supported by the British Association for Japanese Studies. In Ireland, Japanese is offered as a language in the Leaving Certificate in some schools.
The Japanese government provides standardised tests to measure spoken and written comprehension of Japanese for second language learners; the most prominent is the Japanese Language Proficiency Test (JLPT), which features 4 levels of exams, ranging from elementary (4) to advanced (1). The Japanese External Trade Organization JETRO organizes the Business Japanese Proficiency Test which tests the learner's ability to understand Japanese in a business setting.
When learning Japanese in a college setting, students are usually first taught how to pronounce romaji. From that point, they are taught the two main syllabaries, with kanji usually being introduced in the second semester. Focus is usually first on polite (distal) speech, as students who might interact with native speakers would be expected to use. Casual speech and formal speech usually follow polite speech, as well as the usage of honorific.
* Classification of Japanese
* Culture of Japan
* Eurasiatic languages
* Henohenomoheji
* Japanese counter word
* Japanese dialects
* Japanese dictionaries
* Japanese language and computers
* Japonic languages
* Japanese literature
* Japanese name
* Japanese numerals
* Japanese orthography issues
* Japanese words and words derived from Japanese in other languages at Wiktionary, Wikipedia's sibling project
* Late Old Japanese
* Old Japanese
* Rendaku
* Romanization of Japanese
** Hepburn romanization
* Ryūkyūan languages
* Sino-Japanese vocabulary
* Yojijukugo
* Bloch, Bernard. (1946). Studies in colloquial Japanese I: Inflection. Journal of the American Oriental Society, 66, pp. 97 130.
* Bloch, Bernard. (1946). Studies in colloquial Japanese II: Syntax. Language, 22, pp. 200 248.
* Chafe, William L. (1976). Giveness, contrastiveness, definiteness, subjects, topics, and point of view. In C. Li (Ed.), Subject and topic (pp. 25 56). New York: Academic Press. ISBN 0-12-447350-4.
* Kuno, Susumu. (1973). The structure of the Japanese language. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. ISBN 0-262-11049-0.
* Kuno, Susumu. (1976). Subject, theme, and the speaker's empathy: A re-examination of relativization phenomena. In Charles N. Li (Ed.), Subject and topic (pp. 417 444). New York: Academic Press. ISBN 0-12-447350-4.
* Martin, Samuel E. (1975). A reference grammar of Japanese. New Haven: Yale University Press. ISBN 0-300-01813-4.
* McClain, Yoko Matsuoka. (1981). Handbook of modern Japanese grammar: [ ]. Tokyo: Hokuseido Press. ISBN 4-590-00570-0; ISBN 0-89346-149-0.
* Miller, Roy. (1967). The Japanese language. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
* Miller, Roy. (1980). Origins of the Japanese language: Lectures in Japan during the academic year, 1977 78. Seattle: University of Washington Press. ISBN 0-295-95766-2.
* Mizutani, Osamu; & Mizutani, Nobuko. (1987). How to be polite in Japanese: [ ]. Tokyo: Japan Times. ISBN 4789003388 ;
* Shibatani, Masayoshi. (1990). Japanese. In B. Comrie (Ed.), The major languages of east and south-east Asia. London: Routledge. ISBN 0-415-04739-0.
* Shibatani, Masayoshi. (1990). The languages of Japan. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-36070-6 (hbk); ISBN 0-521-36918-5 (pbk).
* Shibamoto, Janet S. (1985). Japanese women's language. New York: Academic Press. ISBN 0-12-640030-X. Graduate Level
* Tsujimura, Natsuko. (1996). An introduction to Japanese linguistics. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell Publishers. ISBN 0-631-19855-5 (hbk); ISBN 0-631-19856-3 (pbk). Upper Level Textbooks
* Tsujimura, Natsuko. (Ed.) (1999). The handbook of Japanese linguistics. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers. ISBN 0-631-20504-7. Readings/Anthologies
* Jim Breen's dictionary and translation server
* Nihongoresources Various dictionaries and worked out textbook grammar.
* Denshi Jisho Find words, example sentences and kanji (through words or radicals). Kanji also contain references to various dictionaries and textbooks.
* Tangorin.com Japanese Dictionary, standard dictionary and Kanji search with example sentences.
* Tatoeba Project, collaborative project that aims to collect example sentences. Has mostly Japanese and English sentences. The sentences can be downloaded.
* JapanOD.com, Japanese-English, English-Japanese dictionary with support for browsers without Japanese fonts
* OmegaJi: Free, opensource (GNU GPL) Japanese-English dictionary program with 190'000 expressions, based on the JMdict project.
* Eijiro Very complete Japanese-English and English-Japanese dictionary, with many example sentences.
* Sanseido Web Dictionary
* Basic verb conjugation search
* A free Japanese lesson finder
*
* Japanese phrasebook on WikiTravel
* Japanese Online Talk
* Tae Kim's guide to Japanese grammar
* Video lectures from York University
* Japanese - a Category III language Languages which are exceptionally difficult for native English speakers
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Japanese_language | Will a japanese person use vocabulary and inflections of the honorific register to refer to the in-group superior and Japanese language`s or Japanese language`s speech and actions ? | null | data/set5/a6 | Japanese_language
IPA: [nʲihoÅÉ¡o] is a language spoken by over 130 million people in Japan and in Japanese emigrant communities. It is related to the Japonic-Ryukyuan languages. Its relationships with other languages remain undemonstrated. It is an agglutinative language and is distinguished by a complex system of honorifics reflecting the hierarchical nature of Japanese society, with verb forms and particular vocabulary to indicate the relative status of the speaker, the listener, and a person mentioned in conversation (regardless of his or her presence). The sound inventory of Japanese is relatively small, and it has a lexically distinct pitch-accent system. It is a mora-timed language.
The Japanese language is written with a combination of three different types of scripts: modified Chinese characters called kanji (æ¼¢å), and two syllabic scripts made up of modified Chinese characters, hiragana (平仮å) and katakana (çä»®å). The Latin alphabet, rÅmaji (ãã¼ãå), is also often used in modern Japanese, especially for company names and logos, advertising, and when entering Japanese text into a computer. Western style Indian numerals are generally used for numbers, but traditional Sino-Japanese numerals are also commonplace.
Japanese vocabulary has been heavily influenced by loanwords from other languages. A vast number of words were borrowed from Chinese, or created from Chinese models, over a period of at least 1,500 years. Since the late 19th century, Japanese has borrowed a considerable number of words from Indo-European languages, primarily English. Because of the special trade relationship between Japan and first Portugal in the 16th century, and then mainly the Netherlands in the 17th century, Portuguese and Dutch have also been influential.
Although Japanese is spoken almost exclusively in Japan, it has been and sometimes still is spoken elsewhere. When Japan occupied Korea, Taiwan, parts of the Chinese mainland, the Philippines, and various Pacific islands before and during World War II, Japanese is listed as one of the official languages of Angaur state, Palau ( Ethnologe, CIA World Factbook). This official status is disputed; there were very few Japanese speakers on Angaur as of the 2005 census. locals in those countries were forced to learn Japanese in empire-building programs. As a result, there are many people in these countries who can speak Japanese in addition to the local languages. Japanese emigrant communities (the largest of which are to be found in Brazil ) sometimes employ Japanese as their primary language. Approximately 5% of Hawaii residents speak Japanese , with Japanese ancestry the largest single ancestry in the state (over 24% of the population). Japanese emigrants can also be found in Peru, Argentina, Australia (especially Sydney, Brisbane, Melbourne and Cairns), the United States (notably California, where 1.2% of the population has Japanese ancestry , and Hawaii), and the Philippines (particularly in Davao and Laguna). Their descendants, who are known as ( , literally Japanese descendants), however, rarely speak Japanese fluently after the second generation.
Japanese is the official language of Japan and in Palau, in the island of Angaur. There is a form of the language considered standard: Standard Japanese, or the common language. The meanings of the two terms are almost the same. or is a conception that forms the counterpart of dialect. This normative language was born after the from the language spoken in the higher-class areas of Tokyo for communicating necessity. is taught in schools and used on television and in official communications, and is the version of Japanese discussed in this article.
Formerly, standard was different from . The two systems have different rules of grammar and some variance in vocabulary. was the main method of writing Japanese until about 1900; since then gradually extended its influence and the two methods were both used in writing until the 1940s. still has some relevance for historians, literary scholars, and lawyers (many Japanese laws that survived World War II are still written in , although there are ongoing efforts to modernize their language). is the predominant method of both speaking and writing Japanese today, although grammar and vocabulary are occasionally used in modern Japanese for effect.
Provincial differences of copula da
Dozens of dialects are spoken in Japan. The profusion is due to many factors, including the length of time the archipelago has been inhabited, its mountainous island terrain, and Japan's long history of both external and internal isolation. Dialects typically differ in terms of pitch accent, inflectional morphology, vocabulary, and particle usage. Some even differ in vowel and consonant inventories, although this is uncommon.
The main distinction in Japanese accents is between and , though KyÅ«shÅ«-type dialects form a third, smaller group. Within each type are several subdivisions. Kyoto-Osaka-type dialects are in the central region, with borders roughly formed by Toyama, KyÅto, HyÅgo, and Mie Prefectures; most Shikoku dialects are also that type. The final category of dialects are those that are descended from the Eastern dialect of Old Japanese; these dialects are spoken in HachijÅ-jima island and few islands.
Dialects from peripheral regions, such as TÅhoku or Tsushima, may be unintelligible to speakers from other parts of the country. The several dialects of Kagoshima in southern KyÅ«shÅ« are famous for being unintelligible not only to speakers of standard Japanese but to speakers of nearby dialects elsewhere in KyÅ«shÅ« as well . This is probably due in part to the Kagoshima dialects' peculiarities of pronunciation, which include the existence of closed syllables (i.e., syllables that end in a consonant, such as or for Standard Japanese "spider"). A dialects group of Kansai is spoken and known by many Japanese, and Osaka dialect in particular is associated with comedy (See Kansai dialect). Dialects of TÅhoku and North KantÅ are associated with typical farmers.
The Ryūkyūan languages, spoken in Okinawa and Amami Islands that are politically part of Kagoshima, are distinct enough to be considered a separate branch of the Japonic family. But many Japanese common people tend to consider the Ryūkyūan languages as dialects of Japanese. Not only is each language unintelligible to Japanese speakers, but most are unintelligible to those who speak other Ryūkyūan languages.
Recently, Standard Japanese has become prevalent nationwide (including the Ryūkyū islands) due to education, mass media, and increase of mobility networks within Japan, as well as economic integration.
All Japanese vowels are pureâthat is, they are Monophthong with no prescence of diphthongs. The only unusual vowel is the high back vowel , which is like , but compressed instead of rounded. Japanese has five vowels, and vowel length is phonemic, so each one has both a short and a long version.
Some Japanese consonants have several allophones, which may give the impression of a larger inventory of sounds. However, some of these allophones have since become phonemic. For example, in the Japanese language up to and including the first half of the twentieth century, the phonemic sequence was palatalized and realized phonetically as , approximately chi ; however, now and are distinct, as evidenced by words like tī "Western style tea" and chii "social status".
The "r" of the Japanese language (technically a lateral apical postalveolar flap), is of particular interest, sounding to most English speakers to be something between an "l" and a retroflex "r" depending on its position in a word. The "g" is also notable; unless it starts a sentence, most speakers pronounce it like the ng in "singer".
The syllabic structure and the phonotactics are very simple: the only consonant clusters allowed within a syllable consist of one of a subset of the consonants plus . These type of clusters only occur in onsets. However, consonant clusters across syllables are allowed as long as the two consonants are a nasal followed by a homorganic consonant. Consonant length (gemination) is also phonemic.
Japanese word order is classified as Subject Object Verb. However, unlike many Indo-European languages, Japanese sentences only require that verbs come last for intelligibility. This is because the Japanese sentence elements are marked with particles that identify their grammatical functions.
The basic sentence structure is topic-comment. For example, ( ). ("this") is the topic of the sentence, indicated by the particle -wa. The verb is , a copula, commonly translated as "to be" or "it is" (though there are other verbs that can be translated as "to be"), though technically it holds no meaning and is used to give a sentence 'politeness'. As a phrase, is the comment. This sentence loosely translates to "As for this person, (it) is Mr./Mrs./Miss Tanaka." Thus Japanese, like Chinese, Korean, and many other Asian languages, is often called a topic-prominent language, which means it has a strong tendency to indicate the topic separately from the subject, and the two do not always coincide. The sentence ã( ) literally means, "As for elephants, (their) noses are long". The topic is "elephant", and the subject is "nose".
Japanese could be considered a pro-drop language, meaning that the subject or object of a sentence need not be stated if it is obvious from context. (Note however that Chomsky's original formulation of this category explicitly excluded languages such as Japanese.) In addition, it is commonly felt, particularly in spoken Japanese, that the shorter a sentence is, the better. As a result of this grammatical permissiveness and tendency towards brevity, Japanese speakers tend naturally to omit words from sentences, rather than refer to them with pronouns. In the context of the above example, would mean "[their] noses are long," while by itself would mean "[they] are long." A single verb can be a complete sentence: "[I / we / they / etc] did [it]!". In addition, since adjectives can form the predicate in a Japanese sentence (below), a single adjective can be a complete sentence: "[I'm] jealous [of it]!".
While the language has some words that are typically translated as pronouns, these are not used as frequently as pronouns in some Indo-European languages, and function differently. Instead, Japanese typically relies on special verb forms and auxiliary verbs to indicate the direction of benefit of an action: "down" to indicate the out-group gives a benefit to the in-group; and "up" to indicate the in-group gives a benefit to the out-group. Here, the in-group includes the speaker and the out-group doesn't, and their boundary depends on context. For example, (literally, "explained" with a benefit from the out-group to the in-group) means "[he/she/they] explained it to [me/us]". Similarly, (literally, "explained" with a benefit from the in-group to the out-group) means "[I/we] explained [it] to [him/her/them]". Such beneficiary auxiliary verbs thus serve a function comparable to that of pronouns and prepositions in Indo-European languages to indicate the actor and the recipient of an action.
Japanese "pronouns" also function differently from most modern Indo-European pronouns (and more like nouns) in that they can take modifiers as any other noun may. For instance, one cannot say in English:
: *The amazed he ran down the street. (grammatically incorrect)
But one can grammatically say essentially the same thing in Japanese:
: (grammatically correct)
This is partly due to the fact that these words evolved from regular nouns, such as "you" ( "lord"), "you" ( "that side, yonder"), and "I" ( "servant"). This is why some linguists do not classify Japanese "pronouns" as pronouns, but rather as referential nouns, much like Spanish usted or Portuguese o senhor. Japanese personal pronouns are generally used only in situations requiring special emphasis as to who is doing what to whom.
The choice of words used as pronouns is correlated with the sex of the speaker and the social situation in which they are spoken: men and women alike in a formal situation generally refer to themselves as ( "private") or (also ), while men in rougher or intimate conversation are much more likely to use the word ( "oneself", "myself") or . Similarly, different words such as , , and ( , more formally "the one before me") may be used to refer to a listener depending on the listener's relative social position and the degree of familiarity between the speaker and the listener. When used in different social relationships, the same word may have positive (intimate or respectful) or negative (distant or disrespectful) connotations.
Japanese often use titles of the person referred to where pronouns would be used in English. For example, when speaking to one's teacher, it is appropriate to use ( , teacher), but inappropriate to use . This is because is used to refer to people of equal or lower status, and one's teacher has allegedly higher status.
For English speaking learners of Japanese, a frequent beginners mistake is to include or at the beginning of sentences as one would with I or you in English. Though these sentences are not grammatically incorrect, even in formal settings it would be considered unnatural and would equate in English to repeatedly using a noun where a pronoun would suffice.
Japanese nouns have no grammatical number, gender or article aspect. The noun ( ) may refer to a single book or several books; ( ) can mean "person" or "people"; and ( ) can be "tree" or "trees". Where number is important, it can be indicated by providing a quantity (often with a counter word) or (rarely) by adding a suffix. Words for people are usually understood as singular. Thus usually means Mr./Ms. Tanaka. Words that refer to people and animals can be made to indicate a group of individuals through the addition of a collective suffix (a noun suffix that indicates a group), such as , but this is not a true plural: the meaning is closer to the English phrase "and company". A group described as may include people not named Tanaka. Some Japanese nouns are effectively plural, such as "people" and "we/us", while the word "friend" is considered singular, although plural in form.
Verbs are conjugated to show tenses, of which there are two: past and present, or non-past, which is used for the present and the future. For verbs that represent an ongoing process, the -te iru form indicates a continuous (or progressive) tense. For others that represent a change of state, the form indicates a perfect tense. For example, means "He has come (and is still here)", but means "He is eating".
Questions (both with an interrogative pronoun and yes/no questions) have the same structure as affirmative sentences, but with intonation rising at the end. In the formal register, the question particle is added. For example, ( ) "It is OK" becomes ( ) "Is it OK?". In a more informal tone sometimes the particle ( ) is added instead to show a personal interest of the speaker: "Why aren't (you) coming?". Some simple queries are formed simply by mentioning the topic with an interrogative intonation to call for the hearer's attention: "(What about) this?"; ( ) "(What's your) name?".
Negatives are formed by inflecting the verb. For example, ( ) "I will eat bread" or "I eat bread" becomes ( ) "I will not eat bread" or "I do not eat bread".
The so-called verb form is used for a variety of purposes: either progressive or perfect aspect (see above); combining verbs in a temporal sequence ( "I'll eat breakfast and leave at once"), simple commands, conditional statements and permissions ( "May I go out?"), etc.
The word (plain), (polite) is the copula verb. It corresponds approximately to the English be, but often takes on other roles, including a marker for tense, when the verb is conjugated into its past form (plain), (polite). This comes into use because only adjectives and verbs can carry tense in Japanese. Two additional common verbs are used to indicate existence ("there is") or, in some contexts, property: (negative ) and (negative ), for inanimate and animate things, respectively. For example, "There's a cat", "[I] haven't got a good idea". Note that the negative forms of the verbs and are actually i-adjectives and inflect as such, e.g. "There was no cat".
The verb "to do" ( , polite form ) is often used to make verbs from nouns ( "to cook", "to study", etc.) and has been productive in creating modern slang words. Japanese also has a huge number of compound verbs to express concepts that are described in English using a verb and a preposition (e.g. "to fly out, to flee," from "to fly, to jump" + "to put out, to emit").
There are three types of adjective (see also Japanese adjectives):
# , or adjectives, which have a conjugating ending ( ) (such as "to be hot") which can become past ( "it was hot"), or negative ( "it is not hot"). Note that is also an adjective, which can become past ( "it was not hot").
#: "a hot day".
# , or adjectives, which are followed by a form of the copula, usually . For example (strange)
#: "a strange person".
# , also called true adjectives, such as "that"
#: "that mountain".
Both and may predicate sentences. For example,
: "The rice is hot."
: "He's strange."
Both inflect, though they do not show the full range of conjugation found in true verbs.
The in Modern Japanese are few in number, and unlike the other words, are limited to directly modifying nouns. They never predicate sentences. Examples include "big", "this", "so-called" and "amazing".
Both and form adverbs, by following with in the case of :
: "become strange",
and by changing to in the case of :
: "become hot".
The grammatical function of nouns is indicated by postpositions, also called particles. These include for example:
* for the nominative case. Not necessarily a subject.
: "He did it."
* for the dative case.
: "Please give it to Mr. Tanaka."
It is also used for the lative case, indicating a motion to a location.
: "I want to go to Japan."
* for the genitive case, or nominalizing phrases.
: "my camera"
: "(I) like going skiing."
* for the accusative case. Not necessarily an object.
: "What will (you) eat?"
* for the topic. It can co-exist with case markers above except , and it overrides and .
: "As for me, Thai food is good." The nominative marker after is hidden under . (Note that English generally makes no distinction between sentence topic and subject.)
Note: The difference between and goes beyond the English distinction between sentence topic and subject. While indicates the topic, which the rest of the sentence describes or acts upon, it carries the implication that the subject indicated by is not unique, or may be part of a larger group.
: "As for Mr. Ikeda, he is forty-two years old." Others in the group may also be of that age.
Absence of often means the subject is the focus of the sentence.
: "It is Mr. Ikeda who is forty-two years old." This is a reply to an implicit or explicit question who in this group is forty-two years old.
Unlike most western languages, Japanese has an extensive grammatical system to express politeness and formality.
Most relationships are not equal in Japanese society. The differences in social position are determined by a variety of factors including job, age, experience, or even psychological state (e.g., a person asking a favour tends to do so politely). The person in the lower position is expected to use a polite form of speech, whereas the other might use a more plain form. Strangers will also speak to each other politely. Japanese children rarely use polite speech until they are teens, at which point they are expected to begin speaking in a more adult manner. See uchi-soto.
Whereas ( ) (polite language) is commonly an inflectional system, ( ) (respectful language) and ( ) (humble language) often employ many special honorific and humble alternate verbs: "go" becomes in polite form, but is replaced by in honorific speech and or in humble speech.
The difference between honorific and humble speech is particularly pronounced in the Japanese language. Humble language is used to talk about oneself or one's own group (company, family) whilst honorific language is mostly used when describing the interlocutor and his/her group. For example, the suffix ("Mr" "Mrs." or "Miss") is an example of honorific language. It is not used to talk about oneself or when talking about someone from one's company to an external person, since the company is the speaker's "group". When speaking directly to one's superior in one's company or when speaking with other employees within one's company about a superior, a Japanese person will use vocabulary and inflections of the honorific register to refer to the in-group superior and his or her speech and actions. When speaking to a person from another company (i.e., a member of an out-group), however, a Japanese person will use the plain or the humble register to refer to the speech and actions of his or her own in-group superiors. In short, the register used in Japanese to refer to the person, speech, or actions of any particular individual varies depending on the relationship (either in-group or out-group) between the speaker and listener, as well as depending on the relative status of the speaker, listener, and third-person referents. For this reason, the Japanese system for explicit indication of social register is known as a system of "relative honorifics." This stands in stark contrast to the Korean system of "absolute honorifics," in which the same register is used to refer to a particular individual (e.g. one's father, one's company president, etc.) in any context regardless of the relationship between the speaker and interlocutor. Thus, polite Korean speech can sound very presumptuous when translated verbatim into Japanese, as in Korean it is acceptable and normal to say things like "Our Mr. Company-President..." when communicating with a member of an out-group, which would be very inappropriate in a Japanese social context.
Most nouns in the Japanese language may be made polite by the addition of or as a prefix. is generally used for words of native Japanese origin, whereas is affixed to words of Chinese derivation. In some cases, the prefix has become a fixed part of the word, and is included even in regular speech, such as 'cooked rice; meal.' Such a construction often indicates deference to either the item's owner or to the object itself. For example, the word 'friend,' would become when referring to the friend of someone of higher status (though mothers often use this form to refer to their children's friends). On the other hand, a polite speaker may sometimes refer to 'water' as in order to show politeness.
Most Japanese people employ politeness to indicate a lack of familiarity. That is, they use polite forms for new acquaintances, but if a relationship becomes more intimate, they no longer use them. This occurs regardless of age, social class, or gender.
The original language of Japan, or at least the original language of a certain population that was ancestral to a significant portion of the historical and present Japanese nation, was the so-called ( or infrequently , i.e. "Yamato words"), which in scholarly contexts is sometimes referred to as ( or rarely , i.e. the words"). In addition to words from this original language, present-day Japanese includes a great number of words that were either borrowed from Chinese or constructed from Chinese roots following Chinese patterns. These words, known as ( ), entered the language from the fifth century onwards via contact with Chinese culture. According to a Japanese dictionary Shinsen-kokugojiten (æ°é¸å½èªè¾å
¸), Chinese-based words comprise 49.1% of the total vocabulary, Wago is 33.8% and other foreign words are 8.8%. æ°é¸å½èªè¾å
¸, éç°ä¸äº¬å©, å°å¦é¤¨, 2001, ISBN 4095014075
Like Latin-derived words in English, words typically are perceived as somewhat formal or academic compared to equivalent Yamato words. Indeed, it is generally fair to say that an English word derived from Latin/French roots typically corresponds to a Sino-Japanese word in Japanese, whereas a simpler Anglo-Saxon word would best be translated by a Yamato equivalent.
A much smaller number of words has been borrowed from Korean and Ainu. Japan has also borrowed a number of words from other languages, particularly ones of European extraction, which are called . This began with borrowings from Portuguese in the 16th century, followed by borrowing from Dutch during Japan's long isolation of the Edo period. With the Meiji Restoration and the reopening of Japan in the 19th century, borrowing occurred from German, French and English. Currently, words of English origin are the most commonly borrowed.
In the Meiji era, the Japanese also coined many neologisms using Chinese roots and morphology to translate Western concepts. The Chinese and Koreans imported many of these pseudo-Chinese words into Chinese, Korean, and Vietnamese via their kanji in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. For example, ("politics"), and ("chemistry") are words derived from Chinese roots that were first created and used by the Japanese, and only later borrowed into Chinese and other East Asian languages. As a result, Japanese, Chinese, Korean, and Vietnamese share a large common corpus of vocabulary in the same way a large number of Greek- and Latin-derived words are shared among modern European languages, although many academic words formed from such roots were certainly coined by native speakers of other languages, such as English.
In the past few decades, (made-in-Japan English) has become a prominent phenomenon. Words such as ( Book of Song é å¸ææäºå¹´ï¼é£ä½¿ä¸è¡¨æ°ï¼å°ååé ï¼ä½è©äºå¤ï¼èªæç¥ç¦°ï¼èº¬æç²åï¼è·æ¸å±±å·ï¼ä¸é寧èãæ±å¾æ¯äººäºååï¼è¥¿æè¡å¤·å
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¶é¤å¸ååæï¼ä»¥å¸å¿ ç¯ã After the ruin of Baekje, Japan invited scholars from China to learn more of the Chinese writing system. Japanese Emperors gave an official rank to Chinese scholars (ç¶å®è¨/è©å¼æ ¼/ Nihon shoki Chapter 30:æçµ±äºå¹´ ä¹æ己巳æ壬ç³ãè³é³å士大åç¶å®è¨ãè©å¼æªãæ¸å士ç¾æ¸æ«å£«åä¿¡ãé人äºå両ã Nihon shoki Chapter 30:æçµ±å
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é³ãçºå¤§å¦é³å士ãæ¼å¾ãæ´å¤§å¦é å®æ¿å®ã ) and spread the use of Chinese characters from the 7th century to the 8th century.
The table of Kana. (Hiragana top, Katakana in the center and Romaji on the bottom.)
At first, the Japanese wrote in Classical Chinese, with Japanese names represented by characters used for their meanings and not their sounds. Later, during the seventh century CE, the Chinese-sounding phoneme principle was used to write pure Japanese poetry and prose (comparable to Akkadian's retention of Sumerian cuneiform), but some Japanese words were still written with characters for their meaning and not the original Chinese sound. This is when the history of Japanese as a written language begins in its own right. By this time, the Japanese language was already distinct from the Ryukyuan languages. What leaves a mark should no longer stain: Progressive erasure and reversing language shift activities in the Ryukyu Islands, 2005, citing Hattori, Shiro (1954) 'Gengo nendaigaku sunawachi goi tokeigaku no hoho ni tsuite' [âConcerning the Method of Glottochronology and Lexicostatisticsâ], Gengo kenkyu [Journal of the Linguistic Society of Japan] v26/27
The Korean settlers and their descendants used Kudara-on or Baekje pronunciation (ç¾æ¸é³), which was also called Tsushima-pronunciation (対馬é³) or Go-on (åé³).
An example of this mixed style is the Kojiki, which was written in 712 AD. They then started to use Chinese characters to write Japanese in a style known as , a syllabic script which used Chinese characters for their sounds in order to transcribe the words of Japanese speech syllable by syllable.
Over time, a writing system evolved. Chinese characters (kanji) were used to write either words borrowed from Chinese, or Japanese words with the same or similar meanings. Chinese characters were also used to write grammatical elements, were simplified, and eventually became two syllabic scripts: hiragana and katakana.
Modern Japanese is written in a mixture of three main systems: kanji, characters of Chinese origin used to represent both Chinese loanwords into Japanese and a number of native Japanese morphemes; and two syllabaries: hiragana and katakana. The Latin alphabet is also sometimes used. Arabic numerals are much more common than the kanji when used in counting, but kanji numerals are still used in compounds, such as ("unification").
Hiragana are used for words without kanji representation, for words no longer written in kanji, and also following kanji to show conjugational endings. Because of the way verbs (and adjectives) in Japanese are conjugated, kanji alone cannot fully convey Japanese tense and mood, as kanji cannot be subject to variation when written without losing its meaning. For this reason, hiragana are suffixed to the ends of kanji to show verb and adjective conjugations. Hiragana used in this way are called okurigana. Hiragana are also written in a superscript called furigana above or beside a kanji to show the proper reading. This is done to facilitate learning, as well as to clarify particularly old or obscure (or sometimes invented) readings.
Katakana, like hiragana, are a syllabary; katakana are primarily used to write foreign words, plant and animal names, and for emphasis. For example "Australia" has been adapted as ( ), and "supermarket" has been adapted and shortened into ( ). The Latin alphabet (in Japanese referred to as RÅmaji ( ), literally "Roman letters") is used for some loan words like "CD" and "DVD", and also for some Japanese creations like "Sony".
Historically, attempts to limit the number of kanji in use commenced in the mid-19th century, but did not become a matter of government intervention until after Japan's defeat in the Second World War. During the period of post-war occupation (and influenced by the views of some U.S. officials), various schemes including the complete abolition of kanji and exclusive use of rÅmaji were considered. The ("common use kanji", originally called [kanji for general use]) scheme arose as a compromise solution.
Japanese students begin to learn kanji from their first year at elementary school. A guideline created by the Japanese Ministry of Education, the list of ("education kanji", a subset of ), specifies the 1,006 simple characters a child is to learn by the end of sixth grade. Children continue to study another 939 characters in junior high school, covering in total 1,945 . The official list of was revised several times, but the total number of officially sanctioned characters remained largely unchanged.
As for kanji for personal names, the circumstances are somewhat complicated. and (an appendix of additional characters for names) are approved for registering personal names. Names containing unapproved characters are denied registration. However, as with the list of , criteria for inclusion were often arbitrary and led to many common and popular characters being disapproved for use. Under popular pressure and following a court decision holding the exclusion of common characters unlawful, the list of was substantially extended from 92 in 1951 (the year it was first decreed) to 983 in 2004. Furthermore, families whose names are not on these lists were permitted to continue using the older forms.
Many writers rely on newspaper circulation to publish their work with officially sanctioned characters. This distribution method is more efficient than traditional pen and paper publications.
Many major universities throughout the world provide Japanese language courses, and a number of secondary and even primary schools worldwide offer courses in the language. International interest in the Japanese language dates from the 1800s but has become more prevalent following Japan's economic bubble of the 1980s and the global popularity of Japanese pop culture (such as anime and video games) since the 1990s. About 2.3 million people studied the language worldwide in 2003: 900,000 South Koreans, 389,000 Chinese, 381,000 Australians, and 140,000 Americans study Japanese in lower and higher educational institutions.
In Japan, more than 90,000 foreign students study at Japanese universities and Japanese language schools, including 77,000 Chinese and 15,000 South Koreans in 2003. In addition, local governments and some NPO groups provide free Japanese language classes for foreign residents, including Japanese Brazilians and foreigners married to Japanese nationals. In the United Kingdom, studies are supported by the British Association for Japanese Studies. In Ireland, Japanese is offered as a language in the Leaving Certificate in some schools.
The Japanese government provides standardised tests to measure spoken and written comprehension of Japanese for second language learners; the most prominent is the Japanese Language Proficiency Test (JLPT), which features 4 levels of exams, ranging from elementary (4) to advanced (1). The Japanese External Trade Organization JETRO organizes the Business Japanese Proficiency Test which tests the learner's ability to understand Japanese in a business setting.
When learning Japanese in a college setting, students are usually first taught how to pronounce romaji. From that point, they are taught the two main syllabaries, with kanji usually being introduced in the second semester. Focus is usually first on polite (distal) speech, as students who might interact with native speakers would be expected to use. Casual speech and formal speech usually follow polite speech, as well as the usage of honorific.
* Classification of Japanese
* Culture of Japan
* Eurasiatic languages
* Henohenomoheji
* Japanese counter word
* Japanese dialects
* Japanese dictionaries
* Japanese language and computers
* Japonic languages
* Japanese literature
* Japanese name
* Japanese numerals
* Japanese orthography issues
* Japanese words and words derived from Japanese in other languages at Wiktionary, Wikipedia's sibling project
* Late Old Japanese
* Old Japanese
* Rendaku
* Romanization of Japanese
** Hepburn romanization
* Ryūkyūan languages
* Sino-Japanese vocabulary
* Yojijukugo
* Bloch, Bernard. (1946). Studies in colloquial Japanese I: Inflection. Journal of the American Oriental Society, 66, pp. 97 130.
* Bloch, Bernard. (1946). Studies in colloquial Japanese II: Syntax. Language, 22, pp. 200 248.
* Chafe, William L. (1976). Giveness, contrastiveness, definiteness, subjects, topics, and point of view. In C. Li (Ed.), Subject and topic (pp. 25 56). New York: Academic Press. ISBN 0-12-447350-4.
* Kuno, Susumu. (1973). The structure of the Japanese language. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. ISBN 0-262-11049-0.
* Kuno, Susumu. (1976). Subject, theme, and the speaker's empathy: A re-examination of relativization phenomena. In Charles N. Li (Ed.), Subject and topic (pp. 417 444). New York: Academic Press. ISBN 0-12-447350-4.
* Martin, Samuel E. (1975). A reference grammar of Japanese. New Haven: Yale University Press. ISBN 0-300-01813-4.
* McClain, Yoko Matsuoka. (1981). Handbook of modern Japanese grammar: [ ]. Tokyo: Hokuseido Press. ISBN 4-590-00570-0; ISBN 0-89346-149-0.
* Miller, Roy. (1967). The Japanese language. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
* Miller, Roy. (1980). Origins of the Japanese language: Lectures in Japan during the academic year, 1977 78. Seattle: University of Washington Press. ISBN 0-295-95766-2.
* Mizutani, Osamu; & Mizutani, Nobuko. (1987). How to be polite in Japanese: [ ]. Tokyo: Japan Times. ISBN 4789003388 ;
* Shibatani, Masayoshi. (1990). Japanese. In B. Comrie (Ed.), The major languages of east and south-east Asia. London: Routledge. ISBN 0-415-04739-0.
* Shibatani, Masayoshi. (1990). The languages of Japan. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-36070-6 (hbk); ISBN 0-521-36918-5 (pbk).
* Shibamoto, Janet S. (1985). Japanese women's language. New York: Academic Press. ISBN 0-12-640030-X. Graduate Level
* Tsujimura, Natsuko. (1996). An introduction to Japanese linguistics. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell Publishers. ISBN 0-631-19855-5 (hbk); ISBN 0-631-19856-3 (pbk). Upper Level Textbooks
* Tsujimura, Natsuko. (Ed.) (1999). The handbook of Japanese linguistics. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers. ISBN 0-631-20504-7. Readings/Anthologies
* Jim Breen's dictionary and translation server
* Nihongoresources Various dictionaries and worked out textbook grammar.
* Denshi Jisho Find words, example sentences and kanji (through words or radicals). Kanji also contain references to various dictionaries and textbooks.
* Tangorin.com Japanese Dictionary, standard dictionary and Kanji search with example sentences.
* Tatoeba Project, collaborative project that aims to collect example sentences. Has mostly Japanese and English sentences. The sentences can be downloaded.
* JapanOD.com, Japanese-English, English-Japanese dictionary with support for browsers without Japanese fonts
* OmegaJi: Free, opensource (GNU GPL) Japanese-English dictionary program with 190'000 expressions, based on the JMdict project.
* Eijiro Very complete Japanese-English and English-Japanese dictionary, with many example sentences.
* Sanseido Web Dictionary
* Basic verb conjugation search
* A free Japanese lesson finder
*
* Japanese phrasebook on WikiTravel
* Japanese Online Talk
* Tae Kim's guide to Japanese grammar
* Video lectures from York University
* Japanese - a Category III language Languages which are exceptionally difficult for native English speakers
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Japanese_language | Thus , can polite korean speech sound very presumptuous when translated verbatim into Japanese , as in korean Japanese language is acceptable and normal to say things like "our Mr ? | null | data/set5/a6 | Japanese_language
IPA: [nʲihoÅÉ¡o] is a language spoken by over 130 million people in Japan and in Japanese emigrant communities. It is related to the Japonic-Ryukyuan languages. Its relationships with other languages remain undemonstrated. It is an agglutinative language and is distinguished by a complex system of honorifics reflecting the hierarchical nature of Japanese society, with verb forms and particular vocabulary to indicate the relative status of the speaker, the listener, and a person mentioned in conversation (regardless of his or her presence). The sound inventory of Japanese is relatively small, and it has a lexically distinct pitch-accent system. It is a mora-timed language.
The Japanese language is written with a combination of three different types of scripts: modified Chinese characters called kanji (æ¼¢å), and two syllabic scripts made up of modified Chinese characters, hiragana (平仮å) and katakana (çä»®å). The Latin alphabet, rÅmaji (ãã¼ãå), is also often used in modern Japanese, especially for company names and logos, advertising, and when entering Japanese text into a computer. Western style Indian numerals are generally used for numbers, but traditional Sino-Japanese numerals are also commonplace.
Japanese vocabulary has been heavily influenced by loanwords from other languages. A vast number of words were borrowed from Chinese, or created from Chinese models, over a period of at least 1,500 years. Since the late 19th century, Japanese has borrowed a considerable number of words from Indo-European languages, primarily English. Because of the special trade relationship between Japan and first Portugal in the 16th century, and then mainly the Netherlands in the 17th century, Portuguese and Dutch have also been influential.
Although Japanese is spoken almost exclusively in Japan, it has been and sometimes still is spoken elsewhere. When Japan occupied Korea, Taiwan, parts of the Chinese mainland, the Philippines, and various Pacific islands before and during World War II, Japanese is listed as one of the official languages of Angaur state, Palau ( Ethnologe, CIA World Factbook). This official status is disputed; there were very few Japanese speakers on Angaur as of the 2005 census. locals in those countries were forced to learn Japanese in empire-building programs. As a result, there are many people in these countries who can speak Japanese in addition to the local languages. Japanese emigrant communities (the largest of which are to be found in Brazil ) sometimes employ Japanese as their primary language. Approximately 5% of Hawaii residents speak Japanese , with Japanese ancestry the largest single ancestry in the state (over 24% of the population). Japanese emigrants can also be found in Peru, Argentina, Australia (especially Sydney, Brisbane, Melbourne and Cairns), the United States (notably California, where 1.2% of the population has Japanese ancestry , and Hawaii), and the Philippines (particularly in Davao and Laguna). Their descendants, who are known as ( , literally Japanese descendants), however, rarely speak Japanese fluently after the second generation.
Japanese is the official language of Japan and in Palau, in the island of Angaur. There is a form of the language considered standard: Standard Japanese, or the common language. The meanings of the two terms are almost the same. or is a conception that forms the counterpart of dialect. This normative language was born after the from the language spoken in the higher-class areas of Tokyo for communicating necessity. is taught in schools and used on television and in official communications, and is the version of Japanese discussed in this article.
Formerly, standard was different from . The two systems have different rules of grammar and some variance in vocabulary. was the main method of writing Japanese until about 1900; since then gradually extended its influence and the two methods were both used in writing until the 1940s. still has some relevance for historians, literary scholars, and lawyers (many Japanese laws that survived World War II are still written in , although there are ongoing efforts to modernize their language). is the predominant method of both speaking and writing Japanese today, although grammar and vocabulary are occasionally used in modern Japanese for effect.
Provincial differences of copula da
Dozens of dialects are spoken in Japan. The profusion is due to many factors, including the length of time the archipelago has been inhabited, its mountainous island terrain, and Japan's long history of both external and internal isolation. Dialects typically differ in terms of pitch accent, inflectional morphology, vocabulary, and particle usage. Some even differ in vowel and consonant inventories, although this is uncommon.
The main distinction in Japanese accents is between and , though KyÅ«shÅ«-type dialects form a third, smaller group. Within each type are several subdivisions. Kyoto-Osaka-type dialects are in the central region, with borders roughly formed by Toyama, KyÅto, HyÅgo, and Mie Prefectures; most Shikoku dialects are also that type. The final category of dialects are those that are descended from the Eastern dialect of Old Japanese; these dialects are spoken in HachijÅ-jima island and few islands.
Dialects from peripheral regions, such as TÅhoku or Tsushima, may be unintelligible to speakers from other parts of the country. The several dialects of Kagoshima in southern KyÅ«shÅ« are famous for being unintelligible not only to speakers of standard Japanese but to speakers of nearby dialects elsewhere in KyÅ«shÅ« as well . This is probably due in part to the Kagoshima dialects' peculiarities of pronunciation, which include the existence of closed syllables (i.e., syllables that end in a consonant, such as or for Standard Japanese "spider"). A dialects group of Kansai is spoken and known by many Japanese, and Osaka dialect in particular is associated with comedy (See Kansai dialect). Dialects of TÅhoku and North KantÅ are associated with typical farmers.
The Ryūkyūan languages, spoken in Okinawa and Amami Islands that are politically part of Kagoshima, are distinct enough to be considered a separate branch of the Japonic family. But many Japanese common people tend to consider the Ryūkyūan languages as dialects of Japanese. Not only is each language unintelligible to Japanese speakers, but most are unintelligible to those who speak other Ryūkyūan languages.
Recently, Standard Japanese has become prevalent nationwide (including the Ryūkyū islands) due to education, mass media, and increase of mobility networks within Japan, as well as economic integration.
All Japanese vowels are pureâthat is, they are Monophthong with no prescence of diphthongs. The only unusual vowel is the high back vowel , which is like , but compressed instead of rounded. Japanese has five vowels, and vowel length is phonemic, so each one has both a short and a long version.
Some Japanese consonants have several allophones, which may give the impression of a larger inventory of sounds. However, some of these allophones have since become phonemic. For example, in the Japanese language up to and including the first half of the twentieth century, the phonemic sequence was palatalized and realized phonetically as , approximately chi ; however, now and are distinct, as evidenced by words like tī "Western style tea" and chii "social status".
The "r" of the Japanese language (technically a lateral apical postalveolar flap), is of particular interest, sounding to most English speakers to be something between an "l" and a retroflex "r" depending on its position in a word. The "g" is also notable; unless it starts a sentence, most speakers pronounce it like the ng in "singer".
The syllabic structure and the phonotactics are very simple: the only consonant clusters allowed within a syllable consist of one of a subset of the consonants plus . These type of clusters only occur in onsets. However, consonant clusters across syllables are allowed as long as the two consonants are a nasal followed by a homorganic consonant. Consonant length (gemination) is also phonemic.
Japanese word order is classified as Subject Object Verb. However, unlike many Indo-European languages, Japanese sentences only require that verbs come last for intelligibility. This is because the Japanese sentence elements are marked with particles that identify their grammatical functions.
The basic sentence structure is topic-comment. For example, ( ). ("this") is the topic of the sentence, indicated by the particle -wa. The verb is , a copula, commonly translated as "to be" or "it is" (though there are other verbs that can be translated as "to be"), though technically it holds no meaning and is used to give a sentence 'politeness'. As a phrase, is the comment. This sentence loosely translates to "As for this person, (it) is Mr./Mrs./Miss Tanaka." Thus Japanese, like Chinese, Korean, and many other Asian languages, is often called a topic-prominent language, which means it has a strong tendency to indicate the topic separately from the subject, and the two do not always coincide. The sentence ã( ) literally means, "As for elephants, (their) noses are long". The topic is "elephant", and the subject is "nose".
Japanese could be considered a pro-drop language, meaning that the subject or object of a sentence need not be stated if it is obvious from context. (Note however that Chomsky's original formulation of this category explicitly excluded languages such as Japanese.) In addition, it is commonly felt, particularly in spoken Japanese, that the shorter a sentence is, the better. As a result of this grammatical permissiveness and tendency towards brevity, Japanese speakers tend naturally to omit words from sentences, rather than refer to them with pronouns. In the context of the above example, would mean "[their] noses are long," while by itself would mean "[they] are long." A single verb can be a complete sentence: "[I / we / they / etc] did [it]!". In addition, since adjectives can form the predicate in a Japanese sentence (below), a single adjective can be a complete sentence: "[I'm] jealous [of it]!".
While the language has some words that are typically translated as pronouns, these are not used as frequently as pronouns in some Indo-European languages, and function differently. Instead, Japanese typically relies on special verb forms and auxiliary verbs to indicate the direction of benefit of an action: "down" to indicate the out-group gives a benefit to the in-group; and "up" to indicate the in-group gives a benefit to the out-group. Here, the in-group includes the speaker and the out-group doesn't, and their boundary depends on context. For example, (literally, "explained" with a benefit from the out-group to the in-group) means "[he/she/they] explained it to [me/us]". Similarly, (literally, "explained" with a benefit from the in-group to the out-group) means "[I/we] explained [it] to [him/her/them]". Such beneficiary auxiliary verbs thus serve a function comparable to that of pronouns and prepositions in Indo-European languages to indicate the actor and the recipient of an action.
Japanese "pronouns" also function differently from most modern Indo-European pronouns (and more like nouns) in that they can take modifiers as any other noun may. For instance, one cannot say in English:
: *The amazed he ran down the street. (grammatically incorrect)
But one can grammatically say essentially the same thing in Japanese:
: (grammatically correct)
This is partly due to the fact that these words evolved from regular nouns, such as "you" ( "lord"), "you" ( "that side, yonder"), and "I" ( "servant"). This is why some linguists do not classify Japanese "pronouns" as pronouns, but rather as referential nouns, much like Spanish usted or Portuguese o senhor. Japanese personal pronouns are generally used only in situations requiring special emphasis as to who is doing what to whom.
The choice of words used as pronouns is correlated with the sex of the speaker and the social situation in which they are spoken: men and women alike in a formal situation generally refer to themselves as ( "private") or (also ), while men in rougher or intimate conversation are much more likely to use the word ( "oneself", "myself") or . Similarly, different words such as , , and ( , more formally "the one before me") may be used to refer to a listener depending on the listener's relative social position and the degree of familiarity between the speaker and the listener. When used in different social relationships, the same word may have positive (intimate or respectful) or negative (distant or disrespectful) connotations.
Japanese often use titles of the person referred to where pronouns would be used in English. For example, when speaking to one's teacher, it is appropriate to use ( , teacher), but inappropriate to use . This is because is used to refer to people of equal or lower status, and one's teacher has allegedly higher status.
For English speaking learners of Japanese, a frequent beginners mistake is to include or at the beginning of sentences as one would with I or you in English. Though these sentences are not grammatically incorrect, even in formal settings it would be considered unnatural and would equate in English to repeatedly using a noun where a pronoun would suffice.
Japanese nouns have no grammatical number, gender or article aspect. The noun ( ) may refer to a single book or several books; ( ) can mean "person" or "people"; and ( ) can be "tree" or "trees". Where number is important, it can be indicated by providing a quantity (often with a counter word) or (rarely) by adding a suffix. Words for people are usually understood as singular. Thus usually means Mr./Ms. Tanaka. Words that refer to people and animals can be made to indicate a group of individuals through the addition of a collective suffix (a noun suffix that indicates a group), such as , but this is not a true plural: the meaning is closer to the English phrase "and company". A group described as may include people not named Tanaka. Some Japanese nouns are effectively plural, such as "people" and "we/us", while the word "friend" is considered singular, although plural in form.
Verbs are conjugated to show tenses, of which there are two: past and present, or non-past, which is used for the present and the future. For verbs that represent an ongoing process, the -te iru form indicates a continuous (or progressive) tense. For others that represent a change of state, the form indicates a perfect tense. For example, means "He has come (and is still here)", but means "He is eating".
Questions (both with an interrogative pronoun and yes/no questions) have the same structure as affirmative sentences, but with intonation rising at the end. In the formal register, the question particle is added. For example, ( ) "It is OK" becomes ( ) "Is it OK?". In a more informal tone sometimes the particle ( ) is added instead to show a personal interest of the speaker: "Why aren't (you) coming?". Some simple queries are formed simply by mentioning the topic with an interrogative intonation to call for the hearer's attention: "(What about) this?"; ( ) "(What's your) name?".
Negatives are formed by inflecting the verb. For example, ( ) "I will eat bread" or "I eat bread" becomes ( ) "I will not eat bread" or "I do not eat bread".
The so-called verb form is used for a variety of purposes: either progressive or perfect aspect (see above); combining verbs in a temporal sequence ( "I'll eat breakfast and leave at once"), simple commands, conditional statements and permissions ( "May I go out?"), etc.
The word (plain), (polite) is the copula verb. It corresponds approximately to the English be, but often takes on other roles, including a marker for tense, when the verb is conjugated into its past form (plain), (polite). This comes into use because only adjectives and verbs can carry tense in Japanese. Two additional common verbs are used to indicate existence ("there is") or, in some contexts, property: (negative ) and (negative ), for inanimate and animate things, respectively. For example, "There's a cat", "[I] haven't got a good idea". Note that the negative forms of the verbs and are actually i-adjectives and inflect as such, e.g. "There was no cat".
The verb "to do" ( , polite form ) is often used to make verbs from nouns ( "to cook", "to study", etc.) and has been productive in creating modern slang words. Japanese also has a huge number of compound verbs to express concepts that are described in English using a verb and a preposition (e.g. "to fly out, to flee," from "to fly, to jump" + "to put out, to emit").
There are three types of adjective (see also Japanese adjectives):
# , or adjectives, which have a conjugating ending ( ) (such as "to be hot") which can become past ( "it was hot"), or negative ( "it is not hot"). Note that is also an adjective, which can become past ( "it was not hot").
#: "a hot day".
# , or adjectives, which are followed by a form of the copula, usually . For example (strange)
#: "a strange person".
# , also called true adjectives, such as "that"
#: "that mountain".
Both and may predicate sentences. For example,
: "The rice is hot."
: "He's strange."
Both inflect, though they do not show the full range of conjugation found in true verbs.
The in Modern Japanese are few in number, and unlike the other words, are limited to directly modifying nouns. They never predicate sentences. Examples include "big", "this", "so-called" and "amazing".
Both and form adverbs, by following with in the case of :
: "become strange",
and by changing to in the case of :
: "become hot".
The grammatical function of nouns is indicated by postpositions, also called particles. These include for example:
* for the nominative case. Not necessarily a subject.
: "He did it."
* for the dative case.
: "Please give it to Mr. Tanaka."
It is also used for the lative case, indicating a motion to a location.
: "I want to go to Japan."
* for the genitive case, or nominalizing phrases.
: "my camera"
: "(I) like going skiing."
* for the accusative case. Not necessarily an object.
: "What will (you) eat?"
* for the topic. It can co-exist with case markers above except , and it overrides and .
: "As for me, Thai food is good." The nominative marker after is hidden under . (Note that English generally makes no distinction between sentence topic and subject.)
Note: The difference between and goes beyond the English distinction between sentence topic and subject. While indicates the topic, which the rest of the sentence describes or acts upon, it carries the implication that the subject indicated by is not unique, or may be part of a larger group.
: "As for Mr. Ikeda, he is forty-two years old." Others in the group may also be of that age.
Absence of often means the subject is the focus of the sentence.
: "It is Mr. Ikeda who is forty-two years old." This is a reply to an implicit or explicit question who in this group is forty-two years old.
Unlike most western languages, Japanese has an extensive grammatical system to express politeness and formality.
Most relationships are not equal in Japanese society. The differences in social position are determined by a variety of factors including job, age, experience, or even psychological state (e.g., a person asking a favour tends to do so politely). The person in the lower position is expected to use a polite form of speech, whereas the other might use a more plain form. Strangers will also speak to each other politely. Japanese children rarely use polite speech until they are teens, at which point they are expected to begin speaking in a more adult manner. See uchi-soto.
Whereas ( ) (polite language) is commonly an inflectional system, ( ) (respectful language) and ( ) (humble language) often employ many special honorific and humble alternate verbs: "go" becomes in polite form, but is replaced by in honorific speech and or in humble speech.
The difference between honorific and humble speech is particularly pronounced in the Japanese language. Humble language is used to talk about oneself or one's own group (company, family) whilst honorific language is mostly used when describing the interlocutor and his/her group. For example, the suffix ("Mr" "Mrs." or "Miss") is an example of honorific language. It is not used to talk about oneself or when talking about someone from one's company to an external person, since the company is the speaker's "group". When speaking directly to one's superior in one's company or when speaking with other employees within one's company about a superior, a Japanese person will use vocabulary and inflections of the honorific register to refer to the in-group superior and his or her speech and actions. When speaking to a person from another company (i.e., a member of an out-group), however, a Japanese person will use the plain or the humble register to refer to the speech and actions of his or her own in-group superiors. In short, the register used in Japanese to refer to the person, speech, or actions of any particular individual varies depending on the relationship (either in-group or out-group) between the speaker and listener, as well as depending on the relative status of the speaker, listener, and third-person referents. For this reason, the Japanese system for explicit indication of social register is known as a system of "relative honorifics." This stands in stark contrast to the Korean system of "absolute honorifics," in which the same register is used to refer to a particular individual (e.g. one's father, one's company president, etc.) in any context regardless of the relationship between the speaker and interlocutor. Thus, polite Korean speech can sound very presumptuous when translated verbatim into Japanese, as in Korean it is acceptable and normal to say things like "Our Mr. Company-President..." when communicating with a member of an out-group, which would be very inappropriate in a Japanese social context.
Most nouns in the Japanese language may be made polite by the addition of or as a prefix. is generally used for words of native Japanese origin, whereas is affixed to words of Chinese derivation. In some cases, the prefix has become a fixed part of the word, and is included even in regular speech, such as 'cooked rice; meal.' Such a construction often indicates deference to either the item's owner or to the object itself. For example, the word 'friend,' would become when referring to the friend of someone of higher status (though mothers often use this form to refer to their children's friends). On the other hand, a polite speaker may sometimes refer to 'water' as in order to show politeness.
Most Japanese people employ politeness to indicate a lack of familiarity. That is, they use polite forms for new acquaintances, but if a relationship becomes more intimate, they no longer use them. This occurs regardless of age, social class, or gender.
The original language of Japan, or at least the original language of a certain population that was ancestral to a significant portion of the historical and present Japanese nation, was the so-called ( or infrequently , i.e. "Yamato words"), which in scholarly contexts is sometimes referred to as ( or rarely , i.e. the words"). In addition to words from this original language, present-day Japanese includes a great number of words that were either borrowed from Chinese or constructed from Chinese roots following Chinese patterns. These words, known as ( ), entered the language from the fifth century onwards via contact with Chinese culture. According to a Japanese dictionary Shinsen-kokugojiten (æ°é¸å½èªè¾å
¸), Chinese-based words comprise 49.1% of the total vocabulary, Wago is 33.8% and other foreign words are 8.8%. æ°é¸å½èªè¾å
¸, éç°ä¸äº¬å©, å°å¦é¤¨, 2001, ISBN 4095014075
Like Latin-derived words in English, words typically are perceived as somewhat formal or academic compared to equivalent Yamato words. Indeed, it is generally fair to say that an English word derived from Latin/French roots typically corresponds to a Sino-Japanese word in Japanese, whereas a simpler Anglo-Saxon word would best be translated by a Yamato equivalent.
A much smaller number of words has been borrowed from Korean and Ainu. Japan has also borrowed a number of words from other languages, particularly ones of European extraction, which are called . This began with borrowings from Portuguese in the 16th century, followed by borrowing from Dutch during Japan's long isolation of the Edo period. With the Meiji Restoration and the reopening of Japan in the 19th century, borrowing occurred from German, French and English. Currently, words of English origin are the most commonly borrowed.
In the Meiji era, the Japanese also coined many neologisms using Chinese roots and morphology to translate Western concepts. The Chinese and Koreans imported many of these pseudo-Chinese words into Chinese, Korean, and Vietnamese via their kanji in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. For example, ("politics"), and ("chemistry") are words derived from Chinese roots that were first created and used by the Japanese, and only later borrowed into Chinese and other East Asian languages. As a result, Japanese, Chinese, Korean, and Vietnamese share a large common corpus of vocabulary in the same way a large number of Greek- and Latin-derived words are shared among modern European languages, although many academic words formed from such roots were certainly coined by native speakers of other languages, such as English.
In the past few decades, (made-in-Japan English) has become a prominent phenomenon. Words such as ( Book of Song é å¸ææäºå¹´ï¼é£ä½¿ä¸è¡¨æ°ï¼å°ååé ï¼ä½è©äºå¤ï¼èªæç¥ç¦°ï¼èº¬æç²åï¼è·æ¸å±±å·ï¼ä¸é寧èãæ±å¾æ¯äººäºååï¼è¥¿æè¡å¤·å
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¶é¤å¸ååæï¼ä»¥å¸å¿ ç¯ã After the ruin of Baekje, Japan invited scholars from China to learn more of the Chinese writing system. Japanese Emperors gave an official rank to Chinese scholars (ç¶å®è¨/è©å¼æ ¼/ Nihon shoki Chapter 30:æçµ±äºå¹´ ä¹æ己巳æ壬ç³ãè³é³å士大åç¶å®è¨ãè©å¼æªãæ¸å士ç¾æ¸æ«å£«åä¿¡ãé人äºå両ã Nihon shoki Chapter 30:æçµ±å
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é³ãçºå¤§å¦é³å士ãæ¼å¾ãæ´å¤§å¦é å®æ¿å®ã ) and spread the use of Chinese characters from the 7th century to the 8th century.
The table of Kana. (Hiragana top, Katakana in the center and Romaji on the bottom.)
At first, the Japanese wrote in Classical Chinese, with Japanese names represented by characters used for their meanings and not their sounds. Later, during the seventh century CE, the Chinese-sounding phoneme principle was used to write pure Japanese poetry and prose (comparable to Akkadian's retention of Sumerian cuneiform), but some Japanese words were still written with characters for their meaning and not the original Chinese sound. This is when the history of Japanese as a written language begins in its own right. By this time, the Japanese language was already distinct from the Ryukyuan languages. What leaves a mark should no longer stain: Progressive erasure and reversing language shift activities in the Ryukyu Islands, 2005, citing Hattori, Shiro (1954) 'Gengo nendaigaku sunawachi goi tokeigaku no hoho ni tsuite' [âConcerning the Method of Glottochronology and Lexicostatisticsâ], Gengo kenkyu [Journal of the Linguistic Society of Japan] v26/27
The Korean settlers and their descendants used Kudara-on or Baekje pronunciation (ç¾æ¸é³), which was also called Tsushima-pronunciation (対馬é³) or Go-on (åé³).
An example of this mixed style is the Kojiki, which was written in 712 AD. They then started to use Chinese characters to write Japanese in a style known as , a syllabic script which used Chinese characters for their sounds in order to transcribe the words of Japanese speech syllable by syllable.
Over time, a writing system evolved. Chinese characters (kanji) were used to write either words borrowed from Chinese, or Japanese words with the same or similar meanings. Chinese characters were also used to write grammatical elements, were simplified, and eventually became two syllabic scripts: hiragana and katakana.
Modern Japanese is written in a mixture of three main systems: kanji, characters of Chinese origin used to represent both Chinese loanwords into Japanese and a number of native Japanese morphemes; and two syllabaries: hiragana and katakana. The Latin alphabet is also sometimes used. Arabic numerals are much more common than the kanji when used in counting, but kanji numerals are still used in compounds, such as ("unification").
Hiragana are used for words without kanji representation, for words no longer written in kanji, and also following kanji to show conjugational endings. Because of the way verbs (and adjectives) in Japanese are conjugated, kanji alone cannot fully convey Japanese tense and mood, as kanji cannot be subject to variation when written without losing its meaning. For this reason, hiragana are suffixed to the ends of kanji to show verb and adjective conjugations. Hiragana used in this way are called okurigana. Hiragana are also written in a superscript called furigana above or beside a kanji to show the proper reading. This is done to facilitate learning, as well as to clarify particularly old or obscure (or sometimes invented) readings.
Katakana, like hiragana, are a syllabary; katakana are primarily used to write foreign words, plant and animal names, and for emphasis. For example "Australia" has been adapted as ( ), and "supermarket" has been adapted and shortened into ( ). The Latin alphabet (in Japanese referred to as RÅmaji ( ), literally "Roman letters") is used for some loan words like "CD" and "DVD", and also for some Japanese creations like "Sony".
Historically, attempts to limit the number of kanji in use commenced in the mid-19th century, but did not become a matter of government intervention until after Japan's defeat in the Second World War. During the period of post-war occupation (and influenced by the views of some U.S. officials), various schemes including the complete abolition of kanji and exclusive use of rÅmaji were considered. The ("common use kanji", originally called [kanji for general use]) scheme arose as a compromise solution.
Japanese students begin to learn kanji from their first year at elementary school. A guideline created by the Japanese Ministry of Education, the list of ("education kanji", a subset of ), specifies the 1,006 simple characters a child is to learn by the end of sixth grade. Children continue to study another 939 characters in junior high school, covering in total 1,945 . The official list of was revised several times, but the total number of officially sanctioned characters remained largely unchanged.
As for kanji for personal names, the circumstances are somewhat complicated. and (an appendix of additional characters for names) are approved for registering personal names. Names containing unapproved characters are denied registration. However, as with the list of , criteria for inclusion were often arbitrary and led to many common and popular characters being disapproved for use. Under popular pressure and following a court decision holding the exclusion of common characters unlawful, the list of was substantially extended from 92 in 1951 (the year it was first decreed) to 983 in 2004. Furthermore, families whose names are not on these lists were permitted to continue using the older forms.
Many writers rely on newspaper circulation to publish their work with officially sanctioned characters. This distribution method is more efficient than traditional pen and paper publications.
Many major universities throughout the world provide Japanese language courses, and a number of secondary and even primary schools worldwide offer courses in the language. International interest in the Japanese language dates from the 1800s but has become more prevalent following Japan's economic bubble of the 1980s and the global popularity of Japanese pop culture (such as anime and video games) since the 1990s. About 2.3 million people studied the language worldwide in 2003: 900,000 South Koreans, 389,000 Chinese, 381,000 Australians, and 140,000 Americans study Japanese in lower and higher educational institutions.
In Japan, more than 90,000 foreign students study at Japanese universities and Japanese language schools, including 77,000 Chinese and 15,000 South Koreans in 2003. In addition, local governments and some NPO groups provide free Japanese language classes for foreign residents, including Japanese Brazilians and foreigners married to Japanese nationals. In the United Kingdom, studies are supported by the British Association for Japanese Studies. In Ireland, Japanese is offered as a language in the Leaving Certificate in some schools.
The Japanese government provides standardised tests to measure spoken and written comprehension of Japanese for second language learners; the most prominent is the Japanese Language Proficiency Test (JLPT), which features 4 levels of exams, ranging from elementary (4) to advanced (1). The Japanese External Trade Organization JETRO organizes the Business Japanese Proficiency Test which tests the learner's ability to understand Japanese in a business setting.
When learning Japanese in a college setting, students are usually first taught how to pronounce romaji. From that point, they are taught the two main syllabaries, with kanji usually being introduced in the second semester. Focus is usually first on polite (distal) speech, as students who might interact with native speakers would be expected to use. Casual speech and formal speech usually follow polite speech, as well as the usage of honorific.
* Classification of Japanese
* Culture of Japan
* Eurasiatic languages
* Henohenomoheji
* Japanese counter word
* Japanese dialects
* Japanese dictionaries
* Japanese language and computers
* Japonic languages
* Japanese literature
* Japanese name
* Japanese numerals
* Japanese orthography issues
* Japanese words and words derived from Japanese in other languages at Wiktionary, Wikipedia's sibling project
* Late Old Japanese
* Old Japanese
* Rendaku
* Romanization of Japanese
** Hepburn romanization
* Ryūkyūan languages
* Sino-Japanese vocabulary
* Yojijukugo
* Bloch, Bernard. (1946). Studies in colloquial Japanese I: Inflection. Journal of the American Oriental Society, 66, pp. 97 130.
* Bloch, Bernard. (1946). Studies in colloquial Japanese II: Syntax. Language, 22, pp. 200 248.
* Chafe, William L. (1976). Giveness, contrastiveness, definiteness, subjects, topics, and point of view. In C. Li (Ed.), Subject and topic (pp. 25 56). New York: Academic Press. ISBN 0-12-447350-4.
* Kuno, Susumu. (1973). The structure of the Japanese language. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. ISBN 0-262-11049-0.
* Kuno, Susumu. (1976). Subject, theme, and the speaker's empathy: A re-examination of relativization phenomena. In Charles N. Li (Ed.), Subject and topic (pp. 417 444). New York: Academic Press. ISBN 0-12-447350-4.
* Martin, Samuel E. (1975). A reference grammar of Japanese. New Haven: Yale University Press. ISBN 0-300-01813-4.
* McClain, Yoko Matsuoka. (1981). Handbook of modern Japanese grammar: [ ]. Tokyo: Hokuseido Press. ISBN 4-590-00570-0; ISBN 0-89346-149-0.
* Miller, Roy. (1967). The Japanese language. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
* Miller, Roy. (1980). Origins of the Japanese language: Lectures in Japan during the academic year, 1977 78. Seattle: University of Washington Press. ISBN 0-295-95766-2.
* Mizutani, Osamu; & Mizutani, Nobuko. (1987). How to be polite in Japanese: [ ]. Tokyo: Japan Times. ISBN 4789003388 ;
* Shibatani, Masayoshi. (1990). Japanese. In B. Comrie (Ed.), The major languages of east and south-east Asia. London: Routledge. ISBN 0-415-04739-0.
* Shibatani, Masayoshi. (1990). The languages of Japan. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-36070-6 (hbk); ISBN 0-521-36918-5 (pbk).
* Shibamoto, Janet S. (1985). Japanese women's language. New York: Academic Press. ISBN 0-12-640030-X. Graduate Level
* Tsujimura, Natsuko. (1996). An introduction to Japanese linguistics. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell Publishers. ISBN 0-631-19855-5 (hbk); ISBN 0-631-19856-3 (pbk). Upper Level Textbooks
* Tsujimura, Natsuko. (Ed.) (1999). The handbook of Japanese linguistics. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers. ISBN 0-631-20504-7. Readings/Anthologies
* Jim Breen's dictionary and translation server
* Nihongoresources Various dictionaries and worked out textbook grammar.
* Denshi Jisho Find words, example sentences and kanji (through words or radicals). Kanji also contain references to various dictionaries and textbooks.
* Tangorin.com Japanese Dictionary, standard dictionary and Kanji search with example sentences.
* Tatoeba Project, collaborative project that aims to collect example sentences. Has mostly Japanese and English sentences. The sentences can be downloaded.
* JapanOD.com, Japanese-English, English-Japanese dictionary with support for browsers without Japanese fonts
* OmegaJi: Free, opensource (GNU GPL) Japanese-English dictionary program with 190'000 expressions, based on the JMdict project.
* Eijiro Very complete Japanese-English and English-Japanese dictionary, with many example sentences.
* Sanseido Web Dictionary
* Basic verb conjugation search
* A free Japanese lesson finder
*
* Japanese phrasebook on WikiTravel
* Japanese Online Talk
* Tae Kim's guide to Japanese grammar
* Video lectures from York University
* Japanese - a Category III language Languages which are exceptionally difficult for native English speakers
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Lima | Is Lima the capital of Peru? | Yes. | data/set3/a4 | Lima
Lima is the capital and largest city of Peru. It is located in the valleys of the Chillón, RÃmac and LurÃn rivers, on a coast overlooking the Pacific Ocean. It forms a contiguous urban area with the seaport of Callao.
Lima was founded by Spanish conquistador Francisco Pizarro on January 18, 1535, as La Ciudad de los Reyes, or "The City of Kings." It became the most important city in the Spanish Viceroyalty of Peru and, after the Peruvian War of Independence, was made the capital of the Republic of Peru. Today around one-third of the Peruvian population lives in the metropolitan area.
According to early Spanish chronicles the Lima area was once called Ichma, after its original inhabitants. However, even before the Inca occupation of the area in the 15th century, a famous oracle in the RÃmac valley had come to be known by visitors as Limaq (limaq, pronounced , which means "talker" in coastal Quechua). This oracle was eventually destroyed by the Spanish and replaced with a church, but the name persisted in the local language, thus the chronicles show "LÃmac" replacing "Ychma" as the common name for the area. /ref>
Modern scholars speculate that the word "Lima" originated as the Spanish pronunciation of the native name Limaq. Linguistic evidence seems to support this theory as spoken Spanish consistently rejects stop consonants in word-final position. The city was founded in 1535 under the name City of the Kings ( ) because its foundation was decided on January 6, date of the feast of the Epiphany. Nevertheless, this name quickly fell into disuse and Lima became the city's name of choice; on the oldest Spanish maps of Peru, both Lima and Ciudad de los Reyes can be seen together as names for the city.
It is worth noting that the river that feeds Lima is called RÃmac, and many people erroneously assume that this is because its original Inca name is "Talking River" (the Incas spoke a highland variety of Quechua where the word for "talker" was pronounced ). However, the original inhabitants of the valley were not the Incas, and this name is actually an innovation arising from an effort by the Cuzco nobility in colonial times to standardize the toponym so that it would conform to the phonology of Cuzco Quechua. Later, as the the original inhabitants of the valley died out and the local Quechua became extinct, the Cuzco pronunciation prevailed. In modern times, Spanish-speaking locals do not see the connection between the name of their city and the name of the river that runs through it. They often assume that the valley is named after the river; however, Spanish documents from the colonial period show the opposite to be true.
Lima City Walls were build between 1684 and 1687 by viceroy Melchor de Navarra y Rocafull.
In the pre-Columbian era, the location of what is now the city of Lima was inhabited by several amerindian groups under the Ychsma polity, which was incorporated into the Inca Empire in the 15th century. Conlee et al, "Late Prehispanic sociopolitical complexity", p. 218. In 1532, a group of Spanish conquistadors led by Francisco Pizarro defeated the Inca ruler Atahualpa and took over his Empire. As the Spanish Crown had named Pizarro governor of the lands he conquered, Hemming, The conquest, p. 28. he chose the RÃmac valley to found his capital on January 18, 1535 as Ciudad de los Reyes (City of the Kings). Klarén, Peru, p. 39. In August 1536, the new city was besieged by the troops of Manco Inca, however, the Spaniards and their native allies defeated the Inca rebels. Hemming, The conquest, p. 203â206.
Balconies were a major feature of Lima's architecture during the colonial period.
Over the next few years, Lima gained prestige as it was designated capital of the Viceroyalty of Peru and site of a Real Audiencia in 1543. Klarén, Peru, p. 87. During the next century Lima flourished as the center of an extensive trade network which integrated the Viceroyalty with the Americas, Europe and the Far East. Andrien, Crisis and decline, pp. 11â13. However, the city was not free from dangers; powerful earthquakes destroyed most of the city in 1687. Andrien, Crisis and decline, p. 26. A second threat was the presence of pirates and privateers in the Pacific Ocean, which led to the building of the Lima City Walls between 1684 and 1687. Higgings, Lima, p. 45. The 1687 earthquake marked a turning point in the history of Lima as it coincided with a recession in trade and economic competition by other cities such as Buenos Aires. Andrien, Crisis and decline, p. 28.
In 1746, a powerful earthquake severely damaged Lima and destroyed Callao, forcing a massive rebuilding effort under Viceroy José Antonio Manso de Velasco. Walker, "The upper classes", pp. 53â55. In the later half of the 18th century, the ideas of the Enlightenment on public health and social control shaped the development of the city. Ramón, "The script", pp. 173â174. During this period, Lima was adversely affected by the Bourbon Reforms as it lost its monopoly on overseas trade and its control over the important mining region of Upper Peru. Anna, Fall of the royal government, pp. 4â5. This economic decline made the city's elite dependent on royal and ecclesiastical appointment and thus, reluctant to advocate independence. Anna, Fall of the royal government, pp. 23â24.
A combined expedition of Argentine and Chilean patriots under General José de San MartÃn managed to land south of Lima in 1820 but did not attack the city. Faced with a naval blockade and the action of guerrillas on land, Viceroy José de la Serna was forced to evacuate the city on July 1821 to save the Royalist army. Anna, Fall of the royal government, pp. 176â177. Fearing a popular uprising and lacking any means to impose order, the city council invited San MartÃn to enter Lima and signed a Declaration of Independence at his request. Anna, Fall of the royal government, pp. 178â180. However, the war was not over; in the next two years the city changed hands several times and suffered exactions from both sides.
The Jiron de la Union was Lima's most important street for the first half of the 20th century
After the war of independence, Lima became the capital of the Republic of Peru but economic stagnation and political turmoil brought urban development to a halt. This hiatus ended in the 1850s, when increased public and private revenues from guano exports led to a rapid expansion of the city. Klarén, Peru, p. 169. However, the export-led economic expansion also widened the gap between rich and poor, fostering social unrest. Klarén, Peru, p. 170. During the 1879â1883 War of the Pacific, Chilean troops occupied Lima, looting public museums, libraries and educational institutions. Higgings, Lima, p. 107. At the same time, angry mobs attacked wealthy citizens and the Asian population; sacking their properties and businesses. Klarén, Peru, p. 192. After the war, the city underwent a process of renewal and expansion from the 1890s up to the 1920s. During this period the urban layout was modified by the construction of big avenues which crisscrossed the city and connected it with neighboring towns. Ramón, "The script", pp. 180â182.
In 1940, an earthquake destroyed most of the city, which at that time was mostly built out of adobe and quincha. In the 1940s, Lima started a period of rapid growth spurred by immigration from the Andean regions of Peru. Population, estimated at 0.6 million in 1940, reached 1.9M by 1960 and 4.8M by 1980. Instituto Nacional de EstadÃstica e Informática, Lima Metropolitana perfil socio-demográfico. Retrieved on August 12, 2007 At the start of this period, the urban area was confined to a triangular area bounded by the city's historic center, Callao and Chorrillos; in the following decades settlements spread to the north, beyond the RÃmac River, to the east, along the Central Highway, and to the south. Dietz, Poverty and problem-solving, p. 35. Immigrants, at first confined to slums in downtown Lima, led this expansion through large-scale land invasions which gave rise to the proliferation of shanty towns, known as pueblos jóvenes. Dietz, Poverty and problem-solving, p. 36.
Lima seen from Spot satellite
The urban area of Lima covers about . It is located on mostly flat terrain in the Peruvian coastal plain, within the valleys of the Chillón, RÃmac and LurÃn rivers. The city slopes gently from the shores of the Pacific Ocean into valleys and mountain slopes located as high as above mean sea level. Within the city exist isolated hills which are not connected to the surrounding hill chains, such as El Agustino, San Cosme, El Pino, La Milla, Muleria and Pro hills. The San Cristobal hill in the Rimac district, which faces directly north of the downtown area, is the local extreme of an Andean hill outgrowth.
Metropolitan Lima has an area of , of which (31%) comprise the actual city and (69%) the city outskirts. The urban area extends around from north to south and around from west to east. The city center is located inland at the shore of the Rimac river, a vital resource for the city, since it carries what will become drinking water for its inhabitants and fuels the hydro electrical dams that provide electricity to the area. While no official administrative definition for the city exists, it is usually considered to be composed of the central 30 out of the 43 districts of Lima Province, corresponding to an urban area centered around the historic Cercado de Lima district. The city is the core of the Lima Metropolitan Area, one of the ten largest metropolitan areas in the Americas. Lima is the second largest city in the world located in a desert, after Cairo, Egypt.
Weather averages for Lima International Airport.
Lima's climate is quite mild, despite being located in the Tropics. Lima has a subtropical and desert climate, yet the microclimate also makes it very humid throughout the year. The temperatures vary from mild to warm (neither very cold or hot).The average temperature in winter ranges from to . These days usually come accompanied by continuous overcast skies, fog, and mist. In the summer, the high averages around with lows around . During El Niño events, the climate of Lima gets severely disrupted, the water temperatures along the coast which usually average around 17 - 19 °C (65 - 68 °F) get much warmer (as in 1998 when the water temperature reached 26 °C (79 °F)), which causes the high and low temperatures to rise by several degrees. Such was the case when Lima hit its all-time record high of
Relative humidity is always very high particularly in the mornings /ref> , and produces brief morning fog from June to December and persistent low clouds from May to November. Sunny, less moist and warm summers follow from December to April and are followed by cloudy, damp and cool winters (June to October). The all-time record low in the metropolitan area is .
Rainfall is very low. The severely low rainfall impacts on water supply in the city. /ref> Inland locations receive 1 to of rainfall, which accumulates mainly during the winter months. Summer rain occurs in the form of isolated light and brief afternoon or evening events, leftover from afternoon storms that generate over the Andes. The peak of the 'rainy season,' which does not produce "rain" in the true sense of the word, occurs during winter when late-night/morning drizzle events (locally called 'garúa','llovizna' or 'camanchacas') become frequent, leaving a light coating of dampness on the ground. All these climatic phenomena arise from the combination of semi-permanent coastal upwelling and the presence of the cold Humboldt Current just offshore.
A Moorish arch built by Spanish immigrants in Lima /ref>
Lima ranks as the 17th most populous city in the world with a municipal population of 7,605,743, and 8,472,935 for the metropolitan area and a population density of as of 2007. Instituto Nacional de EstadÃstica e Informática, Perfil Sociodemográfico del Perú pp. 29â30, 32, 34. Its population features a very complex mix of racial and ethnic groups. Traditionally, Mestizos of mixed European (mostly Spanish) and Amerindian descent are the largest contingent. The second group are White Caucasians, mainly Spanish, Italians, Germans, French, English, Polish and Eastern Europeans. /ref> /ref> Also there is a large number of Jews, and Middle Easterners. Asians make up a large number of the metropolitan population, especially of Chinese (Cantonese) and Japanese descent. Afro-Peruvians, whose African ancestors were initially brought to the region as slaves, are yet another part of the city's ethnic quilt. Lima has by far the largest Chinese community in Latin America. /ref>
The Archbishop's Palace of Lima along with the Cathedral of Lima, the seat of the Roman Catholic Church in Peru.
The first settlement in what would become Lima was made up of only 117 housing blocks. In 1562, another district was built at the other side of the Rimac River and in 1610, the first stone bridge was built. Lima had, at this point in time, around 1600 inhabitants. In 1861, the amount of inhabitants surpassed 100,000, and by 1927 this amount was doubled.
During the early twentieth century thousands of immigrants came to the city, a significant number of French, Italians and Germans, many of them had been adapting to the Peruvian society. They organized in social clubs, and they built their own schools; for example, The American-Peruvian school which is located in Miraflores, The French Alliance (Alianza Francesa de Lima), famous Lycée Franco-Péruvien and the hospital Maison de Sante, the British-Peruvian school in Monterrico, and also several German-Peruvian schools.
They also influenced Peruvian cuisine, the Italians in particular exerting a strong influence in the Miraflores and San Isidro areas with their restaurants, called Trattorias.
A great number of Chinese immigrants, and a lesser amount of Japanese, came to Lima and established themselves in the Barrios Altos neighborhood near downtown Lima, coming in order to work on farms and domestic services. Lima residents refer to their Chinatown as "Calle Capon," and the city's ubiquitous Chifa restaurants a small, sit-down, usually Chinese-run restaurant serving the Peruvian spin on Chinese cuisine can be found by the dozen in this Chinese enclave.
A pueblo joven in the southern outskirts of Lima in 1997
The 1950s saw the exponential increase of the city inhabitants, most of them Andean immigrants and their descendants, who settled in the northern and southern outskirts. The political and economic instability in Peru during the latter half of the twentieth century created unprecedented poverty and violence in the towns of the countryside or Andean highlands, forcing hundreds of thousands of peasants of Amerindian descent to migrate to Lima thus greatly augmenting Lima's population. Instituto Nacional de Estadistica e Informatica In the 70âs, the lacking transportation facilities for the newcomers who had to travel for hours on end to reach the city center became a problem, and it was decided that Lima should not expand any further.
Buildings in the financial district of San Isidro
Lima is the industrial and financial center of Peru Infoplease. Lima. Retrieved on December 8, 2008. , home to many national companies. It accounts for more than two thirds of Peru's industrial production AttractionGuide. Lima Attractions. Retrieved on December 8, 2008. and most of its tertiary sector.
The Metropolitan area, with around 7000 factories /ref>, spearheads the industrial development of the country, thanks to the quantity and quality of the available workforce, cheap infrastructure and the mostly developed routes and highways in the city. The most relevant industrial sectors are textiles, clothing and food. Chemicals, fish, leather and oil derivatives are also manufactured and/or processed in Lima /ref>. The financial district is located in the district of San Isidro, while much of the industrial activity takes place in the area stretching west of Downtown Lima to the airport in Callao.
Industrialization began to take hold in Lima in 1930s and by 1950s, through import substitution policies, by 1950 manufacturing made up 14% of the GNP. In the late 1950s, up to 70% of consumer goods were manufactured in Peruvian, and primarily Limean, factories. /ref>
The Callao seaport is one of the main fishing and commerce ports in South America, with 75% of the country's imports and 25% of its exports /ref> using it as their entry/departure point. The main export goods leaving the country through Callao are oil, steel, silver, zinc, cotton, sugar and coffee.
A building in downtown Lima's financial district
In 2004, Lima's GDP represented 45% of the country's GDP (5% more than the previous year). The GDP per capita in Lima is $7,600 /ref>. Most of the foreign companies operating in the country have settled in Lima, which has led to the previously mentioned concentration of economic and financial activity on the city.
There has been a noticeable increase in slight industries, services and high technologies. In 2007, the Peruvian economy grew 9%, the largest growth rate in all of South America which was spearheaded by economic policies originating in Lima. CIA Factbook .The Lima Stock Exchange grew 185.24% in 2006 Bolsa de Valores de Lima and in 2007 grew 168.3% Bolsa de Valores de Lima making it one of the fastest growing stock exchanges in the world. In 2006, the Lima Stock Exchange was the most profitable in the world. /ref> The unemployment rate in metropolitan area is 7.2%.
The Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Summit and the Latin America, the Caribbean and the European Union Summit were hosted by the city of Lima.
Lima is headquarters to many major banks such as Banco de Crédito del Perú, Interbank, Bank of the Nation, Banco Continental, Banco Interamericano de Finanzas, Banco Finaciero, Banco de Comercio, MiBanco, and Banco del Trabajo. It is also a regional headquarters to Standard Chartered. Major insurance coorperations based in Lima include Rimac Seguros, Mapfre Peru, Interseguro, Pacifico, Protecta, and La Positiva. /ref>
The Government Palace in downtown Lima.Headquarters of the Andean Community of Nations
Lima is the capital city of the Republic of Peru and the department of Lima. As such, it is home to the three branches of the Government of Peru. The executive branch is headquartered in the Government Palace, located in the Plaza Mayor. The legislative branch is headquartered in the Legislative Palace and is home to the Congress of Peru. The Judicial branch is headquartered in the Palace of Justice and is home to the Supreme Court of Peru.
Likewise, all the ministries are located in the city of Lima. In international government, the city of Lima is home to the headquarters of the Andean Community of Nations and the South American Community of Nations, along with other regional and international organizations.
The city is roughly equivalent to the Province of Lima, which is subdivided into 43 districts. The Metropolitan Municipality of Lima is utmost authority of the entire city while each district further has it's own local government. Unlike the rest of the country, the Metropolitan Municipality, although a provincial municipality, acts as and has functions similar to a regional government, as it does not belong to any of the 25 regions of Peru.
The Palace of Justice, seat of the judicial branch
The Palace of Justice in Lima is seat of the Supreme Court of Justice the highest judicial court in Peru with jurisdiction over the entire territory of Peru.
Lima is also seat of two of the 28 second highest or Superior Courts of Justice. The first and oldest Superior Court in Lima is the Superior Court of Justice of Lima belonging to the Judicial District of Lima. Due to the judicial organization of Peru, the highest concentration of courts is located in Lima despite the fact that it's judicial district only has jurisdiction over 35 of the 43 districts of Lima. Judicial Power of Peru. Superior Court of Lima. Retrieved 3 December 2008. . The Superior Court of the Cono Norte is the second Superior Court located in Lima and is part of the Judicial District of North Lima. This judicial district has jurisdiction over the remaining eight districts all located in northern Lima. Judicial Power of Peru. Superior Court of North Lima. Retrieved 3 December 2008.
Paseo de los Heroes Navales
Lima's architecture is characterized by a mix in styles as reflected from shifts between trends throughout various time periods of the city's history. Examples of early colonial architecture include such structures as the Monastery of San Francisco, the Cathedral of Lima and the Torre Tagle Palace. These constructions are generally influenced by the Spanish baroque, /ref> Spanish Neoclassicism]], /ref> and Spanish Colonial /ref> styles. After independence, a gradual shift towards the neoclassical and Art Nouveau styles took place. Many of these constructions were greatly influenced by French architectural styles. /ref>Many government buildings as well as major cultural institutions were contracted in this architectural time period. During 1960s, constructions utilizing the brutalist style began appearing in Lima due to the military government of Juan Velasco. /ref> Examples of this architecture are the Museum of the Nation and the Ministry of Defense. The 21st century has seen the appearance of glass skyscrapers particularly around the city's financial district. /ref>
Lima's urban setting is characterized by green-lined streets as well as the abundance of plazas throughout the city. More important streets usually contain wider green areas and plaza's usually contain monuments or statues of historical figures of importance to Peruvian history. Parque Universitario in downtown Lima
The largest parks of Lima are located near the downtown area such as the Park of the Reserve, Park of the Exposition, /ref> Campo de Marte, and the University Park. The Park of the Reserve is home to the largest fountain complex in the world known as the Magical Circuit of Water. /ref>
A number of large parks lie outside the city center, including Reducto Park, Pantanos de Villa, The Golf, Park of the Legends, the malecon of Miraflores, and the Golf of the Incas. /ref>The street grid of the city of Lima, is laid out with a system of plazas of which serve a purpose similar to roundabouts or junctions. In addition to this practical purpose, plazas serve as one of Lima's principal green spaces and contain a variety of different types of architecture ranging from monuments to statues, and water fountains. /ref>
Strongly influenced by European, Andean, and Asian culture, Lima is a melting pot of cultures due to colonization, immigration, and indigenous influences. /ref>
Like many other world capitals, Lima is home to prestigious museums many of which are world renown. The Historic Center of Lima was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1988. Limean gastronomy is known to be among the best in the world and the city is known as the Gastronomical Capital of the Americas. Lima's gastronomy is a mix of Spanish, Andean, and Asian culinary traditions. /ref>
Lima's beaches, located along the northern and southern ends of the city, are heavily visited during the summer months. Numerous restaurants, clubs and hotels have been opened in these places to serve the many beachgoers. Lima has a vibrant and active theater scene as there are many theaters presenting not only classic theater, but also The Golf cultural presentations, modern theater, experimental theater, dramas, dance performances, and theater for children. Lima is home to many important theaters such as the Municipal Theater, Segura Theater, Japanese-Peruvian Theater, Marsano Theater, British theater, Theater of the PUCP Cultural Center, and the Yuyachkani Theater. /ref>
Known as Peruvian Coastal Spanish, Lima's Spanish is characterized by the lack of strong innotations as found in many other regions of the Spanish-speaking world. It is heavily influenced by the Spanish spoken in Castile as throughout the colonial era, the colonial Spanish nobility was based in Lima, of which most originated from Castile. /ref> Limean Spanish is also characterized by the lack of voseo, a trait present in the dialects of many other Latin American countries. This is due to the fact that voseo was primarily utilized by the lower socioeconomic classes of Spain, a social group that did not begin to appear in Lima until the late colonial era. Limean Spanish is often distinguished by its relative clarity The Museum of Art in comparison to other Latin American dialects. Limean Spanish has been influenced by a number of immigrant groups including Italians, Andalusians, Chinese and Japanese. It also has been influenced by anglicisms as a result of globalization as well as by Andean Spanish due to recent immigration from the Andean highlands to Lima. /ref>
Lima is home to the highest concentration of museums of the country, the most notable of which being the Museo Nacional de ArqueologÃa AntropologÃa e Historia del Perú, Museum of Art of Lima, the Museum of Natural History, the Museum of the Nation, the Museum of Italian Art, and the Museum of Gold, and the Larco Museum. These museums mostly focus on art, pre-Colombian cultures, natural history, science, and religion. /ref>
Lima, as the point of entry to the country, has developed an important tourism industry, characterized by it's historic center, archeological sites, nightlife, museums, art galleries, festivals, and popular traditions. Lima is home to an ample range of restaurants and bars where local as well as international cuisine is served. /ref>
The Historic Center of Lima, made up of the districts of Lima and Rimac, was declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1988 due to its importance during the colonial era leaving a testimony to architectural achievement. /ref> Some examples of this historical colonial architecture include the Monastery of San Francisco, the Plaza Mayor, the Cathedral, Covenant of Santo Domingo, the Palace of Torre Tagle, and much more.
A tour of the city's churches is a popular circuit among tourists. A short jaunt through the central district goes through many churches dating from as early as the 16th and 17th centuries the most noteworthy of which being the Cathedral of Lima and the Monastery of San Francisco, of which are said to be connected by their subterrestrial catacombs. /ref>Both of these churches contain paintings from various schools of art, Sevilian tile, and finely sculpted wood furnishings. Also notable is the Sanctuary of Las Nazarenas, the point of origin for the Lord of Miracles, whose festivities in the month of October constitute the most important religious event in Lima and arguably all of Peru. Some sections of the Lima City Walls still remain and are frequented by tourists. These examples of medieval Spanish fortifications were utilized to defend the city from attacks by pirates and privateers. /ref>
Beaches are visited during the summer months, which are located along the Pan-American Highway, to the south of the city in districts such as Lurin, Punta Hermosa, San Bartolo and Asia. Many restaurants, nightclubs, lounges, bars, clubs, and hotels have developed in said places to cater to beachgoers. /ref>
The suburban districts of Cieneguilla, Pachacamac, and the city of Chosica, are important tourist attractions among locals as they are located at a higher elevation than Lima therefore receiving sunshine in winter months, something that the city of Lima frequently lacks. /ref>
Lima is known as Gastronomical Capital of the Americas. A center of immigration and the center of the Spanish Viceroyalty, Lima has incorporated unique dishes brought from the arrival of the Spanish Conquistadors and the receiving of many waves of immigrants: African, European, Chinese, and Japanese. ref> /ref> Besides international immigrationâa large portion of which happened in Limaâthere has been, since the second half of the 20th century, a strong internal flow from rural areas to cities, in particular to Lima. /ref>This has strongly influenced Lima's cuisine with the incorporation of the immigrant's ingredients and techniques (for example, the Chinese extensive use of rice or the Japanese approach to preparing raw fish). The genres of restaurants in Lima include Creole food, Chifas, Cebicherias, and Pollerias. Peruvian cuisine, widely represented in Lima, holds various Guinness World Records, for its diversity and quality. /ref>
The Estadio Monumental "U" home of Universitario de Deportes
The city of Lima has varied sports venues for soccer, volleyball and basketball, many of which are located within private clubs. A popular sport among Limeans is fronton, a racquet sport similar to squash invented in Lima. The city is home to seven international-class golf links. Equestrian is popular in Lima with many private clubs as well as the Hipódromo de Monterrico horse racing track. The most popular sport in Lima by far is soccer with many professional club teams being located in the city.
/ref>
1. Central Lima
2. Residential Lima
3. Cono Norte
4. Cono Sur
5. Cono Este
6. Beach areas
7. Callao
Lima is made up of thirty densely-populated districts, each headed by a local mayor and the Mayor of Lima, whose authority extends to these and the thirteen outer districts of the Lima province.
The city's historic centre is located in the Cercado de Lima district, locally known as simply Lima, or as "El Centro" ("Downtown"), and it is home to most of the vestiges of Lima's colonial past, the Presidential Palace ( ), the Metropolitan Municipality of Lima ( ), and dozens of hotels, some operating and some defunct, that used to cater to the national and international elite.
The upscale San Isidro district is the city's financial center. It is home to many prominent figures such as politicians and celebrities. It is also where the main banks of Peru and branch offices of world banks are headquartered. San Isidro has many parks, including Parque El Olivar, which has olive trees that were brought from Spain during the seventeenth century.
Another upscale district is Miraflores, which has many luxury hotels, shops and restaurants. Miraflores has more parks and green areas in the south of Lima than most other districts. Larcomar, a popular shopping mall and entertainment center built on cliffs overlooking the Pacific Ocean, featuring bars, dance clubs, movie theaters, cafes, shops, boutiques and galleries, is also located in this district.
La Molina and San Borja, home to the American Embassy and the exclusive Club Polo Lima respectively, are the other two wealthy districts of Lima.
The most densely-populated districts of Lima lie in the northern and southern ends of the city (Spanish: Cono Norte and Cono Sur, respectively), and they are mostly composed of Andean immigrants who arrived during the mid and late 20th century looking for better living standards and economic opportunities, or as refugees of the country's internal conflict with the Shining Path during the late 80s and early 90s. In the case of Cono Norte(North Lima), certain shopping malls like Megaplaza and Royal Plaza have been recently built in the district of Los Olivos, which is the most residential neighborhood in the Northern part of Lima. Most of the inhabitants of this area belong to the middle class.
Barranco, which borders Miraflores by the Pacific Ocean, is known as the city's bohemian district, home or once home of many Peruvian writers and intellectuals like Mario Vargas Llosa, Chabuca Granda and Alfredo Bryce Echenique. This district has many acclaimed restaurants, music venues called "peñas" featuring the traditional folk music of coastal Peru (in Spanish, "música criolla"), and beautiful Victorian-style chalets. It along with Miraflores serves as the home to the foreign nightlife scene.
The University of Lima
Home to a range of universities, institutions, and schools, Lima has the highest concentration of institutions of higher learning in the country and is home to schools with world-wide recognition. The National University of San Marcos, founded on May 12, 1551 during Spanish colonial regime, is the oldest continuously functioning university in the Americas. /ref>
Other public universities also play key roles in teaching and research, such as the Universidad Nacional Agraria La Molina where ex-president Alberto Fujimori once taught, Universidad Nacional de IngenierÃa and the National University of Callao.
The Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú, established in 1917, is the oldest private university. Other private institutions that are located in the city are Universidad de Lima, Universidad CientÃfica del Sur, Universidad San MartÃn de Porres, Universidad del Pacifico, Universidad Inca Garcilaso de la Vega, Universidad Peruana Cayetano Heredia, Universidad Peruana de Ciencias Aplicadas and Universidad Ricardo Palma. /ref>
The Jorge Chávez International Airport
Lima is served by the Jorge Chavez International Airport, located in Callao. It is the largest airport of the country with the largest amount of domestic and international air traffic. It also serves as a major hub in the Latin American air network. Additionally, Lima possesses five other airports: the Las Palmas Air Force Base, Collique Airport, and runways in Santa MarÃa del Mar, San Bartolo and Chilca. /ref>
Lima is connected by highway to every country that borders Peru. Because of its location on the country's central coast, Lima is an important junction in Peru's highway system, three of the major highways originate in Lima.
*The Northern Panamerican Highway, this highway extends more than to the border with Ecuador connecting the northern districts of Lima with many major cities along the northern Peruvian coast.
*The Central Highway ( ), this highway connects the eastern districts of Lima with many cities in central Peru. The highway extends with its terminus at the city of Pucallpa near Brazil.
*The Southern Panamerican Highway, this highway connects the southern districts of Lima to cities on the southern coast. The highway extends to the border with Chile.
The proximity of Lima to the port of Callao allows Callao to act as the metropolitan area's foremost port. Callao concentrates nearly all of the maritime transport of the metropolitan area. There is, however, a small port in LurÃn whose transit mostly is accounted for by oil tankers due to a refinery being located nearby. Nonetheless, maritime transport inside Lima's city limits is relatively insignificant compared to that of Callao, the nation's leading port and one of Latin America's largest. There have been plans to build a new megaport on the island of San Lorenzo known as the San Lorenzo Megaport Project. This port is planned to become the largest of Latin America.
Lima is connected to the Central Andean region by the Ferrocarril Central Andino which runs from Lima through the departments of Junin, Huancavelica, Pasco, and Huanuco. /ref> Major cities along this line include Huancayo, La Oroya, Huancavelica, and Cerro de Pasco. Another inactive line runs from Lima northwards to the city of Huacho. /ref>
The urban transport system is composed of over 652 transit routes /ref> which are served by buses, microbuses, and combis. The system is unorganized and is characterized by the lack of formality. The service is run by 464 private companies which are poorly regulated by the local government. Fares average at around one sol or $0.30 USD. Due to the absence of a centralized bus terminal, individual bus companies use private terminals throughout Lima. /ref>
The Metropolitan Transportation System is a transport project which plans to integrate the Independent Corridor of Mass-Transit Buses known by its Spanish initials as (COSAC 1). This system plans to link the principal points of the Lima Metropolitan Area and the first phase of this project is already in development with the construction of a thirty three kilometer long line from Comas to Chorrillos.The Lima Metro mass transit system This system is similar to the TransMilenio of Bogota, Colombia. /ref>
Automobiles, known as colectivos, render express service on some major roads of the Lima Metropolitan Area. The colectivos signal their specific destination with a sign on the their windshield. Their routes are not generally publicitized but are understood by frequent users. The cost is generally higher than congenital public transport however they cover greater distances at greater speeds due to the lack of stops. /ref>
The Lima Metro, a above ground mass transit system, is under construction and one line has been completed while another six are scheduled for construction. Line 1 is also scheduled to be extended to the city's center, uniting Villa el Salvador with downtown Lima in a matter of only forty minutes, a trip which currently lasts one hour and forty minutes with the current public transport system. www.trenurbano.gob.pe/
The Via Expresa
Taxis in the city are relatively cheap. There are no meters so drivers are told the desired destination and the fare is agreed upon before the passenger enters the taxi. Taxis vary in sizes from small four door compacts to large vans. They are virtually everywhere, accounting for a large part of the car stock. In many cases they are just a private car with a taxi sticker on the windshield. Additionally, there are several companies that provide taxi service on-call. /ref>
Eighty percent of the city's history having occurred during the pre-automobile era, Lima's road network is based mostly on large divided avenues rather than freeways. In recent times however, Lima has developed a freeway network now made up of nine freeways which are, the Via Expresa Paseo de la Republica, Via Expresa Javier Prado, Via Expresa Grau, Panamericana Norte, Panamericana Sur, Carretera Central, Via Expresa Callao, Autopista Chillon Trapiche, and the Autopista Ramiro Priale. /ref> /ref>
Skyline from the Costa Verde
List of sister cities, designated by Sister Cities International: Sister Cities International, Online Directory: Peru, Americas. Retrieved July 14, 2007
* Arequipa, Peru
* Cusco, Peru
* Piura, Peru
* New York City, United States
* Los Angeles, United States
* Austin, United States, since 1981
* Cleveland, United States
* Miami, United States
* Bordeaux, France, since 1957
* Beijing, China, since November 21, 1983Buildings in the financial district
* Madrid, Spain
* Mexico City, Mexico
* São Paulo, Brazil
* Tegucigalpa, Honduras
* Akhisar, Turkey
* Buenos Aires, Argentina
* Guadalajara, Mexico
* Montreal, Canada
* Bogotá, Colombia
* Cairo, Egypt
* Cardiff, Wales, United Kingdom
*Lima Metropolitan Area
*List of people from Lima
*List of districts and neighborhoods of Lima
*List of sites of interest in the Lima Metropolitan area
* Nota etimológica: El topónimo Lima, Rodolfo Cerrón-Palomino, Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú
* Lima Monumento Histórico, Margarita Cubillas Soriano, Lima, 1996
;History
* Andrien, Kenneth. Crisis and decline: the Viceroyalty of Peru in the seventeenth century. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1985. ISBN 0-8263-0791-4
* Anna, Timothy. The fall of the royal government in Peru. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1979. ISBN 0-8032-1004-3
* Conlee, Christina, Jalh Dulanto, Carol Mackay and Charles Stanish. "Late Prehispanic sociopolitical complexity". In Helaine Silverman (ed.), Andean archaeology. Malden: Blackwell, 2004, pp. 209â236. ISBN 0-631-23400-4
* Dietz, Henry. Poverty and problem-solving under military rule: the urban poor in Lima, Peru. Austin : University of Texas Press, 1980. ISBN 0-292-76460-X
* Hemming, John. The conquest of the Incas. London: Macmillan, 1993. ISBN 0-333-51794-6
* Higgings, James. Lima. A cultural history. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005. ISBN 0-19-517891-2
* Instituto Nacional de EstadÃstica e Informática. Lima Metropolitana perfil socio-demográfico. Lima: INEI, 1996.
* Klarén, Peter. Peru: society and nationhood in the Andes. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000. ISBN 0-19-506928-5
* Ramón, Gabriel. "The script of urban surgery: Lima, 1850â1940". In Arturo Almandoz (ed.), Planning Latin America's capital cities, 1850â1950. New York: Routledge, 2002, pp. 170â192. ISBN 0-415-27265-3
* Walker, Charles. "The upper classes and their upper stories: architecture and the aftermath of the Lima earthquake of 1746". Hispanic American Historical Review 83 (1): 53â82 (February 2003).
;Demographics
* Instituto Nacional de EstadÃstica e Informática, Perfil Sociodemográfico del Perú. Lima: INEI, 2008.
* Municipality of Lima
* Geographia.com
* Maps
* Stock Exchange
*
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Lima | Is the Museum of Gold in Lima? | Yes. | data/set3/a4 | Lima
Lima is the capital and largest city of Peru. It is located in the valleys of the Chillón, RÃmac and LurÃn rivers, on a coast overlooking the Pacific Ocean. It forms a contiguous urban area with the seaport of Callao.
Lima was founded by Spanish conquistador Francisco Pizarro on January 18, 1535, as La Ciudad de los Reyes, or "The City of Kings." It became the most important city in the Spanish Viceroyalty of Peru and, after the Peruvian War of Independence, was made the capital of the Republic of Peru. Today around one-third of the Peruvian population lives in the metropolitan area.
According to early Spanish chronicles the Lima area was once called Ichma, after its original inhabitants. However, even before the Inca occupation of the area in the 15th century, a famous oracle in the RÃmac valley had come to be known by visitors as Limaq (limaq, pronounced , which means "talker" in coastal Quechua). This oracle was eventually destroyed by the Spanish and replaced with a church, but the name persisted in the local language, thus the chronicles show "LÃmac" replacing "Ychma" as the common name for the area. /ref>
Modern scholars speculate that the word "Lima" originated as the Spanish pronunciation of the native name Limaq. Linguistic evidence seems to support this theory as spoken Spanish consistently rejects stop consonants in word-final position. The city was founded in 1535 under the name City of the Kings ( ) because its foundation was decided on January 6, date of the feast of the Epiphany. Nevertheless, this name quickly fell into disuse and Lima became the city's name of choice; on the oldest Spanish maps of Peru, both Lima and Ciudad de los Reyes can be seen together as names for the city.
It is worth noting that the river that feeds Lima is called RÃmac, and many people erroneously assume that this is because its original Inca name is "Talking River" (the Incas spoke a highland variety of Quechua where the word for "talker" was pronounced ). However, the original inhabitants of the valley were not the Incas, and this name is actually an innovation arising from an effort by the Cuzco nobility in colonial times to standardize the toponym so that it would conform to the phonology of Cuzco Quechua. Later, as the the original inhabitants of the valley died out and the local Quechua became extinct, the Cuzco pronunciation prevailed. In modern times, Spanish-speaking locals do not see the connection between the name of their city and the name of the river that runs through it. They often assume that the valley is named after the river; however, Spanish documents from the colonial period show the opposite to be true.
Lima City Walls were build between 1684 and 1687 by viceroy Melchor de Navarra y Rocafull.
In the pre-Columbian era, the location of what is now the city of Lima was inhabited by several amerindian groups under the Ychsma polity, which was incorporated into the Inca Empire in the 15th century. Conlee et al, "Late Prehispanic sociopolitical complexity", p. 218. In 1532, a group of Spanish conquistadors led by Francisco Pizarro defeated the Inca ruler Atahualpa and took over his Empire. As the Spanish Crown had named Pizarro governor of the lands he conquered, Hemming, The conquest, p. 28. he chose the RÃmac valley to found his capital on January 18, 1535 as Ciudad de los Reyes (City of the Kings). Klarén, Peru, p. 39. In August 1536, the new city was besieged by the troops of Manco Inca, however, the Spaniards and their native allies defeated the Inca rebels. Hemming, The conquest, p. 203â206.
Balconies were a major feature of Lima's architecture during the colonial period.
Over the next few years, Lima gained prestige as it was designated capital of the Viceroyalty of Peru and site of a Real Audiencia in 1543. Klarén, Peru, p. 87. During the next century Lima flourished as the center of an extensive trade network which integrated the Viceroyalty with the Americas, Europe and the Far East. Andrien, Crisis and decline, pp. 11â13. However, the city was not free from dangers; powerful earthquakes destroyed most of the city in 1687. Andrien, Crisis and decline, p. 26. A second threat was the presence of pirates and privateers in the Pacific Ocean, which led to the building of the Lima City Walls between 1684 and 1687. Higgings, Lima, p. 45. The 1687 earthquake marked a turning point in the history of Lima as it coincided with a recession in trade and economic competition by other cities such as Buenos Aires. Andrien, Crisis and decline, p. 28.
In 1746, a powerful earthquake severely damaged Lima and destroyed Callao, forcing a massive rebuilding effort under Viceroy José Antonio Manso de Velasco. Walker, "The upper classes", pp. 53â55. In the later half of the 18th century, the ideas of the Enlightenment on public health and social control shaped the development of the city. Ramón, "The script", pp. 173â174. During this period, Lima was adversely affected by the Bourbon Reforms as it lost its monopoly on overseas trade and its control over the important mining region of Upper Peru. Anna, Fall of the royal government, pp. 4â5. This economic decline made the city's elite dependent on royal and ecclesiastical appointment and thus, reluctant to advocate independence. Anna, Fall of the royal government, pp. 23â24.
A combined expedition of Argentine and Chilean patriots under General José de San MartÃn managed to land south of Lima in 1820 but did not attack the city. Faced with a naval blockade and the action of guerrillas on land, Viceroy José de la Serna was forced to evacuate the city on July 1821 to save the Royalist army. Anna, Fall of the royal government, pp. 176â177. Fearing a popular uprising and lacking any means to impose order, the city council invited San MartÃn to enter Lima and signed a Declaration of Independence at his request. Anna, Fall of the royal government, pp. 178â180. However, the war was not over; in the next two years the city changed hands several times and suffered exactions from both sides.
The Jiron de la Union was Lima's most important street for the first half of the 20th century
After the war of independence, Lima became the capital of the Republic of Peru but economic stagnation and political turmoil brought urban development to a halt. This hiatus ended in the 1850s, when increased public and private revenues from guano exports led to a rapid expansion of the city. Klarén, Peru, p. 169. However, the export-led economic expansion also widened the gap between rich and poor, fostering social unrest. Klarén, Peru, p. 170. During the 1879â1883 War of the Pacific, Chilean troops occupied Lima, looting public museums, libraries and educational institutions. Higgings, Lima, p. 107. At the same time, angry mobs attacked wealthy citizens and the Asian population; sacking their properties and businesses. Klarén, Peru, p. 192. After the war, the city underwent a process of renewal and expansion from the 1890s up to the 1920s. During this period the urban layout was modified by the construction of big avenues which crisscrossed the city and connected it with neighboring towns. Ramón, "The script", pp. 180â182.
In 1940, an earthquake destroyed most of the city, which at that time was mostly built out of adobe and quincha. In the 1940s, Lima started a period of rapid growth spurred by immigration from the Andean regions of Peru. Population, estimated at 0.6 million in 1940, reached 1.9M by 1960 and 4.8M by 1980. Instituto Nacional de EstadÃstica e Informática, Lima Metropolitana perfil socio-demográfico. Retrieved on August 12, 2007 At the start of this period, the urban area was confined to a triangular area bounded by the city's historic center, Callao and Chorrillos; in the following decades settlements spread to the north, beyond the RÃmac River, to the east, along the Central Highway, and to the south. Dietz, Poverty and problem-solving, p. 35. Immigrants, at first confined to slums in downtown Lima, led this expansion through large-scale land invasions which gave rise to the proliferation of shanty towns, known as pueblos jóvenes. Dietz, Poverty and problem-solving, p. 36.
Lima seen from Spot satellite
The urban area of Lima covers about . It is located on mostly flat terrain in the Peruvian coastal plain, within the valleys of the Chillón, RÃmac and LurÃn rivers. The city slopes gently from the shores of the Pacific Ocean into valleys and mountain slopes located as high as above mean sea level. Within the city exist isolated hills which are not connected to the surrounding hill chains, such as El Agustino, San Cosme, El Pino, La Milla, Muleria and Pro hills. The San Cristobal hill in the Rimac district, which faces directly north of the downtown area, is the local extreme of an Andean hill outgrowth.
Metropolitan Lima has an area of , of which (31%) comprise the actual city and (69%) the city outskirts. The urban area extends around from north to south and around from west to east. The city center is located inland at the shore of the Rimac river, a vital resource for the city, since it carries what will become drinking water for its inhabitants and fuels the hydro electrical dams that provide electricity to the area. While no official administrative definition for the city exists, it is usually considered to be composed of the central 30 out of the 43 districts of Lima Province, corresponding to an urban area centered around the historic Cercado de Lima district. The city is the core of the Lima Metropolitan Area, one of the ten largest metropolitan areas in the Americas. Lima is the second largest city in the world located in a desert, after Cairo, Egypt.
Weather averages for Lima International Airport.
Lima's climate is quite mild, despite being located in the Tropics. Lima has a subtropical and desert climate, yet the microclimate also makes it very humid throughout the year. The temperatures vary from mild to warm (neither very cold or hot).The average temperature in winter ranges from to . These days usually come accompanied by continuous overcast skies, fog, and mist. In the summer, the high averages around with lows around . During El Niño events, the climate of Lima gets severely disrupted, the water temperatures along the coast which usually average around 17 - 19 °C (65 - 68 °F) get much warmer (as in 1998 when the water temperature reached 26 °C (79 °F)), which causes the high and low temperatures to rise by several degrees. Such was the case when Lima hit its all-time record high of
Relative humidity is always very high particularly in the mornings /ref> , and produces brief morning fog from June to December and persistent low clouds from May to November. Sunny, less moist and warm summers follow from December to April and are followed by cloudy, damp and cool winters (June to October). The all-time record low in the metropolitan area is .
Rainfall is very low. The severely low rainfall impacts on water supply in the city. /ref> Inland locations receive 1 to of rainfall, which accumulates mainly during the winter months. Summer rain occurs in the form of isolated light and brief afternoon or evening events, leftover from afternoon storms that generate over the Andes. The peak of the 'rainy season,' which does not produce "rain" in the true sense of the word, occurs during winter when late-night/morning drizzle events (locally called 'garúa','llovizna' or 'camanchacas') become frequent, leaving a light coating of dampness on the ground. All these climatic phenomena arise from the combination of semi-permanent coastal upwelling and the presence of the cold Humboldt Current just offshore.
A Moorish arch built by Spanish immigrants in Lima /ref>
Lima ranks as the 17th most populous city in the world with a municipal population of 7,605,743, and 8,472,935 for the metropolitan area and a population density of as of 2007. Instituto Nacional de EstadÃstica e Informática, Perfil Sociodemográfico del Perú pp. 29â30, 32, 34. Its population features a very complex mix of racial and ethnic groups. Traditionally, Mestizos of mixed European (mostly Spanish) and Amerindian descent are the largest contingent. The second group are White Caucasians, mainly Spanish, Italians, Germans, French, English, Polish and Eastern Europeans. /ref> /ref> Also there is a large number of Jews, and Middle Easterners. Asians make up a large number of the metropolitan population, especially of Chinese (Cantonese) and Japanese descent. Afro-Peruvians, whose African ancestors were initially brought to the region as slaves, are yet another part of the city's ethnic quilt. Lima has by far the largest Chinese community in Latin America. /ref>
The Archbishop's Palace of Lima along with the Cathedral of Lima, the seat of the Roman Catholic Church in Peru.
The first settlement in what would become Lima was made up of only 117 housing blocks. In 1562, another district was built at the other side of the Rimac River and in 1610, the first stone bridge was built. Lima had, at this point in time, around 1600 inhabitants. In 1861, the amount of inhabitants surpassed 100,000, and by 1927 this amount was doubled.
During the early twentieth century thousands of immigrants came to the city, a significant number of French, Italians and Germans, many of them had been adapting to the Peruvian society. They organized in social clubs, and they built their own schools; for example, The American-Peruvian school which is located in Miraflores, The French Alliance (Alianza Francesa de Lima), famous Lycée Franco-Péruvien and the hospital Maison de Sante, the British-Peruvian school in Monterrico, and also several German-Peruvian schools.
They also influenced Peruvian cuisine, the Italians in particular exerting a strong influence in the Miraflores and San Isidro areas with their restaurants, called Trattorias.
A great number of Chinese immigrants, and a lesser amount of Japanese, came to Lima and established themselves in the Barrios Altos neighborhood near downtown Lima, coming in order to work on farms and domestic services. Lima residents refer to their Chinatown as "Calle Capon," and the city's ubiquitous Chifa restaurants a small, sit-down, usually Chinese-run restaurant serving the Peruvian spin on Chinese cuisine can be found by the dozen in this Chinese enclave.
A pueblo joven in the southern outskirts of Lima in 1997
The 1950s saw the exponential increase of the city inhabitants, most of them Andean immigrants and their descendants, who settled in the northern and southern outskirts. The political and economic instability in Peru during the latter half of the twentieth century created unprecedented poverty and violence in the towns of the countryside or Andean highlands, forcing hundreds of thousands of peasants of Amerindian descent to migrate to Lima thus greatly augmenting Lima's population. Instituto Nacional de Estadistica e Informatica In the 70âs, the lacking transportation facilities for the newcomers who had to travel for hours on end to reach the city center became a problem, and it was decided that Lima should not expand any further.
Buildings in the financial district of San Isidro
Lima is the industrial and financial center of Peru Infoplease. Lima. Retrieved on December 8, 2008. , home to many national companies. It accounts for more than two thirds of Peru's industrial production AttractionGuide. Lima Attractions. Retrieved on December 8, 2008. and most of its tertiary sector.
The Metropolitan area, with around 7000 factories /ref>, spearheads the industrial development of the country, thanks to the quantity and quality of the available workforce, cheap infrastructure and the mostly developed routes and highways in the city. The most relevant industrial sectors are textiles, clothing and food. Chemicals, fish, leather and oil derivatives are also manufactured and/or processed in Lima /ref>. The financial district is located in the district of San Isidro, while much of the industrial activity takes place in the area stretching west of Downtown Lima to the airport in Callao.
Industrialization began to take hold in Lima in 1930s and by 1950s, through import substitution policies, by 1950 manufacturing made up 14% of the GNP. In the late 1950s, up to 70% of consumer goods were manufactured in Peruvian, and primarily Limean, factories. /ref>
The Callao seaport is one of the main fishing and commerce ports in South America, with 75% of the country's imports and 25% of its exports /ref> using it as their entry/departure point. The main export goods leaving the country through Callao are oil, steel, silver, zinc, cotton, sugar and coffee.
A building in downtown Lima's financial district
In 2004, Lima's GDP represented 45% of the country's GDP (5% more than the previous year). The GDP per capita in Lima is $7,600 /ref>. Most of the foreign companies operating in the country have settled in Lima, which has led to the previously mentioned concentration of economic and financial activity on the city.
There has been a noticeable increase in slight industries, services and high technologies. In 2007, the Peruvian economy grew 9%, the largest growth rate in all of South America which was spearheaded by economic policies originating in Lima. CIA Factbook .The Lima Stock Exchange grew 185.24% in 2006 Bolsa de Valores de Lima and in 2007 grew 168.3% Bolsa de Valores de Lima making it one of the fastest growing stock exchanges in the world. In 2006, the Lima Stock Exchange was the most profitable in the world. /ref> The unemployment rate in metropolitan area is 7.2%.
The Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Summit and the Latin America, the Caribbean and the European Union Summit were hosted by the city of Lima.
Lima is headquarters to many major banks such as Banco de Crédito del Perú, Interbank, Bank of the Nation, Banco Continental, Banco Interamericano de Finanzas, Banco Finaciero, Banco de Comercio, MiBanco, and Banco del Trabajo. It is also a regional headquarters to Standard Chartered. Major insurance coorperations based in Lima include Rimac Seguros, Mapfre Peru, Interseguro, Pacifico, Protecta, and La Positiva. /ref>
The Government Palace in downtown Lima.Headquarters of the Andean Community of Nations
Lima is the capital city of the Republic of Peru and the department of Lima. As such, it is home to the three branches of the Government of Peru. The executive branch is headquartered in the Government Palace, located in the Plaza Mayor. The legislative branch is headquartered in the Legislative Palace and is home to the Congress of Peru. The Judicial branch is headquartered in the Palace of Justice and is home to the Supreme Court of Peru.
Likewise, all the ministries are located in the city of Lima. In international government, the city of Lima is home to the headquarters of the Andean Community of Nations and the South American Community of Nations, along with other regional and international organizations.
The city is roughly equivalent to the Province of Lima, which is subdivided into 43 districts. The Metropolitan Municipality of Lima is utmost authority of the entire city while each district further has it's own local government. Unlike the rest of the country, the Metropolitan Municipality, although a provincial municipality, acts as and has functions similar to a regional government, as it does not belong to any of the 25 regions of Peru.
The Palace of Justice, seat of the judicial branch
The Palace of Justice in Lima is seat of the Supreme Court of Justice the highest judicial court in Peru with jurisdiction over the entire territory of Peru.
Lima is also seat of two of the 28 second highest or Superior Courts of Justice. The first and oldest Superior Court in Lima is the Superior Court of Justice of Lima belonging to the Judicial District of Lima. Due to the judicial organization of Peru, the highest concentration of courts is located in Lima despite the fact that it's judicial district only has jurisdiction over 35 of the 43 districts of Lima. Judicial Power of Peru. Superior Court of Lima. Retrieved 3 December 2008. . The Superior Court of the Cono Norte is the second Superior Court located in Lima and is part of the Judicial District of North Lima. This judicial district has jurisdiction over the remaining eight districts all located in northern Lima. Judicial Power of Peru. Superior Court of North Lima. Retrieved 3 December 2008.
Paseo de los Heroes Navales
Lima's architecture is characterized by a mix in styles as reflected from shifts between trends throughout various time periods of the city's history. Examples of early colonial architecture include such structures as the Monastery of San Francisco, the Cathedral of Lima and the Torre Tagle Palace. These constructions are generally influenced by the Spanish baroque, /ref> Spanish Neoclassicism]], /ref> and Spanish Colonial /ref> styles. After independence, a gradual shift towards the neoclassical and Art Nouveau styles took place. Many of these constructions were greatly influenced by French architectural styles. /ref>Many government buildings as well as major cultural institutions were contracted in this architectural time period. During 1960s, constructions utilizing the brutalist style began appearing in Lima due to the military government of Juan Velasco. /ref> Examples of this architecture are the Museum of the Nation and the Ministry of Defense. The 21st century has seen the appearance of glass skyscrapers particularly around the city's financial district. /ref>
Lima's urban setting is characterized by green-lined streets as well as the abundance of plazas throughout the city. More important streets usually contain wider green areas and plaza's usually contain monuments or statues of historical figures of importance to Peruvian history. Parque Universitario in downtown Lima
The largest parks of Lima are located near the downtown area such as the Park of the Reserve, Park of the Exposition, /ref> Campo de Marte, and the University Park. The Park of the Reserve is home to the largest fountain complex in the world known as the Magical Circuit of Water. /ref>
A number of large parks lie outside the city center, including Reducto Park, Pantanos de Villa, The Golf, Park of the Legends, the malecon of Miraflores, and the Golf of the Incas. /ref>The street grid of the city of Lima, is laid out with a system of plazas of which serve a purpose similar to roundabouts or junctions. In addition to this practical purpose, plazas serve as one of Lima's principal green spaces and contain a variety of different types of architecture ranging from monuments to statues, and water fountains. /ref>
Strongly influenced by European, Andean, and Asian culture, Lima is a melting pot of cultures due to colonization, immigration, and indigenous influences. /ref>
Like many other world capitals, Lima is home to prestigious museums many of which are world renown. The Historic Center of Lima was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1988. Limean gastronomy is known to be among the best in the world and the city is known as the Gastronomical Capital of the Americas. Lima's gastronomy is a mix of Spanish, Andean, and Asian culinary traditions. /ref>
Lima's beaches, located along the northern and southern ends of the city, are heavily visited during the summer months. Numerous restaurants, clubs and hotels have been opened in these places to serve the many beachgoers. Lima has a vibrant and active theater scene as there are many theaters presenting not only classic theater, but also The Golf cultural presentations, modern theater, experimental theater, dramas, dance performances, and theater for children. Lima is home to many important theaters such as the Municipal Theater, Segura Theater, Japanese-Peruvian Theater, Marsano Theater, British theater, Theater of the PUCP Cultural Center, and the Yuyachkani Theater. /ref>
Known as Peruvian Coastal Spanish, Lima's Spanish is characterized by the lack of strong innotations as found in many other regions of the Spanish-speaking world. It is heavily influenced by the Spanish spoken in Castile as throughout the colonial era, the colonial Spanish nobility was based in Lima, of which most originated from Castile. /ref> Limean Spanish is also characterized by the lack of voseo, a trait present in the dialects of many other Latin American countries. This is due to the fact that voseo was primarily utilized by the lower socioeconomic classes of Spain, a social group that did not begin to appear in Lima until the late colonial era. Limean Spanish is often distinguished by its relative clarity The Museum of Art in comparison to other Latin American dialects. Limean Spanish has been influenced by a number of immigrant groups including Italians, Andalusians, Chinese and Japanese. It also has been influenced by anglicisms as a result of globalization as well as by Andean Spanish due to recent immigration from the Andean highlands to Lima. /ref>
Lima is home to the highest concentration of museums of the country, the most notable of which being the Museo Nacional de ArqueologÃa AntropologÃa e Historia del Perú, Museum of Art of Lima, the Museum of Natural History, the Museum of the Nation, the Museum of Italian Art, and the Museum of Gold, and the Larco Museum. These museums mostly focus on art, pre-Colombian cultures, natural history, science, and religion. /ref>
Lima, as the point of entry to the country, has developed an important tourism industry, characterized by it's historic center, archeological sites, nightlife, museums, art galleries, festivals, and popular traditions. Lima is home to an ample range of restaurants and bars where local as well as international cuisine is served. /ref>
The Historic Center of Lima, made up of the districts of Lima and Rimac, was declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1988 due to its importance during the colonial era leaving a testimony to architectural achievement. /ref> Some examples of this historical colonial architecture include the Monastery of San Francisco, the Plaza Mayor, the Cathedral, Covenant of Santo Domingo, the Palace of Torre Tagle, and much more.
A tour of the city's churches is a popular circuit among tourists. A short jaunt through the central district goes through many churches dating from as early as the 16th and 17th centuries the most noteworthy of which being the Cathedral of Lima and the Monastery of San Francisco, of which are said to be connected by their subterrestrial catacombs. /ref>Both of these churches contain paintings from various schools of art, Sevilian tile, and finely sculpted wood furnishings. Also notable is the Sanctuary of Las Nazarenas, the point of origin for the Lord of Miracles, whose festivities in the month of October constitute the most important religious event in Lima and arguably all of Peru. Some sections of the Lima City Walls still remain and are frequented by tourists. These examples of medieval Spanish fortifications were utilized to defend the city from attacks by pirates and privateers. /ref>
Beaches are visited during the summer months, which are located along the Pan-American Highway, to the south of the city in districts such as Lurin, Punta Hermosa, San Bartolo and Asia. Many restaurants, nightclubs, lounges, bars, clubs, and hotels have developed in said places to cater to beachgoers. /ref>
The suburban districts of Cieneguilla, Pachacamac, and the city of Chosica, are important tourist attractions among locals as they are located at a higher elevation than Lima therefore receiving sunshine in winter months, something that the city of Lima frequently lacks. /ref>
Lima is known as Gastronomical Capital of the Americas. A center of immigration and the center of the Spanish Viceroyalty, Lima has incorporated unique dishes brought from the arrival of the Spanish Conquistadors and the receiving of many waves of immigrants: African, European, Chinese, and Japanese. ref> /ref> Besides international immigrationâa large portion of which happened in Limaâthere has been, since the second half of the 20th century, a strong internal flow from rural areas to cities, in particular to Lima. /ref>This has strongly influenced Lima's cuisine with the incorporation of the immigrant's ingredients and techniques (for example, the Chinese extensive use of rice or the Japanese approach to preparing raw fish). The genres of restaurants in Lima include Creole food, Chifas, Cebicherias, and Pollerias. Peruvian cuisine, widely represented in Lima, holds various Guinness World Records, for its diversity and quality. /ref>
The Estadio Monumental "U" home of Universitario de Deportes
The city of Lima has varied sports venues for soccer, volleyball and basketball, many of which are located within private clubs. A popular sport among Limeans is fronton, a racquet sport similar to squash invented in Lima. The city is home to seven international-class golf links. Equestrian is popular in Lima with many private clubs as well as the Hipódromo de Monterrico horse racing track. The most popular sport in Lima by far is soccer with many professional club teams being located in the city.
/ref>
1. Central Lima
2. Residential Lima
3. Cono Norte
4. Cono Sur
5. Cono Este
6. Beach areas
7. Callao
Lima is made up of thirty densely-populated districts, each headed by a local mayor and the Mayor of Lima, whose authority extends to these and the thirteen outer districts of the Lima province.
The city's historic centre is located in the Cercado de Lima district, locally known as simply Lima, or as "El Centro" ("Downtown"), and it is home to most of the vestiges of Lima's colonial past, the Presidential Palace ( ), the Metropolitan Municipality of Lima ( ), and dozens of hotels, some operating and some defunct, that used to cater to the national and international elite.
The upscale San Isidro district is the city's financial center. It is home to many prominent figures such as politicians and celebrities. It is also where the main banks of Peru and branch offices of world banks are headquartered. San Isidro has many parks, including Parque El Olivar, which has olive trees that were brought from Spain during the seventeenth century.
Another upscale district is Miraflores, which has many luxury hotels, shops and restaurants. Miraflores has more parks and green areas in the south of Lima than most other districts. Larcomar, a popular shopping mall and entertainment center built on cliffs overlooking the Pacific Ocean, featuring bars, dance clubs, movie theaters, cafes, shops, boutiques and galleries, is also located in this district.
La Molina and San Borja, home to the American Embassy and the exclusive Club Polo Lima respectively, are the other two wealthy districts of Lima.
The most densely-populated districts of Lima lie in the northern and southern ends of the city (Spanish: Cono Norte and Cono Sur, respectively), and they are mostly composed of Andean immigrants who arrived during the mid and late 20th century looking for better living standards and economic opportunities, or as refugees of the country's internal conflict with the Shining Path during the late 80s and early 90s. In the case of Cono Norte(North Lima), certain shopping malls like Megaplaza and Royal Plaza have been recently built in the district of Los Olivos, which is the most residential neighborhood in the Northern part of Lima. Most of the inhabitants of this area belong to the middle class.
Barranco, which borders Miraflores by the Pacific Ocean, is known as the city's bohemian district, home or once home of many Peruvian writers and intellectuals like Mario Vargas Llosa, Chabuca Granda and Alfredo Bryce Echenique. This district has many acclaimed restaurants, music venues called "peñas" featuring the traditional folk music of coastal Peru (in Spanish, "música criolla"), and beautiful Victorian-style chalets. It along with Miraflores serves as the home to the foreign nightlife scene.
The University of Lima
Home to a range of universities, institutions, and schools, Lima has the highest concentration of institutions of higher learning in the country and is home to schools with world-wide recognition. The National University of San Marcos, founded on May 12, 1551 during Spanish colonial regime, is the oldest continuously functioning university in the Americas. /ref>
Other public universities also play key roles in teaching and research, such as the Universidad Nacional Agraria La Molina where ex-president Alberto Fujimori once taught, Universidad Nacional de IngenierÃa and the National University of Callao.
The Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú, established in 1917, is the oldest private university. Other private institutions that are located in the city are Universidad de Lima, Universidad CientÃfica del Sur, Universidad San MartÃn de Porres, Universidad del Pacifico, Universidad Inca Garcilaso de la Vega, Universidad Peruana Cayetano Heredia, Universidad Peruana de Ciencias Aplicadas and Universidad Ricardo Palma. /ref>
The Jorge Chávez International Airport
Lima is served by the Jorge Chavez International Airport, located in Callao. It is the largest airport of the country with the largest amount of domestic and international air traffic. It also serves as a major hub in the Latin American air network. Additionally, Lima possesses five other airports: the Las Palmas Air Force Base, Collique Airport, and runways in Santa MarÃa del Mar, San Bartolo and Chilca. /ref>
Lima is connected by highway to every country that borders Peru. Because of its location on the country's central coast, Lima is an important junction in Peru's highway system, three of the major highways originate in Lima.
*The Northern Panamerican Highway, this highway extends more than to the border with Ecuador connecting the northern districts of Lima with many major cities along the northern Peruvian coast.
*The Central Highway ( ), this highway connects the eastern districts of Lima with many cities in central Peru. The highway extends with its terminus at the city of Pucallpa near Brazil.
*The Southern Panamerican Highway, this highway connects the southern districts of Lima to cities on the southern coast. The highway extends to the border with Chile.
The proximity of Lima to the port of Callao allows Callao to act as the metropolitan area's foremost port. Callao concentrates nearly all of the maritime transport of the metropolitan area. There is, however, a small port in LurÃn whose transit mostly is accounted for by oil tankers due to a refinery being located nearby. Nonetheless, maritime transport inside Lima's city limits is relatively insignificant compared to that of Callao, the nation's leading port and one of Latin America's largest. There have been plans to build a new megaport on the island of San Lorenzo known as the San Lorenzo Megaport Project. This port is planned to become the largest of Latin America.
Lima is connected to the Central Andean region by the Ferrocarril Central Andino which runs from Lima through the departments of Junin, Huancavelica, Pasco, and Huanuco. /ref> Major cities along this line include Huancayo, La Oroya, Huancavelica, and Cerro de Pasco. Another inactive line runs from Lima northwards to the city of Huacho. /ref>
The urban transport system is composed of over 652 transit routes /ref> which are served by buses, microbuses, and combis. The system is unorganized and is characterized by the lack of formality. The service is run by 464 private companies which are poorly regulated by the local government. Fares average at around one sol or $0.30 USD. Due to the absence of a centralized bus terminal, individual bus companies use private terminals throughout Lima. /ref>
The Metropolitan Transportation System is a transport project which plans to integrate the Independent Corridor of Mass-Transit Buses known by its Spanish initials as (COSAC 1). This system plans to link the principal points of the Lima Metropolitan Area and the first phase of this project is already in development with the construction of a thirty three kilometer long line from Comas to Chorrillos.The Lima Metro mass transit system This system is similar to the TransMilenio of Bogota, Colombia. /ref>
Automobiles, known as colectivos, render express service on some major roads of the Lima Metropolitan Area. The colectivos signal their specific destination with a sign on the their windshield. Their routes are not generally publicitized but are understood by frequent users. The cost is generally higher than congenital public transport however they cover greater distances at greater speeds due to the lack of stops. /ref>
The Lima Metro, a above ground mass transit system, is under construction and one line has been completed while another six are scheduled for construction. Line 1 is also scheduled to be extended to the city's center, uniting Villa el Salvador with downtown Lima in a matter of only forty minutes, a trip which currently lasts one hour and forty minutes with the current public transport system. www.trenurbano.gob.pe/
The Via Expresa
Taxis in the city are relatively cheap. There are no meters so drivers are told the desired destination and the fare is agreed upon before the passenger enters the taxi. Taxis vary in sizes from small four door compacts to large vans. They are virtually everywhere, accounting for a large part of the car stock. In many cases they are just a private car with a taxi sticker on the windshield. Additionally, there are several companies that provide taxi service on-call. /ref>
Eighty percent of the city's history having occurred during the pre-automobile era, Lima's road network is based mostly on large divided avenues rather than freeways. In recent times however, Lima has developed a freeway network now made up of nine freeways which are, the Via Expresa Paseo de la Republica, Via Expresa Javier Prado, Via Expresa Grau, Panamericana Norte, Panamericana Sur, Carretera Central, Via Expresa Callao, Autopista Chillon Trapiche, and the Autopista Ramiro Priale. /ref> /ref>
Skyline from the Costa Verde
List of sister cities, designated by Sister Cities International: Sister Cities International, Online Directory: Peru, Americas. Retrieved July 14, 2007
* Arequipa, Peru
* Cusco, Peru
* Piura, Peru
* New York City, United States
* Los Angeles, United States
* Austin, United States, since 1981
* Cleveland, United States
* Miami, United States
* Bordeaux, France, since 1957
* Beijing, China, since November 21, 1983Buildings in the financial district
* Madrid, Spain
* Mexico City, Mexico
* São Paulo, Brazil
* Tegucigalpa, Honduras
* Akhisar, Turkey
* Buenos Aires, Argentina
* Guadalajara, Mexico
* Montreal, Canada
* Bogotá, Colombia
* Cairo, Egypt
* Cardiff, Wales, United Kingdom
*Lima Metropolitan Area
*List of people from Lima
*List of districts and neighborhoods of Lima
*List of sites of interest in the Lima Metropolitan area
* Nota etimológica: El topónimo Lima, Rodolfo Cerrón-Palomino, Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú
* Lima Monumento Histórico, Margarita Cubillas Soriano, Lima, 1996
;History
* Andrien, Kenneth. Crisis and decline: the Viceroyalty of Peru in the seventeenth century. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1985. ISBN 0-8263-0791-4
* Anna, Timothy. The fall of the royal government in Peru. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1979. ISBN 0-8032-1004-3
* Conlee, Christina, Jalh Dulanto, Carol Mackay and Charles Stanish. "Late Prehispanic sociopolitical complexity". In Helaine Silverman (ed.), Andean archaeology. Malden: Blackwell, 2004, pp. 209â236. ISBN 0-631-23400-4
* Dietz, Henry. Poverty and problem-solving under military rule: the urban poor in Lima, Peru. Austin : University of Texas Press, 1980. ISBN 0-292-76460-X
* Hemming, John. The conquest of the Incas. London: Macmillan, 1993. ISBN 0-333-51794-6
* Higgings, James. Lima. A cultural history. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005. ISBN 0-19-517891-2
* Instituto Nacional de EstadÃstica e Informática. Lima Metropolitana perfil socio-demográfico. Lima: INEI, 1996.
* Klarén, Peter. Peru: society and nationhood in the Andes. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000. ISBN 0-19-506928-5
* Ramón, Gabriel. "The script of urban surgery: Lima, 1850â1940". In Arturo Almandoz (ed.), Planning Latin America's capital cities, 1850â1950. New York: Routledge, 2002, pp. 170â192. ISBN 0-415-27265-3
* Walker, Charles. "The upper classes and their upper stories: architecture and the aftermath of the Lima earthquake of 1746". Hispanic American Historical Review 83 (1): 53â82 (February 2003).
;Demographics
* Instituto Nacional de EstadÃstica e Informática, Perfil Sociodemográfico del Perú. Lima: INEI, 2008.
* Municipality of Lima
* Geographia.com
* Maps
* Stock Exchange
*
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Lima | Does Lima have volleyball venues? | Yes. | data/set3/a4 | Lima
Lima is the capital and largest city of Peru. It is located in the valleys of the Chillón, RÃmac and LurÃn rivers, on a coast overlooking the Pacific Ocean. It forms a contiguous urban area with the seaport of Callao.
Lima was founded by Spanish conquistador Francisco Pizarro on January 18, 1535, as La Ciudad de los Reyes, or "The City of Kings." It became the most important city in the Spanish Viceroyalty of Peru and, after the Peruvian War of Independence, was made the capital of the Republic of Peru. Today around one-third of the Peruvian population lives in the metropolitan area.
According to early Spanish chronicles the Lima area was once called Ichma, after its original inhabitants. However, even before the Inca occupation of the area in the 15th century, a famous oracle in the RÃmac valley had come to be known by visitors as Limaq (limaq, pronounced , which means "talker" in coastal Quechua). This oracle was eventually destroyed by the Spanish and replaced with a church, but the name persisted in the local language, thus the chronicles show "LÃmac" replacing "Ychma" as the common name for the area. /ref>
Modern scholars speculate that the word "Lima" originated as the Spanish pronunciation of the native name Limaq. Linguistic evidence seems to support this theory as spoken Spanish consistently rejects stop consonants in word-final position. The city was founded in 1535 under the name City of the Kings ( ) because its foundation was decided on January 6, date of the feast of the Epiphany. Nevertheless, this name quickly fell into disuse and Lima became the city's name of choice; on the oldest Spanish maps of Peru, both Lima and Ciudad de los Reyes can be seen together as names for the city.
It is worth noting that the river that feeds Lima is called RÃmac, and many people erroneously assume that this is because its original Inca name is "Talking River" (the Incas spoke a highland variety of Quechua where the word for "talker" was pronounced ). However, the original inhabitants of the valley were not the Incas, and this name is actually an innovation arising from an effort by the Cuzco nobility in colonial times to standardize the toponym so that it would conform to the phonology of Cuzco Quechua. Later, as the the original inhabitants of the valley died out and the local Quechua became extinct, the Cuzco pronunciation prevailed. In modern times, Spanish-speaking locals do not see the connection between the name of their city and the name of the river that runs through it. They often assume that the valley is named after the river; however, Spanish documents from the colonial period show the opposite to be true.
Lima City Walls were build between 1684 and 1687 by viceroy Melchor de Navarra y Rocafull.
In the pre-Columbian era, the location of what is now the city of Lima was inhabited by several amerindian groups under the Ychsma polity, which was incorporated into the Inca Empire in the 15th century. Conlee et al, "Late Prehispanic sociopolitical complexity", p. 218. In 1532, a group of Spanish conquistadors led by Francisco Pizarro defeated the Inca ruler Atahualpa and took over his Empire. As the Spanish Crown had named Pizarro governor of the lands he conquered, Hemming, The conquest, p. 28. he chose the RÃmac valley to found his capital on January 18, 1535 as Ciudad de los Reyes (City of the Kings). Klarén, Peru, p. 39. In August 1536, the new city was besieged by the troops of Manco Inca, however, the Spaniards and their native allies defeated the Inca rebels. Hemming, The conquest, p. 203â206.
Balconies were a major feature of Lima's architecture during the colonial period.
Over the next few years, Lima gained prestige as it was designated capital of the Viceroyalty of Peru and site of a Real Audiencia in 1543. Klarén, Peru, p. 87. During the next century Lima flourished as the center of an extensive trade network which integrated the Viceroyalty with the Americas, Europe and the Far East. Andrien, Crisis and decline, pp. 11â13. However, the city was not free from dangers; powerful earthquakes destroyed most of the city in 1687. Andrien, Crisis and decline, p. 26. A second threat was the presence of pirates and privateers in the Pacific Ocean, which led to the building of the Lima City Walls between 1684 and 1687. Higgings, Lima, p. 45. The 1687 earthquake marked a turning point in the history of Lima as it coincided with a recession in trade and economic competition by other cities such as Buenos Aires. Andrien, Crisis and decline, p. 28.
In 1746, a powerful earthquake severely damaged Lima and destroyed Callao, forcing a massive rebuilding effort under Viceroy José Antonio Manso de Velasco. Walker, "The upper classes", pp. 53â55. In the later half of the 18th century, the ideas of the Enlightenment on public health and social control shaped the development of the city. Ramón, "The script", pp. 173â174. During this period, Lima was adversely affected by the Bourbon Reforms as it lost its monopoly on overseas trade and its control over the important mining region of Upper Peru. Anna, Fall of the royal government, pp. 4â5. This economic decline made the city's elite dependent on royal and ecclesiastical appointment and thus, reluctant to advocate independence. Anna, Fall of the royal government, pp. 23â24.
A combined expedition of Argentine and Chilean patriots under General José de San MartÃn managed to land south of Lima in 1820 but did not attack the city. Faced with a naval blockade and the action of guerrillas on land, Viceroy José de la Serna was forced to evacuate the city on July 1821 to save the Royalist army. Anna, Fall of the royal government, pp. 176â177. Fearing a popular uprising and lacking any means to impose order, the city council invited San MartÃn to enter Lima and signed a Declaration of Independence at his request. Anna, Fall of the royal government, pp. 178â180. However, the war was not over; in the next two years the city changed hands several times and suffered exactions from both sides.
The Jiron de la Union was Lima's most important street for the first half of the 20th century
After the war of independence, Lima became the capital of the Republic of Peru but economic stagnation and political turmoil brought urban development to a halt. This hiatus ended in the 1850s, when increased public and private revenues from guano exports led to a rapid expansion of the city. Klarén, Peru, p. 169. However, the export-led economic expansion also widened the gap between rich and poor, fostering social unrest. Klarén, Peru, p. 170. During the 1879â1883 War of the Pacific, Chilean troops occupied Lima, looting public museums, libraries and educational institutions. Higgings, Lima, p. 107. At the same time, angry mobs attacked wealthy citizens and the Asian population; sacking their properties and businesses. Klarén, Peru, p. 192. After the war, the city underwent a process of renewal and expansion from the 1890s up to the 1920s. During this period the urban layout was modified by the construction of big avenues which crisscrossed the city and connected it with neighboring towns. Ramón, "The script", pp. 180â182.
In 1940, an earthquake destroyed most of the city, which at that time was mostly built out of adobe and quincha. In the 1940s, Lima started a period of rapid growth spurred by immigration from the Andean regions of Peru. Population, estimated at 0.6 million in 1940, reached 1.9M by 1960 and 4.8M by 1980. Instituto Nacional de EstadÃstica e Informática, Lima Metropolitana perfil socio-demográfico. Retrieved on August 12, 2007 At the start of this period, the urban area was confined to a triangular area bounded by the city's historic center, Callao and Chorrillos; in the following decades settlements spread to the north, beyond the RÃmac River, to the east, along the Central Highway, and to the south. Dietz, Poverty and problem-solving, p. 35. Immigrants, at first confined to slums in downtown Lima, led this expansion through large-scale land invasions which gave rise to the proliferation of shanty towns, known as pueblos jóvenes. Dietz, Poverty and problem-solving, p. 36.
Lima seen from Spot satellite
The urban area of Lima covers about . It is located on mostly flat terrain in the Peruvian coastal plain, within the valleys of the Chillón, RÃmac and LurÃn rivers. The city slopes gently from the shores of the Pacific Ocean into valleys and mountain slopes located as high as above mean sea level. Within the city exist isolated hills which are not connected to the surrounding hill chains, such as El Agustino, San Cosme, El Pino, La Milla, Muleria and Pro hills. The San Cristobal hill in the Rimac district, which faces directly north of the downtown area, is the local extreme of an Andean hill outgrowth.
Metropolitan Lima has an area of , of which (31%) comprise the actual city and (69%) the city outskirts. The urban area extends around from north to south and around from west to east. The city center is located inland at the shore of the Rimac river, a vital resource for the city, since it carries what will become drinking water for its inhabitants and fuels the hydro electrical dams that provide electricity to the area. While no official administrative definition for the city exists, it is usually considered to be composed of the central 30 out of the 43 districts of Lima Province, corresponding to an urban area centered around the historic Cercado de Lima district. The city is the core of the Lima Metropolitan Area, one of the ten largest metropolitan areas in the Americas. Lima is the second largest city in the world located in a desert, after Cairo, Egypt.
Weather averages for Lima International Airport.
Lima's climate is quite mild, despite being located in the Tropics. Lima has a subtropical and desert climate, yet the microclimate also makes it very humid throughout the year. The temperatures vary from mild to warm (neither very cold or hot).The average temperature in winter ranges from to . These days usually come accompanied by continuous overcast skies, fog, and mist. In the summer, the high averages around with lows around . During El Niño events, the climate of Lima gets severely disrupted, the water temperatures along the coast which usually average around 17 - 19 °C (65 - 68 °F) get much warmer (as in 1998 when the water temperature reached 26 °C (79 °F)), which causes the high and low temperatures to rise by several degrees. Such was the case when Lima hit its all-time record high of
Relative humidity is always very high particularly in the mornings /ref> , and produces brief morning fog from June to December and persistent low clouds from May to November. Sunny, less moist and warm summers follow from December to April and are followed by cloudy, damp and cool winters (June to October). The all-time record low in the metropolitan area is .
Rainfall is very low. The severely low rainfall impacts on water supply in the city. /ref> Inland locations receive 1 to of rainfall, which accumulates mainly during the winter months. Summer rain occurs in the form of isolated light and brief afternoon or evening events, leftover from afternoon storms that generate over the Andes. The peak of the 'rainy season,' which does not produce "rain" in the true sense of the word, occurs during winter when late-night/morning drizzle events (locally called 'garúa','llovizna' or 'camanchacas') become frequent, leaving a light coating of dampness on the ground. All these climatic phenomena arise from the combination of semi-permanent coastal upwelling and the presence of the cold Humboldt Current just offshore.
A Moorish arch built by Spanish immigrants in Lima /ref>
Lima ranks as the 17th most populous city in the world with a municipal population of 7,605,743, and 8,472,935 for the metropolitan area and a population density of as of 2007. Instituto Nacional de EstadÃstica e Informática, Perfil Sociodemográfico del Perú pp. 29â30, 32, 34. Its population features a very complex mix of racial and ethnic groups. Traditionally, Mestizos of mixed European (mostly Spanish) and Amerindian descent are the largest contingent. The second group are White Caucasians, mainly Spanish, Italians, Germans, French, English, Polish and Eastern Europeans. /ref> /ref> Also there is a large number of Jews, and Middle Easterners. Asians make up a large number of the metropolitan population, especially of Chinese (Cantonese) and Japanese descent. Afro-Peruvians, whose African ancestors were initially brought to the region as slaves, are yet another part of the city's ethnic quilt. Lima has by far the largest Chinese community in Latin America. /ref>
The Archbishop's Palace of Lima along with the Cathedral of Lima, the seat of the Roman Catholic Church in Peru.
The first settlement in what would become Lima was made up of only 117 housing blocks. In 1562, another district was built at the other side of the Rimac River and in 1610, the first stone bridge was built. Lima had, at this point in time, around 1600 inhabitants. In 1861, the amount of inhabitants surpassed 100,000, and by 1927 this amount was doubled.
During the early twentieth century thousands of immigrants came to the city, a significant number of French, Italians and Germans, many of them had been adapting to the Peruvian society. They organized in social clubs, and they built their own schools; for example, The American-Peruvian school which is located in Miraflores, The French Alliance (Alianza Francesa de Lima), famous Lycée Franco-Péruvien and the hospital Maison de Sante, the British-Peruvian school in Monterrico, and also several German-Peruvian schools.
They also influenced Peruvian cuisine, the Italians in particular exerting a strong influence in the Miraflores and San Isidro areas with their restaurants, called Trattorias.
A great number of Chinese immigrants, and a lesser amount of Japanese, came to Lima and established themselves in the Barrios Altos neighborhood near downtown Lima, coming in order to work on farms and domestic services. Lima residents refer to their Chinatown as "Calle Capon," and the city's ubiquitous Chifa restaurants a small, sit-down, usually Chinese-run restaurant serving the Peruvian spin on Chinese cuisine can be found by the dozen in this Chinese enclave.
A pueblo joven in the southern outskirts of Lima in 1997
The 1950s saw the exponential increase of the city inhabitants, most of them Andean immigrants and their descendants, who settled in the northern and southern outskirts. The political and economic instability in Peru during the latter half of the twentieth century created unprecedented poverty and violence in the towns of the countryside or Andean highlands, forcing hundreds of thousands of peasants of Amerindian descent to migrate to Lima thus greatly augmenting Lima's population. Instituto Nacional de Estadistica e Informatica In the 70âs, the lacking transportation facilities for the newcomers who had to travel for hours on end to reach the city center became a problem, and it was decided that Lima should not expand any further.
Buildings in the financial district of San Isidro
Lima is the industrial and financial center of Peru Infoplease. Lima. Retrieved on December 8, 2008. , home to many national companies. It accounts for more than two thirds of Peru's industrial production AttractionGuide. Lima Attractions. Retrieved on December 8, 2008. and most of its tertiary sector.
The Metropolitan area, with around 7000 factories /ref>, spearheads the industrial development of the country, thanks to the quantity and quality of the available workforce, cheap infrastructure and the mostly developed routes and highways in the city. The most relevant industrial sectors are textiles, clothing and food. Chemicals, fish, leather and oil derivatives are also manufactured and/or processed in Lima /ref>. The financial district is located in the district of San Isidro, while much of the industrial activity takes place in the area stretching west of Downtown Lima to the airport in Callao.
Industrialization began to take hold in Lima in 1930s and by 1950s, through import substitution policies, by 1950 manufacturing made up 14% of the GNP. In the late 1950s, up to 70% of consumer goods were manufactured in Peruvian, and primarily Limean, factories. /ref>
The Callao seaport is one of the main fishing and commerce ports in South America, with 75% of the country's imports and 25% of its exports /ref> using it as their entry/departure point. The main export goods leaving the country through Callao are oil, steel, silver, zinc, cotton, sugar and coffee.
A building in downtown Lima's financial district
In 2004, Lima's GDP represented 45% of the country's GDP (5% more than the previous year). The GDP per capita in Lima is $7,600 /ref>. Most of the foreign companies operating in the country have settled in Lima, which has led to the previously mentioned concentration of economic and financial activity on the city.
There has been a noticeable increase in slight industries, services and high technologies. In 2007, the Peruvian economy grew 9%, the largest growth rate in all of South America which was spearheaded by economic policies originating in Lima. CIA Factbook .The Lima Stock Exchange grew 185.24% in 2006 Bolsa de Valores de Lima and in 2007 grew 168.3% Bolsa de Valores de Lima making it one of the fastest growing stock exchanges in the world. In 2006, the Lima Stock Exchange was the most profitable in the world. /ref> The unemployment rate in metropolitan area is 7.2%.
The Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Summit and the Latin America, the Caribbean and the European Union Summit were hosted by the city of Lima.
Lima is headquarters to many major banks such as Banco de Crédito del Perú, Interbank, Bank of the Nation, Banco Continental, Banco Interamericano de Finanzas, Banco Finaciero, Banco de Comercio, MiBanco, and Banco del Trabajo. It is also a regional headquarters to Standard Chartered. Major insurance coorperations based in Lima include Rimac Seguros, Mapfre Peru, Interseguro, Pacifico, Protecta, and La Positiva. /ref>
The Government Palace in downtown Lima.Headquarters of the Andean Community of Nations
Lima is the capital city of the Republic of Peru and the department of Lima. As such, it is home to the three branches of the Government of Peru. The executive branch is headquartered in the Government Palace, located in the Plaza Mayor. The legislative branch is headquartered in the Legislative Palace and is home to the Congress of Peru. The Judicial branch is headquartered in the Palace of Justice and is home to the Supreme Court of Peru.
Likewise, all the ministries are located in the city of Lima. In international government, the city of Lima is home to the headquarters of the Andean Community of Nations and the South American Community of Nations, along with other regional and international organizations.
The city is roughly equivalent to the Province of Lima, which is subdivided into 43 districts. The Metropolitan Municipality of Lima is utmost authority of the entire city while each district further has it's own local government. Unlike the rest of the country, the Metropolitan Municipality, although a provincial municipality, acts as and has functions similar to a regional government, as it does not belong to any of the 25 regions of Peru.
The Palace of Justice, seat of the judicial branch
The Palace of Justice in Lima is seat of the Supreme Court of Justice the highest judicial court in Peru with jurisdiction over the entire territory of Peru.
Lima is also seat of two of the 28 second highest or Superior Courts of Justice. The first and oldest Superior Court in Lima is the Superior Court of Justice of Lima belonging to the Judicial District of Lima. Due to the judicial organization of Peru, the highest concentration of courts is located in Lima despite the fact that it's judicial district only has jurisdiction over 35 of the 43 districts of Lima. Judicial Power of Peru. Superior Court of Lima. Retrieved 3 December 2008. . The Superior Court of the Cono Norte is the second Superior Court located in Lima and is part of the Judicial District of North Lima. This judicial district has jurisdiction over the remaining eight districts all located in northern Lima. Judicial Power of Peru. Superior Court of North Lima. Retrieved 3 December 2008.
Paseo de los Heroes Navales
Lima's architecture is characterized by a mix in styles as reflected from shifts between trends throughout various time periods of the city's history. Examples of early colonial architecture include such structures as the Monastery of San Francisco, the Cathedral of Lima and the Torre Tagle Palace. These constructions are generally influenced by the Spanish baroque, /ref> Spanish Neoclassicism]], /ref> and Spanish Colonial /ref> styles. After independence, a gradual shift towards the neoclassical and Art Nouveau styles took place. Many of these constructions were greatly influenced by French architectural styles. /ref>Many government buildings as well as major cultural institutions were contracted in this architectural time period. During 1960s, constructions utilizing the brutalist style began appearing in Lima due to the military government of Juan Velasco. /ref> Examples of this architecture are the Museum of the Nation and the Ministry of Defense. The 21st century has seen the appearance of glass skyscrapers particularly around the city's financial district. /ref>
Lima's urban setting is characterized by green-lined streets as well as the abundance of plazas throughout the city. More important streets usually contain wider green areas and plaza's usually contain monuments or statues of historical figures of importance to Peruvian history. Parque Universitario in downtown Lima
The largest parks of Lima are located near the downtown area such as the Park of the Reserve, Park of the Exposition, /ref> Campo de Marte, and the University Park. The Park of the Reserve is home to the largest fountain complex in the world known as the Magical Circuit of Water. /ref>
A number of large parks lie outside the city center, including Reducto Park, Pantanos de Villa, The Golf, Park of the Legends, the malecon of Miraflores, and the Golf of the Incas. /ref>The street grid of the city of Lima, is laid out with a system of plazas of which serve a purpose similar to roundabouts or junctions. In addition to this practical purpose, plazas serve as one of Lima's principal green spaces and contain a variety of different types of architecture ranging from monuments to statues, and water fountains. /ref>
Strongly influenced by European, Andean, and Asian culture, Lima is a melting pot of cultures due to colonization, immigration, and indigenous influences. /ref>
Like many other world capitals, Lima is home to prestigious museums many of which are world renown. The Historic Center of Lima was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1988. Limean gastronomy is known to be among the best in the world and the city is known as the Gastronomical Capital of the Americas. Lima's gastronomy is a mix of Spanish, Andean, and Asian culinary traditions. /ref>
Lima's beaches, located along the northern and southern ends of the city, are heavily visited during the summer months. Numerous restaurants, clubs and hotels have been opened in these places to serve the many beachgoers. Lima has a vibrant and active theater scene as there are many theaters presenting not only classic theater, but also The Golf cultural presentations, modern theater, experimental theater, dramas, dance performances, and theater for children. Lima is home to many important theaters such as the Municipal Theater, Segura Theater, Japanese-Peruvian Theater, Marsano Theater, British theater, Theater of the PUCP Cultural Center, and the Yuyachkani Theater. /ref>
Known as Peruvian Coastal Spanish, Lima's Spanish is characterized by the lack of strong innotations as found in many other regions of the Spanish-speaking world. It is heavily influenced by the Spanish spoken in Castile as throughout the colonial era, the colonial Spanish nobility was based in Lima, of which most originated from Castile. /ref> Limean Spanish is also characterized by the lack of voseo, a trait present in the dialects of many other Latin American countries. This is due to the fact that voseo was primarily utilized by the lower socioeconomic classes of Spain, a social group that did not begin to appear in Lima until the late colonial era. Limean Spanish is often distinguished by its relative clarity The Museum of Art in comparison to other Latin American dialects. Limean Spanish has been influenced by a number of immigrant groups including Italians, Andalusians, Chinese and Japanese. It also has been influenced by anglicisms as a result of globalization as well as by Andean Spanish due to recent immigration from the Andean highlands to Lima. /ref>
Lima is home to the highest concentration of museums of the country, the most notable of which being the Museo Nacional de ArqueologÃa AntropologÃa e Historia del Perú, Museum of Art of Lima, the Museum of Natural History, the Museum of the Nation, the Museum of Italian Art, and the Museum of Gold, and the Larco Museum. These museums mostly focus on art, pre-Colombian cultures, natural history, science, and religion. /ref>
Lima, as the point of entry to the country, has developed an important tourism industry, characterized by it's historic center, archeological sites, nightlife, museums, art galleries, festivals, and popular traditions. Lima is home to an ample range of restaurants and bars where local as well as international cuisine is served. /ref>
The Historic Center of Lima, made up of the districts of Lima and Rimac, was declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1988 due to its importance during the colonial era leaving a testimony to architectural achievement. /ref> Some examples of this historical colonial architecture include the Monastery of San Francisco, the Plaza Mayor, the Cathedral, Covenant of Santo Domingo, the Palace of Torre Tagle, and much more.
A tour of the city's churches is a popular circuit among tourists. A short jaunt through the central district goes through many churches dating from as early as the 16th and 17th centuries the most noteworthy of which being the Cathedral of Lima and the Monastery of San Francisco, of which are said to be connected by their subterrestrial catacombs. /ref>Both of these churches contain paintings from various schools of art, Sevilian tile, and finely sculpted wood furnishings. Also notable is the Sanctuary of Las Nazarenas, the point of origin for the Lord of Miracles, whose festivities in the month of October constitute the most important religious event in Lima and arguably all of Peru. Some sections of the Lima City Walls still remain and are frequented by tourists. These examples of medieval Spanish fortifications were utilized to defend the city from attacks by pirates and privateers. /ref>
Beaches are visited during the summer months, which are located along the Pan-American Highway, to the south of the city in districts such as Lurin, Punta Hermosa, San Bartolo and Asia. Many restaurants, nightclubs, lounges, bars, clubs, and hotels have developed in said places to cater to beachgoers. /ref>
The suburban districts of Cieneguilla, Pachacamac, and the city of Chosica, are important tourist attractions among locals as they are located at a higher elevation than Lima therefore receiving sunshine in winter months, something that the city of Lima frequently lacks. /ref>
Lima is known as Gastronomical Capital of the Americas. A center of immigration and the center of the Spanish Viceroyalty, Lima has incorporated unique dishes brought from the arrival of the Spanish Conquistadors and the receiving of many waves of immigrants: African, European, Chinese, and Japanese. ref> /ref> Besides international immigrationâa large portion of which happened in Limaâthere has been, since the second half of the 20th century, a strong internal flow from rural areas to cities, in particular to Lima. /ref>This has strongly influenced Lima's cuisine with the incorporation of the immigrant's ingredients and techniques (for example, the Chinese extensive use of rice or the Japanese approach to preparing raw fish). The genres of restaurants in Lima include Creole food, Chifas, Cebicherias, and Pollerias. Peruvian cuisine, widely represented in Lima, holds various Guinness World Records, for its diversity and quality. /ref>
The Estadio Monumental "U" home of Universitario de Deportes
The city of Lima has varied sports venues for soccer, volleyball and basketball, many of which are located within private clubs. A popular sport among Limeans is fronton, a racquet sport similar to squash invented in Lima. The city is home to seven international-class golf links. Equestrian is popular in Lima with many private clubs as well as the Hipódromo de Monterrico horse racing track. The most popular sport in Lima by far is soccer with many professional club teams being located in the city.
/ref>
1. Central Lima
2. Residential Lima
3. Cono Norte
4. Cono Sur
5. Cono Este
6. Beach areas
7. Callao
Lima is made up of thirty densely-populated districts, each headed by a local mayor and the Mayor of Lima, whose authority extends to these and the thirteen outer districts of the Lima province.
The city's historic centre is located in the Cercado de Lima district, locally known as simply Lima, or as "El Centro" ("Downtown"), and it is home to most of the vestiges of Lima's colonial past, the Presidential Palace ( ), the Metropolitan Municipality of Lima ( ), and dozens of hotels, some operating and some defunct, that used to cater to the national and international elite.
The upscale San Isidro district is the city's financial center. It is home to many prominent figures such as politicians and celebrities. It is also where the main banks of Peru and branch offices of world banks are headquartered. San Isidro has many parks, including Parque El Olivar, which has olive trees that were brought from Spain during the seventeenth century.
Another upscale district is Miraflores, which has many luxury hotels, shops and restaurants. Miraflores has more parks and green areas in the south of Lima than most other districts. Larcomar, a popular shopping mall and entertainment center built on cliffs overlooking the Pacific Ocean, featuring bars, dance clubs, movie theaters, cafes, shops, boutiques and galleries, is also located in this district.
La Molina and San Borja, home to the American Embassy and the exclusive Club Polo Lima respectively, are the other two wealthy districts of Lima.
The most densely-populated districts of Lima lie in the northern and southern ends of the city (Spanish: Cono Norte and Cono Sur, respectively), and they are mostly composed of Andean immigrants who arrived during the mid and late 20th century looking for better living standards and economic opportunities, or as refugees of the country's internal conflict with the Shining Path during the late 80s and early 90s. In the case of Cono Norte(North Lima), certain shopping malls like Megaplaza and Royal Plaza have been recently built in the district of Los Olivos, which is the most residential neighborhood in the Northern part of Lima. Most of the inhabitants of this area belong to the middle class.
Barranco, which borders Miraflores by the Pacific Ocean, is known as the city's bohemian district, home or once home of many Peruvian writers and intellectuals like Mario Vargas Llosa, Chabuca Granda and Alfredo Bryce Echenique. This district has many acclaimed restaurants, music venues called "peñas" featuring the traditional folk music of coastal Peru (in Spanish, "música criolla"), and beautiful Victorian-style chalets. It along with Miraflores serves as the home to the foreign nightlife scene.
The University of Lima
Home to a range of universities, institutions, and schools, Lima has the highest concentration of institutions of higher learning in the country and is home to schools with world-wide recognition. The National University of San Marcos, founded on May 12, 1551 during Spanish colonial regime, is the oldest continuously functioning university in the Americas. /ref>
Other public universities also play key roles in teaching and research, such as the Universidad Nacional Agraria La Molina where ex-president Alberto Fujimori once taught, Universidad Nacional de IngenierÃa and the National University of Callao.
The Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú, established in 1917, is the oldest private university. Other private institutions that are located in the city are Universidad de Lima, Universidad CientÃfica del Sur, Universidad San MartÃn de Porres, Universidad del Pacifico, Universidad Inca Garcilaso de la Vega, Universidad Peruana Cayetano Heredia, Universidad Peruana de Ciencias Aplicadas and Universidad Ricardo Palma. /ref>
The Jorge Chávez International Airport
Lima is served by the Jorge Chavez International Airport, located in Callao. It is the largest airport of the country with the largest amount of domestic and international air traffic. It also serves as a major hub in the Latin American air network. Additionally, Lima possesses five other airports: the Las Palmas Air Force Base, Collique Airport, and runways in Santa MarÃa del Mar, San Bartolo and Chilca. /ref>
Lima is connected by highway to every country that borders Peru. Because of its location on the country's central coast, Lima is an important junction in Peru's highway system, three of the major highways originate in Lima.
*The Northern Panamerican Highway, this highway extends more than to the border with Ecuador connecting the northern districts of Lima with many major cities along the northern Peruvian coast.
*The Central Highway ( ), this highway connects the eastern districts of Lima with many cities in central Peru. The highway extends with its terminus at the city of Pucallpa near Brazil.
*The Southern Panamerican Highway, this highway connects the southern districts of Lima to cities on the southern coast. The highway extends to the border with Chile.
The proximity of Lima to the port of Callao allows Callao to act as the metropolitan area's foremost port. Callao concentrates nearly all of the maritime transport of the metropolitan area. There is, however, a small port in LurÃn whose transit mostly is accounted for by oil tankers due to a refinery being located nearby. Nonetheless, maritime transport inside Lima's city limits is relatively insignificant compared to that of Callao, the nation's leading port and one of Latin America's largest. There have been plans to build a new megaport on the island of San Lorenzo known as the San Lorenzo Megaport Project. This port is planned to become the largest of Latin America.
Lima is connected to the Central Andean region by the Ferrocarril Central Andino which runs from Lima through the departments of Junin, Huancavelica, Pasco, and Huanuco. /ref> Major cities along this line include Huancayo, La Oroya, Huancavelica, and Cerro de Pasco. Another inactive line runs from Lima northwards to the city of Huacho. /ref>
The urban transport system is composed of over 652 transit routes /ref> which are served by buses, microbuses, and combis. The system is unorganized and is characterized by the lack of formality. The service is run by 464 private companies which are poorly regulated by the local government. Fares average at around one sol or $0.30 USD. Due to the absence of a centralized bus terminal, individual bus companies use private terminals throughout Lima. /ref>
The Metropolitan Transportation System is a transport project which plans to integrate the Independent Corridor of Mass-Transit Buses known by its Spanish initials as (COSAC 1). This system plans to link the principal points of the Lima Metropolitan Area and the first phase of this project is already in development with the construction of a thirty three kilometer long line from Comas to Chorrillos.The Lima Metro mass transit system This system is similar to the TransMilenio of Bogota, Colombia. /ref>
Automobiles, known as colectivos, render express service on some major roads of the Lima Metropolitan Area. The colectivos signal their specific destination with a sign on the their windshield. Their routes are not generally publicitized but are understood by frequent users. The cost is generally higher than congenital public transport however they cover greater distances at greater speeds due to the lack of stops. /ref>
The Lima Metro, a above ground mass transit system, is under construction and one line has been completed while another six are scheduled for construction. Line 1 is also scheduled to be extended to the city's center, uniting Villa el Salvador with downtown Lima in a matter of only forty minutes, a trip which currently lasts one hour and forty minutes with the current public transport system. www.trenurbano.gob.pe/
The Via Expresa
Taxis in the city are relatively cheap. There are no meters so drivers are told the desired destination and the fare is agreed upon before the passenger enters the taxi. Taxis vary in sizes from small four door compacts to large vans. They are virtually everywhere, accounting for a large part of the car stock. In many cases they are just a private car with a taxi sticker on the windshield. Additionally, there are several companies that provide taxi service on-call. /ref>
Eighty percent of the city's history having occurred during the pre-automobile era, Lima's road network is based mostly on large divided avenues rather than freeways. In recent times however, Lima has developed a freeway network now made up of nine freeways which are, the Via Expresa Paseo de la Republica, Via Expresa Javier Prado, Via Expresa Grau, Panamericana Norte, Panamericana Sur, Carretera Central, Via Expresa Callao, Autopista Chillon Trapiche, and the Autopista Ramiro Priale. /ref> /ref>
Skyline from the Costa Verde
List of sister cities, designated by Sister Cities International: Sister Cities International, Online Directory: Peru, Americas. Retrieved July 14, 2007
* Arequipa, Peru
* Cusco, Peru
* Piura, Peru
* New York City, United States
* Los Angeles, United States
* Austin, United States, since 1981
* Cleveland, United States
* Miami, United States
* Bordeaux, France, since 1957
* Beijing, China, since November 21, 1983Buildings in the financial district
* Madrid, Spain
* Mexico City, Mexico
* São Paulo, Brazil
* Tegucigalpa, Honduras
* Akhisar, Turkey
* Buenos Aires, Argentina
* Guadalajara, Mexico
* Montreal, Canada
* Bogotá, Colombia
* Cairo, Egypt
* Cardiff, Wales, United Kingdom
*Lima Metropolitan Area
*List of people from Lima
*List of districts and neighborhoods of Lima
*List of sites of interest in the Lima Metropolitan area
* Nota etimológica: El topónimo Lima, Rodolfo Cerrón-Palomino, Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú
* Lima Monumento Histórico, Margarita Cubillas Soriano, Lima, 1996
;History
* Andrien, Kenneth. Crisis and decline: the Viceroyalty of Peru in the seventeenth century. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1985. ISBN 0-8263-0791-4
* Anna, Timothy. The fall of the royal government in Peru. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1979. ISBN 0-8032-1004-3
* Conlee, Christina, Jalh Dulanto, Carol Mackay and Charles Stanish. "Late Prehispanic sociopolitical complexity". In Helaine Silverman (ed.), Andean archaeology. Malden: Blackwell, 2004, pp. 209â236. ISBN 0-631-23400-4
* Dietz, Henry. Poverty and problem-solving under military rule: the urban poor in Lima, Peru. Austin : University of Texas Press, 1980. ISBN 0-292-76460-X
* Hemming, John. The conquest of the Incas. London: Macmillan, 1993. ISBN 0-333-51794-6
* Higgings, James. Lima. A cultural history. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005. ISBN 0-19-517891-2
* Instituto Nacional de EstadÃstica e Informática. Lima Metropolitana perfil socio-demográfico. Lima: INEI, 1996.
* Klarén, Peter. Peru: society and nationhood in the Andes. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000. ISBN 0-19-506928-5
* Ramón, Gabriel. "The script of urban surgery: Lima, 1850â1940". In Arturo Almandoz (ed.), Planning Latin America's capital cities, 1850â1950. New York: Routledge, 2002, pp. 170â192. ISBN 0-415-27265-3
* Walker, Charles. "The upper classes and their upper stories: architecture and the aftermath of the Lima earthquake of 1746". Hispanic American Historical Review 83 (1): 53â82 (February 2003).
;Demographics
* Instituto Nacional de EstadÃstica e Informática, Perfil Sociodemográfico del Perú. Lima: INEI, 2008.
* Municipality of Lima
* Geographia.com
* Maps
* Stock Exchange
*
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Lima | When was Lima founded? | January 18,1535. | data/set3/a4 | Lima
Lima is the capital and largest city of Peru. It is located in the valleys of the Chillón, RÃmac and LurÃn rivers, on a coast overlooking the Pacific Ocean. It forms a contiguous urban area with the seaport of Callao.
Lima was founded by Spanish conquistador Francisco Pizarro on January 18, 1535, as La Ciudad de los Reyes, or "The City of Kings." It became the most important city in the Spanish Viceroyalty of Peru and, after the Peruvian War of Independence, was made the capital of the Republic of Peru. Today around one-third of the Peruvian population lives in the metropolitan area.
According to early Spanish chronicles the Lima area was once called Ichma, after its original inhabitants. However, even before the Inca occupation of the area in the 15th century, a famous oracle in the RÃmac valley had come to be known by visitors as Limaq (limaq, pronounced , which means "talker" in coastal Quechua). This oracle was eventually destroyed by the Spanish and replaced with a church, but the name persisted in the local language, thus the chronicles show "LÃmac" replacing "Ychma" as the common name for the area. /ref>
Modern scholars speculate that the word "Lima" originated as the Spanish pronunciation of the native name Limaq. Linguistic evidence seems to support this theory as spoken Spanish consistently rejects stop consonants in word-final position. The city was founded in 1535 under the name City of the Kings ( ) because its foundation was decided on January 6, date of the feast of the Epiphany. Nevertheless, this name quickly fell into disuse and Lima became the city's name of choice; on the oldest Spanish maps of Peru, both Lima and Ciudad de los Reyes can be seen together as names for the city.
It is worth noting that the river that feeds Lima is called RÃmac, and many people erroneously assume that this is because its original Inca name is "Talking River" (the Incas spoke a highland variety of Quechua where the word for "talker" was pronounced ). However, the original inhabitants of the valley were not the Incas, and this name is actually an innovation arising from an effort by the Cuzco nobility in colonial times to standardize the toponym so that it would conform to the phonology of Cuzco Quechua. Later, as the the original inhabitants of the valley died out and the local Quechua became extinct, the Cuzco pronunciation prevailed. In modern times, Spanish-speaking locals do not see the connection between the name of their city and the name of the river that runs through it. They often assume that the valley is named after the river; however, Spanish documents from the colonial period show the opposite to be true.
Lima City Walls were build between 1684 and 1687 by viceroy Melchor de Navarra y Rocafull.
In the pre-Columbian era, the location of what is now the city of Lima was inhabited by several amerindian groups under the Ychsma polity, which was incorporated into the Inca Empire in the 15th century. Conlee et al, "Late Prehispanic sociopolitical complexity", p. 218. In 1532, a group of Spanish conquistadors led by Francisco Pizarro defeated the Inca ruler Atahualpa and took over his Empire. As the Spanish Crown had named Pizarro governor of the lands he conquered, Hemming, The conquest, p. 28. he chose the RÃmac valley to found his capital on January 18, 1535 as Ciudad de los Reyes (City of the Kings). Klarén, Peru, p. 39. In August 1536, the new city was besieged by the troops of Manco Inca, however, the Spaniards and their native allies defeated the Inca rebels. Hemming, The conquest, p. 203â206.
Balconies were a major feature of Lima's architecture during the colonial period.
Over the next few years, Lima gained prestige as it was designated capital of the Viceroyalty of Peru and site of a Real Audiencia in 1543. Klarén, Peru, p. 87. During the next century Lima flourished as the center of an extensive trade network which integrated the Viceroyalty with the Americas, Europe and the Far East. Andrien, Crisis and decline, pp. 11â13. However, the city was not free from dangers; powerful earthquakes destroyed most of the city in 1687. Andrien, Crisis and decline, p. 26. A second threat was the presence of pirates and privateers in the Pacific Ocean, which led to the building of the Lima City Walls between 1684 and 1687. Higgings, Lima, p. 45. The 1687 earthquake marked a turning point in the history of Lima as it coincided with a recession in trade and economic competition by other cities such as Buenos Aires. Andrien, Crisis and decline, p. 28.
In 1746, a powerful earthquake severely damaged Lima and destroyed Callao, forcing a massive rebuilding effort under Viceroy José Antonio Manso de Velasco. Walker, "The upper classes", pp. 53â55. In the later half of the 18th century, the ideas of the Enlightenment on public health and social control shaped the development of the city. Ramón, "The script", pp. 173â174. During this period, Lima was adversely affected by the Bourbon Reforms as it lost its monopoly on overseas trade and its control over the important mining region of Upper Peru. Anna, Fall of the royal government, pp. 4â5. This economic decline made the city's elite dependent on royal and ecclesiastical appointment and thus, reluctant to advocate independence. Anna, Fall of the royal government, pp. 23â24.
A combined expedition of Argentine and Chilean patriots under General José de San MartÃn managed to land south of Lima in 1820 but did not attack the city. Faced with a naval blockade and the action of guerrillas on land, Viceroy José de la Serna was forced to evacuate the city on July 1821 to save the Royalist army. Anna, Fall of the royal government, pp. 176â177. Fearing a popular uprising and lacking any means to impose order, the city council invited San MartÃn to enter Lima and signed a Declaration of Independence at his request. Anna, Fall of the royal government, pp. 178â180. However, the war was not over; in the next two years the city changed hands several times and suffered exactions from both sides.
The Jiron de la Union was Lima's most important street for the first half of the 20th century
After the war of independence, Lima became the capital of the Republic of Peru but economic stagnation and political turmoil brought urban development to a halt. This hiatus ended in the 1850s, when increased public and private revenues from guano exports led to a rapid expansion of the city. Klarén, Peru, p. 169. However, the export-led economic expansion also widened the gap between rich and poor, fostering social unrest. Klarén, Peru, p. 170. During the 1879â1883 War of the Pacific, Chilean troops occupied Lima, looting public museums, libraries and educational institutions. Higgings, Lima, p. 107. At the same time, angry mobs attacked wealthy citizens and the Asian population; sacking their properties and businesses. Klarén, Peru, p. 192. After the war, the city underwent a process of renewal and expansion from the 1890s up to the 1920s. During this period the urban layout was modified by the construction of big avenues which crisscrossed the city and connected it with neighboring towns. Ramón, "The script", pp. 180â182.
In 1940, an earthquake destroyed most of the city, which at that time was mostly built out of adobe and quincha. In the 1940s, Lima started a period of rapid growth spurred by immigration from the Andean regions of Peru. Population, estimated at 0.6 million in 1940, reached 1.9M by 1960 and 4.8M by 1980. Instituto Nacional de EstadÃstica e Informática, Lima Metropolitana perfil socio-demográfico. Retrieved on August 12, 2007 At the start of this period, the urban area was confined to a triangular area bounded by the city's historic center, Callao and Chorrillos; in the following decades settlements spread to the north, beyond the RÃmac River, to the east, along the Central Highway, and to the south. Dietz, Poverty and problem-solving, p. 35. Immigrants, at first confined to slums in downtown Lima, led this expansion through large-scale land invasions which gave rise to the proliferation of shanty towns, known as pueblos jóvenes. Dietz, Poverty and problem-solving, p. 36.
Lima seen from Spot satellite
The urban area of Lima covers about . It is located on mostly flat terrain in the Peruvian coastal plain, within the valleys of the Chillón, RÃmac and LurÃn rivers. The city slopes gently from the shores of the Pacific Ocean into valleys and mountain slopes located as high as above mean sea level. Within the city exist isolated hills which are not connected to the surrounding hill chains, such as El Agustino, San Cosme, El Pino, La Milla, Muleria and Pro hills. The San Cristobal hill in the Rimac district, which faces directly north of the downtown area, is the local extreme of an Andean hill outgrowth.
Metropolitan Lima has an area of , of which (31%) comprise the actual city and (69%) the city outskirts. The urban area extends around from north to south and around from west to east. The city center is located inland at the shore of the Rimac river, a vital resource for the city, since it carries what will become drinking water for its inhabitants and fuels the hydro electrical dams that provide electricity to the area. While no official administrative definition for the city exists, it is usually considered to be composed of the central 30 out of the 43 districts of Lima Province, corresponding to an urban area centered around the historic Cercado de Lima district. The city is the core of the Lima Metropolitan Area, one of the ten largest metropolitan areas in the Americas. Lima is the second largest city in the world located in a desert, after Cairo, Egypt.
Weather averages for Lima International Airport.
Lima's climate is quite mild, despite being located in the Tropics. Lima has a subtropical and desert climate, yet the microclimate also makes it very humid throughout the year. The temperatures vary from mild to warm (neither very cold or hot).The average temperature in winter ranges from to . These days usually come accompanied by continuous overcast skies, fog, and mist. In the summer, the high averages around with lows around . During El Niño events, the climate of Lima gets severely disrupted, the water temperatures along the coast which usually average around 17 - 19 °C (65 - 68 °F) get much warmer (as in 1998 when the water temperature reached 26 °C (79 °F)), which causes the high and low temperatures to rise by several degrees. Such was the case when Lima hit its all-time record high of
Relative humidity is always very high particularly in the mornings /ref> , and produces brief morning fog from June to December and persistent low clouds from May to November. Sunny, less moist and warm summers follow from December to April and are followed by cloudy, damp and cool winters (June to October). The all-time record low in the metropolitan area is .
Rainfall is very low. The severely low rainfall impacts on water supply in the city. /ref> Inland locations receive 1 to of rainfall, which accumulates mainly during the winter months. Summer rain occurs in the form of isolated light and brief afternoon or evening events, leftover from afternoon storms that generate over the Andes. The peak of the 'rainy season,' which does not produce "rain" in the true sense of the word, occurs during winter when late-night/morning drizzle events (locally called 'garúa','llovizna' or 'camanchacas') become frequent, leaving a light coating of dampness on the ground. All these climatic phenomena arise from the combination of semi-permanent coastal upwelling and the presence of the cold Humboldt Current just offshore.
A Moorish arch built by Spanish immigrants in Lima /ref>
Lima ranks as the 17th most populous city in the world with a municipal population of 7,605,743, and 8,472,935 for the metropolitan area and a population density of as of 2007. Instituto Nacional de EstadÃstica e Informática, Perfil Sociodemográfico del Perú pp. 29â30, 32, 34. Its population features a very complex mix of racial and ethnic groups. Traditionally, Mestizos of mixed European (mostly Spanish) and Amerindian descent are the largest contingent. The second group are White Caucasians, mainly Spanish, Italians, Germans, French, English, Polish and Eastern Europeans. /ref> /ref> Also there is a large number of Jews, and Middle Easterners. Asians make up a large number of the metropolitan population, especially of Chinese (Cantonese) and Japanese descent. Afro-Peruvians, whose African ancestors were initially brought to the region as slaves, are yet another part of the city's ethnic quilt. Lima has by far the largest Chinese community in Latin America. /ref>
The Archbishop's Palace of Lima along with the Cathedral of Lima, the seat of the Roman Catholic Church in Peru.
The first settlement in what would become Lima was made up of only 117 housing blocks. In 1562, another district was built at the other side of the Rimac River and in 1610, the first stone bridge was built. Lima had, at this point in time, around 1600 inhabitants. In 1861, the amount of inhabitants surpassed 100,000, and by 1927 this amount was doubled.
During the early twentieth century thousands of immigrants came to the city, a significant number of French, Italians and Germans, many of them had been adapting to the Peruvian society. They organized in social clubs, and they built their own schools; for example, The American-Peruvian school which is located in Miraflores, The French Alliance (Alianza Francesa de Lima), famous Lycée Franco-Péruvien and the hospital Maison de Sante, the British-Peruvian school in Monterrico, and also several German-Peruvian schools.
They also influenced Peruvian cuisine, the Italians in particular exerting a strong influence in the Miraflores and San Isidro areas with their restaurants, called Trattorias.
A great number of Chinese immigrants, and a lesser amount of Japanese, came to Lima and established themselves in the Barrios Altos neighborhood near downtown Lima, coming in order to work on farms and domestic services. Lima residents refer to their Chinatown as "Calle Capon," and the city's ubiquitous Chifa restaurants a small, sit-down, usually Chinese-run restaurant serving the Peruvian spin on Chinese cuisine can be found by the dozen in this Chinese enclave.
A pueblo joven in the southern outskirts of Lima in 1997
The 1950s saw the exponential increase of the city inhabitants, most of them Andean immigrants and their descendants, who settled in the northern and southern outskirts. The political and economic instability in Peru during the latter half of the twentieth century created unprecedented poverty and violence in the towns of the countryside or Andean highlands, forcing hundreds of thousands of peasants of Amerindian descent to migrate to Lima thus greatly augmenting Lima's population. Instituto Nacional de Estadistica e Informatica In the 70âs, the lacking transportation facilities for the newcomers who had to travel for hours on end to reach the city center became a problem, and it was decided that Lima should not expand any further.
Buildings in the financial district of San Isidro
Lima is the industrial and financial center of Peru Infoplease. Lima. Retrieved on December 8, 2008. , home to many national companies. It accounts for more than two thirds of Peru's industrial production AttractionGuide. Lima Attractions. Retrieved on December 8, 2008. and most of its tertiary sector.
The Metropolitan area, with around 7000 factories /ref>, spearheads the industrial development of the country, thanks to the quantity and quality of the available workforce, cheap infrastructure and the mostly developed routes and highways in the city. The most relevant industrial sectors are textiles, clothing and food. Chemicals, fish, leather and oil derivatives are also manufactured and/or processed in Lima /ref>. The financial district is located in the district of San Isidro, while much of the industrial activity takes place in the area stretching west of Downtown Lima to the airport in Callao.
Industrialization began to take hold in Lima in 1930s and by 1950s, through import substitution policies, by 1950 manufacturing made up 14% of the GNP. In the late 1950s, up to 70% of consumer goods were manufactured in Peruvian, and primarily Limean, factories. /ref>
The Callao seaport is one of the main fishing and commerce ports in South America, with 75% of the country's imports and 25% of its exports /ref> using it as their entry/departure point. The main export goods leaving the country through Callao are oil, steel, silver, zinc, cotton, sugar and coffee.
A building in downtown Lima's financial district
In 2004, Lima's GDP represented 45% of the country's GDP (5% more than the previous year). The GDP per capita in Lima is $7,600 /ref>. Most of the foreign companies operating in the country have settled in Lima, which has led to the previously mentioned concentration of economic and financial activity on the city.
There has been a noticeable increase in slight industries, services and high technologies. In 2007, the Peruvian economy grew 9%, the largest growth rate in all of South America which was spearheaded by economic policies originating in Lima. CIA Factbook .The Lima Stock Exchange grew 185.24% in 2006 Bolsa de Valores de Lima and in 2007 grew 168.3% Bolsa de Valores de Lima making it one of the fastest growing stock exchanges in the world. In 2006, the Lima Stock Exchange was the most profitable in the world. /ref> The unemployment rate in metropolitan area is 7.2%.
The Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Summit and the Latin America, the Caribbean and the European Union Summit were hosted by the city of Lima.
Lima is headquarters to many major banks such as Banco de Crédito del Perú, Interbank, Bank of the Nation, Banco Continental, Banco Interamericano de Finanzas, Banco Finaciero, Banco de Comercio, MiBanco, and Banco del Trabajo. It is also a regional headquarters to Standard Chartered. Major insurance coorperations based in Lima include Rimac Seguros, Mapfre Peru, Interseguro, Pacifico, Protecta, and La Positiva. /ref>
The Government Palace in downtown Lima.Headquarters of the Andean Community of Nations
Lima is the capital city of the Republic of Peru and the department of Lima. As such, it is home to the three branches of the Government of Peru. The executive branch is headquartered in the Government Palace, located in the Plaza Mayor. The legislative branch is headquartered in the Legislative Palace and is home to the Congress of Peru. The Judicial branch is headquartered in the Palace of Justice and is home to the Supreme Court of Peru.
Likewise, all the ministries are located in the city of Lima. In international government, the city of Lima is home to the headquarters of the Andean Community of Nations and the South American Community of Nations, along with other regional and international organizations.
The city is roughly equivalent to the Province of Lima, which is subdivided into 43 districts. The Metropolitan Municipality of Lima is utmost authority of the entire city while each district further has it's own local government. Unlike the rest of the country, the Metropolitan Municipality, although a provincial municipality, acts as and has functions similar to a regional government, as it does not belong to any of the 25 regions of Peru.
The Palace of Justice, seat of the judicial branch
The Palace of Justice in Lima is seat of the Supreme Court of Justice the highest judicial court in Peru with jurisdiction over the entire territory of Peru.
Lima is also seat of two of the 28 second highest or Superior Courts of Justice. The first and oldest Superior Court in Lima is the Superior Court of Justice of Lima belonging to the Judicial District of Lima. Due to the judicial organization of Peru, the highest concentration of courts is located in Lima despite the fact that it's judicial district only has jurisdiction over 35 of the 43 districts of Lima. Judicial Power of Peru. Superior Court of Lima. Retrieved 3 December 2008. . The Superior Court of the Cono Norte is the second Superior Court located in Lima and is part of the Judicial District of North Lima. This judicial district has jurisdiction over the remaining eight districts all located in northern Lima. Judicial Power of Peru. Superior Court of North Lima. Retrieved 3 December 2008.
Paseo de los Heroes Navales
Lima's architecture is characterized by a mix in styles as reflected from shifts between trends throughout various time periods of the city's history. Examples of early colonial architecture include such structures as the Monastery of San Francisco, the Cathedral of Lima and the Torre Tagle Palace. These constructions are generally influenced by the Spanish baroque, /ref> Spanish Neoclassicism]], /ref> and Spanish Colonial /ref> styles. After independence, a gradual shift towards the neoclassical and Art Nouveau styles took place. Many of these constructions were greatly influenced by French architectural styles. /ref>Many government buildings as well as major cultural institutions were contracted in this architectural time period. During 1960s, constructions utilizing the brutalist style began appearing in Lima due to the military government of Juan Velasco. /ref> Examples of this architecture are the Museum of the Nation and the Ministry of Defense. The 21st century has seen the appearance of glass skyscrapers particularly around the city's financial district. /ref>
Lima's urban setting is characterized by green-lined streets as well as the abundance of plazas throughout the city. More important streets usually contain wider green areas and plaza's usually contain monuments or statues of historical figures of importance to Peruvian history. Parque Universitario in downtown Lima
The largest parks of Lima are located near the downtown area such as the Park of the Reserve, Park of the Exposition, /ref> Campo de Marte, and the University Park. The Park of the Reserve is home to the largest fountain complex in the world known as the Magical Circuit of Water. /ref>
A number of large parks lie outside the city center, including Reducto Park, Pantanos de Villa, The Golf, Park of the Legends, the malecon of Miraflores, and the Golf of the Incas. /ref>The street grid of the city of Lima, is laid out with a system of plazas of which serve a purpose similar to roundabouts or junctions. In addition to this practical purpose, plazas serve as one of Lima's principal green spaces and contain a variety of different types of architecture ranging from monuments to statues, and water fountains. /ref>
Strongly influenced by European, Andean, and Asian culture, Lima is a melting pot of cultures due to colonization, immigration, and indigenous influences. /ref>
Like many other world capitals, Lima is home to prestigious museums many of which are world renown. The Historic Center of Lima was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1988. Limean gastronomy is known to be among the best in the world and the city is known as the Gastronomical Capital of the Americas. Lima's gastronomy is a mix of Spanish, Andean, and Asian culinary traditions. /ref>
Lima's beaches, located along the northern and southern ends of the city, are heavily visited during the summer months. Numerous restaurants, clubs and hotels have been opened in these places to serve the many beachgoers. Lima has a vibrant and active theater scene as there are many theaters presenting not only classic theater, but also The Golf cultural presentations, modern theater, experimental theater, dramas, dance performances, and theater for children. Lima is home to many important theaters such as the Municipal Theater, Segura Theater, Japanese-Peruvian Theater, Marsano Theater, British theater, Theater of the PUCP Cultural Center, and the Yuyachkani Theater. /ref>
Known as Peruvian Coastal Spanish, Lima's Spanish is characterized by the lack of strong innotations as found in many other regions of the Spanish-speaking world. It is heavily influenced by the Spanish spoken in Castile as throughout the colonial era, the colonial Spanish nobility was based in Lima, of which most originated from Castile. /ref> Limean Spanish is also characterized by the lack of voseo, a trait present in the dialects of many other Latin American countries. This is due to the fact that voseo was primarily utilized by the lower socioeconomic classes of Spain, a social group that did not begin to appear in Lima until the late colonial era. Limean Spanish is often distinguished by its relative clarity The Museum of Art in comparison to other Latin American dialects. Limean Spanish has been influenced by a number of immigrant groups including Italians, Andalusians, Chinese and Japanese. It also has been influenced by anglicisms as a result of globalization as well as by Andean Spanish due to recent immigration from the Andean highlands to Lima. /ref>
Lima is home to the highest concentration of museums of the country, the most notable of which being the Museo Nacional de ArqueologÃa AntropologÃa e Historia del Perú, Museum of Art of Lima, the Museum of Natural History, the Museum of the Nation, the Museum of Italian Art, and the Museum of Gold, and the Larco Museum. These museums mostly focus on art, pre-Colombian cultures, natural history, science, and religion. /ref>
Lima, as the point of entry to the country, has developed an important tourism industry, characterized by it's historic center, archeological sites, nightlife, museums, art galleries, festivals, and popular traditions. Lima is home to an ample range of restaurants and bars where local as well as international cuisine is served. /ref>
The Historic Center of Lima, made up of the districts of Lima and Rimac, was declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1988 due to its importance during the colonial era leaving a testimony to architectural achievement. /ref> Some examples of this historical colonial architecture include the Monastery of San Francisco, the Plaza Mayor, the Cathedral, Covenant of Santo Domingo, the Palace of Torre Tagle, and much more.
A tour of the city's churches is a popular circuit among tourists. A short jaunt through the central district goes through many churches dating from as early as the 16th and 17th centuries the most noteworthy of which being the Cathedral of Lima and the Monastery of San Francisco, of which are said to be connected by their subterrestrial catacombs. /ref>Both of these churches contain paintings from various schools of art, Sevilian tile, and finely sculpted wood furnishings. Also notable is the Sanctuary of Las Nazarenas, the point of origin for the Lord of Miracles, whose festivities in the month of October constitute the most important religious event in Lima and arguably all of Peru. Some sections of the Lima City Walls still remain and are frequented by tourists. These examples of medieval Spanish fortifications were utilized to defend the city from attacks by pirates and privateers. /ref>
Beaches are visited during the summer months, which are located along the Pan-American Highway, to the south of the city in districts such as Lurin, Punta Hermosa, San Bartolo and Asia. Many restaurants, nightclubs, lounges, bars, clubs, and hotels have developed in said places to cater to beachgoers. /ref>
The suburban districts of Cieneguilla, Pachacamac, and the city of Chosica, are important tourist attractions among locals as they are located at a higher elevation than Lima therefore receiving sunshine in winter months, something that the city of Lima frequently lacks. /ref>
Lima is known as Gastronomical Capital of the Americas. A center of immigration and the center of the Spanish Viceroyalty, Lima has incorporated unique dishes brought from the arrival of the Spanish Conquistadors and the receiving of many waves of immigrants: African, European, Chinese, and Japanese. ref> /ref> Besides international immigrationâa large portion of which happened in Limaâthere has been, since the second half of the 20th century, a strong internal flow from rural areas to cities, in particular to Lima. /ref>This has strongly influenced Lima's cuisine with the incorporation of the immigrant's ingredients and techniques (for example, the Chinese extensive use of rice or the Japanese approach to preparing raw fish). The genres of restaurants in Lima include Creole food, Chifas, Cebicherias, and Pollerias. Peruvian cuisine, widely represented in Lima, holds various Guinness World Records, for its diversity and quality. /ref>
The Estadio Monumental "U" home of Universitario de Deportes
The city of Lima has varied sports venues for soccer, volleyball and basketball, many of which are located within private clubs. A popular sport among Limeans is fronton, a racquet sport similar to squash invented in Lima. The city is home to seven international-class golf links. Equestrian is popular in Lima with many private clubs as well as the Hipódromo de Monterrico horse racing track. The most popular sport in Lima by far is soccer with many professional club teams being located in the city.
/ref>
1. Central Lima
2. Residential Lima
3. Cono Norte
4. Cono Sur
5. Cono Este
6. Beach areas
7. Callao
Lima is made up of thirty densely-populated districts, each headed by a local mayor and the Mayor of Lima, whose authority extends to these and the thirteen outer districts of the Lima province.
The city's historic centre is located in the Cercado de Lima district, locally known as simply Lima, or as "El Centro" ("Downtown"), and it is home to most of the vestiges of Lima's colonial past, the Presidential Palace ( ), the Metropolitan Municipality of Lima ( ), and dozens of hotels, some operating and some defunct, that used to cater to the national and international elite.
The upscale San Isidro district is the city's financial center. It is home to many prominent figures such as politicians and celebrities. It is also where the main banks of Peru and branch offices of world banks are headquartered. San Isidro has many parks, including Parque El Olivar, which has olive trees that were brought from Spain during the seventeenth century.
Another upscale district is Miraflores, which has many luxury hotels, shops and restaurants. Miraflores has more parks and green areas in the south of Lima than most other districts. Larcomar, a popular shopping mall and entertainment center built on cliffs overlooking the Pacific Ocean, featuring bars, dance clubs, movie theaters, cafes, shops, boutiques and galleries, is also located in this district.
La Molina and San Borja, home to the American Embassy and the exclusive Club Polo Lima respectively, are the other two wealthy districts of Lima.
The most densely-populated districts of Lima lie in the northern and southern ends of the city (Spanish: Cono Norte and Cono Sur, respectively), and they are mostly composed of Andean immigrants who arrived during the mid and late 20th century looking for better living standards and economic opportunities, or as refugees of the country's internal conflict with the Shining Path during the late 80s and early 90s. In the case of Cono Norte(North Lima), certain shopping malls like Megaplaza and Royal Plaza have been recently built in the district of Los Olivos, which is the most residential neighborhood in the Northern part of Lima. Most of the inhabitants of this area belong to the middle class.
Barranco, which borders Miraflores by the Pacific Ocean, is known as the city's bohemian district, home or once home of many Peruvian writers and intellectuals like Mario Vargas Llosa, Chabuca Granda and Alfredo Bryce Echenique. This district has many acclaimed restaurants, music venues called "peñas" featuring the traditional folk music of coastal Peru (in Spanish, "música criolla"), and beautiful Victorian-style chalets. It along with Miraflores serves as the home to the foreign nightlife scene.
The University of Lima
Home to a range of universities, institutions, and schools, Lima has the highest concentration of institutions of higher learning in the country and is home to schools with world-wide recognition. The National University of San Marcos, founded on May 12, 1551 during Spanish colonial regime, is the oldest continuously functioning university in the Americas. /ref>
Other public universities also play key roles in teaching and research, such as the Universidad Nacional Agraria La Molina where ex-president Alberto Fujimori once taught, Universidad Nacional de IngenierÃa and the National University of Callao.
The Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú, established in 1917, is the oldest private university. Other private institutions that are located in the city are Universidad de Lima, Universidad CientÃfica del Sur, Universidad San MartÃn de Porres, Universidad del Pacifico, Universidad Inca Garcilaso de la Vega, Universidad Peruana Cayetano Heredia, Universidad Peruana de Ciencias Aplicadas and Universidad Ricardo Palma. /ref>
The Jorge Chávez International Airport
Lima is served by the Jorge Chavez International Airport, located in Callao. It is the largest airport of the country with the largest amount of domestic and international air traffic. It also serves as a major hub in the Latin American air network. Additionally, Lima possesses five other airports: the Las Palmas Air Force Base, Collique Airport, and runways in Santa MarÃa del Mar, San Bartolo and Chilca. /ref>
Lima is connected by highway to every country that borders Peru. Because of its location on the country's central coast, Lima is an important junction in Peru's highway system, three of the major highways originate in Lima.
*The Northern Panamerican Highway, this highway extends more than to the border with Ecuador connecting the northern districts of Lima with many major cities along the northern Peruvian coast.
*The Central Highway ( ), this highway connects the eastern districts of Lima with many cities in central Peru. The highway extends with its terminus at the city of Pucallpa near Brazil.
*The Southern Panamerican Highway, this highway connects the southern districts of Lima to cities on the southern coast. The highway extends to the border with Chile.
The proximity of Lima to the port of Callao allows Callao to act as the metropolitan area's foremost port. Callao concentrates nearly all of the maritime transport of the metropolitan area. There is, however, a small port in LurÃn whose transit mostly is accounted for by oil tankers due to a refinery being located nearby. Nonetheless, maritime transport inside Lima's city limits is relatively insignificant compared to that of Callao, the nation's leading port and one of Latin America's largest. There have been plans to build a new megaport on the island of San Lorenzo known as the San Lorenzo Megaport Project. This port is planned to become the largest of Latin America.
Lima is connected to the Central Andean region by the Ferrocarril Central Andino which runs from Lima through the departments of Junin, Huancavelica, Pasco, and Huanuco. /ref> Major cities along this line include Huancayo, La Oroya, Huancavelica, and Cerro de Pasco. Another inactive line runs from Lima northwards to the city of Huacho. /ref>
The urban transport system is composed of over 652 transit routes /ref> which are served by buses, microbuses, and combis. The system is unorganized and is characterized by the lack of formality. The service is run by 464 private companies which are poorly regulated by the local government. Fares average at around one sol or $0.30 USD. Due to the absence of a centralized bus terminal, individual bus companies use private terminals throughout Lima. /ref>
The Metropolitan Transportation System is a transport project which plans to integrate the Independent Corridor of Mass-Transit Buses known by its Spanish initials as (COSAC 1). This system plans to link the principal points of the Lima Metropolitan Area and the first phase of this project is already in development with the construction of a thirty three kilometer long line from Comas to Chorrillos.The Lima Metro mass transit system This system is similar to the TransMilenio of Bogota, Colombia. /ref>
Automobiles, known as colectivos, render express service on some major roads of the Lima Metropolitan Area. The colectivos signal their specific destination with a sign on the their windshield. Their routes are not generally publicitized but are understood by frequent users. The cost is generally higher than congenital public transport however they cover greater distances at greater speeds due to the lack of stops. /ref>
The Lima Metro, a above ground mass transit system, is under construction and one line has been completed while another six are scheduled for construction. Line 1 is also scheduled to be extended to the city's center, uniting Villa el Salvador with downtown Lima in a matter of only forty minutes, a trip which currently lasts one hour and forty minutes with the current public transport system. www.trenurbano.gob.pe/
The Via Expresa
Taxis in the city are relatively cheap. There are no meters so drivers are told the desired destination and the fare is agreed upon before the passenger enters the taxi. Taxis vary in sizes from small four door compacts to large vans. They are virtually everywhere, accounting for a large part of the car stock. In many cases they are just a private car with a taxi sticker on the windshield. Additionally, there are several companies that provide taxi service on-call. /ref>
Eighty percent of the city's history having occurred during the pre-automobile era, Lima's road network is based mostly on large divided avenues rather than freeways. In recent times however, Lima has developed a freeway network now made up of nine freeways which are, the Via Expresa Paseo de la Republica, Via Expresa Javier Prado, Via Expresa Grau, Panamericana Norte, Panamericana Sur, Carretera Central, Via Expresa Callao, Autopista Chillon Trapiche, and the Autopista Ramiro Priale. /ref> /ref>
Skyline from the Costa Verde
List of sister cities, designated by Sister Cities International: Sister Cities International, Online Directory: Peru, Americas. Retrieved July 14, 2007
* Arequipa, Peru
* Cusco, Peru
* Piura, Peru
* New York City, United States
* Los Angeles, United States
* Austin, United States, since 1981
* Cleveland, United States
* Miami, United States
* Bordeaux, France, since 1957
* Beijing, China, since November 21, 1983Buildings in the financial district
* Madrid, Spain
* Mexico City, Mexico
* São Paulo, Brazil
* Tegucigalpa, Honduras
* Akhisar, Turkey
* Buenos Aires, Argentina
* Guadalajara, Mexico
* Montreal, Canada
* Bogotá, Colombia
* Cairo, Egypt
* Cardiff, Wales, United Kingdom
*Lima Metropolitan Area
*List of people from Lima
*List of districts and neighborhoods of Lima
*List of sites of interest in the Lima Metropolitan area
* Nota etimológica: El topónimo Lima, Rodolfo Cerrón-Palomino, Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú
* Lima Monumento Histórico, Margarita Cubillas Soriano, Lima, 1996
;History
* Andrien, Kenneth. Crisis and decline: the Viceroyalty of Peru in the seventeenth century. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1985. ISBN 0-8263-0791-4
* Anna, Timothy. The fall of the royal government in Peru. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1979. ISBN 0-8032-1004-3
* Conlee, Christina, Jalh Dulanto, Carol Mackay and Charles Stanish. "Late Prehispanic sociopolitical complexity". In Helaine Silverman (ed.), Andean archaeology. Malden: Blackwell, 2004, pp. 209â236. ISBN 0-631-23400-4
* Dietz, Henry. Poverty and problem-solving under military rule: the urban poor in Lima, Peru. Austin : University of Texas Press, 1980. ISBN 0-292-76460-X
* Hemming, John. The conquest of the Incas. London: Macmillan, 1993. ISBN 0-333-51794-6
* Higgings, James. Lima. A cultural history. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005. ISBN 0-19-517891-2
* Instituto Nacional de EstadÃstica e Informática. Lima Metropolitana perfil socio-demográfico. Lima: INEI, 1996.
* Klarén, Peter. Peru: society and nationhood in the Andes. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000. ISBN 0-19-506928-5
* Ramón, Gabriel. "The script of urban surgery: Lima, 1850â1940". In Arturo Almandoz (ed.), Planning Latin America's capital cities, 1850â1950. New York: Routledge, 2002, pp. 170â192. ISBN 0-415-27265-3
* Walker, Charles. "The upper classes and their upper stories: architecture and the aftermath of the Lima earthquake of 1746". Hispanic American Historical Review 83 (1): 53â82 (February 2003).
;Demographics
* Instituto Nacional de EstadÃstica e Informática, Perfil Sociodemográfico del Perú. Lima: INEI, 2008.
* Municipality of Lima
* Geographia.com
* Maps
* Stock Exchange
*
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Lima | Where is the Park of the Reserve located? | Near the downtown area. | data/set3/a4 | Lima
Lima is the capital and largest city of Peru. It is located in the valleys of the Chillón, RÃmac and LurÃn rivers, on a coast overlooking the Pacific Ocean. It forms a contiguous urban area with the seaport of Callao.
Lima was founded by Spanish conquistador Francisco Pizarro on January 18, 1535, as La Ciudad de los Reyes, or "The City of Kings." It became the most important city in the Spanish Viceroyalty of Peru and, after the Peruvian War of Independence, was made the capital of the Republic of Peru. Today around one-third of the Peruvian population lives in the metropolitan area.
According to early Spanish chronicles the Lima area was once called Ichma, after its original inhabitants. However, even before the Inca occupation of the area in the 15th century, a famous oracle in the RÃmac valley had come to be known by visitors as Limaq (limaq, pronounced , which means "talker" in coastal Quechua). This oracle was eventually destroyed by the Spanish and replaced with a church, but the name persisted in the local language, thus the chronicles show "LÃmac" replacing "Ychma" as the common name for the area. /ref>
Modern scholars speculate that the word "Lima" originated as the Spanish pronunciation of the native name Limaq. Linguistic evidence seems to support this theory as spoken Spanish consistently rejects stop consonants in word-final position. The city was founded in 1535 under the name City of the Kings ( ) because its foundation was decided on January 6, date of the feast of the Epiphany. Nevertheless, this name quickly fell into disuse and Lima became the city's name of choice; on the oldest Spanish maps of Peru, both Lima and Ciudad de los Reyes can be seen together as names for the city.
It is worth noting that the river that feeds Lima is called RÃmac, and many people erroneously assume that this is because its original Inca name is "Talking River" (the Incas spoke a highland variety of Quechua where the word for "talker" was pronounced ). However, the original inhabitants of the valley were not the Incas, and this name is actually an innovation arising from an effort by the Cuzco nobility in colonial times to standardize the toponym so that it would conform to the phonology of Cuzco Quechua. Later, as the the original inhabitants of the valley died out and the local Quechua became extinct, the Cuzco pronunciation prevailed. In modern times, Spanish-speaking locals do not see the connection between the name of their city and the name of the river that runs through it. They often assume that the valley is named after the river; however, Spanish documents from the colonial period show the opposite to be true.
Lima City Walls were build between 1684 and 1687 by viceroy Melchor de Navarra y Rocafull.
In the pre-Columbian era, the location of what is now the city of Lima was inhabited by several amerindian groups under the Ychsma polity, which was incorporated into the Inca Empire in the 15th century. Conlee et al, "Late Prehispanic sociopolitical complexity", p. 218. In 1532, a group of Spanish conquistadors led by Francisco Pizarro defeated the Inca ruler Atahualpa and took over his Empire. As the Spanish Crown had named Pizarro governor of the lands he conquered, Hemming, The conquest, p. 28. he chose the RÃmac valley to found his capital on January 18, 1535 as Ciudad de los Reyes (City of the Kings). Klarén, Peru, p. 39. In August 1536, the new city was besieged by the troops of Manco Inca, however, the Spaniards and their native allies defeated the Inca rebels. Hemming, The conquest, p. 203â206.
Balconies were a major feature of Lima's architecture during the colonial period.
Over the next few years, Lima gained prestige as it was designated capital of the Viceroyalty of Peru and site of a Real Audiencia in 1543. Klarén, Peru, p. 87. During the next century Lima flourished as the center of an extensive trade network which integrated the Viceroyalty with the Americas, Europe and the Far East. Andrien, Crisis and decline, pp. 11â13. However, the city was not free from dangers; powerful earthquakes destroyed most of the city in 1687. Andrien, Crisis and decline, p. 26. A second threat was the presence of pirates and privateers in the Pacific Ocean, which led to the building of the Lima City Walls between 1684 and 1687. Higgings, Lima, p. 45. The 1687 earthquake marked a turning point in the history of Lima as it coincided with a recession in trade and economic competition by other cities such as Buenos Aires. Andrien, Crisis and decline, p. 28.
In 1746, a powerful earthquake severely damaged Lima and destroyed Callao, forcing a massive rebuilding effort under Viceroy José Antonio Manso de Velasco. Walker, "The upper classes", pp. 53â55. In the later half of the 18th century, the ideas of the Enlightenment on public health and social control shaped the development of the city. Ramón, "The script", pp. 173â174. During this period, Lima was adversely affected by the Bourbon Reforms as it lost its monopoly on overseas trade and its control over the important mining region of Upper Peru. Anna, Fall of the royal government, pp. 4â5. This economic decline made the city's elite dependent on royal and ecclesiastical appointment and thus, reluctant to advocate independence. Anna, Fall of the royal government, pp. 23â24.
A combined expedition of Argentine and Chilean patriots under General José de San MartÃn managed to land south of Lima in 1820 but did not attack the city. Faced with a naval blockade and the action of guerrillas on land, Viceroy José de la Serna was forced to evacuate the city on July 1821 to save the Royalist army. Anna, Fall of the royal government, pp. 176â177. Fearing a popular uprising and lacking any means to impose order, the city council invited San MartÃn to enter Lima and signed a Declaration of Independence at his request. Anna, Fall of the royal government, pp. 178â180. However, the war was not over; in the next two years the city changed hands several times and suffered exactions from both sides.
The Jiron de la Union was Lima's most important street for the first half of the 20th century
After the war of independence, Lima became the capital of the Republic of Peru but economic stagnation and political turmoil brought urban development to a halt. This hiatus ended in the 1850s, when increased public and private revenues from guano exports led to a rapid expansion of the city. Klarén, Peru, p. 169. However, the export-led economic expansion also widened the gap between rich and poor, fostering social unrest. Klarén, Peru, p. 170. During the 1879â1883 War of the Pacific, Chilean troops occupied Lima, looting public museums, libraries and educational institutions. Higgings, Lima, p. 107. At the same time, angry mobs attacked wealthy citizens and the Asian population; sacking their properties and businesses. Klarén, Peru, p. 192. After the war, the city underwent a process of renewal and expansion from the 1890s up to the 1920s. During this period the urban layout was modified by the construction of big avenues which crisscrossed the city and connected it with neighboring towns. Ramón, "The script", pp. 180â182.
In 1940, an earthquake destroyed most of the city, which at that time was mostly built out of adobe and quincha. In the 1940s, Lima started a period of rapid growth spurred by immigration from the Andean regions of Peru. Population, estimated at 0.6 million in 1940, reached 1.9M by 1960 and 4.8M by 1980. Instituto Nacional de EstadÃstica e Informática, Lima Metropolitana perfil socio-demográfico. Retrieved on August 12, 2007 At the start of this period, the urban area was confined to a triangular area bounded by the city's historic center, Callao and Chorrillos; in the following decades settlements spread to the north, beyond the RÃmac River, to the east, along the Central Highway, and to the south. Dietz, Poverty and problem-solving, p. 35. Immigrants, at first confined to slums in downtown Lima, led this expansion through large-scale land invasions which gave rise to the proliferation of shanty towns, known as pueblos jóvenes. Dietz, Poverty and problem-solving, p. 36.
Lima seen from Spot satellite
The urban area of Lima covers about . It is located on mostly flat terrain in the Peruvian coastal plain, within the valleys of the Chillón, RÃmac and LurÃn rivers. The city slopes gently from the shores of the Pacific Ocean into valleys and mountain slopes located as high as above mean sea level. Within the city exist isolated hills which are not connected to the surrounding hill chains, such as El Agustino, San Cosme, El Pino, La Milla, Muleria and Pro hills. The San Cristobal hill in the Rimac district, which faces directly north of the downtown area, is the local extreme of an Andean hill outgrowth.
Metropolitan Lima has an area of , of which (31%) comprise the actual city and (69%) the city outskirts. The urban area extends around from north to south and around from west to east. The city center is located inland at the shore of the Rimac river, a vital resource for the city, since it carries what will become drinking water for its inhabitants and fuels the hydro electrical dams that provide electricity to the area. While no official administrative definition for the city exists, it is usually considered to be composed of the central 30 out of the 43 districts of Lima Province, corresponding to an urban area centered around the historic Cercado de Lima district. The city is the core of the Lima Metropolitan Area, one of the ten largest metropolitan areas in the Americas. Lima is the second largest city in the world located in a desert, after Cairo, Egypt.
Weather averages for Lima International Airport.
Lima's climate is quite mild, despite being located in the Tropics. Lima has a subtropical and desert climate, yet the microclimate also makes it very humid throughout the year. The temperatures vary from mild to warm (neither very cold or hot).The average temperature in winter ranges from to . These days usually come accompanied by continuous overcast skies, fog, and mist. In the summer, the high averages around with lows around . During El Niño events, the climate of Lima gets severely disrupted, the water temperatures along the coast which usually average around 17 - 19 °C (65 - 68 °F) get much warmer (as in 1998 when the water temperature reached 26 °C (79 °F)), which causes the high and low temperatures to rise by several degrees. Such was the case when Lima hit its all-time record high of
Relative humidity is always very high particularly in the mornings /ref> , and produces brief morning fog from June to December and persistent low clouds from May to November. Sunny, less moist and warm summers follow from December to April and are followed by cloudy, damp and cool winters (June to October). The all-time record low in the metropolitan area is .
Rainfall is very low. The severely low rainfall impacts on water supply in the city. /ref> Inland locations receive 1 to of rainfall, which accumulates mainly during the winter months. Summer rain occurs in the form of isolated light and brief afternoon or evening events, leftover from afternoon storms that generate over the Andes. The peak of the 'rainy season,' which does not produce "rain" in the true sense of the word, occurs during winter when late-night/morning drizzle events (locally called 'garúa','llovizna' or 'camanchacas') become frequent, leaving a light coating of dampness on the ground. All these climatic phenomena arise from the combination of semi-permanent coastal upwelling and the presence of the cold Humboldt Current just offshore.
A Moorish arch built by Spanish immigrants in Lima /ref>
Lima ranks as the 17th most populous city in the world with a municipal population of 7,605,743, and 8,472,935 for the metropolitan area and a population density of as of 2007. Instituto Nacional de EstadÃstica e Informática, Perfil Sociodemográfico del Perú pp. 29â30, 32, 34. Its population features a very complex mix of racial and ethnic groups. Traditionally, Mestizos of mixed European (mostly Spanish) and Amerindian descent are the largest contingent. The second group are White Caucasians, mainly Spanish, Italians, Germans, French, English, Polish and Eastern Europeans. /ref> /ref> Also there is a large number of Jews, and Middle Easterners. Asians make up a large number of the metropolitan population, especially of Chinese (Cantonese) and Japanese descent. Afro-Peruvians, whose African ancestors were initially brought to the region as slaves, are yet another part of the city's ethnic quilt. Lima has by far the largest Chinese community in Latin America. /ref>
The Archbishop's Palace of Lima along with the Cathedral of Lima, the seat of the Roman Catholic Church in Peru.
The first settlement in what would become Lima was made up of only 117 housing blocks. In 1562, another district was built at the other side of the Rimac River and in 1610, the first stone bridge was built. Lima had, at this point in time, around 1600 inhabitants. In 1861, the amount of inhabitants surpassed 100,000, and by 1927 this amount was doubled.
During the early twentieth century thousands of immigrants came to the city, a significant number of French, Italians and Germans, many of them had been adapting to the Peruvian society. They organized in social clubs, and they built their own schools; for example, The American-Peruvian school which is located in Miraflores, The French Alliance (Alianza Francesa de Lima), famous Lycée Franco-Péruvien and the hospital Maison de Sante, the British-Peruvian school in Monterrico, and also several German-Peruvian schools.
They also influenced Peruvian cuisine, the Italians in particular exerting a strong influence in the Miraflores and San Isidro areas with their restaurants, called Trattorias.
A great number of Chinese immigrants, and a lesser amount of Japanese, came to Lima and established themselves in the Barrios Altos neighborhood near downtown Lima, coming in order to work on farms and domestic services. Lima residents refer to their Chinatown as "Calle Capon," and the city's ubiquitous Chifa restaurants a small, sit-down, usually Chinese-run restaurant serving the Peruvian spin on Chinese cuisine can be found by the dozen in this Chinese enclave.
A pueblo joven in the southern outskirts of Lima in 1997
The 1950s saw the exponential increase of the city inhabitants, most of them Andean immigrants and their descendants, who settled in the northern and southern outskirts. The political and economic instability in Peru during the latter half of the twentieth century created unprecedented poverty and violence in the towns of the countryside or Andean highlands, forcing hundreds of thousands of peasants of Amerindian descent to migrate to Lima thus greatly augmenting Lima's population. Instituto Nacional de Estadistica e Informatica In the 70âs, the lacking transportation facilities for the newcomers who had to travel for hours on end to reach the city center became a problem, and it was decided that Lima should not expand any further.
Buildings in the financial district of San Isidro
Lima is the industrial and financial center of Peru Infoplease. Lima. Retrieved on December 8, 2008. , home to many national companies. It accounts for more than two thirds of Peru's industrial production AttractionGuide. Lima Attractions. Retrieved on December 8, 2008. and most of its tertiary sector.
The Metropolitan area, with around 7000 factories /ref>, spearheads the industrial development of the country, thanks to the quantity and quality of the available workforce, cheap infrastructure and the mostly developed routes and highways in the city. The most relevant industrial sectors are textiles, clothing and food. Chemicals, fish, leather and oil derivatives are also manufactured and/or processed in Lima /ref>. The financial district is located in the district of San Isidro, while much of the industrial activity takes place in the area stretching west of Downtown Lima to the airport in Callao.
Industrialization began to take hold in Lima in 1930s and by 1950s, through import substitution policies, by 1950 manufacturing made up 14% of the GNP. In the late 1950s, up to 70% of consumer goods were manufactured in Peruvian, and primarily Limean, factories. /ref>
The Callao seaport is one of the main fishing and commerce ports in South America, with 75% of the country's imports and 25% of its exports /ref> using it as their entry/departure point. The main export goods leaving the country through Callao are oil, steel, silver, zinc, cotton, sugar and coffee.
A building in downtown Lima's financial district
In 2004, Lima's GDP represented 45% of the country's GDP (5% more than the previous year). The GDP per capita in Lima is $7,600 /ref>. Most of the foreign companies operating in the country have settled in Lima, which has led to the previously mentioned concentration of economic and financial activity on the city.
There has been a noticeable increase in slight industries, services and high technologies. In 2007, the Peruvian economy grew 9%, the largest growth rate in all of South America which was spearheaded by economic policies originating in Lima. CIA Factbook .The Lima Stock Exchange grew 185.24% in 2006 Bolsa de Valores de Lima and in 2007 grew 168.3% Bolsa de Valores de Lima making it one of the fastest growing stock exchanges in the world. In 2006, the Lima Stock Exchange was the most profitable in the world. /ref> The unemployment rate in metropolitan area is 7.2%.
The Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Summit and the Latin America, the Caribbean and the European Union Summit were hosted by the city of Lima.
Lima is headquarters to many major banks such as Banco de Crédito del Perú, Interbank, Bank of the Nation, Banco Continental, Banco Interamericano de Finanzas, Banco Finaciero, Banco de Comercio, MiBanco, and Banco del Trabajo. It is also a regional headquarters to Standard Chartered. Major insurance coorperations based in Lima include Rimac Seguros, Mapfre Peru, Interseguro, Pacifico, Protecta, and La Positiva. /ref>
The Government Palace in downtown Lima.Headquarters of the Andean Community of Nations
Lima is the capital city of the Republic of Peru and the department of Lima. As such, it is home to the three branches of the Government of Peru. The executive branch is headquartered in the Government Palace, located in the Plaza Mayor. The legislative branch is headquartered in the Legislative Palace and is home to the Congress of Peru. The Judicial branch is headquartered in the Palace of Justice and is home to the Supreme Court of Peru.
Likewise, all the ministries are located in the city of Lima. In international government, the city of Lima is home to the headquarters of the Andean Community of Nations and the South American Community of Nations, along with other regional and international organizations.
The city is roughly equivalent to the Province of Lima, which is subdivided into 43 districts. The Metropolitan Municipality of Lima is utmost authority of the entire city while each district further has it's own local government. Unlike the rest of the country, the Metropolitan Municipality, although a provincial municipality, acts as and has functions similar to a regional government, as it does not belong to any of the 25 regions of Peru.
The Palace of Justice, seat of the judicial branch
The Palace of Justice in Lima is seat of the Supreme Court of Justice the highest judicial court in Peru with jurisdiction over the entire territory of Peru.
Lima is also seat of two of the 28 second highest or Superior Courts of Justice. The first and oldest Superior Court in Lima is the Superior Court of Justice of Lima belonging to the Judicial District of Lima. Due to the judicial organization of Peru, the highest concentration of courts is located in Lima despite the fact that it's judicial district only has jurisdiction over 35 of the 43 districts of Lima. Judicial Power of Peru. Superior Court of Lima. Retrieved 3 December 2008. . The Superior Court of the Cono Norte is the second Superior Court located in Lima and is part of the Judicial District of North Lima. This judicial district has jurisdiction over the remaining eight districts all located in northern Lima. Judicial Power of Peru. Superior Court of North Lima. Retrieved 3 December 2008.
Paseo de los Heroes Navales
Lima's architecture is characterized by a mix in styles as reflected from shifts between trends throughout various time periods of the city's history. Examples of early colonial architecture include such structures as the Monastery of San Francisco, the Cathedral of Lima and the Torre Tagle Palace. These constructions are generally influenced by the Spanish baroque, /ref> Spanish Neoclassicism]], /ref> and Spanish Colonial /ref> styles. After independence, a gradual shift towards the neoclassical and Art Nouveau styles took place. Many of these constructions were greatly influenced by French architectural styles. /ref>Many government buildings as well as major cultural institutions were contracted in this architectural time period. During 1960s, constructions utilizing the brutalist style began appearing in Lima due to the military government of Juan Velasco. /ref> Examples of this architecture are the Museum of the Nation and the Ministry of Defense. The 21st century has seen the appearance of glass skyscrapers particularly around the city's financial district. /ref>
Lima's urban setting is characterized by green-lined streets as well as the abundance of plazas throughout the city. More important streets usually contain wider green areas and plaza's usually contain monuments or statues of historical figures of importance to Peruvian history. Parque Universitario in downtown Lima
The largest parks of Lima are located near the downtown area such as the Park of the Reserve, Park of the Exposition, /ref> Campo de Marte, and the University Park. The Park of the Reserve is home to the largest fountain complex in the world known as the Magical Circuit of Water. /ref>
A number of large parks lie outside the city center, including Reducto Park, Pantanos de Villa, The Golf, Park of the Legends, the malecon of Miraflores, and the Golf of the Incas. /ref>The street grid of the city of Lima, is laid out with a system of plazas of which serve a purpose similar to roundabouts or junctions. In addition to this practical purpose, plazas serve as one of Lima's principal green spaces and contain a variety of different types of architecture ranging from monuments to statues, and water fountains. /ref>
Strongly influenced by European, Andean, and Asian culture, Lima is a melting pot of cultures due to colonization, immigration, and indigenous influences. /ref>
Like many other world capitals, Lima is home to prestigious museums many of which are world renown. The Historic Center of Lima was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1988. Limean gastronomy is known to be among the best in the world and the city is known as the Gastronomical Capital of the Americas. Lima's gastronomy is a mix of Spanish, Andean, and Asian culinary traditions. /ref>
Lima's beaches, located along the northern and southern ends of the city, are heavily visited during the summer months. Numerous restaurants, clubs and hotels have been opened in these places to serve the many beachgoers. Lima has a vibrant and active theater scene as there are many theaters presenting not only classic theater, but also The Golf cultural presentations, modern theater, experimental theater, dramas, dance performances, and theater for children. Lima is home to many important theaters such as the Municipal Theater, Segura Theater, Japanese-Peruvian Theater, Marsano Theater, British theater, Theater of the PUCP Cultural Center, and the Yuyachkani Theater. /ref>
Known as Peruvian Coastal Spanish, Lima's Spanish is characterized by the lack of strong innotations as found in many other regions of the Spanish-speaking world. It is heavily influenced by the Spanish spoken in Castile as throughout the colonial era, the colonial Spanish nobility was based in Lima, of which most originated from Castile. /ref> Limean Spanish is also characterized by the lack of voseo, a trait present in the dialects of many other Latin American countries. This is due to the fact that voseo was primarily utilized by the lower socioeconomic classes of Spain, a social group that did not begin to appear in Lima until the late colonial era. Limean Spanish is often distinguished by its relative clarity The Museum of Art in comparison to other Latin American dialects. Limean Spanish has been influenced by a number of immigrant groups including Italians, Andalusians, Chinese and Japanese. It also has been influenced by anglicisms as a result of globalization as well as by Andean Spanish due to recent immigration from the Andean highlands to Lima. /ref>
Lima is home to the highest concentration of museums of the country, the most notable of which being the Museo Nacional de ArqueologÃa AntropologÃa e Historia del Perú, Museum of Art of Lima, the Museum of Natural History, the Museum of the Nation, the Museum of Italian Art, and the Museum of Gold, and the Larco Museum. These museums mostly focus on art, pre-Colombian cultures, natural history, science, and religion. /ref>
Lima, as the point of entry to the country, has developed an important tourism industry, characterized by it's historic center, archeological sites, nightlife, museums, art galleries, festivals, and popular traditions. Lima is home to an ample range of restaurants and bars where local as well as international cuisine is served. /ref>
The Historic Center of Lima, made up of the districts of Lima and Rimac, was declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1988 due to its importance during the colonial era leaving a testimony to architectural achievement. /ref> Some examples of this historical colonial architecture include the Monastery of San Francisco, the Plaza Mayor, the Cathedral, Covenant of Santo Domingo, the Palace of Torre Tagle, and much more.
A tour of the city's churches is a popular circuit among tourists. A short jaunt through the central district goes through many churches dating from as early as the 16th and 17th centuries the most noteworthy of which being the Cathedral of Lima and the Monastery of San Francisco, of which are said to be connected by their subterrestrial catacombs. /ref>Both of these churches contain paintings from various schools of art, Sevilian tile, and finely sculpted wood furnishings. Also notable is the Sanctuary of Las Nazarenas, the point of origin for the Lord of Miracles, whose festivities in the month of October constitute the most important religious event in Lima and arguably all of Peru. Some sections of the Lima City Walls still remain and are frequented by tourists. These examples of medieval Spanish fortifications were utilized to defend the city from attacks by pirates and privateers. /ref>
Beaches are visited during the summer months, which are located along the Pan-American Highway, to the south of the city in districts such as Lurin, Punta Hermosa, San Bartolo and Asia. Many restaurants, nightclubs, lounges, bars, clubs, and hotels have developed in said places to cater to beachgoers. /ref>
The suburban districts of Cieneguilla, Pachacamac, and the city of Chosica, are important tourist attractions among locals as they are located at a higher elevation than Lima therefore receiving sunshine in winter months, something that the city of Lima frequently lacks. /ref>
Lima is known as Gastronomical Capital of the Americas. A center of immigration and the center of the Spanish Viceroyalty, Lima has incorporated unique dishes brought from the arrival of the Spanish Conquistadors and the receiving of many waves of immigrants: African, European, Chinese, and Japanese. ref> /ref> Besides international immigrationâa large portion of which happened in Limaâthere has been, since the second half of the 20th century, a strong internal flow from rural areas to cities, in particular to Lima. /ref>This has strongly influenced Lima's cuisine with the incorporation of the immigrant's ingredients and techniques (for example, the Chinese extensive use of rice or the Japanese approach to preparing raw fish). The genres of restaurants in Lima include Creole food, Chifas, Cebicherias, and Pollerias. Peruvian cuisine, widely represented in Lima, holds various Guinness World Records, for its diversity and quality. /ref>
The Estadio Monumental "U" home of Universitario de Deportes
The city of Lima has varied sports venues for soccer, volleyball and basketball, many of which are located within private clubs. A popular sport among Limeans is fronton, a racquet sport similar to squash invented in Lima. The city is home to seven international-class golf links. Equestrian is popular in Lima with many private clubs as well as the Hipódromo de Monterrico horse racing track. The most popular sport in Lima by far is soccer with many professional club teams being located in the city.
/ref>
1. Central Lima
2. Residential Lima
3. Cono Norte
4. Cono Sur
5. Cono Este
6. Beach areas
7. Callao
Lima is made up of thirty densely-populated districts, each headed by a local mayor and the Mayor of Lima, whose authority extends to these and the thirteen outer districts of the Lima province.
The city's historic centre is located in the Cercado de Lima district, locally known as simply Lima, or as "El Centro" ("Downtown"), and it is home to most of the vestiges of Lima's colonial past, the Presidential Palace ( ), the Metropolitan Municipality of Lima ( ), and dozens of hotels, some operating and some defunct, that used to cater to the national and international elite.
The upscale San Isidro district is the city's financial center. It is home to many prominent figures such as politicians and celebrities. It is also where the main banks of Peru and branch offices of world banks are headquartered. San Isidro has many parks, including Parque El Olivar, which has olive trees that were brought from Spain during the seventeenth century.
Another upscale district is Miraflores, which has many luxury hotels, shops and restaurants. Miraflores has more parks and green areas in the south of Lima than most other districts. Larcomar, a popular shopping mall and entertainment center built on cliffs overlooking the Pacific Ocean, featuring bars, dance clubs, movie theaters, cafes, shops, boutiques and galleries, is also located in this district.
La Molina and San Borja, home to the American Embassy and the exclusive Club Polo Lima respectively, are the other two wealthy districts of Lima.
The most densely-populated districts of Lima lie in the northern and southern ends of the city (Spanish: Cono Norte and Cono Sur, respectively), and they are mostly composed of Andean immigrants who arrived during the mid and late 20th century looking for better living standards and economic opportunities, or as refugees of the country's internal conflict with the Shining Path during the late 80s and early 90s. In the case of Cono Norte(North Lima), certain shopping malls like Megaplaza and Royal Plaza have been recently built in the district of Los Olivos, which is the most residential neighborhood in the Northern part of Lima. Most of the inhabitants of this area belong to the middle class.
Barranco, which borders Miraflores by the Pacific Ocean, is known as the city's bohemian district, home or once home of many Peruvian writers and intellectuals like Mario Vargas Llosa, Chabuca Granda and Alfredo Bryce Echenique. This district has many acclaimed restaurants, music venues called "peñas" featuring the traditional folk music of coastal Peru (in Spanish, "música criolla"), and beautiful Victorian-style chalets. It along with Miraflores serves as the home to the foreign nightlife scene.
The University of Lima
Home to a range of universities, institutions, and schools, Lima has the highest concentration of institutions of higher learning in the country and is home to schools with world-wide recognition. The National University of San Marcos, founded on May 12, 1551 during Spanish colonial regime, is the oldest continuously functioning university in the Americas. /ref>
Other public universities also play key roles in teaching and research, such as the Universidad Nacional Agraria La Molina where ex-president Alberto Fujimori once taught, Universidad Nacional de IngenierÃa and the National University of Callao.
The Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú, established in 1917, is the oldest private university. Other private institutions that are located in the city are Universidad de Lima, Universidad CientÃfica del Sur, Universidad San MartÃn de Porres, Universidad del Pacifico, Universidad Inca Garcilaso de la Vega, Universidad Peruana Cayetano Heredia, Universidad Peruana de Ciencias Aplicadas and Universidad Ricardo Palma. /ref>
The Jorge Chávez International Airport
Lima is served by the Jorge Chavez International Airport, located in Callao. It is the largest airport of the country with the largest amount of domestic and international air traffic. It also serves as a major hub in the Latin American air network. Additionally, Lima possesses five other airports: the Las Palmas Air Force Base, Collique Airport, and runways in Santa MarÃa del Mar, San Bartolo and Chilca. /ref>
Lima is connected by highway to every country that borders Peru. Because of its location on the country's central coast, Lima is an important junction in Peru's highway system, three of the major highways originate in Lima.
*The Northern Panamerican Highway, this highway extends more than to the border with Ecuador connecting the northern districts of Lima with many major cities along the northern Peruvian coast.
*The Central Highway ( ), this highway connects the eastern districts of Lima with many cities in central Peru. The highway extends with its terminus at the city of Pucallpa near Brazil.
*The Southern Panamerican Highway, this highway connects the southern districts of Lima to cities on the southern coast. The highway extends to the border with Chile.
The proximity of Lima to the port of Callao allows Callao to act as the metropolitan area's foremost port. Callao concentrates nearly all of the maritime transport of the metropolitan area. There is, however, a small port in LurÃn whose transit mostly is accounted for by oil tankers due to a refinery being located nearby. Nonetheless, maritime transport inside Lima's city limits is relatively insignificant compared to that of Callao, the nation's leading port and one of Latin America's largest. There have been plans to build a new megaport on the island of San Lorenzo known as the San Lorenzo Megaport Project. This port is planned to become the largest of Latin America.
Lima is connected to the Central Andean region by the Ferrocarril Central Andino which runs from Lima through the departments of Junin, Huancavelica, Pasco, and Huanuco. /ref> Major cities along this line include Huancayo, La Oroya, Huancavelica, and Cerro de Pasco. Another inactive line runs from Lima northwards to the city of Huacho. /ref>
The urban transport system is composed of over 652 transit routes /ref> which are served by buses, microbuses, and combis. The system is unorganized and is characterized by the lack of formality. The service is run by 464 private companies which are poorly regulated by the local government. Fares average at around one sol or $0.30 USD. Due to the absence of a centralized bus terminal, individual bus companies use private terminals throughout Lima. /ref>
The Metropolitan Transportation System is a transport project which plans to integrate the Independent Corridor of Mass-Transit Buses known by its Spanish initials as (COSAC 1). This system plans to link the principal points of the Lima Metropolitan Area and the first phase of this project is already in development with the construction of a thirty three kilometer long line from Comas to Chorrillos.The Lima Metro mass transit system This system is similar to the TransMilenio of Bogota, Colombia. /ref>
Automobiles, known as colectivos, render express service on some major roads of the Lima Metropolitan Area. The colectivos signal their specific destination with a sign on the their windshield. Their routes are not generally publicitized but are understood by frequent users. The cost is generally higher than congenital public transport however they cover greater distances at greater speeds due to the lack of stops. /ref>
The Lima Metro, a above ground mass transit system, is under construction and one line has been completed while another six are scheduled for construction. Line 1 is also scheduled to be extended to the city's center, uniting Villa el Salvador with downtown Lima in a matter of only forty minutes, a trip which currently lasts one hour and forty minutes with the current public transport system. www.trenurbano.gob.pe/
The Via Expresa
Taxis in the city are relatively cheap. There are no meters so drivers are told the desired destination and the fare is agreed upon before the passenger enters the taxi. Taxis vary in sizes from small four door compacts to large vans. They are virtually everywhere, accounting for a large part of the car stock. In many cases they are just a private car with a taxi sticker on the windshield. Additionally, there are several companies that provide taxi service on-call. /ref>
Eighty percent of the city's history having occurred during the pre-automobile era, Lima's road network is based mostly on large divided avenues rather than freeways. In recent times however, Lima has developed a freeway network now made up of nine freeways which are, the Via Expresa Paseo de la Republica, Via Expresa Javier Prado, Via Expresa Grau, Panamericana Norte, Panamericana Sur, Carretera Central, Via Expresa Callao, Autopista Chillon Trapiche, and the Autopista Ramiro Priale. /ref> /ref>
Skyline from the Costa Verde
List of sister cities, designated by Sister Cities International: Sister Cities International, Online Directory: Peru, Americas. Retrieved July 14, 2007
* Arequipa, Peru
* Cusco, Peru
* Piura, Peru
* New York City, United States
* Los Angeles, United States
* Austin, United States, since 1981
* Cleveland, United States
* Miami, United States
* Bordeaux, France, since 1957
* Beijing, China, since November 21, 1983Buildings in the financial district
* Madrid, Spain
* Mexico City, Mexico
* São Paulo, Brazil
* Tegucigalpa, Honduras
* Akhisar, Turkey
* Buenos Aires, Argentina
* Guadalajara, Mexico
* Montreal, Canada
* Bogotá, Colombia
* Cairo, Egypt
* Cardiff, Wales, United Kingdom
*Lima Metropolitan Area
*List of people from Lima
*List of districts and neighborhoods of Lima
*List of sites of interest in the Lima Metropolitan area
* Nota etimológica: El topónimo Lima, Rodolfo Cerrón-Palomino, Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú
* Lima Monumento Histórico, Margarita Cubillas Soriano, Lima, 1996
;History
* Andrien, Kenneth. Crisis and decline: the Viceroyalty of Peru in the seventeenth century. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1985. ISBN 0-8263-0791-4
* Anna, Timothy. The fall of the royal government in Peru. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1979. ISBN 0-8032-1004-3
* Conlee, Christina, Jalh Dulanto, Carol Mackay and Charles Stanish. "Late Prehispanic sociopolitical complexity". In Helaine Silverman (ed.), Andean archaeology. Malden: Blackwell, 2004, pp. 209â236. ISBN 0-631-23400-4
* Dietz, Henry. Poverty and problem-solving under military rule: the urban poor in Lima, Peru. Austin : University of Texas Press, 1980. ISBN 0-292-76460-X
* Hemming, John. The conquest of the Incas. London: Macmillan, 1993. ISBN 0-333-51794-6
* Higgings, James. Lima. A cultural history. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005. ISBN 0-19-517891-2
* Instituto Nacional de EstadÃstica e Informática. Lima Metropolitana perfil socio-demográfico. Lima: INEI, 1996.
* Klarén, Peter. Peru: society and nationhood in the Andes. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000. ISBN 0-19-506928-5
* Ramón, Gabriel. "The script of urban surgery: Lima, 1850â1940". In Arturo Almandoz (ed.), Planning Latin America's capital cities, 1850â1950. New York: Routledge, 2002, pp. 170â192. ISBN 0-415-27265-3
* Walker, Charles. "The upper classes and their upper stories: architecture and the aftermath of the Lima earthquake of 1746". Hispanic American Historical Review 83 (1): 53â82 (February 2003).
;Demographics
* Instituto Nacional de EstadÃstica e Informática, Perfil Sociodemográfico del Perú. Lima: INEI, 2008.
* Municipality of Lima
* Geographia.com
* Maps
* Stock Exchange
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Lima | What is a colectivo? | Automobiles that renders express service on some major roads of the Lima Metropolitan Area. | data/set3/a4 | Lima
Lima is the capital and largest city of Peru. It is located in the valleys of the Chillón, RÃmac and LurÃn rivers, on a coast overlooking the Pacific Ocean. It forms a contiguous urban area with the seaport of Callao.
Lima was founded by Spanish conquistador Francisco Pizarro on January 18, 1535, as La Ciudad de los Reyes, or "The City of Kings." It became the most important city in the Spanish Viceroyalty of Peru and, after the Peruvian War of Independence, was made the capital of the Republic of Peru. Today around one-third of the Peruvian population lives in the metropolitan area.
According to early Spanish chronicles the Lima area was once called Ichma, after its original inhabitants. However, even before the Inca occupation of the area in the 15th century, a famous oracle in the RÃmac valley had come to be known by visitors as Limaq (limaq, pronounced , which means "talker" in coastal Quechua). This oracle was eventually destroyed by the Spanish and replaced with a church, but the name persisted in the local language, thus the chronicles show "LÃmac" replacing "Ychma" as the common name for the area. /ref>
Modern scholars speculate that the word "Lima" originated as the Spanish pronunciation of the native name Limaq. Linguistic evidence seems to support this theory as spoken Spanish consistently rejects stop consonants in word-final position. The city was founded in 1535 under the name City of the Kings ( ) because its foundation was decided on January 6, date of the feast of the Epiphany. Nevertheless, this name quickly fell into disuse and Lima became the city's name of choice; on the oldest Spanish maps of Peru, both Lima and Ciudad de los Reyes can be seen together as names for the city.
It is worth noting that the river that feeds Lima is called RÃmac, and many people erroneously assume that this is because its original Inca name is "Talking River" (the Incas spoke a highland variety of Quechua where the word for "talker" was pronounced ). However, the original inhabitants of the valley were not the Incas, and this name is actually an innovation arising from an effort by the Cuzco nobility in colonial times to standardize the toponym so that it would conform to the phonology of Cuzco Quechua. Later, as the the original inhabitants of the valley died out and the local Quechua became extinct, the Cuzco pronunciation prevailed. In modern times, Spanish-speaking locals do not see the connection between the name of their city and the name of the river that runs through it. They often assume that the valley is named after the river; however, Spanish documents from the colonial period show the opposite to be true.
Lima City Walls were build between 1684 and 1687 by viceroy Melchor de Navarra y Rocafull.
In the pre-Columbian era, the location of what is now the city of Lima was inhabited by several amerindian groups under the Ychsma polity, which was incorporated into the Inca Empire in the 15th century. Conlee et al, "Late Prehispanic sociopolitical complexity", p. 218. In 1532, a group of Spanish conquistadors led by Francisco Pizarro defeated the Inca ruler Atahualpa and took over his Empire. As the Spanish Crown had named Pizarro governor of the lands he conquered, Hemming, The conquest, p. 28. he chose the RÃmac valley to found his capital on January 18, 1535 as Ciudad de los Reyes (City of the Kings). Klarén, Peru, p. 39. In August 1536, the new city was besieged by the troops of Manco Inca, however, the Spaniards and their native allies defeated the Inca rebels. Hemming, The conquest, p. 203â206.
Balconies were a major feature of Lima's architecture during the colonial period.
Over the next few years, Lima gained prestige as it was designated capital of the Viceroyalty of Peru and site of a Real Audiencia in 1543. Klarén, Peru, p. 87. During the next century Lima flourished as the center of an extensive trade network which integrated the Viceroyalty with the Americas, Europe and the Far East. Andrien, Crisis and decline, pp. 11â13. However, the city was not free from dangers; powerful earthquakes destroyed most of the city in 1687. Andrien, Crisis and decline, p. 26. A second threat was the presence of pirates and privateers in the Pacific Ocean, which led to the building of the Lima City Walls between 1684 and 1687. Higgings, Lima, p. 45. The 1687 earthquake marked a turning point in the history of Lima as it coincided with a recession in trade and economic competition by other cities such as Buenos Aires. Andrien, Crisis and decline, p. 28.
In 1746, a powerful earthquake severely damaged Lima and destroyed Callao, forcing a massive rebuilding effort under Viceroy José Antonio Manso de Velasco. Walker, "The upper classes", pp. 53â55. In the later half of the 18th century, the ideas of the Enlightenment on public health and social control shaped the development of the city. Ramón, "The script", pp. 173â174. During this period, Lima was adversely affected by the Bourbon Reforms as it lost its monopoly on overseas trade and its control over the important mining region of Upper Peru. Anna, Fall of the royal government, pp. 4â5. This economic decline made the city's elite dependent on royal and ecclesiastical appointment and thus, reluctant to advocate independence. Anna, Fall of the royal government, pp. 23â24.
A combined expedition of Argentine and Chilean patriots under General José de San MartÃn managed to land south of Lima in 1820 but did not attack the city. Faced with a naval blockade and the action of guerrillas on land, Viceroy José de la Serna was forced to evacuate the city on July 1821 to save the Royalist army. Anna, Fall of the royal government, pp. 176â177. Fearing a popular uprising and lacking any means to impose order, the city council invited San MartÃn to enter Lima and signed a Declaration of Independence at his request. Anna, Fall of the royal government, pp. 178â180. However, the war was not over; in the next two years the city changed hands several times and suffered exactions from both sides.
The Jiron de la Union was Lima's most important street for the first half of the 20th century
After the war of independence, Lima became the capital of the Republic of Peru but economic stagnation and political turmoil brought urban development to a halt. This hiatus ended in the 1850s, when increased public and private revenues from guano exports led to a rapid expansion of the city. Klarén, Peru, p. 169. However, the export-led economic expansion also widened the gap between rich and poor, fostering social unrest. Klarén, Peru, p. 170. During the 1879â1883 War of the Pacific, Chilean troops occupied Lima, looting public museums, libraries and educational institutions. Higgings, Lima, p. 107. At the same time, angry mobs attacked wealthy citizens and the Asian population; sacking their properties and businesses. Klarén, Peru, p. 192. After the war, the city underwent a process of renewal and expansion from the 1890s up to the 1920s. During this period the urban layout was modified by the construction of big avenues which crisscrossed the city and connected it with neighboring towns. Ramón, "The script", pp. 180â182.
In 1940, an earthquake destroyed most of the city, which at that time was mostly built out of adobe and quincha. In the 1940s, Lima started a period of rapid growth spurred by immigration from the Andean regions of Peru. Population, estimated at 0.6 million in 1940, reached 1.9M by 1960 and 4.8M by 1980. Instituto Nacional de EstadÃstica e Informática, Lima Metropolitana perfil socio-demográfico. Retrieved on August 12, 2007 At the start of this period, the urban area was confined to a triangular area bounded by the city's historic center, Callao and Chorrillos; in the following decades settlements spread to the north, beyond the RÃmac River, to the east, along the Central Highway, and to the south. Dietz, Poverty and problem-solving, p. 35. Immigrants, at first confined to slums in downtown Lima, led this expansion through large-scale land invasions which gave rise to the proliferation of shanty towns, known as pueblos jóvenes. Dietz, Poverty and problem-solving, p. 36.
Lima seen from Spot satellite
The urban area of Lima covers about . It is located on mostly flat terrain in the Peruvian coastal plain, within the valleys of the Chillón, RÃmac and LurÃn rivers. The city slopes gently from the shores of the Pacific Ocean into valleys and mountain slopes located as high as above mean sea level. Within the city exist isolated hills which are not connected to the surrounding hill chains, such as El Agustino, San Cosme, El Pino, La Milla, Muleria and Pro hills. The San Cristobal hill in the Rimac district, which faces directly north of the downtown area, is the local extreme of an Andean hill outgrowth.
Metropolitan Lima has an area of , of which (31%) comprise the actual city and (69%) the city outskirts. The urban area extends around from north to south and around from west to east. The city center is located inland at the shore of the Rimac river, a vital resource for the city, since it carries what will become drinking water for its inhabitants and fuels the hydro electrical dams that provide electricity to the area. While no official administrative definition for the city exists, it is usually considered to be composed of the central 30 out of the 43 districts of Lima Province, corresponding to an urban area centered around the historic Cercado de Lima district. The city is the core of the Lima Metropolitan Area, one of the ten largest metropolitan areas in the Americas. Lima is the second largest city in the world located in a desert, after Cairo, Egypt.
Weather averages for Lima International Airport.
Lima's climate is quite mild, despite being located in the Tropics. Lima has a subtropical and desert climate, yet the microclimate also makes it very humid throughout the year. The temperatures vary from mild to warm (neither very cold or hot).The average temperature in winter ranges from to . These days usually come accompanied by continuous overcast skies, fog, and mist. In the summer, the high averages around with lows around . During El Niño events, the climate of Lima gets severely disrupted, the water temperatures along the coast which usually average around 17 - 19 °C (65 - 68 °F) get much warmer (as in 1998 when the water temperature reached 26 °C (79 °F)), which causes the high and low temperatures to rise by several degrees. Such was the case when Lima hit its all-time record high of
Relative humidity is always very high particularly in the mornings /ref> , and produces brief morning fog from June to December and persistent low clouds from May to November. Sunny, less moist and warm summers follow from December to April and are followed by cloudy, damp and cool winters (June to October). The all-time record low in the metropolitan area is .
Rainfall is very low. The severely low rainfall impacts on water supply in the city. /ref> Inland locations receive 1 to of rainfall, which accumulates mainly during the winter months. Summer rain occurs in the form of isolated light and brief afternoon or evening events, leftover from afternoon storms that generate over the Andes. The peak of the 'rainy season,' which does not produce "rain" in the true sense of the word, occurs during winter when late-night/morning drizzle events (locally called 'garúa','llovizna' or 'camanchacas') become frequent, leaving a light coating of dampness on the ground. All these climatic phenomena arise from the combination of semi-permanent coastal upwelling and the presence of the cold Humboldt Current just offshore.
A Moorish arch built by Spanish immigrants in Lima /ref>
Lima ranks as the 17th most populous city in the world with a municipal population of 7,605,743, and 8,472,935 for the metropolitan area and a population density of as of 2007. Instituto Nacional de EstadÃstica e Informática, Perfil Sociodemográfico del Perú pp. 29â30, 32, 34. Its population features a very complex mix of racial and ethnic groups. Traditionally, Mestizos of mixed European (mostly Spanish) and Amerindian descent are the largest contingent. The second group are White Caucasians, mainly Spanish, Italians, Germans, French, English, Polish and Eastern Europeans. /ref> /ref> Also there is a large number of Jews, and Middle Easterners. Asians make up a large number of the metropolitan population, especially of Chinese (Cantonese) and Japanese descent. Afro-Peruvians, whose African ancestors were initially brought to the region as slaves, are yet another part of the city's ethnic quilt. Lima has by far the largest Chinese community in Latin America. /ref>
The Archbishop's Palace of Lima along with the Cathedral of Lima, the seat of the Roman Catholic Church in Peru.
The first settlement in what would become Lima was made up of only 117 housing blocks. In 1562, another district was built at the other side of the Rimac River and in 1610, the first stone bridge was built. Lima had, at this point in time, around 1600 inhabitants. In 1861, the amount of inhabitants surpassed 100,000, and by 1927 this amount was doubled.
During the early twentieth century thousands of immigrants came to the city, a significant number of French, Italians and Germans, many of them had been adapting to the Peruvian society. They organized in social clubs, and they built their own schools; for example, The American-Peruvian school which is located in Miraflores, The French Alliance (Alianza Francesa de Lima), famous Lycée Franco-Péruvien and the hospital Maison de Sante, the British-Peruvian school in Monterrico, and also several German-Peruvian schools.
They also influenced Peruvian cuisine, the Italians in particular exerting a strong influence in the Miraflores and San Isidro areas with their restaurants, called Trattorias.
A great number of Chinese immigrants, and a lesser amount of Japanese, came to Lima and established themselves in the Barrios Altos neighborhood near downtown Lima, coming in order to work on farms and domestic services. Lima residents refer to their Chinatown as "Calle Capon," and the city's ubiquitous Chifa restaurants a small, sit-down, usually Chinese-run restaurant serving the Peruvian spin on Chinese cuisine can be found by the dozen in this Chinese enclave.
A pueblo joven in the southern outskirts of Lima in 1997
The 1950s saw the exponential increase of the city inhabitants, most of them Andean immigrants and their descendants, who settled in the northern and southern outskirts. The political and economic instability in Peru during the latter half of the twentieth century created unprecedented poverty and violence in the towns of the countryside or Andean highlands, forcing hundreds of thousands of peasants of Amerindian descent to migrate to Lima thus greatly augmenting Lima's population. Instituto Nacional de Estadistica e Informatica In the 70âs, the lacking transportation facilities for the newcomers who had to travel for hours on end to reach the city center became a problem, and it was decided that Lima should not expand any further.
Buildings in the financial district of San Isidro
Lima is the industrial and financial center of Peru Infoplease. Lima. Retrieved on December 8, 2008. , home to many national companies. It accounts for more than two thirds of Peru's industrial production AttractionGuide. Lima Attractions. Retrieved on December 8, 2008. and most of its tertiary sector.
The Metropolitan area, with around 7000 factories /ref>, spearheads the industrial development of the country, thanks to the quantity and quality of the available workforce, cheap infrastructure and the mostly developed routes and highways in the city. The most relevant industrial sectors are textiles, clothing and food. Chemicals, fish, leather and oil derivatives are also manufactured and/or processed in Lima /ref>. The financial district is located in the district of San Isidro, while much of the industrial activity takes place in the area stretching west of Downtown Lima to the airport in Callao.
Industrialization began to take hold in Lima in 1930s and by 1950s, through import substitution policies, by 1950 manufacturing made up 14% of the GNP. In the late 1950s, up to 70% of consumer goods were manufactured in Peruvian, and primarily Limean, factories. /ref>
The Callao seaport is one of the main fishing and commerce ports in South America, with 75% of the country's imports and 25% of its exports /ref> using it as their entry/departure point. The main export goods leaving the country through Callao are oil, steel, silver, zinc, cotton, sugar and coffee.
A building in downtown Lima's financial district
In 2004, Lima's GDP represented 45% of the country's GDP (5% more than the previous year). The GDP per capita in Lima is $7,600 /ref>. Most of the foreign companies operating in the country have settled in Lima, which has led to the previously mentioned concentration of economic and financial activity on the city.
There has been a noticeable increase in slight industries, services and high technologies. In 2007, the Peruvian economy grew 9%, the largest growth rate in all of South America which was spearheaded by economic policies originating in Lima. CIA Factbook .The Lima Stock Exchange grew 185.24% in 2006 Bolsa de Valores de Lima and in 2007 grew 168.3% Bolsa de Valores de Lima making it one of the fastest growing stock exchanges in the world. In 2006, the Lima Stock Exchange was the most profitable in the world. /ref> The unemployment rate in metropolitan area is 7.2%.
The Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Summit and the Latin America, the Caribbean and the European Union Summit were hosted by the city of Lima.
Lima is headquarters to many major banks such as Banco de Crédito del Perú, Interbank, Bank of the Nation, Banco Continental, Banco Interamericano de Finanzas, Banco Finaciero, Banco de Comercio, MiBanco, and Banco del Trabajo. It is also a regional headquarters to Standard Chartered. Major insurance coorperations based in Lima include Rimac Seguros, Mapfre Peru, Interseguro, Pacifico, Protecta, and La Positiva. /ref>
The Government Palace in downtown Lima.Headquarters of the Andean Community of Nations
Lima is the capital city of the Republic of Peru and the department of Lima. As such, it is home to the three branches of the Government of Peru. The executive branch is headquartered in the Government Palace, located in the Plaza Mayor. The legislative branch is headquartered in the Legislative Palace and is home to the Congress of Peru. The Judicial branch is headquartered in the Palace of Justice and is home to the Supreme Court of Peru.
Likewise, all the ministries are located in the city of Lima. In international government, the city of Lima is home to the headquarters of the Andean Community of Nations and the South American Community of Nations, along with other regional and international organizations.
The city is roughly equivalent to the Province of Lima, which is subdivided into 43 districts. The Metropolitan Municipality of Lima is utmost authority of the entire city while each district further has it's own local government. Unlike the rest of the country, the Metropolitan Municipality, although a provincial municipality, acts as and has functions similar to a regional government, as it does not belong to any of the 25 regions of Peru.
The Palace of Justice, seat of the judicial branch
The Palace of Justice in Lima is seat of the Supreme Court of Justice the highest judicial court in Peru with jurisdiction over the entire territory of Peru.
Lima is also seat of two of the 28 second highest or Superior Courts of Justice. The first and oldest Superior Court in Lima is the Superior Court of Justice of Lima belonging to the Judicial District of Lima. Due to the judicial organization of Peru, the highest concentration of courts is located in Lima despite the fact that it's judicial district only has jurisdiction over 35 of the 43 districts of Lima. Judicial Power of Peru. Superior Court of Lima. Retrieved 3 December 2008. . The Superior Court of the Cono Norte is the second Superior Court located in Lima and is part of the Judicial District of North Lima. This judicial district has jurisdiction over the remaining eight districts all located in northern Lima. Judicial Power of Peru. Superior Court of North Lima. Retrieved 3 December 2008.
Paseo de los Heroes Navales
Lima's architecture is characterized by a mix in styles as reflected from shifts between trends throughout various time periods of the city's history. Examples of early colonial architecture include such structures as the Monastery of San Francisco, the Cathedral of Lima and the Torre Tagle Palace. These constructions are generally influenced by the Spanish baroque, /ref> Spanish Neoclassicism]], /ref> and Spanish Colonial /ref> styles. After independence, a gradual shift towards the neoclassical and Art Nouveau styles took place. Many of these constructions were greatly influenced by French architectural styles. /ref>Many government buildings as well as major cultural institutions were contracted in this architectural time period. During 1960s, constructions utilizing the brutalist style began appearing in Lima due to the military government of Juan Velasco. /ref> Examples of this architecture are the Museum of the Nation and the Ministry of Defense. The 21st century has seen the appearance of glass skyscrapers particularly around the city's financial district. /ref>
Lima's urban setting is characterized by green-lined streets as well as the abundance of plazas throughout the city. More important streets usually contain wider green areas and plaza's usually contain monuments or statues of historical figures of importance to Peruvian history. Parque Universitario in downtown Lima
The largest parks of Lima are located near the downtown area such as the Park of the Reserve, Park of the Exposition, /ref> Campo de Marte, and the University Park. The Park of the Reserve is home to the largest fountain complex in the world known as the Magical Circuit of Water. /ref>
A number of large parks lie outside the city center, including Reducto Park, Pantanos de Villa, The Golf, Park of the Legends, the malecon of Miraflores, and the Golf of the Incas. /ref>The street grid of the city of Lima, is laid out with a system of plazas of which serve a purpose similar to roundabouts or junctions. In addition to this practical purpose, plazas serve as one of Lima's principal green spaces and contain a variety of different types of architecture ranging from monuments to statues, and water fountains. /ref>
Strongly influenced by European, Andean, and Asian culture, Lima is a melting pot of cultures due to colonization, immigration, and indigenous influences. /ref>
Like many other world capitals, Lima is home to prestigious museums many of which are world renown. The Historic Center of Lima was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1988. Limean gastronomy is known to be among the best in the world and the city is known as the Gastronomical Capital of the Americas. Lima's gastronomy is a mix of Spanish, Andean, and Asian culinary traditions. /ref>
Lima's beaches, located along the northern and southern ends of the city, are heavily visited during the summer months. Numerous restaurants, clubs and hotels have been opened in these places to serve the many beachgoers. Lima has a vibrant and active theater scene as there are many theaters presenting not only classic theater, but also The Golf cultural presentations, modern theater, experimental theater, dramas, dance performances, and theater for children. Lima is home to many important theaters such as the Municipal Theater, Segura Theater, Japanese-Peruvian Theater, Marsano Theater, British theater, Theater of the PUCP Cultural Center, and the Yuyachkani Theater. /ref>
Known as Peruvian Coastal Spanish, Lima's Spanish is characterized by the lack of strong innotations as found in many other regions of the Spanish-speaking world. It is heavily influenced by the Spanish spoken in Castile as throughout the colonial era, the colonial Spanish nobility was based in Lima, of which most originated from Castile. /ref> Limean Spanish is also characterized by the lack of voseo, a trait present in the dialects of many other Latin American countries. This is due to the fact that voseo was primarily utilized by the lower socioeconomic classes of Spain, a social group that did not begin to appear in Lima until the late colonial era. Limean Spanish is often distinguished by its relative clarity The Museum of Art in comparison to other Latin American dialects. Limean Spanish has been influenced by a number of immigrant groups including Italians, Andalusians, Chinese and Japanese. It also has been influenced by anglicisms as a result of globalization as well as by Andean Spanish due to recent immigration from the Andean highlands to Lima. /ref>
Lima is home to the highest concentration of museums of the country, the most notable of which being the Museo Nacional de ArqueologÃa AntropologÃa e Historia del Perú, Museum of Art of Lima, the Museum of Natural History, the Museum of the Nation, the Museum of Italian Art, and the Museum of Gold, and the Larco Museum. These museums mostly focus on art, pre-Colombian cultures, natural history, science, and religion. /ref>
Lima, as the point of entry to the country, has developed an important tourism industry, characterized by it's historic center, archeological sites, nightlife, museums, art galleries, festivals, and popular traditions. Lima is home to an ample range of restaurants and bars where local as well as international cuisine is served. /ref>
The Historic Center of Lima, made up of the districts of Lima and Rimac, was declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1988 due to its importance during the colonial era leaving a testimony to architectural achievement. /ref> Some examples of this historical colonial architecture include the Monastery of San Francisco, the Plaza Mayor, the Cathedral, Covenant of Santo Domingo, the Palace of Torre Tagle, and much more.
A tour of the city's churches is a popular circuit among tourists. A short jaunt through the central district goes through many churches dating from as early as the 16th and 17th centuries the most noteworthy of which being the Cathedral of Lima and the Monastery of San Francisco, of which are said to be connected by their subterrestrial catacombs. /ref>Both of these churches contain paintings from various schools of art, Sevilian tile, and finely sculpted wood furnishings. Also notable is the Sanctuary of Las Nazarenas, the point of origin for the Lord of Miracles, whose festivities in the month of October constitute the most important religious event in Lima and arguably all of Peru. Some sections of the Lima City Walls still remain and are frequented by tourists. These examples of medieval Spanish fortifications were utilized to defend the city from attacks by pirates and privateers. /ref>
Beaches are visited during the summer months, which are located along the Pan-American Highway, to the south of the city in districts such as Lurin, Punta Hermosa, San Bartolo and Asia. Many restaurants, nightclubs, lounges, bars, clubs, and hotels have developed in said places to cater to beachgoers. /ref>
The suburban districts of Cieneguilla, Pachacamac, and the city of Chosica, are important tourist attractions among locals as they are located at a higher elevation than Lima therefore receiving sunshine in winter months, something that the city of Lima frequently lacks. /ref>
Lima is known as Gastronomical Capital of the Americas. A center of immigration and the center of the Spanish Viceroyalty, Lima has incorporated unique dishes brought from the arrival of the Spanish Conquistadors and the receiving of many waves of immigrants: African, European, Chinese, and Japanese. ref> /ref> Besides international immigrationâa large portion of which happened in Limaâthere has been, since the second half of the 20th century, a strong internal flow from rural areas to cities, in particular to Lima. /ref>This has strongly influenced Lima's cuisine with the incorporation of the immigrant's ingredients and techniques (for example, the Chinese extensive use of rice or the Japanese approach to preparing raw fish). The genres of restaurants in Lima include Creole food, Chifas, Cebicherias, and Pollerias. Peruvian cuisine, widely represented in Lima, holds various Guinness World Records, for its diversity and quality. /ref>
The Estadio Monumental "U" home of Universitario de Deportes
The city of Lima has varied sports venues for soccer, volleyball and basketball, many of which are located within private clubs. A popular sport among Limeans is fronton, a racquet sport similar to squash invented in Lima. The city is home to seven international-class golf links. Equestrian is popular in Lima with many private clubs as well as the Hipódromo de Monterrico horse racing track. The most popular sport in Lima by far is soccer with many professional club teams being located in the city.
/ref>
1. Central Lima
2. Residential Lima
3. Cono Norte
4. Cono Sur
5. Cono Este
6. Beach areas
7. Callao
Lima is made up of thirty densely-populated districts, each headed by a local mayor and the Mayor of Lima, whose authority extends to these and the thirteen outer districts of the Lima province.
The city's historic centre is located in the Cercado de Lima district, locally known as simply Lima, or as "El Centro" ("Downtown"), and it is home to most of the vestiges of Lima's colonial past, the Presidential Palace ( ), the Metropolitan Municipality of Lima ( ), and dozens of hotels, some operating and some defunct, that used to cater to the national and international elite.
The upscale San Isidro district is the city's financial center. It is home to many prominent figures such as politicians and celebrities. It is also where the main banks of Peru and branch offices of world banks are headquartered. San Isidro has many parks, including Parque El Olivar, which has olive trees that were brought from Spain during the seventeenth century.
Another upscale district is Miraflores, which has many luxury hotels, shops and restaurants. Miraflores has more parks and green areas in the south of Lima than most other districts. Larcomar, a popular shopping mall and entertainment center built on cliffs overlooking the Pacific Ocean, featuring bars, dance clubs, movie theaters, cafes, shops, boutiques and galleries, is also located in this district.
La Molina and San Borja, home to the American Embassy and the exclusive Club Polo Lima respectively, are the other two wealthy districts of Lima.
The most densely-populated districts of Lima lie in the northern and southern ends of the city (Spanish: Cono Norte and Cono Sur, respectively), and they are mostly composed of Andean immigrants who arrived during the mid and late 20th century looking for better living standards and economic opportunities, or as refugees of the country's internal conflict with the Shining Path during the late 80s and early 90s. In the case of Cono Norte(North Lima), certain shopping malls like Megaplaza and Royal Plaza have been recently built in the district of Los Olivos, which is the most residential neighborhood in the Northern part of Lima. Most of the inhabitants of this area belong to the middle class.
Barranco, which borders Miraflores by the Pacific Ocean, is known as the city's bohemian district, home or once home of many Peruvian writers and intellectuals like Mario Vargas Llosa, Chabuca Granda and Alfredo Bryce Echenique. This district has many acclaimed restaurants, music venues called "peñas" featuring the traditional folk music of coastal Peru (in Spanish, "música criolla"), and beautiful Victorian-style chalets. It along with Miraflores serves as the home to the foreign nightlife scene.
The University of Lima
Home to a range of universities, institutions, and schools, Lima has the highest concentration of institutions of higher learning in the country and is home to schools with world-wide recognition. The National University of San Marcos, founded on May 12, 1551 during Spanish colonial regime, is the oldest continuously functioning university in the Americas. /ref>
Other public universities also play key roles in teaching and research, such as the Universidad Nacional Agraria La Molina where ex-president Alberto Fujimori once taught, Universidad Nacional de IngenierÃa and the National University of Callao.
The Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú, established in 1917, is the oldest private university. Other private institutions that are located in the city are Universidad de Lima, Universidad CientÃfica del Sur, Universidad San MartÃn de Porres, Universidad del Pacifico, Universidad Inca Garcilaso de la Vega, Universidad Peruana Cayetano Heredia, Universidad Peruana de Ciencias Aplicadas and Universidad Ricardo Palma. /ref>
The Jorge Chávez International Airport
Lima is served by the Jorge Chavez International Airport, located in Callao. It is the largest airport of the country with the largest amount of domestic and international air traffic. It also serves as a major hub in the Latin American air network. Additionally, Lima possesses five other airports: the Las Palmas Air Force Base, Collique Airport, and runways in Santa MarÃa del Mar, San Bartolo and Chilca. /ref>
Lima is connected by highway to every country that borders Peru. Because of its location on the country's central coast, Lima is an important junction in Peru's highway system, three of the major highways originate in Lima.
*The Northern Panamerican Highway, this highway extends more than to the border with Ecuador connecting the northern districts of Lima with many major cities along the northern Peruvian coast.
*The Central Highway ( ), this highway connects the eastern districts of Lima with many cities in central Peru. The highway extends with its terminus at the city of Pucallpa near Brazil.
*The Southern Panamerican Highway, this highway connects the southern districts of Lima to cities on the southern coast. The highway extends to the border with Chile.
The proximity of Lima to the port of Callao allows Callao to act as the metropolitan area's foremost port. Callao concentrates nearly all of the maritime transport of the metropolitan area. There is, however, a small port in LurÃn whose transit mostly is accounted for by oil tankers due to a refinery being located nearby. Nonetheless, maritime transport inside Lima's city limits is relatively insignificant compared to that of Callao, the nation's leading port and one of Latin America's largest. There have been plans to build a new megaport on the island of San Lorenzo known as the San Lorenzo Megaport Project. This port is planned to become the largest of Latin America.
Lima is connected to the Central Andean region by the Ferrocarril Central Andino which runs from Lima through the departments of Junin, Huancavelica, Pasco, and Huanuco. /ref> Major cities along this line include Huancayo, La Oroya, Huancavelica, and Cerro de Pasco. Another inactive line runs from Lima northwards to the city of Huacho. /ref>
The urban transport system is composed of over 652 transit routes /ref> which are served by buses, microbuses, and combis. The system is unorganized and is characterized by the lack of formality. The service is run by 464 private companies which are poorly regulated by the local government. Fares average at around one sol or $0.30 USD. Due to the absence of a centralized bus terminal, individual bus companies use private terminals throughout Lima. /ref>
The Metropolitan Transportation System is a transport project which plans to integrate the Independent Corridor of Mass-Transit Buses known by its Spanish initials as (COSAC 1). This system plans to link the principal points of the Lima Metropolitan Area and the first phase of this project is already in development with the construction of a thirty three kilometer long line from Comas to Chorrillos.The Lima Metro mass transit system This system is similar to the TransMilenio of Bogota, Colombia. /ref>
Automobiles, known as colectivos, render express service on some major roads of the Lima Metropolitan Area. The colectivos signal their specific destination with a sign on the their windshield. Their routes are not generally publicitized but are understood by frequent users. The cost is generally higher than congenital public transport however they cover greater distances at greater speeds due to the lack of stops. /ref>
The Lima Metro, a above ground mass transit system, is under construction and one line has been completed while another six are scheduled for construction. Line 1 is also scheduled to be extended to the city's center, uniting Villa el Salvador with downtown Lima in a matter of only forty minutes, a trip which currently lasts one hour and forty minutes with the current public transport system. www.trenurbano.gob.pe/
The Via Expresa
Taxis in the city are relatively cheap. There are no meters so drivers are told the desired destination and the fare is agreed upon before the passenger enters the taxi. Taxis vary in sizes from small four door compacts to large vans. They are virtually everywhere, accounting for a large part of the car stock. In many cases they are just a private car with a taxi sticker on the windshield. Additionally, there are several companies that provide taxi service on-call. /ref>
Eighty percent of the city's history having occurred during the pre-automobile era, Lima's road network is based mostly on large divided avenues rather than freeways. In recent times however, Lima has developed a freeway network now made up of nine freeways which are, the Via Expresa Paseo de la Republica, Via Expresa Javier Prado, Via Expresa Grau, Panamericana Norte, Panamericana Sur, Carretera Central, Via Expresa Callao, Autopista Chillon Trapiche, and the Autopista Ramiro Priale. /ref> /ref>
Skyline from the Costa Verde
List of sister cities, designated by Sister Cities International: Sister Cities International, Online Directory: Peru, Americas. Retrieved July 14, 2007
* Arequipa, Peru
* Cusco, Peru
* Piura, Peru
* New York City, United States
* Los Angeles, United States
* Austin, United States, since 1981
* Cleveland, United States
* Miami, United States
* Bordeaux, France, since 1957
* Beijing, China, since November 21, 1983Buildings in the financial district
* Madrid, Spain
* Mexico City, Mexico
* São Paulo, Brazil
* Tegucigalpa, Honduras
* Akhisar, Turkey
* Buenos Aires, Argentina
* Guadalajara, Mexico
* Montreal, Canada
* Bogotá, Colombia
* Cairo, Egypt
* Cardiff, Wales, United Kingdom
*Lima Metropolitan Area
*List of people from Lima
*List of districts and neighborhoods of Lima
*List of sites of interest in the Lima Metropolitan area
* Nota etimológica: El topónimo Lima, Rodolfo Cerrón-Palomino, Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú
* Lima Monumento Histórico, Margarita Cubillas Soriano, Lima, 1996
;History
* Andrien, Kenneth. Crisis and decline: the Viceroyalty of Peru in the seventeenth century. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1985. ISBN 0-8263-0791-4
* Anna, Timothy. The fall of the royal government in Peru. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1979. ISBN 0-8032-1004-3
* Conlee, Christina, Jalh Dulanto, Carol Mackay and Charles Stanish. "Late Prehispanic sociopolitical complexity". In Helaine Silverman (ed.), Andean archaeology. Malden: Blackwell, 2004, pp. 209â236. ISBN 0-631-23400-4
* Dietz, Henry. Poverty and problem-solving under military rule: the urban poor in Lima, Peru. Austin : University of Texas Press, 1980. ISBN 0-292-76460-X
* Hemming, John. The conquest of the Incas. London: Macmillan, 1993. ISBN 0-333-51794-6
* Higgings, James. Lima. A cultural history. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005. ISBN 0-19-517891-2
* Instituto Nacional de EstadÃstica e Informática. Lima Metropolitana perfil socio-demográfico. Lima: INEI, 1996.
* Klarén, Peter. Peru: society and nationhood in the Andes. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000. ISBN 0-19-506928-5
* Ramón, Gabriel. "The script of urban surgery: Lima, 1850â1940". In Arturo Almandoz (ed.), Planning Latin America's capital cities, 1850â1950. New York: Routledge, 2002, pp. 170â192. ISBN 0-415-27265-3
* Walker, Charles. "The upper classes and their upper stories: architecture and the aftermath of the Lima earthquake of 1746". Hispanic American Historical Review 83 (1): 53â82 (February 2003).
;Demographics
* Instituto Nacional de EstadÃstica e Informática, Perfil Sociodemográfico del Perú. Lima: INEI, 2008.
* Municipality of Lima
* Geographia.com
* Maps
* Stock Exchange
*
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Lima | Is the National University of San Marcos in Lima? | Yes. | data/set3/a4 | Lima
Lima is the capital and largest city of Peru. It is located in the valleys of the Chillón, RÃmac and LurÃn rivers, on a coast overlooking the Pacific Ocean. It forms a contiguous urban area with the seaport of Callao.
Lima was founded by Spanish conquistador Francisco Pizarro on January 18, 1535, as La Ciudad de los Reyes, or "The City of Kings." It became the most important city in the Spanish Viceroyalty of Peru and, after the Peruvian War of Independence, was made the capital of the Republic of Peru. Today around one-third of the Peruvian population lives in the metropolitan area.
According to early Spanish chronicles the Lima area was once called Ichma, after its original inhabitants. However, even before the Inca occupation of the area in the 15th century, a famous oracle in the RÃmac valley had come to be known by visitors as Limaq (limaq, pronounced , which means "talker" in coastal Quechua). This oracle was eventually destroyed by the Spanish and replaced with a church, but the name persisted in the local language, thus the chronicles show "LÃmac" replacing "Ychma" as the common name for the area. /ref>
Modern scholars speculate that the word "Lima" originated as the Spanish pronunciation of the native name Limaq. Linguistic evidence seems to support this theory as spoken Spanish consistently rejects stop consonants in word-final position. The city was founded in 1535 under the name City of the Kings ( ) because its foundation was decided on January 6, date of the feast of the Epiphany. Nevertheless, this name quickly fell into disuse and Lima became the city's name of choice; on the oldest Spanish maps of Peru, both Lima and Ciudad de los Reyes can be seen together as names for the city.
It is worth noting that the river that feeds Lima is called RÃmac, and many people erroneously assume that this is because its original Inca name is "Talking River" (the Incas spoke a highland variety of Quechua where the word for "talker" was pronounced ). However, the original inhabitants of the valley were not the Incas, and this name is actually an innovation arising from an effort by the Cuzco nobility in colonial times to standardize the toponym so that it would conform to the phonology of Cuzco Quechua. Later, as the the original inhabitants of the valley died out and the local Quechua became extinct, the Cuzco pronunciation prevailed. In modern times, Spanish-speaking locals do not see the connection between the name of their city and the name of the river that runs through it. They often assume that the valley is named after the river; however, Spanish documents from the colonial period show the opposite to be true.
Lima City Walls were build between 1684 and 1687 by viceroy Melchor de Navarra y Rocafull.
In the pre-Columbian era, the location of what is now the city of Lima was inhabited by several amerindian groups under the Ychsma polity, which was incorporated into the Inca Empire in the 15th century. Conlee et al, "Late Prehispanic sociopolitical complexity", p. 218. In 1532, a group of Spanish conquistadors led by Francisco Pizarro defeated the Inca ruler Atahualpa and took over his Empire. As the Spanish Crown had named Pizarro governor of the lands he conquered, Hemming, The conquest, p. 28. he chose the RÃmac valley to found his capital on January 18, 1535 as Ciudad de los Reyes (City of the Kings). Klarén, Peru, p. 39. In August 1536, the new city was besieged by the troops of Manco Inca, however, the Spaniards and their native allies defeated the Inca rebels. Hemming, The conquest, p. 203â206.
Balconies were a major feature of Lima's architecture during the colonial period.
Over the next few years, Lima gained prestige as it was designated capital of the Viceroyalty of Peru and site of a Real Audiencia in 1543. Klarén, Peru, p. 87. During the next century Lima flourished as the center of an extensive trade network which integrated the Viceroyalty with the Americas, Europe and the Far East. Andrien, Crisis and decline, pp. 11â13. However, the city was not free from dangers; powerful earthquakes destroyed most of the city in 1687. Andrien, Crisis and decline, p. 26. A second threat was the presence of pirates and privateers in the Pacific Ocean, which led to the building of the Lima City Walls between 1684 and 1687. Higgings, Lima, p. 45. The 1687 earthquake marked a turning point in the history of Lima as it coincided with a recession in trade and economic competition by other cities such as Buenos Aires. Andrien, Crisis and decline, p. 28.
In 1746, a powerful earthquake severely damaged Lima and destroyed Callao, forcing a massive rebuilding effort under Viceroy José Antonio Manso de Velasco. Walker, "The upper classes", pp. 53â55. In the later half of the 18th century, the ideas of the Enlightenment on public health and social control shaped the development of the city. Ramón, "The script", pp. 173â174. During this period, Lima was adversely affected by the Bourbon Reforms as it lost its monopoly on overseas trade and its control over the important mining region of Upper Peru. Anna, Fall of the royal government, pp. 4â5. This economic decline made the city's elite dependent on royal and ecclesiastical appointment and thus, reluctant to advocate independence. Anna, Fall of the royal government, pp. 23â24.
A combined expedition of Argentine and Chilean patriots under General José de San MartÃn managed to land south of Lima in 1820 but did not attack the city. Faced with a naval blockade and the action of guerrillas on land, Viceroy José de la Serna was forced to evacuate the city on July 1821 to save the Royalist army. Anna, Fall of the royal government, pp. 176â177. Fearing a popular uprising and lacking any means to impose order, the city council invited San MartÃn to enter Lima and signed a Declaration of Independence at his request. Anna, Fall of the royal government, pp. 178â180. However, the war was not over; in the next two years the city changed hands several times and suffered exactions from both sides.
The Jiron de la Union was Lima's most important street for the first half of the 20th century
After the war of independence, Lima became the capital of the Republic of Peru but economic stagnation and political turmoil brought urban development to a halt. This hiatus ended in the 1850s, when increased public and private revenues from guano exports led to a rapid expansion of the city. Klarén, Peru, p. 169. However, the export-led economic expansion also widened the gap between rich and poor, fostering social unrest. Klarén, Peru, p. 170. During the 1879â1883 War of the Pacific, Chilean troops occupied Lima, looting public museums, libraries and educational institutions. Higgings, Lima, p. 107. At the same time, angry mobs attacked wealthy citizens and the Asian population; sacking their properties and businesses. Klarén, Peru, p. 192. After the war, the city underwent a process of renewal and expansion from the 1890s up to the 1920s. During this period the urban layout was modified by the construction of big avenues which crisscrossed the city and connected it with neighboring towns. Ramón, "The script", pp. 180â182.
In 1940, an earthquake destroyed most of the city, which at that time was mostly built out of adobe and quincha. In the 1940s, Lima started a period of rapid growth spurred by immigration from the Andean regions of Peru. Population, estimated at 0.6 million in 1940, reached 1.9M by 1960 and 4.8M by 1980. Instituto Nacional de EstadÃstica e Informática, Lima Metropolitana perfil socio-demográfico. Retrieved on August 12, 2007 At the start of this period, the urban area was confined to a triangular area bounded by the city's historic center, Callao and Chorrillos; in the following decades settlements spread to the north, beyond the RÃmac River, to the east, along the Central Highway, and to the south. Dietz, Poverty and problem-solving, p. 35. Immigrants, at first confined to slums in downtown Lima, led this expansion through large-scale land invasions which gave rise to the proliferation of shanty towns, known as pueblos jóvenes. Dietz, Poverty and problem-solving, p. 36.
Lima seen from Spot satellite
The urban area of Lima covers about . It is located on mostly flat terrain in the Peruvian coastal plain, within the valleys of the Chillón, RÃmac and LurÃn rivers. The city slopes gently from the shores of the Pacific Ocean into valleys and mountain slopes located as high as above mean sea level. Within the city exist isolated hills which are not connected to the surrounding hill chains, such as El Agustino, San Cosme, El Pino, La Milla, Muleria and Pro hills. The San Cristobal hill in the Rimac district, which faces directly north of the downtown area, is the local extreme of an Andean hill outgrowth.
Metropolitan Lima has an area of , of which (31%) comprise the actual city and (69%) the city outskirts. The urban area extends around from north to south and around from west to east. The city center is located inland at the shore of the Rimac river, a vital resource for the city, since it carries what will become drinking water for its inhabitants and fuels the hydro electrical dams that provide electricity to the area. While no official administrative definition for the city exists, it is usually considered to be composed of the central 30 out of the 43 districts of Lima Province, corresponding to an urban area centered around the historic Cercado de Lima district. The city is the core of the Lima Metropolitan Area, one of the ten largest metropolitan areas in the Americas. Lima is the second largest city in the world located in a desert, after Cairo, Egypt.
Weather averages for Lima International Airport.
Lima's climate is quite mild, despite being located in the Tropics. Lima has a subtropical and desert climate, yet the microclimate also makes it very humid throughout the year. The temperatures vary from mild to warm (neither very cold or hot).The average temperature in winter ranges from to . These days usually come accompanied by continuous overcast skies, fog, and mist. In the summer, the high averages around with lows around . During El Niño events, the climate of Lima gets severely disrupted, the water temperatures along the coast which usually average around 17 - 19 °C (65 - 68 °F) get much warmer (as in 1998 when the water temperature reached 26 °C (79 °F)), which causes the high and low temperatures to rise by several degrees. Such was the case when Lima hit its all-time record high of
Relative humidity is always very high particularly in the mornings /ref> , and produces brief morning fog from June to December and persistent low clouds from May to November. Sunny, less moist and warm summers follow from December to April and are followed by cloudy, damp and cool winters (June to October). The all-time record low in the metropolitan area is .
Rainfall is very low. The severely low rainfall impacts on water supply in the city. /ref> Inland locations receive 1 to of rainfall, which accumulates mainly during the winter months. Summer rain occurs in the form of isolated light and brief afternoon or evening events, leftover from afternoon storms that generate over the Andes. The peak of the 'rainy season,' which does not produce "rain" in the true sense of the word, occurs during winter when late-night/morning drizzle events (locally called 'garúa','llovizna' or 'camanchacas') become frequent, leaving a light coating of dampness on the ground. All these climatic phenomena arise from the combination of semi-permanent coastal upwelling and the presence of the cold Humboldt Current just offshore.
A Moorish arch built by Spanish immigrants in Lima /ref>
Lima ranks as the 17th most populous city in the world with a municipal population of 7,605,743, and 8,472,935 for the metropolitan area and a population density of as of 2007. Instituto Nacional de EstadÃstica e Informática, Perfil Sociodemográfico del Perú pp. 29â30, 32, 34. Its population features a very complex mix of racial and ethnic groups. Traditionally, Mestizos of mixed European (mostly Spanish) and Amerindian descent are the largest contingent. The second group are White Caucasians, mainly Spanish, Italians, Germans, French, English, Polish and Eastern Europeans. /ref> /ref> Also there is a large number of Jews, and Middle Easterners. Asians make up a large number of the metropolitan population, especially of Chinese (Cantonese) and Japanese descent. Afro-Peruvians, whose African ancestors were initially brought to the region as slaves, are yet another part of the city's ethnic quilt. Lima has by far the largest Chinese community in Latin America. /ref>
The Archbishop's Palace of Lima along with the Cathedral of Lima, the seat of the Roman Catholic Church in Peru.
The first settlement in what would become Lima was made up of only 117 housing blocks. In 1562, another district was built at the other side of the Rimac River and in 1610, the first stone bridge was built. Lima had, at this point in time, around 1600 inhabitants. In 1861, the amount of inhabitants surpassed 100,000, and by 1927 this amount was doubled.
During the early twentieth century thousands of immigrants came to the city, a significant number of French, Italians and Germans, many of them had been adapting to the Peruvian society. They organized in social clubs, and they built their own schools; for example, The American-Peruvian school which is located in Miraflores, The French Alliance (Alianza Francesa de Lima), famous Lycée Franco-Péruvien and the hospital Maison de Sante, the British-Peruvian school in Monterrico, and also several German-Peruvian schools.
They also influenced Peruvian cuisine, the Italians in particular exerting a strong influence in the Miraflores and San Isidro areas with their restaurants, called Trattorias.
A great number of Chinese immigrants, and a lesser amount of Japanese, came to Lima and established themselves in the Barrios Altos neighborhood near downtown Lima, coming in order to work on farms and domestic services. Lima residents refer to their Chinatown as "Calle Capon," and the city's ubiquitous Chifa restaurants a small, sit-down, usually Chinese-run restaurant serving the Peruvian spin on Chinese cuisine can be found by the dozen in this Chinese enclave.
A pueblo joven in the southern outskirts of Lima in 1997
The 1950s saw the exponential increase of the city inhabitants, most of them Andean immigrants and their descendants, who settled in the northern and southern outskirts. The political and economic instability in Peru during the latter half of the twentieth century created unprecedented poverty and violence in the towns of the countryside or Andean highlands, forcing hundreds of thousands of peasants of Amerindian descent to migrate to Lima thus greatly augmenting Lima's population. Instituto Nacional de Estadistica e Informatica In the 70âs, the lacking transportation facilities for the newcomers who had to travel for hours on end to reach the city center became a problem, and it was decided that Lima should not expand any further.
Buildings in the financial district of San Isidro
Lima is the industrial and financial center of Peru Infoplease. Lima. Retrieved on December 8, 2008. , home to many national companies. It accounts for more than two thirds of Peru's industrial production AttractionGuide. Lima Attractions. Retrieved on December 8, 2008. and most of its tertiary sector.
The Metropolitan area, with around 7000 factories /ref>, spearheads the industrial development of the country, thanks to the quantity and quality of the available workforce, cheap infrastructure and the mostly developed routes and highways in the city. The most relevant industrial sectors are textiles, clothing and food. Chemicals, fish, leather and oil derivatives are also manufactured and/or processed in Lima /ref>. The financial district is located in the district of San Isidro, while much of the industrial activity takes place in the area stretching west of Downtown Lima to the airport in Callao.
Industrialization began to take hold in Lima in 1930s and by 1950s, through import substitution policies, by 1950 manufacturing made up 14% of the GNP. In the late 1950s, up to 70% of consumer goods were manufactured in Peruvian, and primarily Limean, factories. /ref>
The Callao seaport is one of the main fishing and commerce ports in South America, with 75% of the country's imports and 25% of its exports /ref> using it as their entry/departure point. The main export goods leaving the country through Callao are oil, steel, silver, zinc, cotton, sugar and coffee.
A building in downtown Lima's financial district
In 2004, Lima's GDP represented 45% of the country's GDP (5% more than the previous year). The GDP per capita in Lima is $7,600 /ref>. Most of the foreign companies operating in the country have settled in Lima, which has led to the previously mentioned concentration of economic and financial activity on the city.
There has been a noticeable increase in slight industries, services and high technologies. In 2007, the Peruvian economy grew 9%, the largest growth rate in all of South America which was spearheaded by economic policies originating in Lima. CIA Factbook .The Lima Stock Exchange grew 185.24% in 2006 Bolsa de Valores de Lima and in 2007 grew 168.3% Bolsa de Valores de Lima making it one of the fastest growing stock exchanges in the world. In 2006, the Lima Stock Exchange was the most profitable in the world. /ref> The unemployment rate in metropolitan area is 7.2%.
The Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Summit and the Latin America, the Caribbean and the European Union Summit were hosted by the city of Lima.
Lima is headquarters to many major banks such as Banco de Crédito del Perú, Interbank, Bank of the Nation, Banco Continental, Banco Interamericano de Finanzas, Banco Finaciero, Banco de Comercio, MiBanco, and Banco del Trabajo. It is also a regional headquarters to Standard Chartered. Major insurance coorperations based in Lima include Rimac Seguros, Mapfre Peru, Interseguro, Pacifico, Protecta, and La Positiva. /ref>
The Government Palace in downtown Lima.Headquarters of the Andean Community of Nations
Lima is the capital city of the Republic of Peru and the department of Lima. As such, it is home to the three branches of the Government of Peru. The executive branch is headquartered in the Government Palace, located in the Plaza Mayor. The legislative branch is headquartered in the Legislative Palace and is home to the Congress of Peru. The Judicial branch is headquartered in the Palace of Justice and is home to the Supreme Court of Peru.
Likewise, all the ministries are located in the city of Lima. In international government, the city of Lima is home to the headquarters of the Andean Community of Nations and the South American Community of Nations, along with other regional and international organizations.
The city is roughly equivalent to the Province of Lima, which is subdivided into 43 districts. The Metropolitan Municipality of Lima is utmost authority of the entire city while each district further has it's own local government. Unlike the rest of the country, the Metropolitan Municipality, although a provincial municipality, acts as and has functions similar to a regional government, as it does not belong to any of the 25 regions of Peru.
The Palace of Justice, seat of the judicial branch
The Palace of Justice in Lima is seat of the Supreme Court of Justice the highest judicial court in Peru with jurisdiction over the entire territory of Peru.
Lima is also seat of two of the 28 second highest or Superior Courts of Justice. The first and oldest Superior Court in Lima is the Superior Court of Justice of Lima belonging to the Judicial District of Lima. Due to the judicial organization of Peru, the highest concentration of courts is located in Lima despite the fact that it's judicial district only has jurisdiction over 35 of the 43 districts of Lima. Judicial Power of Peru. Superior Court of Lima. Retrieved 3 December 2008. . The Superior Court of the Cono Norte is the second Superior Court located in Lima and is part of the Judicial District of North Lima. This judicial district has jurisdiction over the remaining eight districts all located in northern Lima. Judicial Power of Peru. Superior Court of North Lima. Retrieved 3 December 2008.
Paseo de los Heroes Navales
Lima's architecture is characterized by a mix in styles as reflected from shifts between trends throughout various time periods of the city's history. Examples of early colonial architecture include such structures as the Monastery of San Francisco, the Cathedral of Lima and the Torre Tagle Palace. These constructions are generally influenced by the Spanish baroque, /ref> Spanish Neoclassicism]], /ref> and Spanish Colonial /ref> styles. After independence, a gradual shift towards the neoclassical and Art Nouveau styles took place. Many of these constructions were greatly influenced by French architectural styles. /ref>Many government buildings as well as major cultural institutions were contracted in this architectural time period. During 1960s, constructions utilizing the brutalist style began appearing in Lima due to the military government of Juan Velasco. /ref> Examples of this architecture are the Museum of the Nation and the Ministry of Defense. The 21st century has seen the appearance of glass skyscrapers particularly around the city's financial district. /ref>
Lima's urban setting is characterized by green-lined streets as well as the abundance of plazas throughout the city. More important streets usually contain wider green areas and plaza's usually contain monuments or statues of historical figures of importance to Peruvian history. Parque Universitario in downtown Lima
The largest parks of Lima are located near the downtown area such as the Park of the Reserve, Park of the Exposition, /ref> Campo de Marte, and the University Park. The Park of the Reserve is home to the largest fountain complex in the world known as the Magical Circuit of Water. /ref>
A number of large parks lie outside the city center, including Reducto Park, Pantanos de Villa, The Golf, Park of the Legends, the malecon of Miraflores, and the Golf of the Incas. /ref>The street grid of the city of Lima, is laid out with a system of plazas of which serve a purpose similar to roundabouts or junctions. In addition to this practical purpose, plazas serve as one of Lima's principal green spaces and contain a variety of different types of architecture ranging from monuments to statues, and water fountains. /ref>
Strongly influenced by European, Andean, and Asian culture, Lima is a melting pot of cultures due to colonization, immigration, and indigenous influences. /ref>
Like many other world capitals, Lima is home to prestigious museums many of which are world renown. The Historic Center of Lima was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1988. Limean gastronomy is known to be among the best in the world and the city is known as the Gastronomical Capital of the Americas. Lima's gastronomy is a mix of Spanish, Andean, and Asian culinary traditions. /ref>
Lima's beaches, located along the northern and southern ends of the city, are heavily visited during the summer months. Numerous restaurants, clubs and hotels have been opened in these places to serve the many beachgoers. Lima has a vibrant and active theater scene as there are many theaters presenting not only classic theater, but also The Golf cultural presentations, modern theater, experimental theater, dramas, dance performances, and theater for children. Lima is home to many important theaters such as the Municipal Theater, Segura Theater, Japanese-Peruvian Theater, Marsano Theater, British theater, Theater of the PUCP Cultural Center, and the Yuyachkani Theater. /ref>
Known as Peruvian Coastal Spanish, Lima's Spanish is characterized by the lack of strong innotations as found in many other regions of the Spanish-speaking world. It is heavily influenced by the Spanish spoken in Castile as throughout the colonial era, the colonial Spanish nobility was based in Lima, of which most originated from Castile. /ref> Limean Spanish is also characterized by the lack of voseo, a trait present in the dialects of many other Latin American countries. This is due to the fact that voseo was primarily utilized by the lower socioeconomic classes of Spain, a social group that did not begin to appear in Lima until the late colonial era. Limean Spanish is often distinguished by its relative clarity The Museum of Art in comparison to other Latin American dialects. Limean Spanish has been influenced by a number of immigrant groups including Italians, Andalusians, Chinese and Japanese. It also has been influenced by anglicisms as a result of globalization as well as by Andean Spanish due to recent immigration from the Andean highlands to Lima. /ref>
Lima is home to the highest concentration of museums of the country, the most notable of which being the Museo Nacional de ArqueologÃa AntropologÃa e Historia del Perú, Museum of Art of Lima, the Museum of Natural History, the Museum of the Nation, the Museum of Italian Art, and the Museum of Gold, and the Larco Museum. These museums mostly focus on art, pre-Colombian cultures, natural history, science, and religion. /ref>
Lima, as the point of entry to the country, has developed an important tourism industry, characterized by it's historic center, archeological sites, nightlife, museums, art galleries, festivals, and popular traditions. Lima is home to an ample range of restaurants and bars where local as well as international cuisine is served. /ref>
The Historic Center of Lima, made up of the districts of Lima and Rimac, was declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1988 due to its importance during the colonial era leaving a testimony to architectural achievement. /ref> Some examples of this historical colonial architecture include the Monastery of San Francisco, the Plaza Mayor, the Cathedral, Covenant of Santo Domingo, the Palace of Torre Tagle, and much more.
A tour of the city's churches is a popular circuit among tourists. A short jaunt through the central district goes through many churches dating from as early as the 16th and 17th centuries the most noteworthy of which being the Cathedral of Lima and the Monastery of San Francisco, of which are said to be connected by their subterrestrial catacombs. /ref>Both of these churches contain paintings from various schools of art, Sevilian tile, and finely sculpted wood furnishings. Also notable is the Sanctuary of Las Nazarenas, the point of origin for the Lord of Miracles, whose festivities in the month of October constitute the most important religious event in Lima and arguably all of Peru. Some sections of the Lima City Walls still remain and are frequented by tourists. These examples of medieval Spanish fortifications were utilized to defend the city from attacks by pirates and privateers. /ref>
Beaches are visited during the summer months, which are located along the Pan-American Highway, to the south of the city in districts such as Lurin, Punta Hermosa, San Bartolo and Asia. Many restaurants, nightclubs, lounges, bars, clubs, and hotels have developed in said places to cater to beachgoers. /ref>
The suburban districts of Cieneguilla, Pachacamac, and the city of Chosica, are important tourist attractions among locals as they are located at a higher elevation than Lima therefore receiving sunshine in winter months, something that the city of Lima frequently lacks. /ref>
Lima is known as Gastronomical Capital of the Americas. A center of immigration and the center of the Spanish Viceroyalty, Lima has incorporated unique dishes brought from the arrival of the Spanish Conquistadors and the receiving of many waves of immigrants: African, European, Chinese, and Japanese. ref> /ref> Besides international immigrationâa large portion of which happened in Limaâthere has been, since the second half of the 20th century, a strong internal flow from rural areas to cities, in particular to Lima. /ref>This has strongly influenced Lima's cuisine with the incorporation of the immigrant's ingredients and techniques (for example, the Chinese extensive use of rice or the Japanese approach to preparing raw fish). The genres of restaurants in Lima include Creole food, Chifas, Cebicherias, and Pollerias. Peruvian cuisine, widely represented in Lima, holds various Guinness World Records, for its diversity and quality. /ref>
The Estadio Monumental "U" home of Universitario de Deportes
The city of Lima has varied sports venues for soccer, volleyball and basketball, many of which are located within private clubs. A popular sport among Limeans is fronton, a racquet sport similar to squash invented in Lima. The city is home to seven international-class golf links. Equestrian is popular in Lima with many private clubs as well as the Hipódromo de Monterrico horse racing track. The most popular sport in Lima by far is soccer with many professional club teams being located in the city.
/ref>
1. Central Lima
2. Residential Lima
3. Cono Norte
4. Cono Sur
5. Cono Este
6. Beach areas
7. Callao
Lima is made up of thirty densely-populated districts, each headed by a local mayor and the Mayor of Lima, whose authority extends to these and the thirteen outer districts of the Lima province.
The city's historic centre is located in the Cercado de Lima district, locally known as simply Lima, or as "El Centro" ("Downtown"), and it is home to most of the vestiges of Lima's colonial past, the Presidential Palace ( ), the Metropolitan Municipality of Lima ( ), and dozens of hotels, some operating and some defunct, that used to cater to the national and international elite.
The upscale San Isidro district is the city's financial center. It is home to many prominent figures such as politicians and celebrities. It is also where the main banks of Peru and branch offices of world banks are headquartered. San Isidro has many parks, including Parque El Olivar, which has olive trees that were brought from Spain during the seventeenth century.
Another upscale district is Miraflores, which has many luxury hotels, shops and restaurants. Miraflores has more parks and green areas in the south of Lima than most other districts. Larcomar, a popular shopping mall and entertainment center built on cliffs overlooking the Pacific Ocean, featuring bars, dance clubs, movie theaters, cafes, shops, boutiques and galleries, is also located in this district.
La Molina and San Borja, home to the American Embassy and the exclusive Club Polo Lima respectively, are the other two wealthy districts of Lima.
The most densely-populated districts of Lima lie in the northern and southern ends of the city (Spanish: Cono Norte and Cono Sur, respectively), and they are mostly composed of Andean immigrants who arrived during the mid and late 20th century looking for better living standards and economic opportunities, or as refugees of the country's internal conflict with the Shining Path during the late 80s and early 90s. In the case of Cono Norte(North Lima), certain shopping malls like Megaplaza and Royal Plaza have been recently built in the district of Los Olivos, which is the most residential neighborhood in the Northern part of Lima. Most of the inhabitants of this area belong to the middle class.
Barranco, which borders Miraflores by the Pacific Ocean, is known as the city's bohemian district, home or once home of many Peruvian writers and intellectuals like Mario Vargas Llosa, Chabuca Granda and Alfredo Bryce Echenique. This district has many acclaimed restaurants, music venues called "peñas" featuring the traditional folk music of coastal Peru (in Spanish, "música criolla"), and beautiful Victorian-style chalets. It along with Miraflores serves as the home to the foreign nightlife scene.
The University of Lima
Home to a range of universities, institutions, and schools, Lima has the highest concentration of institutions of higher learning in the country and is home to schools with world-wide recognition. The National University of San Marcos, founded on May 12, 1551 during Spanish colonial regime, is the oldest continuously functioning university in the Americas. /ref>
Other public universities also play key roles in teaching and research, such as the Universidad Nacional Agraria La Molina where ex-president Alberto Fujimori once taught, Universidad Nacional de IngenierÃa and the National University of Callao.
The Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú, established in 1917, is the oldest private university. Other private institutions that are located in the city are Universidad de Lima, Universidad CientÃfica del Sur, Universidad San MartÃn de Porres, Universidad del Pacifico, Universidad Inca Garcilaso de la Vega, Universidad Peruana Cayetano Heredia, Universidad Peruana de Ciencias Aplicadas and Universidad Ricardo Palma. /ref>
The Jorge Chávez International Airport
Lima is served by the Jorge Chavez International Airport, located in Callao. It is the largest airport of the country with the largest amount of domestic and international air traffic. It also serves as a major hub in the Latin American air network. Additionally, Lima possesses five other airports: the Las Palmas Air Force Base, Collique Airport, and runways in Santa MarÃa del Mar, San Bartolo and Chilca. /ref>
Lima is connected by highway to every country that borders Peru. Because of its location on the country's central coast, Lima is an important junction in Peru's highway system, three of the major highways originate in Lima.
*The Northern Panamerican Highway, this highway extends more than to the border with Ecuador connecting the northern districts of Lima with many major cities along the northern Peruvian coast.
*The Central Highway ( ), this highway connects the eastern districts of Lima with many cities in central Peru. The highway extends with its terminus at the city of Pucallpa near Brazil.
*The Southern Panamerican Highway, this highway connects the southern districts of Lima to cities on the southern coast. The highway extends to the border with Chile.
The proximity of Lima to the port of Callao allows Callao to act as the metropolitan area's foremost port. Callao concentrates nearly all of the maritime transport of the metropolitan area. There is, however, a small port in LurÃn whose transit mostly is accounted for by oil tankers due to a refinery being located nearby. Nonetheless, maritime transport inside Lima's city limits is relatively insignificant compared to that of Callao, the nation's leading port and one of Latin America's largest. There have been plans to build a new megaport on the island of San Lorenzo known as the San Lorenzo Megaport Project. This port is planned to become the largest of Latin America.
Lima is connected to the Central Andean region by the Ferrocarril Central Andino which runs from Lima through the departments of Junin, Huancavelica, Pasco, and Huanuco. /ref> Major cities along this line include Huancayo, La Oroya, Huancavelica, and Cerro de Pasco. Another inactive line runs from Lima northwards to the city of Huacho. /ref>
The urban transport system is composed of over 652 transit routes /ref> which are served by buses, microbuses, and combis. The system is unorganized and is characterized by the lack of formality. The service is run by 464 private companies which are poorly regulated by the local government. Fares average at around one sol or $0.30 USD. Due to the absence of a centralized bus terminal, individual bus companies use private terminals throughout Lima. /ref>
The Metropolitan Transportation System is a transport project which plans to integrate the Independent Corridor of Mass-Transit Buses known by its Spanish initials as (COSAC 1). This system plans to link the principal points of the Lima Metropolitan Area and the first phase of this project is already in development with the construction of a thirty three kilometer long line from Comas to Chorrillos.The Lima Metro mass transit system This system is similar to the TransMilenio of Bogota, Colombia. /ref>
Automobiles, known as colectivos, render express service on some major roads of the Lima Metropolitan Area. The colectivos signal their specific destination with a sign on the their windshield. Their routes are not generally publicitized but are understood by frequent users. The cost is generally higher than congenital public transport however they cover greater distances at greater speeds due to the lack of stops. /ref>
The Lima Metro, a above ground mass transit system, is under construction and one line has been completed while another six are scheduled for construction. Line 1 is also scheduled to be extended to the city's center, uniting Villa el Salvador with downtown Lima in a matter of only forty minutes, a trip which currently lasts one hour and forty minutes with the current public transport system. www.trenurbano.gob.pe/
The Via Expresa
Taxis in the city are relatively cheap. There are no meters so drivers are told the desired destination and the fare is agreed upon before the passenger enters the taxi. Taxis vary in sizes from small four door compacts to large vans. They are virtually everywhere, accounting for a large part of the car stock. In many cases they are just a private car with a taxi sticker on the windshield. Additionally, there are several companies that provide taxi service on-call. /ref>
Eighty percent of the city's history having occurred during the pre-automobile era, Lima's road network is based mostly on large divided avenues rather than freeways. In recent times however, Lima has developed a freeway network now made up of nine freeways which are, the Via Expresa Paseo de la Republica, Via Expresa Javier Prado, Via Expresa Grau, Panamericana Norte, Panamericana Sur, Carretera Central, Via Expresa Callao, Autopista Chillon Trapiche, and the Autopista Ramiro Priale. /ref> /ref>
Skyline from the Costa Verde
List of sister cities, designated by Sister Cities International: Sister Cities International, Online Directory: Peru, Americas. Retrieved July 14, 2007
* Arequipa, Peru
* Cusco, Peru
* Piura, Peru
* New York City, United States
* Los Angeles, United States
* Austin, United States, since 1981
* Cleveland, United States
* Miami, United States
* Bordeaux, France, since 1957
* Beijing, China, since November 21, 1983Buildings in the financial district
* Madrid, Spain
* Mexico City, Mexico
* São Paulo, Brazil
* Tegucigalpa, Honduras
* Akhisar, Turkey
* Buenos Aires, Argentina
* Guadalajara, Mexico
* Montreal, Canada
* Bogotá, Colombia
* Cairo, Egypt
* Cardiff, Wales, United Kingdom
*Lima Metropolitan Area
*List of people from Lima
*List of districts and neighborhoods of Lima
*List of sites of interest in the Lima Metropolitan area
* Nota etimológica: El topónimo Lima, Rodolfo Cerrón-Palomino, Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú
* Lima Monumento Histórico, Margarita Cubillas Soriano, Lima, 1996
;History
* Andrien, Kenneth. Crisis and decline: the Viceroyalty of Peru in the seventeenth century. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1985. ISBN 0-8263-0791-4
* Anna, Timothy. The fall of the royal government in Peru. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1979. ISBN 0-8032-1004-3
* Conlee, Christina, Jalh Dulanto, Carol Mackay and Charles Stanish. "Late Prehispanic sociopolitical complexity". In Helaine Silverman (ed.), Andean archaeology. Malden: Blackwell, 2004, pp. 209â236. ISBN 0-631-23400-4
* Dietz, Henry. Poverty and problem-solving under military rule: the urban poor in Lima, Peru. Austin : University of Texas Press, 1980. ISBN 0-292-76460-X
* Hemming, John. The conquest of the Incas. London: Macmillan, 1993. ISBN 0-333-51794-6
* Higgings, James. Lima. A cultural history. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005. ISBN 0-19-517891-2
* Instituto Nacional de EstadÃstica e Informática. Lima Metropolitana perfil socio-demográfico. Lima: INEI, 1996.
* Klarén, Peter. Peru: society and nationhood in the Andes. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000. ISBN 0-19-506928-5
* Ramón, Gabriel. "The script of urban surgery: Lima, 1850â1940". In Arturo Almandoz (ed.), Planning Latin America's capital cities, 1850â1950. New York: Routledge, 2002, pp. 170â192. ISBN 0-415-27265-3
* Walker, Charles. "The upper classes and their upper stories: architecture and the aftermath of the Lima earthquake of 1746". Hispanic American Historical Review 83 (1): 53â82 (February 2003).
;Demographics
* Instituto Nacional de EstadÃstica e Informática, Perfil Sociodemográfico del Perú. Lima: INEI, 2008.
* Municipality of Lima
* Geographia.com
* Maps
* Stock Exchange
*
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Lima | Has the San Lorenzo Megaport Project been completed? | No. | data/set3/a4 | Lima
Lima is the capital and largest city of Peru. It is located in the valleys of the Chillón, RÃmac and LurÃn rivers, on a coast overlooking the Pacific Ocean. It forms a contiguous urban area with the seaport of Callao.
Lima was founded by Spanish conquistador Francisco Pizarro on January 18, 1535, as La Ciudad de los Reyes, or "The City of Kings." It became the most important city in the Spanish Viceroyalty of Peru and, after the Peruvian War of Independence, was made the capital of the Republic of Peru. Today around one-third of the Peruvian population lives in the metropolitan area.
According to early Spanish chronicles the Lima area was once called Ichma, after its original inhabitants. However, even before the Inca occupation of the area in the 15th century, a famous oracle in the RÃmac valley had come to be known by visitors as Limaq (limaq, pronounced , which means "talker" in coastal Quechua). This oracle was eventually destroyed by the Spanish and replaced with a church, but the name persisted in the local language, thus the chronicles show "LÃmac" replacing "Ychma" as the common name for the area. /ref>
Modern scholars speculate that the word "Lima" originated as the Spanish pronunciation of the native name Limaq. Linguistic evidence seems to support this theory as spoken Spanish consistently rejects stop consonants in word-final position. The city was founded in 1535 under the name City of the Kings ( ) because its foundation was decided on January 6, date of the feast of the Epiphany. Nevertheless, this name quickly fell into disuse and Lima became the city's name of choice; on the oldest Spanish maps of Peru, both Lima and Ciudad de los Reyes can be seen together as names for the city.
It is worth noting that the river that feeds Lima is called RÃmac, and many people erroneously assume that this is because its original Inca name is "Talking River" (the Incas spoke a highland variety of Quechua where the word for "talker" was pronounced ). However, the original inhabitants of the valley were not the Incas, and this name is actually an innovation arising from an effort by the Cuzco nobility in colonial times to standardize the toponym so that it would conform to the phonology of Cuzco Quechua. Later, as the the original inhabitants of the valley died out and the local Quechua became extinct, the Cuzco pronunciation prevailed. In modern times, Spanish-speaking locals do not see the connection between the name of their city and the name of the river that runs through it. They often assume that the valley is named after the river; however, Spanish documents from the colonial period show the opposite to be true.
Lima City Walls were build between 1684 and 1687 by viceroy Melchor de Navarra y Rocafull.
In the pre-Columbian era, the location of what is now the city of Lima was inhabited by several amerindian groups under the Ychsma polity, which was incorporated into the Inca Empire in the 15th century. Conlee et al, "Late Prehispanic sociopolitical complexity", p. 218. In 1532, a group of Spanish conquistadors led by Francisco Pizarro defeated the Inca ruler Atahualpa and took over his Empire. As the Spanish Crown had named Pizarro governor of the lands he conquered, Hemming, The conquest, p. 28. he chose the RÃmac valley to found his capital on January 18, 1535 as Ciudad de los Reyes (City of the Kings). Klarén, Peru, p. 39. In August 1536, the new city was besieged by the troops of Manco Inca, however, the Spaniards and their native allies defeated the Inca rebels. Hemming, The conquest, p. 203â206.
Balconies were a major feature of Lima's architecture during the colonial period.
Over the next few years, Lima gained prestige as it was designated capital of the Viceroyalty of Peru and site of a Real Audiencia in 1543. Klarén, Peru, p. 87. During the next century Lima flourished as the center of an extensive trade network which integrated the Viceroyalty with the Americas, Europe and the Far East. Andrien, Crisis and decline, pp. 11â13. However, the city was not free from dangers; powerful earthquakes destroyed most of the city in 1687. Andrien, Crisis and decline, p. 26. A second threat was the presence of pirates and privateers in the Pacific Ocean, which led to the building of the Lima City Walls between 1684 and 1687. Higgings, Lima, p. 45. The 1687 earthquake marked a turning point in the history of Lima as it coincided with a recession in trade and economic competition by other cities such as Buenos Aires. Andrien, Crisis and decline, p. 28.
In 1746, a powerful earthquake severely damaged Lima and destroyed Callao, forcing a massive rebuilding effort under Viceroy José Antonio Manso de Velasco. Walker, "The upper classes", pp. 53â55. In the later half of the 18th century, the ideas of the Enlightenment on public health and social control shaped the development of the city. Ramón, "The script", pp. 173â174. During this period, Lima was adversely affected by the Bourbon Reforms as it lost its monopoly on overseas trade and its control over the important mining region of Upper Peru. Anna, Fall of the royal government, pp. 4â5. This economic decline made the city's elite dependent on royal and ecclesiastical appointment and thus, reluctant to advocate independence. Anna, Fall of the royal government, pp. 23â24.
A combined expedition of Argentine and Chilean patriots under General José de San MartÃn managed to land south of Lima in 1820 but did not attack the city. Faced with a naval blockade and the action of guerrillas on land, Viceroy José de la Serna was forced to evacuate the city on July 1821 to save the Royalist army. Anna, Fall of the royal government, pp. 176â177. Fearing a popular uprising and lacking any means to impose order, the city council invited San MartÃn to enter Lima and signed a Declaration of Independence at his request. Anna, Fall of the royal government, pp. 178â180. However, the war was not over; in the next two years the city changed hands several times and suffered exactions from both sides.
The Jiron de la Union was Lima's most important street for the first half of the 20th century
After the war of independence, Lima became the capital of the Republic of Peru but economic stagnation and political turmoil brought urban development to a halt. This hiatus ended in the 1850s, when increased public and private revenues from guano exports led to a rapid expansion of the city. Klarén, Peru, p. 169. However, the export-led economic expansion also widened the gap between rich and poor, fostering social unrest. Klarén, Peru, p. 170. During the 1879â1883 War of the Pacific, Chilean troops occupied Lima, looting public museums, libraries and educational institutions. Higgings, Lima, p. 107. At the same time, angry mobs attacked wealthy citizens and the Asian population; sacking their properties and businesses. Klarén, Peru, p. 192. After the war, the city underwent a process of renewal and expansion from the 1890s up to the 1920s. During this period the urban layout was modified by the construction of big avenues which crisscrossed the city and connected it with neighboring towns. Ramón, "The script", pp. 180â182.
In 1940, an earthquake destroyed most of the city, which at that time was mostly built out of adobe and quincha. In the 1940s, Lima started a period of rapid growth spurred by immigration from the Andean regions of Peru. Population, estimated at 0.6 million in 1940, reached 1.9M by 1960 and 4.8M by 1980. Instituto Nacional de EstadÃstica e Informática, Lima Metropolitana perfil socio-demográfico. Retrieved on August 12, 2007 At the start of this period, the urban area was confined to a triangular area bounded by the city's historic center, Callao and Chorrillos; in the following decades settlements spread to the north, beyond the RÃmac River, to the east, along the Central Highway, and to the south. Dietz, Poverty and problem-solving, p. 35. Immigrants, at first confined to slums in downtown Lima, led this expansion through large-scale land invasions which gave rise to the proliferation of shanty towns, known as pueblos jóvenes. Dietz, Poverty and problem-solving, p. 36.
Lima seen from Spot satellite
The urban area of Lima covers about . It is located on mostly flat terrain in the Peruvian coastal plain, within the valleys of the Chillón, RÃmac and LurÃn rivers. The city slopes gently from the shores of the Pacific Ocean into valleys and mountain slopes located as high as above mean sea level. Within the city exist isolated hills which are not connected to the surrounding hill chains, such as El Agustino, San Cosme, El Pino, La Milla, Muleria and Pro hills. The San Cristobal hill in the Rimac district, which faces directly north of the downtown area, is the local extreme of an Andean hill outgrowth.
Metropolitan Lima has an area of , of which (31%) comprise the actual city and (69%) the city outskirts. The urban area extends around from north to south and around from west to east. The city center is located inland at the shore of the Rimac river, a vital resource for the city, since it carries what will become drinking water for its inhabitants and fuels the hydro electrical dams that provide electricity to the area. While no official administrative definition for the city exists, it is usually considered to be composed of the central 30 out of the 43 districts of Lima Province, corresponding to an urban area centered around the historic Cercado de Lima district. The city is the core of the Lima Metropolitan Area, one of the ten largest metropolitan areas in the Americas. Lima is the second largest city in the world located in a desert, after Cairo, Egypt.
Weather averages for Lima International Airport.
Lima's climate is quite mild, despite being located in the Tropics. Lima has a subtropical and desert climate, yet the microclimate also makes it very humid throughout the year. The temperatures vary from mild to warm (neither very cold or hot).The average temperature in winter ranges from to . These days usually come accompanied by continuous overcast skies, fog, and mist. In the summer, the high averages around with lows around . During El Niño events, the climate of Lima gets severely disrupted, the water temperatures along the coast which usually average around 17 - 19 °C (65 - 68 °F) get much warmer (as in 1998 when the water temperature reached 26 °C (79 °F)), which causes the high and low temperatures to rise by several degrees. Such was the case when Lima hit its all-time record high of
Relative humidity is always very high particularly in the mornings /ref> , and produces brief morning fog from June to December and persistent low clouds from May to November. Sunny, less moist and warm summers follow from December to April and are followed by cloudy, damp and cool winters (June to October). The all-time record low in the metropolitan area is .
Rainfall is very low. The severely low rainfall impacts on water supply in the city. /ref> Inland locations receive 1 to of rainfall, which accumulates mainly during the winter months. Summer rain occurs in the form of isolated light and brief afternoon or evening events, leftover from afternoon storms that generate over the Andes. The peak of the 'rainy season,' which does not produce "rain" in the true sense of the word, occurs during winter when late-night/morning drizzle events (locally called 'garúa','llovizna' or 'camanchacas') become frequent, leaving a light coating of dampness on the ground. All these climatic phenomena arise from the combination of semi-permanent coastal upwelling and the presence of the cold Humboldt Current just offshore.
A Moorish arch built by Spanish immigrants in Lima /ref>
Lima ranks as the 17th most populous city in the world with a municipal population of 7,605,743, and 8,472,935 for the metropolitan area and a population density of as of 2007. Instituto Nacional de EstadÃstica e Informática, Perfil Sociodemográfico del Perú pp. 29â30, 32, 34. Its population features a very complex mix of racial and ethnic groups. Traditionally, Mestizos of mixed European (mostly Spanish) and Amerindian descent are the largest contingent. The second group are White Caucasians, mainly Spanish, Italians, Germans, French, English, Polish and Eastern Europeans. /ref> /ref> Also there is a large number of Jews, and Middle Easterners. Asians make up a large number of the metropolitan population, especially of Chinese (Cantonese) and Japanese descent. Afro-Peruvians, whose African ancestors were initially brought to the region as slaves, are yet another part of the city's ethnic quilt. Lima has by far the largest Chinese community in Latin America. /ref>
The Archbishop's Palace of Lima along with the Cathedral of Lima, the seat of the Roman Catholic Church in Peru.
The first settlement in what would become Lima was made up of only 117 housing blocks. In 1562, another district was built at the other side of the Rimac River and in 1610, the first stone bridge was built. Lima had, at this point in time, around 1600 inhabitants. In 1861, the amount of inhabitants surpassed 100,000, and by 1927 this amount was doubled.
During the early twentieth century thousands of immigrants came to the city, a significant number of French, Italians and Germans, many of them had been adapting to the Peruvian society. They organized in social clubs, and they built their own schools; for example, The American-Peruvian school which is located in Miraflores, The French Alliance (Alianza Francesa de Lima), famous Lycée Franco-Péruvien and the hospital Maison de Sante, the British-Peruvian school in Monterrico, and also several German-Peruvian schools.
They also influenced Peruvian cuisine, the Italians in particular exerting a strong influence in the Miraflores and San Isidro areas with their restaurants, called Trattorias.
A great number of Chinese immigrants, and a lesser amount of Japanese, came to Lima and established themselves in the Barrios Altos neighborhood near downtown Lima, coming in order to work on farms and domestic services. Lima residents refer to their Chinatown as "Calle Capon," and the city's ubiquitous Chifa restaurants a small, sit-down, usually Chinese-run restaurant serving the Peruvian spin on Chinese cuisine can be found by the dozen in this Chinese enclave.
A pueblo joven in the southern outskirts of Lima in 1997
The 1950s saw the exponential increase of the city inhabitants, most of them Andean immigrants and their descendants, who settled in the northern and southern outskirts. The political and economic instability in Peru during the latter half of the twentieth century created unprecedented poverty and violence in the towns of the countryside or Andean highlands, forcing hundreds of thousands of peasants of Amerindian descent to migrate to Lima thus greatly augmenting Lima's population. Instituto Nacional de Estadistica e Informatica In the 70âs, the lacking transportation facilities for the newcomers who had to travel for hours on end to reach the city center became a problem, and it was decided that Lima should not expand any further.
Buildings in the financial district of San Isidro
Lima is the industrial and financial center of Peru Infoplease. Lima. Retrieved on December 8, 2008. , home to many national companies. It accounts for more than two thirds of Peru's industrial production AttractionGuide. Lima Attractions. Retrieved on December 8, 2008. and most of its tertiary sector.
The Metropolitan area, with around 7000 factories /ref>, spearheads the industrial development of the country, thanks to the quantity and quality of the available workforce, cheap infrastructure and the mostly developed routes and highways in the city. The most relevant industrial sectors are textiles, clothing and food. Chemicals, fish, leather and oil derivatives are also manufactured and/or processed in Lima /ref>. The financial district is located in the district of San Isidro, while much of the industrial activity takes place in the area stretching west of Downtown Lima to the airport in Callao.
Industrialization began to take hold in Lima in 1930s and by 1950s, through import substitution policies, by 1950 manufacturing made up 14% of the GNP. In the late 1950s, up to 70% of consumer goods were manufactured in Peruvian, and primarily Limean, factories. /ref>
The Callao seaport is one of the main fishing and commerce ports in South America, with 75% of the country's imports and 25% of its exports /ref> using it as their entry/departure point. The main export goods leaving the country through Callao are oil, steel, silver, zinc, cotton, sugar and coffee.
A building in downtown Lima's financial district
In 2004, Lima's GDP represented 45% of the country's GDP (5% more than the previous year). The GDP per capita in Lima is $7,600 /ref>. Most of the foreign companies operating in the country have settled in Lima, which has led to the previously mentioned concentration of economic and financial activity on the city.
There has been a noticeable increase in slight industries, services and high technologies. In 2007, the Peruvian economy grew 9%, the largest growth rate in all of South America which was spearheaded by economic policies originating in Lima. CIA Factbook .The Lima Stock Exchange grew 185.24% in 2006 Bolsa de Valores de Lima and in 2007 grew 168.3% Bolsa de Valores de Lima making it one of the fastest growing stock exchanges in the world. In 2006, the Lima Stock Exchange was the most profitable in the world. /ref> The unemployment rate in metropolitan area is 7.2%.
The Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Summit and the Latin America, the Caribbean and the European Union Summit were hosted by the city of Lima.
Lima is headquarters to many major banks such as Banco de Crédito del Perú, Interbank, Bank of the Nation, Banco Continental, Banco Interamericano de Finanzas, Banco Finaciero, Banco de Comercio, MiBanco, and Banco del Trabajo. It is also a regional headquarters to Standard Chartered. Major insurance coorperations based in Lima include Rimac Seguros, Mapfre Peru, Interseguro, Pacifico, Protecta, and La Positiva. /ref>
The Government Palace in downtown Lima.Headquarters of the Andean Community of Nations
Lima is the capital city of the Republic of Peru and the department of Lima. As such, it is home to the three branches of the Government of Peru. The executive branch is headquartered in the Government Palace, located in the Plaza Mayor. The legislative branch is headquartered in the Legislative Palace and is home to the Congress of Peru. The Judicial branch is headquartered in the Palace of Justice and is home to the Supreme Court of Peru.
Likewise, all the ministries are located in the city of Lima. In international government, the city of Lima is home to the headquarters of the Andean Community of Nations and the South American Community of Nations, along with other regional and international organizations.
The city is roughly equivalent to the Province of Lima, which is subdivided into 43 districts. The Metropolitan Municipality of Lima is utmost authority of the entire city while each district further has it's own local government. Unlike the rest of the country, the Metropolitan Municipality, although a provincial municipality, acts as and has functions similar to a regional government, as it does not belong to any of the 25 regions of Peru.
The Palace of Justice, seat of the judicial branch
The Palace of Justice in Lima is seat of the Supreme Court of Justice the highest judicial court in Peru with jurisdiction over the entire territory of Peru.
Lima is also seat of two of the 28 second highest or Superior Courts of Justice. The first and oldest Superior Court in Lima is the Superior Court of Justice of Lima belonging to the Judicial District of Lima. Due to the judicial organization of Peru, the highest concentration of courts is located in Lima despite the fact that it's judicial district only has jurisdiction over 35 of the 43 districts of Lima. Judicial Power of Peru. Superior Court of Lima. Retrieved 3 December 2008. . The Superior Court of the Cono Norte is the second Superior Court located in Lima and is part of the Judicial District of North Lima. This judicial district has jurisdiction over the remaining eight districts all located in northern Lima. Judicial Power of Peru. Superior Court of North Lima. Retrieved 3 December 2008.
Paseo de los Heroes Navales
Lima's architecture is characterized by a mix in styles as reflected from shifts between trends throughout various time periods of the city's history. Examples of early colonial architecture include such structures as the Monastery of San Francisco, the Cathedral of Lima and the Torre Tagle Palace. These constructions are generally influenced by the Spanish baroque, /ref> Spanish Neoclassicism]], /ref> and Spanish Colonial /ref> styles. After independence, a gradual shift towards the neoclassical and Art Nouveau styles took place. Many of these constructions were greatly influenced by French architectural styles. /ref>Many government buildings as well as major cultural institutions were contracted in this architectural time period. During 1960s, constructions utilizing the brutalist style began appearing in Lima due to the military government of Juan Velasco. /ref> Examples of this architecture are the Museum of the Nation and the Ministry of Defense. The 21st century has seen the appearance of glass skyscrapers particularly around the city's financial district. /ref>
Lima's urban setting is characterized by green-lined streets as well as the abundance of plazas throughout the city. More important streets usually contain wider green areas and plaza's usually contain monuments or statues of historical figures of importance to Peruvian history. Parque Universitario in downtown Lima
The largest parks of Lima are located near the downtown area such as the Park of the Reserve, Park of the Exposition, /ref> Campo de Marte, and the University Park. The Park of the Reserve is home to the largest fountain complex in the world known as the Magical Circuit of Water. /ref>
A number of large parks lie outside the city center, including Reducto Park, Pantanos de Villa, The Golf, Park of the Legends, the malecon of Miraflores, and the Golf of the Incas. /ref>The street grid of the city of Lima, is laid out with a system of plazas of which serve a purpose similar to roundabouts or junctions. In addition to this practical purpose, plazas serve as one of Lima's principal green spaces and contain a variety of different types of architecture ranging from monuments to statues, and water fountains. /ref>
Strongly influenced by European, Andean, and Asian culture, Lima is a melting pot of cultures due to colonization, immigration, and indigenous influences. /ref>
Like many other world capitals, Lima is home to prestigious museums many of which are world renown. The Historic Center of Lima was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1988. Limean gastronomy is known to be among the best in the world and the city is known as the Gastronomical Capital of the Americas. Lima's gastronomy is a mix of Spanish, Andean, and Asian culinary traditions. /ref>
Lima's beaches, located along the northern and southern ends of the city, are heavily visited during the summer months. Numerous restaurants, clubs and hotels have been opened in these places to serve the many beachgoers. Lima has a vibrant and active theater scene as there are many theaters presenting not only classic theater, but also The Golf cultural presentations, modern theater, experimental theater, dramas, dance performances, and theater for children. Lima is home to many important theaters such as the Municipal Theater, Segura Theater, Japanese-Peruvian Theater, Marsano Theater, British theater, Theater of the PUCP Cultural Center, and the Yuyachkani Theater. /ref>
Known as Peruvian Coastal Spanish, Lima's Spanish is characterized by the lack of strong innotations as found in many other regions of the Spanish-speaking world. It is heavily influenced by the Spanish spoken in Castile as throughout the colonial era, the colonial Spanish nobility was based in Lima, of which most originated from Castile. /ref> Limean Spanish is also characterized by the lack of voseo, a trait present in the dialects of many other Latin American countries. This is due to the fact that voseo was primarily utilized by the lower socioeconomic classes of Spain, a social group that did not begin to appear in Lima until the late colonial era. Limean Spanish is often distinguished by its relative clarity The Museum of Art in comparison to other Latin American dialects. Limean Spanish has been influenced by a number of immigrant groups including Italians, Andalusians, Chinese and Japanese. It also has been influenced by anglicisms as a result of globalization as well as by Andean Spanish due to recent immigration from the Andean highlands to Lima. /ref>
Lima is home to the highest concentration of museums of the country, the most notable of which being the Museo Nacional de ArqueologÃa AntropologÃa e Historia del Perú, Museum of Art of Lima, the Museum of Natural History, the Museum of the Nation, the Museum of Italian Art, and the Museum of Gold, and the Larco Museum. These museums mostly focus on art, pre-Colombian cultures, natural history, science, and religion. /ref>
Lima, as the point of entry to the country, has developed an important tourism industry, characterized by it's historic center, archeological sites, nightlife, museums, art galleries, festivals, and popular traditions. Lima is home to an ample range of restaurants and bars where local as well as international cuisine is served. /ref>
The Historic Center of Lima, made up of the districts of Lima and Rimac, was declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1988 due to its importance during the colonial era leaving a testimony to architectural achievement. /ref> Some examples of this historical colonial architecture include the Monastery of San Francisco, the Plaza Mayor, the Cathedral, Covenant of Santo Domingo, the Palace of Torre Tagle, and much more.
A tour of the city's churches is a popular circuit among tourists. A short jaunt through the central district goes through many churches dating from as early as the 16th and 17th centuries the most noteworthy of which being the Cathedral of Lima and the Monastery of San Francisco, of which are said to be connected by their subterrestrial catacombs. /ref>Both of these churches contain paintings from various schools of art, Sevilian tile, and finely sculpted wood furnishings. Also notable is the Sanctuary of Las Nazarenas, the point of origin for the Lord of Miracles, whose festivities in the month of October constitute the most important religious event in Lima and arguably all of Peru. Some sections of the Lima City Walls still remain and are frequented by tourists. These examples of medieval Spanish fortifications were utilized to defend the city from attacks by pirates and privateers. /ref>
Beaches are visited during the summer months, which are located along the Pan-American Highway, to the south of the city in districts such as Lurin, Punta Hermosa, San Bartolo and Asia. Many restaurants, nightclubs, lounges, bars, clubs, and hotels have developed in said places to cater to beachgoers. /ref>
The suburban districts of Cieneguilla, Pachacamac, and the city of Chosica, are important tourist attractions among locals as they are located at a higher elevation than Lima therefore receiving sunshine in winter months, something that the city of Lima frequently lacks. /ref>
Lima is known as Gastronomical Capital of the Americas. A center of immigration and the center of the Spanish Viceroyalty, Lima has incorporated unique dishes brought from the arrival of the Spanish Conquistadors and the receiving of many waves of immigrants: African, European, Chinese, and Japanese. ref> /ref> Besides international immigrationâa large portion of which happened in Limaâthere has been, since the second half of the 20th century, a strong internal flow from rural areas to cities, in particular to Lima. /ref>This has strongly influenced Lima's cuisine with the incorporation of the immigrant's ingredients and techniques (for example, the Chinese extensive use of rice or the Japanese approach to preparing raw fish). The genres of restaurants in Lima include Creole food, Chifas, Cebicherias, and Pollerias. Peruvian cuisine, widely represented in Lima, holds various Guinness World Records, for its diversity and quality. /ref>
The Estadio Monumental "U" home of Universitario de Deportes
The city of Lima has varied sports venues for soccer, volleyball and basketball, many of which are located within private clubs. A popular sport among Limeans is fronton, a racquet sport similar to squash invented in Lima. The city is home to seven international-class golf links. Equestrian is popular in Lima with many private clubs as well as the Hipódromo de Monterrico horse racing track. The most popular sport in Lima by far is soccer with many professional club teams being located in the city.
/ref>
1. Central Lima
2. Residential Lima
3. Cono Norte
4. Cono Sur
5. Cono Este
6. Beach areas
7. Callao
Lima is made up of thirty densely-populated districts, each headed by a local mayor and the Mayor of Lima, whose authority extends to these and the thirteen outer districts of the Lima province.
The city's historic centre is located in the Cercado de Lima district, locally known as simply Lima, or as "El Centro" ("Downtown"), and it is home to most of the vestiges of Lima's colonial past, the Presidential Palace ( ), the Metropolitan Municipality of Lima ( ), and dozens of hotels, some operating and some defunct, that used to cater to the national and international elite.
The upscale San Isidro district is the city's financial center. It is home to many prominent figures such as politicians and celebrities. It is also where the main banks of Peru and branch offices of world banks are headquartered. San Isidro has many parks, including Parque El Olivar, which has olive trees that were brought from Spain during the seventeenth century.
Another upscale district is Miraflores, which has many luxury hotels, shops and restaurants. Miraflores has more parks and green areas in the south of Lima than most other districts. Larcomar, a popular shopping mall and entertainment center built on cliffs overlooking the Pacific Ocean, featuring bars, dance clubs, movie theaters, cafes, shops, boutiques and galleries, is also located in this district.
La Molina and San Borja, home to the American Embassy and the exclusive Club Polo Lima respectively, are the other two wealthy districts of Lima.
The most densely-populated districts of Lima lie in the northern and southern ends of the city (Spanish: Cono Norte and Cono Sur, respectively), and they are mostly composed of Andean immigrants who arrived during the mid and late 20th century looking for better living standards and economic opportunities, or as refugees of the country's internal conflict with the Shining Path during the late 80s and early 90s. In the case of Cono Norte(North Lima), certain shopping malls like Megaplaza and Royal Plaza have been recently built in the district of Los Olivos, which is the most residential neighborhood in the Northern part of Lima. Most of the inhabitants of this area belong to the middle class.
Barranco, which borders Miraflores by the Pacific Ocean, is known as the city's bohemian district, home or once home of many Peruvian writers and intellectuals like Mario Vargas Llosa, Chabuca Granda and Alfredo Bryce Echenique. This district has many acclaimed restaurants, music venues called "peñas" featuring the traditional folk music of coastal Peru (in Spanish, "música criolla"), and beautiful Victorian-style chalets. It along with Miraflores serves as the home to the foreign nightlife scene.
The University of Lima
Home to a range of universities, institutions, and schools, Lima has the highest concentration of institutions of higher learning in the country and is home to schools with world-wide recognition. The National University of San Marcos, founded on May 12, 1551 during Spanish colonial regime, is the oldest continuously functioning university in the Americas. /ref>
Other public universities also play key roles in teaching and research, such as the Universidad Nacional Agraria La Molina where ex-president Alberto Fujimori once taught, Universidad Nacional de IngenierÃa and the National University of Callao.
The Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú, established in 1917, is the oldest private university. Other private institutions that are located in the city are Universidad de Lima, Universidad CientÃfica del Sur, Universidad San MartÃn de Porres, Universidad del Pacifico, Universidad Inca Garcilaso de la Vega, Universidad Peruana Cayetano Heredia, Universidad Peruana de Ciencias Aplicadas and Universidad Ricardo Palma. /ref>
The Jorge Chávez International Airport
Lima is served by the Jorge Chavez International Airport, located in Callao. It is the largest airport of the country with the largest amount of domestic and international air traffic. It also serves as a major hub in the Latin American air network. Additionally, Lima possesses five other airports: the Las Palmas Air Force Base, Collique Airport, and runways in Santa MarÃa del Mar, San Bartolo and Chilca. /ref>
Lima is connected by highway to every country that borders Peru. Because of its location on the country's central coast, Lima is an important junction in Peru's highway system, three of the major highways originate in Lima.
*The Northern Panamerican Highway, this highway extends more than to the border with Ecuador connecting the northern districts of Lima with many major cities along the northern Peruvian coast.
*The Central Highway ( ), this highway connects the eastern districts of Lima with many cities in central Peru. The highway extends with its terminus at the city of Pucallpa near Brazil.
*The Southern Panamerican Highway, this highway connects the southern districts of Lima to cities on the southern coast. The highway extends to the border with Chile.
The proximity of Lima to the port of Callao allows Callao to act as the metropolitan area's foremost port. Callao concentrates nearly all of the maritime transport of the metropolitan area. There is, however, a small port in LurÃn whose transit mostly is accounted for by oil tankers due to a refinery being located nearby. Nonetheless, maritime transport inside Lima's city limits is relatively insignificant compared to that of Callao, the nation's leading port and one of Latin America's largest. There have been plans to build a new megaport on the island of San Lorenzo known as the San Lorenzo Megaport Project. This port is planned to become the largest of Latin America.
Lima is connected to the Central Andean region by the Ferrocarril Central Andino which runs from Lima through the departments of Junin, Huancavelica, Pasco, and Huanuco. /ref> Major cities along this line include Huancayo, La Oroya, Huancavelica, and Cerro de Pasco. Another inactive line runs from Lima northwards to the city of Huacho. /ref>
The urban transport system is composed of over 652 transit routes /ref> which are served by buses, microbuses, and combis. The system is unorganized and is characterized by the lack of formality. The service is run by 464 private companies which are poorly regulated by the local government. Fares average at around one sol or $0.30 USD. Due to the absence of a centralized bus terminal, individual bus companies use private terminals throughout Lima. /ref>
The Metropolitan Transportation System is a transport project which plans to integrate the Independent Corridor of Mass-Transit Buses known by its Spanish initials as (COSAC 1). This system plans to link the principal points of the Lima Metropolitan Area and the first phase of this project is already in development with the construction of a thirty three kilometer long line from Comas to Chorrillos.The Lima Metro mass transit system This system is similar to the TransMilenio of Bogota, Colombia. /ref>
Automobiles, known as colectivos, render express service on some major roads of the Lima Metropolitan Area. The colectivos signal their specific destination with a sign on the their windshield. Their routes are not generally publicitized but are understood by frequent users. The cost is generally higher than congenital public transport however they cover greater distances at greater speeds due to the lack of stops. /ref>
The Lima Metro, a above ground mass transit system, is under construction and one line has been completed while another six are scheduled for construction. Line 1 is also scheduled to be extended to the city's center, uniting Villa el Salvador with downtown Lima in a matter of only forty minutes, a trip which currently lasts one hour and forty minutes with the current public transport system. www.trenurbano.gob.pe/
The Via Expresa
Taxis in the city are relatively cheap. There are no meters so drivers are told the desired destination and the fare is agreed upon before the passenger enters the taxi. Taxis vary in sizes from small four door compacts to large vans. They are virtually everywhere, accounting for a large part of the car stock. In many cases they are just a private car with a taxi sticker on the windshield. Additionally, there are several companies that provide taxi service on-call. /ref>
Eighty percent of the city's history having occurred during the pre-automobile era, Lima's road network is based mostly on large divided avenues rather than freeways. In recent times however, Lima has developed a freeway network now made up of nine freeways which are, the Via Expresa Paseo de la Republica, Via Expresa Javier Prado, Via Expresa Grau, Panamericana Norte, Panamericana Sur, Carretera Central, Via Expresa Callao, Autopista Chillon Trapiche, and the Autopista Ramiro Priale. /ref> /ref>
Skyline from the Costa Verde
List of sister cities, designated by Sister Cities International: Sister Cities International, Online Directory: Peru, Americas. Retrieved July 14, 2007
* Arequipa, Peru
* Cusco, Peru
* Piura, Peru
* New York City, United States
* Los Angeles, United States
* Austin, United States, since 1981
* Cleveland, United States
* Miami, United States
* Bordeaux, France, since 1957
* Beijing, China, since November 21, 1983Buildings in the financial district
* Madrid, Spain
* Mexico City, Mexico
* São Paulo, Brazil
* Tegucigalpa, Honduras
* Akhisar, Turkey
* Buenos Aires, Argentina
* Guadalajara, Mexico
* Montreal, Canada
* Bogotá, Colombia
* Cairo, Egypt
* Cardiff, Wales, United Kingdom
*Lima Metropolitan Area
*List of people from Lima
*List of districts and neighborhoods of Lima
*List of sites of interest in the Lima Metropolitan area
* Nota etimológica: El topónimo Lima, Rodolfo Cerrón-Palomino, Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú
* Lima Monumento Histórico, Margarita Cubillas Soriano, Lima, 1996
;History
* Andrien, Kenneth. Crisis and decline: the Viceroyalty of Peru in the seventeenth century. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1985. ISBN 0-8263-0791-4
* Anna, Timothy. The fall of the royal government in Peru. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1979. ISBN 0-8032-1004-3
* Conlee, Christina, Jalh Dulanto, Carol Mackay and Charles Stanish. "Late Prehispanic sociopolitical complexity". In Helaine Silverman (ed.), Andean archaeology. Malden: Blackwell, 2004, pp. 209â236. ISBN 0-631-23400-4
* Dietz, Henry. Poverty and problem-solving under military rule: the urban poor in Lima, Peru. Austin : University of Texas Press, 1980. ISBN 0-292-76460-X
* Hemming, John. The conquest of the Incas. London: Macmillan, 1993. ISBN 0-333-51794-6
* Higgings, James. Lima. A cultural history. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005. ISBN 0-19-517891-2
* Instituto Nacional de EstadÃstica e Informática. Lima Metropolitana perfil socio-demográfico. Lima: INEI, 1996.
* Klarén, Peter. Peru: society and nationhood in the Andes. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000. ISBN 0-19-506928-5
* Ramón, Gabriel. "The script of urban surgery: Lima, 1850â1940". In Arturo Almandoz (ed.), Planning Latin America's capital cities, 1850â1950. New York: Routledge, 2002, pp. 170â192. ISBN 0-415-27265-3
* Walker, Charles. "The upper classes and their upper stories: architecture and the aftermath of the Lima earthquake of 1746". Hispanic American Historical Review 83 (1): 53â82 (February 2003).
;Demographics
* Instituto Nacional de EstadÃstica e Informática, Perfil Sociodemográfico del Perú. Lima: INEI, 2008.
* Municipality of Lima
* Geographia.com
* Maps
* Stock Exchange
*
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Lima | How many years ago was the Lima Stock Exchange the most profitable in the world? | Three | data/set3/a4 | Lima
Lima is the capital and largest city of Peru. It is located in the valleys of the Chillón, RÃmac and LurÃn rivers, on a coast overlooking the Pacific Ocean. It forms a contiguous urban area with the seaport of Callao.
Lima was founded by Spanish conquistador Francisco Pizarro on January 18, 1535, as La Ciudad de los Reyes, or "The City of Kings." It became the most important city in the Spanish Viceroyalty of Peru and, after the Peruvian War of Independence, was made the capital of the Republic of Peru. Today around one-third of the Peruvian population lives in the metropolitan area.
According to early Spanish chronicles the Lima area was once called Ichma, after its original inhabitants. However, even before the Inca occupation of the area in the 15th century, a famous oracle in the RÃmac valley had come to be known by visitors as Limaq (limaq, pronounced , which means "talker" in coastal Quechua). This oracle was eventually destroyed by the Spanish and replaced with a church, but the name persisted in the local language, thus the chronicles show "LÃmac" replacing "Ychma" as the common name for the area. /ref>
Modern scholars speculate that the word "Lima" originated as the Spanish pronunciation of the native name Limaq. Linguistic evidence seems to support this theory as spoken Spanish consistently rejects stop consonants in word-final position. The city was founded in 1535 under the name City of the Kings ( ) because its foundation was decided on January 6, date of the feast of the Epiphany. Nevertheless, this name quickly fell into disuse and Lima became the city's name of choice; on the oldest Spanish maps of Peru, both Lima and Ciudad de los Reyes can be seen together as names for the city.
It is worth noting that the river that feeds Lima is called RÃmac, and many people erroneously assume that this is because its original Inca name is "Talking River" (the Incas spoke a highland variety of Quechua where the word for "talker" was pronounced ). However, the original inhabitants of the valley were not the Incas, and this name is actually an innovation arising from an effort by the Cuzco nobility in colonial times to standardize the toponym so that it would conform to the phonology of Cuzco Quechua. Later, as the the original inhabitants of the valley died out and the local Quechua became extinct, the Cuzco pronunciation prevailed. In modern times, Spanish-speaking locals do not see the connection between the name of their city and the name of the river that runs through it. They often assume that the valley is named after the river; however, Spanish documents from the colonial period show the opposite to be true.
Lima City Walls were build between 1684 and 1687 by viceroy Melchor de Navarra y Rocafull.
In the pre-Columbian era, the location of what is now the city of Lima was inhabited by several amerindian groups under the Ychsma polity, which was incorporated into the Inca Empire in the 15th century. Conlee et al, "Late Prehispanic sociopolitical complexity", p. 218. In 1532, a group of Spanish conquistadors led by Francisco Pizarro defeated the Inca ruler Atahualpa and took over his Empire. As the Spanish Crown had named Pizarro governor of the lands he conquered, Hemming, The conquest, p. 28. he chose the RÃmac valley to found his capital on January 18, 1535 as Ciudad de los Reyes (City of the Kings). Klarén, Peru, p. 39. In August 1536, the new city was besieged by the troops of Manco Inca, however, the Spaniards and their native allies defeated the Inca rebels. Hemming, The conquest, p. 203â206.
Balconies were a major feature of Lima's architecture during the colonial period.
Over the next few years, Lima gained prestige as it was designated capital of the Viceroyalty of Peru and site of a Real Audiencia in 1543. Klarén, Peru, p. 87. During the next century Lima flourished as the center of an extensive trade network which integrated the Viceroyalty with the Americas, Europe and the Far East. Andrien, Crisis and decline, pp. 11â13. However, the city was not free from dangers; powerful earthquakes destroyed most of the city in 1687. Andrien, Crisis and decline, p. 26. A second threat was the presence of pirates and privateers in the Pacific Ocean, which led to the building of the Lima City Walls between 1684 and 1687. Higgings, Lima, p. 45. The 1687 earthquake marked a turning point in the history of Lima as it coincided with a recession in trade and economic competition by other cities such as Buenos Aires. Andrien, Crisis and decline, p. 28.
In 1746, a powerful earthquake severely damaged Lima and destroyed Callao, forcing a massive rebuilding effort under Viceroy José Antonio Manso de Velasco. Walker, "The upper classes", pp. 53â55. In the later half of the 18th century, the ideas of the Enlightenment on public health and social control shaped the development of the city. Ramón, "The script", pp. 173â174. During this period, Lima was adversely affected by the Bourbon Reforms as it lost its monopoly on overseas trade and its control over the important mining region of Upper Peru. Anna, Fall of the royal government, pp. 4â5. This economic decline made the city's elite dependent on royal and ecclesiastical appointment and thus, reluctant to advocate independence. Anna, Fall of the royal government, pp. 23â24.
A combined expedition of Argentine and Chilean patriots under General José de San MartÃn managed to land south of Lima in 1820 but did not attack the city. Faced with a naval blockade and the action of guerrillas on land, Viceroy José de la Serna was forced to evacuate the city on July 1821 to save the Royalist army. Anna, Fall of the royal government, pp. 176â177. Fearing a popular uprising and lacking any means to impose order, the city council invited San MartÃn to enter Lima and signed a Declaration of Independence at his request. Anna, Fall of the royal government, pp. 178â180. However, the war was not over; in the next two years the city changed hands several times and suffered exactions from both sides.
The Jiron de la Union was Lima's most important street for the first half of the 20th century
After the war of independence, Lima became the capital of the Republic of Peru but economic stagnation and political turmoil brought urban development to a halt. This hiatus ended in the 1850s, when increased public and private revenues from guano exports led to a rapid expansion of the city. Klarén, Peru, p. 169. However, the export-led economic expansion also widened the gap between rich and poor, fostering social unrest. Klarén, Peru, p. 170. During the 1879â1883 War of the Pacific, Chilean troops occupied Lima, looting public museums, libraries and educational institutions. Higgings, Lima, p. 107. At the same time, angry mobs attacked wealthy citizens and the Asian population; sacking their properties and businesses. Klarén, Peru, p. 192. After the war, the city underwent a process of renewal and expansion from the 1890s up to the 1920s. During this period the urban layout was modified by the construction of big avenues which crisscrossed the city and connected it with neighboring towns. Ramón, "The script", pp. 180â182.
In 1940, an earthquake destroyed most of the city, which at that time was mostly built out of adobe and quincha. In the 1940s, Lima started a period of rapid growth spurred by immigration from the Andean regions of Peru. Population, estimated at 0.6 million in 1940, reached 1.9M by 1960 and 4.8M by 1980. Instituto Nacional de EstadÃstica e Informática, Lima Metropolitana perfil socio-demográfico. Retrieved on August 12, 2007 At the start of this period, the urban area was confined to a triangular area bounded by the city's historic center, Callao and Chorrillos; in the following decades settlements spread to the north, beyond the RÃmac River, to the east, along the Central Highway, and to the south. Dietz, Poverty and problem-solving, p. 35. Immigrants, at first confined to slums in downtown Lima, led this expansion through large-scale land invasions which gave rise to the proliferation of shanty towns, known as pueblos jóvenes. Dietz, Poverty and problem-solving, p. 36.
Lima seen from Spot satellite
The urban area of Lima covers about . It is located on mostly flat terrain in the Peruvian coastal plain, within the valleys of the Chillón, RÃmac and LurÃn rivers. The city slopes gently from the shores of the Pacific Ocean into valleys and mountain slopes located as high as above mean sea level. Within the city exist isolated hills which are not connected to the surrounding hill chains, such as El Agustino, San Cosme, El Pino, La Milla, Muleria and Pro hills. The San Cristobal hill in the Rimac district, which faces directly north of the downtown area, is the local extreme of an Andean hill outgrowth.
Metropolitan Lima has an area of , of which (31%) comprise the actual city and (69%) the city outskirts. The urban area extends around from north to south and around from west to east. The city center is located inland at the shore of the Rimac river, a vital resource for the city, since it carries what will become drinking water for its inhabitants and fuels the hydro electrical dams that provide electricity to the area. While no official administrative definition for the city exists, it is usually considered to be composed of the central 30 out of the 43 districts of Lima Province, corresponding to an urban area centered around the historic Cercado de Lima district. The city is the core of the Lima Metropolitan Area, one of the ten largest metropolitan areas in the Americas. Lima is the second largest city in the world located in a desert, after Cairo, Egypt.
Weather averages for Lima International Airport.
Lima's climate is quite mild, despite being located in the Tropics. Lima has a subtropical and desert climate, yet the microclimate also makes it very humid throughout the year. The temperatures vary from mild to warm (neither very cold or hot).The average temperature in winter ranges from to . These days usually come accompanied by continuous overcast skies, fog, and mist. In the summer, the high averages around with lows around . During El Niño events, the climate of Lima gets severely disrupted, the water temperatures along the coast which usually average around 17 - 19 °C (65 - 68 °F) get much warmer (as in 1998 when the water temperature reached 26 °C (79 °F)), which causes the high and low temperatures to rise by several degrees. Such was the case when Lima hit its all-time record high of
Relative humidity is always very high particularly in the mornings /ref> , and produces brief morning fog from June to December and persistent low clouds from May to November. Sunny, less moist and warm summers follow from December to April and are followed by cloudy, damp and cool winters (June to October). The all-time record low in the metropolitan area is .
Rainfall is very low. The severely low rainfall impacts on water supply in the city. /ref> Inland locations receive 1 to of rainfall, which accumulates mainly during the winter months. Summer rain occurs in the form of isolated light and brief afternoon or evening events, leftover from afternoon storms that generate over the Andes. The peak of the 'rainy season,' which does not produce "rain" in the true sense of the word, occurs during winter when late-night/morning drizzle events (locally called 'garúa','llovizna' or 'camanchacas') become frequent, leaving a light coating of dampness on the ground. All these climatic phenomena arise from the combination of semi-permanent coastal upwelling and the presence of the cold Humboldt Current just offshore.
A Moorish arch built by Spanish immigrants in Lima /ref>
Lima ranks as the 17th most populous city in the world with a municipal population of 7,605,743, and 8,472,935 for the metropolitan area and a population density of as of 2007. Instituto Nacional de EstadÃstica e Informática, Perfil Sociodemográfico del Perú pp. 29â30, 32, 34. Its population features a very complex mix of racial and ethnic groups. Traditionally, Mestizos of mixed European (mostly Spanish) and Amerindian descent are the largest contingent. The second group are White Caucasians, mainly Spanish, Italians, Germans, French, English, Polish and Eastern Europeans. /ref> /ref> Also there is a large number of Jews, and Middle Easterners. Asians make up a large number of the metropolitan population, especially of Chinese (Cantonese) and Japanese descent. Afro-Peruvians, whose African ancestors were initially brought to the region as slaves, are yet another part of the city's ethnic quilt. Lima has by far the largest Chinese community in Latin America. /ref>
The Archbishop's Palace of Lima along with the Cathedral of Lima, the seat of the Roman Catholic Church in Peru.
The first settlement in what would become Lima was made up of only 117 housing blocks. In 1562, another district was built at the other side of the Rimac River and in 1610, the first stone bridge was built. Lima had, at this point in time, around 1600 inhabitants. In 1861, the amount of inhabitants surpassed 100,000, and by 1927 this amount was doubled.
During the early twentieth century thousands of immigrants came to the city, a significant number of French, Italians and Germans, many of them had been adapting to the Peruvian society. They organized in social clubs, and they built their own schools; for example, The American-Peruvian school which is located in Miraflores, The French Alliance (Alianza Francesa de Lima), famous Lycée Franco-Péruvien and the hospital Maison de Sante, the British-Peruvian school in Monterrico, and also several German-Peruvian schools.
They also influenced Peruvian cuisine, the Italians in particular exerting a strong influence in the Miraflores and San Isidro areas with their restaurants, called Trattorias.
A great number of Chinese immigrants, and a lesser amount of Japanese, came to Lima and established themselves in the Barrios Altos neighborhood near downtown Lima, coming in order to work on farms and domestic services. Lima residents refer to their Chinatown as "Calle Capon," and the city's ubiquitous Chifa restaurants a small, sit-down, usually Chinese-run restaurant serving the Peruvian spin on Chinese cuisine can be found by the dozen in this Chinese enclave.
A pueblo joven in the southern outskirts of Lima in 1997
The 1950s saw the exponential increase of the city inhabitants, most of them Andean immigrants and their descendants, who settled in the northern and southern outskirts. The political and economic instability in Peru during the latter half of the twentieth century created unprecedented poverty and violence in the towns of the countryside or Andean highlands, forcing hundreds of thousands of peasants of Amerindian descent to migrate to Lima thus greatly augmenting Lima's population. Instituto Nacional de Estadistica e Informatica In the 70âs, the lacking transportation facilities for the newcomers who had to travel for hours on end to reach the city center became a problem, and it was decided that Lima should not expand any further.
Buildings in the financial district of San Isidro
Lima is the industrial and financial center of Peru Infoplease. Lima. Retrieved on December 8, 2008. , home to many national companies. It accounts for more than two thirds of Peru's industrial production AttractionGuide. Lima Attractions. Retrieved on December 8, 2008. and most of its tertiary sector.
The Metropolitan area, with around 7000 factories /ref>, spearheads the industrial development of the country, thanks to the quantity and quality of the available workforce, cheap infrastructure and the mostly developed routes and highways in the city. The most relevant industrial sectors are textiles, clothing and food. Chemicals, fish, leather and oil derivatives are also manufactured and/or processed in Lima /ref>. The financial district is located in the district of San Isidro, while much of the industrial activity takes place in the area stretching west of Downtown Lima to the airport in Callao.
Industrialization began to take hold in Lima in 1930s and by 1950s, through import substitution policies, by 1950 manufacturing made up 14% of the GNP. In the late 1950s, up to 70% of consumer goods were manufactured in Peruvian, and primarily Limean, factories. /ref>
The Callao seaport is one of the main fishing and commerce ports in South America, with 75% of the country's imports and 25% of its exports /ref> using it as their entry/departure point. The main export goods leaving the country through Callao are oil, steel, silver, zinc, cotton, sugar and coffee.
A building in downtown Lima's financial district
In 2004, Lima's GDP represented 45% of the country's GDP (5% more than the previous year). The GDP per capita in Lima is $7,600 /ref>. Most of the foreign companies operating in the country have settled in Lima, which has led to the previously mentioned concentration of economic and financial activity on the city.
There has been a noticeable increase in slight industries, services and high technologies. In 2007, the Peruvian economy grew 9%, the largest growth rate in all of South America which was spearheaded by economic policies originating in Lima. CIA Factbook .The Lima Stock Exchange grew 185.24% in 2006 Bolsa de Valores de Lima and in 2007 grew 168.3% Bolsa de Valores de Lima making it one of the fastest growing stock exchanges in the world. In 2006, the Lima Stock Exchange was the most profitable in the world. /ref> The unemployment rate in metropolitan area is 7.2%.
The Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Summit and the Latin America, the Caribbean and the European Union Summit were hosted by the city of Lima.
Lima is headquarters to many major banks such as Banco de Crédito del Perú, Interbank, Bank of the Nation, Banco Continental, Banco Interamericano de Finanzas, Banco Finaciero, Banco de Comercio, MiBanco, and Banco del Trabajo. It is also a regional headquarters to Standard Chartered. Major insurance coorperations based in Lima include Rimac Seguros, Mapfre Peru, Interseguro, Pacifico, Protecta, and La Positiva. /ref>
The Government Palace in downtown Lima.Headquarters of the Andean Community of Nations
Lima is the capital city of the Republic of Peru and the department of Lima. As such, it is home to the three branches of the Government of Peru. The executive branch is headquartered in the Government Palace, located in the Plaza Mayor. The legislative branch is headquartered in the Legislative Palace and is home to the Congress of Peru. The Judicial branch is headquartered in the Palace of Justice and is home to the Supreme Court of Peru.
Likewise, all the ministries are located in the city of Lima. In international government, the city of Lima is home to the headquarters of the Andean Community of Nations and the South American Community of Nations, along with other regional and international organizations.
The city is roughly equivalent to the Province of Lima, which is subdivided into 43 districts. The Metropolitan Municipality of Lima is utmost authority of the entire city while each district further has it's own local government. Unlike the rest of the country, the Metropolitan Municipality, although a provincial municipality, acts as and has functions similar to a regional government, as it does not belong to any of the 25 regions of Peru.
The Palace of Justice, seat of the judicial branch
The Palace of Justice in Lima is seat of the Supreme Court of Justice the highest judicial court in Peru with jurisdiction over the entire territory of Peru.
Lima is also seat of two of the 28 second highest or Superior Courts of Justice. The first and oldest Superior Court in Lima is the Superior Court of Justice of Lima belonging to the Judicial District of Lima. Due to the judicial organization of Peru, the highest concentration of courts is located in Lima despite the fact that it's judicial district only has jurisdiction over 35 of the 43 districts of Lima. Judicial Power of Peru. Superior Court of Lima. Retrieved 3 December 2008. . The Superior Court of the Cono Norte is the second Superior Court located in Lima and is part of the Judicial District of North Lima. This judicial district has jurisdiction over the remaining eight districts all located in northern Lima. Judicial Power of Peru. Superior Court of North Lima. Retrieved 3 December 2008.
Paseo de los Heroes Navales
Lima's architecture is characterized by a mix in styles as reflected from shifts between trends throughout various time periods of the city's history. Examples of early colonial architecture include such structures as the Monastery of San Francisco, the Cathedral of Lima and the Torre Tagle Palace. These constructions are generally influenced by the Spanish baroque, /ref> Spanish Neoclassicism]], /ref> and Spanish Colonial /ref> styles. After independence, a gradual shift towards the neoclassical and Art Nouveau styles took place. Many of these constructions were greatly influenced by French architectural styles. /ref>Many government buildings as well as major cultural institutions were contracted in this architectural time period. During 1960s, constructions utilizing the brutalist style began appearing in Lima due to the military government of Juan Velasco. /ref> Examples of this architecture are the Museum of the Nation and the Ministry of Defense. The 21st century has seen the appearance of glass skyscrapers particularly around the city's financial district. /ref>
Lima's urban setting is characterized by green-lined streets as well as the abundance of plazas throughout the city. More important streets usually contain wider green areas and plaza's usually contain monuments or statues of historical figures of importance to Peruvian history. Parque Universitario in downtown Lima
The largest parks of Lima are located near the downtown area such as the Park of the Reserve, Park of the Exposition, /ref> Campo de Marte, and the University Park. The Park of the Reserve is home to the largest fountain complex in the world known as the Magical Circuit of Water. /ref>
A number of large parks lie outside the city center, including Reducto Park, Pantanos de Villa, The Golf, Park of the Legends, the malecon of Miraflores, and the Golf of the Incas. /ref>The street grid of the city of Lima, is laid out with a system of plazas of which serve a purpose similar to roundabouts or junctions. In addition to this practical purpose, plazas serve as one of Lima's principal green spaces and contain a variety of different types of architecture ranging from monuments to statues, and water fountains. /ref>
Strongly influenced by European, Andean, and Asian culture, Lima is a melting pot of cultures due to colonization, immigration, and indigenous influences. /ref>
Like many other world capitals, Lima is home to prestigious museums many of which are world renown. The Historic Center of Lima was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1988. Limean gastronomy is known to be among the best in the world and the city is known as the Gastronomical Capital of the Americas. Lima's gastronomy is a mix of Spanish, Andean, and Asian culinary traditions. /ref>
Lima's beaches, located along the northern and southern ends of the city, are heavily visited during the summer months. Numerous restaurants, clubs and hotels have been opened in these places to serve the many beachgoers. Lima has a vibrant and active theater scene as there are many theaters presenting not only classic theater, but also The Golf cultural presentations, modern theater, experimental theater, dramas, dance performances, and theater for children. Lima is home to many important theaters such as the Municipal Theater, Segura Theater, Japanese-Peruvian Theater, Marsano Theater, British theater, Theater of the PUCP Cultural Center, and the Yuyachkani Theater. /ref>
Known as Peruvian Coastal Spanish, Lima's Spanish is characterized by the lack of strong innotations as found in many other regions of the Spanish-speaking world. It is heavily influenced by the Spanish spoken in Castile as throughout the colonial era, the colonial Spanish nobility was based in Lima, of which most originated from Castile. /ref> Limean Spanish is also characterized by the lack of voseo, a trait present in the dialects of many other Latin American countries. This is due to the fact that voseo was primarily utilized by the lower socioeconomic classes of Spain, a social group that did not begin to appear in Lima until the late colonial era. Limean Spanish is often distinguished by its relative clarity The Museum of Art in comparison to other Latin American dialects. Limean Spanish has been influenced by a number of immigrant groups including Italians, Andalusians, Chinese and Japanese. It also has been influenced by anglicisms as a result of globalization as well as by Andean Spanish due to recent immigration from the Andean highlands to Lima. /ref>
Lima is home to the highest concentration of museums of the country, the most notable of which being the Museo Nacional de ArqueologÃa AntropologÃa e Historia del Perú, Museum of Art of Lima, the Museum of Natural History, the Museum of the Nation, the Museum of Italian Art, and the Museum of Gold, and the Larco Museum. These museums mostly focus on art, pre-Colombian cultures, natural history, science, and religion. /ref>
Lima, as the point of entry to the country, has developed an important tourism industry, characterized by it's historic center, archeological sites, nightlife, museums, art galleries, festivals, and popular traditions. Lima is home to an ample range of restaurants and bars where local as well as international cuisine is served. /ref>
The Historic Center of Lima, made up of the districts of Lima and Rimac, was declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1988 due to its importance during the colonial era leaving a testimony to architectural achievement. /ref> Some examples of this historical colonial architecture include the Monastery of San Francisco, the Plaza Mayor, the Cathedral, Covenant of Santo Domingo, the Palace of Torre Tagle, and much more.
A tour of the city's churches is a popular circuit among tourists. A short jaunt through the central district goes through many churches dating from as early as the 16th and 17th centuries the most noteworthy of which being the Cathedral of Lima and the Monastery of San Francisco, of which are said to be connected by their subterrestrial catacombs. /ref>Both of these churches contain paintings from various schools of art, Sevilian tile, and finely sculpted wood furnishings. Also notable is the Sanctuary of Las Nazarenas, the point of origin for the Lord of Miracles, whose festivities in the month of October constitute the most important religious event in Lima and arguably all of Peru. Some sections of the Lima City Walls still remain and are frequented by tourists. These examples of medieval Spanish fortifications were utilized to defend the city from attacks by pirates and privateers. /ref>
Beaches are visited during the summer months, which are located along the Pan-American Highway, to the south of the city in districts such as Lurin, Punta Hermosa, San Bartolo and Asia. Many restaurants, nightclubs, lounges, bars, clubs, and hotels have developed in said places to cater to beachgoers. /ref>
The suburban districts of Cieneguilla, Pachacamac, and the city of Chosica, are important tourist attractions among locals as they are located at a higher elevation than Lima therefore receiving sunshine in winter months, something that the city of Lima frequently lacks. /ref>
Lima is known as Gastronomical Capital of the Americas. A center of immigration and the center of the Spanish Viceroyalty, Lima has incorporated unique dishes brought from the arrival of the Spanish Conquistadors and the receiving of many waves of immigrants: African, European, Chinese, and Japanese. ref> /ref> Besides international immigrationâa large portion of which happened in Limaâthere has been, since the second half of the 20th century, a strong internal flow from rural areas to cities, in particular to Lima. /ref>This has strongly influenced Lima's cuisine with the incorporation of the immigrant's ingredients and techniques (for example, the Chinese extensive use of rice or the Japanese approach to preparing raw fish). The genres of restaurants in Lima include Creole food, Chifas, Cebicherias, and Pollerias. Peruvian cuisine, widely represented in Lima, holds various Guinness World Records, for its diversity and quality. /ref>
The Estadio Monumental "U" home of Universitario de Deportes
The city of Lima has varied sports venues for soccer, volleyball and basketball, many of which are located within private clubs. A popular sport among Limeans is fronton, a racquet sport similar to squash invented in Lima. The city is home to seven international-class golf links. Equestrian is popular in Lima with many private clubs as well as the Hipódromo de Monterrico horse racing track. The most popular sport in Lima by far is soccer with many professional club teams being located in the city.
/ref>
1. Central Lima
2. Residential Lima
3. Cono Norte
4. Cono Sur
5. Cono Este
6. Beach areas
7. Callao
Lima is made up of thirty densely-populated districts, each headed by a local mayor and the Mayor of Lima, whose authority extends to these and the thirteen outer districts of the Lima province.
The city's historic centre is located in the Cercado de Lima district, locally known as simply Lima, or as "El Centro" ("Downtown"), and it is home to most of the vestiges of Lima's colonial past, the Presidential Palace ( ), the Metropolitan Municipality of Lima ( ), and dozens of hotels, some operating and some defunct, that used to cater to the national and international elite.
The upscale San Isidro district is the city's financial center. It is home to many prominent figures such as politicians and celebrities. It is also where the main banks of Peru and branch offices of world banks are headquartered. San Isidro has many parks, including Parque El Olivar, which has olive trees that were brought from Spain during the seventeenth century.
Another upscale district is Miraflores, which has many luxury hotels, shops and restaurants. Miraflores has more parks and green areas in the south of Lima than most other districts. Larcomar, a popular shopping mall and entertainment center built on cliffs overlooking the Pacific Ocean, featuring bars, dance clubs, movie theaters, cafes, shops, boutiques and galleries, is also located in this district.
La Molina and San Borja, home to the American Embassy and the exclusive Club Polo Lima respectively, are the other two wealthy districts of Lima.
The most densely-populated districts of Lima lie in the northern and southern ends of the city (Spanish: Cono Norte and Cono Sur, respectively), and they are mostly composed of Andean immigrants who arrived during the mid and late 20th century looking for better living standards and economic opportunities, or as refugees of the country's internal conflict with the Shining Path during the late 80s and early 90s. In the case of Cono Norte(North Lima), certain shopping malls like Megaplaza and Royal Plaza have been recently built in the district of Los Olivos, which is the most residential neighborhood in the Northern part of Lima. Most of the inhabitants of this area belong to the middle class.
Barranco, which borders Miraflores by the Pacific Ocean, is known as the city's bohemian district, home or once home of many Peruvian writers and intellectuals like Mario Vargas Llosa, Chabuca Granda and Alfredo Bryce Echenique. This district has many acclaimed restaurants, music venues called "peñas" featuring the traditional folk music of coastal Peru (in Spanish, "música criolla"), and beautiful Victorian-style chalets. It along with Miraflores serves as the home to the foreign nightlife scene.
The University of Lima
Home to a range of universities, institutions, and schools, Lima has the highest concentration of institutions of higher learning in the country and is home to schools with world-wide recognition. The National University of San Marcos, founded on May 12, 1551 during Spanish colonial regime, is the oldest continuously functioning university in the Americas. /ref>
Other public universities also play key roles in teaching and research, such as the Universidad Nacional Agraria La Molina where ex-president Alberto Fujimori once taught, Universidad Nacional de IngenierÃa and the National University of Callao.
The Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú, established in 1917, is the oldest private university. Other private institutions that are located in the city are Universidad de Lima, Universidad CientÃfica del Sur, Universidad San MartÃn de Porres, Universidad del Pacifico, Universidad Inca Garcilaso de la Vega, Universidad Peruana Cayetano Heredia, Universidad Peruana de Ciencias Aplicadas and Universidad Ricardo Palma. /ref>
The Jorge Chávez International Airport
Lima is served by the Jorge Chavez International Airport, located in Callao. It is the largest airport of the country with the largest amount of domestic and international air traffic. It also serves as a major hub in the Latin American air network. Additionally, Lima possesses five other airports: the Las Palmas Air Force Base, Collique Airport, and runways in Santa MarÃa del Mar, San Bartolo and Chilca. /ref>
Lima is connected by highway to every country that borders Peru. Because of its location on the country's central coast, Lima is an important junction in Peru's highway system, three of the major highways originate in Lima.
*The Northern Panamerican Highway, this highway extends more than to the border with Ecuador connecting the northern districts of Lima with many major cities along the northern Peruvian coast.
*The Central Highway ( ), this highway connects the eastern districts of Lima with many cities in central Peru. The highway extends with its terminus at the city of Pucallpa near Brazil.
*The Southern Panamerican Highway, this highway connects the southern districts of Lima to cities on the southern coast. The highway extends to the border with Chile.
The proximity of Lima to the port of Callao allows Callao to act as the metropolitan area's foremost port. Callao concentrates nearly all of the maritime transport of the metropolitan area. There is, however, a small port in LurÃn whose transit mostly is accounted for by oil tankers due to a refinery being located nearby. Nonetheless, maritime transport inside Lima's city limits is relatively insignificant compared to that of Callao, the nation's leading port and one of Latin America's largest. There have been plans to build a new megaport on the island of San Lorenzo known as the San Lorenzo Megaport Project. This port is planned to become the largest of Latin America.
Lima is connected to the Central Andean region by the Ferrocarril Central Andino which runs from Lima through the departments of Junin, Huancavelica, Pasco, and Huanuco. /ref> Major cities along this line include Huancayo, La Oroya, Huancavelica, and Cerro de Pasco. Another inactive line runs from Lima northwards to the city of Huacho. /ref>
The urban transport system is composed of over 652 transit routes /ref> which are served by buses, microbuses, and combis. The system is unorganized and is characterized by the lack of formality. The service is run by 464 private companies which are poorly regulated by the local government. Fares average at around one sol or $0.30 USD. Due to the absence of a centralized bus terminal, individual bus companies use private terminals throughout Lima. /ref>
The Metropolitan Transportation System is a transport project which plans to integrate the Independent Corridor of Mass-Transit Buses known by its Spanish initials as (COSAC 1). This system plans to link the principal points of the Lima Metropolitan Area and the first phase of this project is already in development with the construction of a thirty three kilometer long line from Comas to Chorrillos.The Lima Metro mass transit system This system is similar to the TransMilenio of Bogota, Colombia. /ref>
Automobiles, known as colectivos, render express service on some major roads of the Lima Metropolitan Area. The colectivos signal their specific destination with a sign on the their windshield. Their routes are not generally publicitized but are understood by frequent users. The cost is generally higher than congenital public transport however they cover greater distances at greater speeds due to the lack of stops. /ref>
The Lima Metro, a above ground mass transit system, is under construction and one line has been completed while another six are scheduled for construction. Line 1 is also scheduled to be extended to the city's center, uniting Villa el Salvador with downtown Lima in a matter of only forty minutes, a trip which currently lasts one hour and forty minutes with the current public transport system. www.trenurbano.gob.pe/
The Via Expresa
Taxis in the city are relatively cheap. There are no meters so drivers are told the desired destination and the fare is agreed upon before the passenger enters the taxi. Taxis vary in sizes from small four door compacts to large vans. They are virtually everywhere, accounting for a large part of the car stock. In many cases they are just a private car with a taxi sticker on the windshield. Additionally, there are several companies that provide taxi service on-call. /ref>
Eighty percent of the city's history having occurred during the pre-automobile era, Lima's road network is based mostly on large divided avenues rather than freeways. In recent times however, Lima has developed a freeway network now made up of nine freeways which are, the Via Expresa Paseo de la Republica, Via Expresa Javier Prado, Via Expresa Grau, Panamericana Norte, Panamericana Sur, Carretera Central, Via Expresa Callao, Autopista Chillon Trapiche, and the Autopista Ramiro Priale. /ref> /ref>
Skyline from the Costa Verde
List of sister cities, designated by Sister Cities International: Sister Cities International, Online Directory: Peru, Americas. Retrieved July 14, 2007
* Arequipa, Peru
* Cusco, Peru
* Piura, Peru
* New York City, United States
* Los Angeles, United States
* Austin, United States, since 1981
* Cleveland, United States
* Miami, United States
* Bordeaux, France, since 1957
* Beijing, China, since November 21, 1983Buildings in the financial district
* Madrid, Spain
* Mexico City, Mexico
* São Paulo, Brazil
* Tegucigalpa, Honduras
* Akhisar, Turkey
* Buenos Aires, Argentina
* Guadalajara, Mexico
* Montreal, Canada
* Bogotá, Colombia
* Cairo, Egypt
* Cardiff, Wales, United Kingdom
*Lima Metropolitan Area
*List of people from Lima
*List of districts and neighborhoods of Lima
*List of sites of interest in the Lima Metropolitan area
* Nota etimológica: El topónimo Lima, Rodolfo Cerrón-Palomino, Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú
* Lima Monumento Histórico, Margarita Cubillas Soriano, Lima, 1996
;History
* Andrien, Kenneth. Crisis and decline: the Viceroyalty of Peru in the seventeenth century. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1985. ISBN 0-8263-0791-4
* Anna, Timothy. The fall of the royal government in Peru. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1979. ISBN 0-8032-1004-3
* Conlee, Christina, Jalh Dulanto, Carol Mackay and Charles Stanish. "Late Prehispanic sociopolitical complexity". In Helaine Silverman (ed.), Andean archaeology. Malden: Blackwell, 2004, pp. 209â236. ISBN 0-631-23400-4
* Dietz, Henry. Poverty and problem-solving under military rule: the urban poor in Lima, Peru. Austin : University of Texas Press, 1980. ISBN 0-292-76460-X
* Hemming, John. The conquest of the Incas. London: Macmillan, 1993. ISBN 0-333-51794-6
* Higgings, James. Lima. A cultural history. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005. ISBN 0-19-517891-2
* Instituto Nacional de EstadÃstica e Informática. Lima Metropolitana perfil socio-demográfico. Lima: INEI, 1996.
* Klarén, Peter. Peru: society and nationhood in the Andes. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000. ISBN 0-19-506928-5
* Ramón, Gabriel. "The script of urban surgery: Lima, 1850â1940". In Arturo Almandoz (ed.), Planning Latin America's capital cities, 1850â1950. New York: Routledge, 2002, pp. 170â192. ISBN 0-415-27265-3
* Walker, Charles. "The upper classes and their upper stories: architecture and the aftermath of the Lima earthquake of 1746". Hispanic American Historical Review 83 (1): 53â82 (February 2003).
;Demographics
* Instituto Nacional de EstadÃstica e Informática, Perfil Sociodemográfico del Perú. Lima: INEI, 2008.
* Municipality of Lima
* Geographia.com
* Maps
* Stock Exchange
*
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Lima | Is rainfall very low? | Yes. | data/set3/a4 | Lima
Lima is the capital and largest city of Peru. It is located in the valleys of the Chillón, RÃmac and LurÃn rivers, on a coast overlooking the Pacific Ocean. It forms a contiguous urban area with the seaport of Callao.
Lima was founded by Spanish conquistador Francisco Pizarro on January 18, 1535, as La Ciudad de los Reyes, or "The City of Kings." It became the most important city in the Spanish Viceroyalty of Peru and, after the Peruvian War of Independence, was made the capital of the Republic of Peru. Today around one-third of the Peruvian population lives in the metropolitan area.
According to early Spanish chronicles the Lima area was once called Ichma, after its original inhabitants. However, even before the Inca occupation of the area in the 15th century, a famous oracle in the RÃmac valley had come to be known by visitors as Limaq (limaq, pronounced , which means "talker" in coastal Quechua). This oracle was eventually destroyed by the Spanish and replaced with a church, but the name persisted in the local language, thus the chronicles show "LÃmac" replacing "Ychma" as the common name for the area. /ref>
Modern scholars speculate that the word "Lima" originated as the Spanish pronunciation of the native name Limaq. Linguistic evidence seems to support this theory as spoken Spanish consistently rejects stop consonants in word-final position. The city was founded in 1535 under the name City of the Kings ( ) because its foundation was decided on January 6, date of the feast of the Epiphany. Nevertheless, this name quickly fell into disuse and Lima became the city's name of choice; on the oldest Spanish maps of Peru, both Lima and Ciudad de los Reyes can be seen together as names for the city.
It is worth noting that the river that feeds Lima is called RÃmac, and many people erroneously assume that this is because its original Inca name is "Talking River" (the Incas spoke a highland variety of Quechua where the word for "talker" was pronounced ). However, the original inhabitants of the valley were not the Incas, and this name is actually an innovation arising from an effort by the Cuzco nobility in colonial times to standardize the toponym so that it would conform to the phonology of Cuzco Quechua. Later, as the the original inhabitants of the valley died out and the local Quechua became extinct, the Cuzco pronunciation prevailed. In modern times, Spanish-speaking locals do not see the connection between the name of their city and the name of the river that runs through it. They often assume that the valley is named after the river; however, Spanish documents from the colonial period show the opposite to be true.
Lima City Walls were build between 1684 and 1687 by viceroy Melchor de Navarra y Rocafull.
In the pre-Columbian era, the location of what is now the city of Lima was inhabited by several amerindian groups under the Ychsma polity, which was incorporated into the Inca Empire in the 15th century. Conlee et al, "Late Prehispanic sociopolitical complexity", p. 218. In 1532, a group of Spanish conquistadors led by Francisco Pizarro defeated the Inca ruler Atahualpa and took over his Empire. As the Spanish Crown had named Pizarro governor of the lands he conquered, Hemming, The conquest, p. 28. he chose the RÃmac valley to found his capital on January 18, 1535 as Ciudad de los Reyes (City of the Kings). Klarén, Peru, p. 39. In August 1536, the new city was besieged by the troops of Manco Inca, however, the Spaniards and their native allies defeated the Inca rebels. Hemming, The conquest, p. 203â206.
Balconies were a major feature of Lima's architecture during the colonial period.
Over the next few years, Lima gained prestige as it was designated capital of the Viceroyalty of Peru and site of a Real Audiencia in 1543. Klarén, Peru, p. 87. During the next century Lima flourished as the center of an extensive trade network which integrated the Viceroyalty with the Americas, Europe and the Far East. Andrien, Crisis and decline, pp. 11â13. However, the city was not free from dangers; powerful earthquakes destroyed most of the city in 1687. Andrien, Crisis and decline, p. 26. A second threat was the presence of pirates and privateers in the Pacific Ocean, which led to the building of the Lima City Walls between 1684 and 1687. Higgings, Lima, p. 45. The 1687 earthquake marked a turning point in the history of Lima as it coincided with a recession in trade and economic competition by other cities such as Buenos Aires. Andrien, Crisis and decline, p. 28.
In 1746, a powerful earthquake severely damaged Lima and destroyed Callao, forcing a massive rebuilding effort under Viceroy José Antonio Manso de Velasco. Walker, "The upper classes", pp. 53â55. In the later half of the 18th century, the ideas of the Enlightenment on public health and social control shaped the development of the city. Ramón, "The script", pp. 173â174. During this period, Lima was adversely affected by the Bourbon Reforms as it lost its monopoly on overseas trade and its control over the important mining region of Upper Peru. Anna, Fall of the royal government, pp. 4â5. This economic decline made the city's elite dependent on royal and ecclesiastical appointment and thus, reluctant to advocate independence. Anna, Fall of the royal government, pp. 23â24.
A combined expedition of Argentine and Chilean patriots under General José de San MartÃn managed to land south of Lima in 1820 but did not attack the city. Faced with a naval blockade and the action of guerrillas on land, Viceroy José de la Serna was forced to evacuate the city on July 1821 to save the Royalist army. Anna, Fall of the royal government, pp. 176â177. Fearing a popular uprising and lacking any means to impose order, the city council invited San MartÃn to enter Lima and signed a Declaration of Independence at his request. Anna, Fall of the royal government, pp. 178â180. However, the war was not over; in the next two years the city changed hands several times and suffered exactions from both sides.
The Jiron de la Union was Lima's most important street for the first half of the 20th century
After the war of independence, Lima became the capital of the Republic of Peru but economic stagnation and political turmoil brought urban development to a halt. This hiatus ended in the 1850s, when increased public and private revenues from guano exports led to a rapid expansion of the city. Klarén, Peru, p. 169. However, the export-led economic expansion also widened the gap between rich and poor, fostering social unrest. Klarén, Peru, p. 170. During the 1879â1883 War of the Pacific, Chilean troops occupied Lima, looting public museums, libraries and educational institutions. Higgings, Lima, p. 107. At the same time, angry mobs attacked wealthy citizens and the Asian population; sacking their properties and businesses. Klarén, Peru, p. 192. After the war, the city underwent a process of renewal and expansion from the 1890s up to the 1920s. During this period the urban layout was modified by the construction of big avenues which crisscrossed the city and connected it with neighboring towns. Ramón, "The script", pp. 180â182.
In 1940, an earthquake destroyed most of the city, which at that time was mostly built out of adobe and quincha. In the 1940s, Lima started a period of rapid growth spurred by immigration from the Andean regions of Peru. Population, estimated at 0.6 million in 1940, reached 1.9M by 1960 and 4.8M by 1980. Instituto Nacional de EstadÃstica e Informática, Lima Metropolitana perfil socio-demográfico. Retrieved on August 12, 2007 At the start of this period, the urban area was confined to a triangular area bounded by the city's historic center, Callao and Chorrillos; in the following decades settlements spread to the north, beyond the RÃmac River, to the east, along the Central Highway, and to the south. Dietz, Poverty and problem-solving, p. 35. Immigrants, at first confined to slums in downtown Lima, led this expansion through large-scale land invasions which gave rise to the proliferation of shanty towns, known as pueblos jóvenes. Dietz, Poverty and problem-solving, p. 36.
Lima seen from Spot satellite
The urban area of Lima covers about . It is located on mostly flat terrain in the Peruvian coastal plain, within the valleys of the Chillón, RÃmac and LurÃn rivers. The city slopes gently from the shores of the Pacific Ocean into valleys and mountain slopes located as high as above mean sea level. Within the city exist isolated hills which are not connected to the surrounding hill chains, such as El Agustino, San Cosme, El Pino, La Milla, Muleria and Pro hills. The San Cristobal hill in the Rimac district, which faces directly north of the downtown area, is the local extreme of an Andean hill outgrowth.
Metropolitan Lima has an area of , of which (31%) comprise the actual city and (69%) the city outskirts. The urban area extends around from north to south and around from west to east. The city center is located inland at the shore of the Rimac river, a vital resource for the city, since it carries what will become drinking water for its inhabitants and fuels the hydro electrical dams that provide electricity to the area. While no official administrative definition for the city exists, it is usually considered to be composed of the central 30 out of the 43 districts of Lima Province, corresponding to an urban area centered around the historic Cercado de Lima district. The city is the core of the Lima Metropolitan Area, one of the ten largest metropolitan areas in the Americas. Lima is the second largest city in the world located in a desert, after Cairo, Egypt.
Weather averages for Lima International Airport.
Lima's climate is quite mild, despite being located in the Tropics. Lima has a subtropical and desert climate, yet the microclimate also makes it very humid throughout the year. The temperatures vary from mild to warm (neither very cold or hot).The average temperature in winter ranges from to . These days usually come accompanied by continuous overcast skies, fog, and mist. In the summer, the high averages around with lows around . During El Niño events, the climate of Lima gets severely disrupted, the water temperatures along the coast which usually average around 17 - 19 °C (65 - 68 °F) get much warmer (as in 1998 when the water temperature reached 26 °C (79 °F)), which causes the high and low temperatures to rise by several degrees. Such was the case when Lima hit its all-time record high of
Relative humidity is always very high particularly in the mornings /ref> , and produces brief morning fog from June to December and persistent low clouds from May to November. Sunny, less moist and warm summers follow from December to April and are followed by cloudy, damp and cool winters (June to October). The all-time record low in the metropolitan area is .
Rainfall is very low. The severely low rainfall impacts on water supply in the city. /ref> Inland locations receive 1 to of rainfall, which accumulates mainly during the winter months. Summer rain occurs in the form of isolated light and brief afternoon or evening events, leftover from afternoon storms that generate over the Andes. The peak of the 'rainy season,' which does not produce "rain" in the true sense of the word, occurs during winter when late-night/morning drizzle events (locally called 'garúa','llovizna' or 'camanchacas') become frequent, leaving a light coating of dampness on the ground. All these climatic phenomena arise from the combination of semi-permanent coastal upwelling and the presence of the cold Humboldt Current just offshore.
A Moorish arch built by Spanish immigrants in Lima /ref>
Lima ranks as the 17th most populous city in the world with a municipal population of 7,605,743, and 8,472,935 for the metropolitan area and a population density of as of 2007. Instituto Nacional de EstadÃstica e Informática, Perfil Sociodemográfico del Perú pp. 29â30, 32, 34. Its population features a very complex mix of racial and ethnic groups. Traditionally, Mestizos of mixed European (mostly Spanish) and Amerindian descent are the largest contingent. The second group are White Caucasians, mainly Spanish, Italians, Germans, French, English, Polish and Eastern Europeans. /ref> /ref> Also there is a large number of Jews, and Middle Easterners. Asians make up a large number of the metropolitan population, especially of Chinese (Cantonese) and Japanese descent. Afro-Peruvians, whose African ancestors were initially brought to the region as slaves, are yet another part of the city's ethnic quilt. Lima has by far the largest Chinese community in Latin America. /ref>
The Archbishop's Palace of Lima along with the Cathedral of Lima, the seat of the Roman Catholic Church in Peru.
The first settlement in what would become Lima was made up of only 117 housing blocks. In 1562, another district was built at the other side of the Rimac River and in 1610, the first stone bridge was built. Lima had, at this point in time, around 1600 inhabitants. In 1861, the amount of inhabitants surpassed 100,000, and by 1927 this amount was doubled.
During the early twentieth century thousands of immigrants came to the city, a significant number of French, Italians and Germans, many of them had been adapting to the Peruvian society. They organized in social clubs, and they built their own schools; for example, The American-Peruvian school which is located in Miraflores, The French Alliance (Alianza Francesa de Lima), famous Lycée Franco-Péruvien and the hospital Maison de Sante, the British-Peruvian school in Monterrico, and also several German-Peruvian schools.
They also influenced Peruvian cuisine, the Italians in particular exerting a strong influence in the Miraflores and San Isidro areas with their restaurants, called Trattorias.
A great number of Chinese immigrants, and a lesser amount of Japanese, came to Lima and established themselves in the Barrios Altos neighborhood near downtown Lima, coming in order to work on farms and domestic services. Lima residents refer to their Chinatown as "Calle Capon," and the city's ubiquitous Chifa restaurants a small, sit-down, usually Chinese-run restaurant serving the Peruvian spin on Chinese cuisine can be found by the dozen in this Chinese enclave.
A pueblo joven in the southern outskirts of Lima in 1997
The 1950s saw the exponential increase of the city inhabitants, most of them Andean immigrants and their descendants, who settled in the northern and southern outskirts. The political and economic instability in Peru during the latter half of the twentieth century created unprecedented poverty and violence in the towns of the countryside or Andean highlands, forcing hundreds of thousands of peasants of Amerindian descent to migrate to Lima thus greatly augmenting Lima's population. Instituto Nacional de Estadistica e Informatica In the 70âs, the lacking transportation facilities for the newcomers who had to travel for hours on end to reach the city center became a problem, and it was decided that Lima should not expand any further.
Buildings in the financial district of San Isidro
Lima is the industrial and financial center of Peru Infoplease. Lima. Retrieved on December 8, 2008. , home to many national companies. It accounts for more than two thirds of Peru's industrial production AttractionGuide. Lima Attractions. Retrieved on December 8, 2008. and most of its tertiary sector.
The Metropolitan area, with around 7000 factories /ref>, spearheads the industrial development of the country, thanks to the quantity and quality of the available workforce, cheap infrastructure and the mostly developed routes and highways in the city. The most relevant industrial sectors are textiles, clothing and food. Chemicals, fish, leather and oil derivatives are also manufactured and/or processed in Lima /ref>. The financial district is located in the district of San Isidro, while much of the industrial activity takes place in the area stretching west of Downtown Lima to the airport in Callao.
Industrialization began to take hold in Lima in 1930s and by 1950s, through import substitution policies, by 1950 manufacturing made up 14% of the GNP. In the late 1950s, up to 70% of consumer goods were manufactured in Peruvian, and primarily Limean, factories. /ref>
The Callao seaport is one of the main fishing and commerce ports in South America, with 75% of the country's imports and 25% of its exports /ref> using it as their entry/departure point. The main export goods leaving the country through Callao are oil, steel, silver, zinc, cotton, sugar and coffee.
A building in downtown Lima's financial district
In 2004, Lima's GDP represented 45% of the country's GDP (5% more than the previous year). The GDP per capita in Lima is $7,600 /ref>. Most of the foreign companies operating in the country have settled in Lima, which has led to the previously mentioned concentration of economic and financial activity on the city.
There has been a noticeable increase in slight industries, services and high technologies. In 2007, the Peruvian economy grew 9%, the largest growth rate in all of South America which was spearheaded by economic policies originating in Lima. CIA Factbook .The Lima Stock Exchange grew 185.24% in 2006 Bolsa de Valores de Lima and in 2007 grew 168.3% Bolsa de Valores de Lima making it one of the fastest growing stock exchanges in the world. In 2006, the Lima Stock Exchange was the most profitable in the world. /ref> The unemployment rate in metropolitan area is 7.2%.
The Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Summit and the Latin America, the Caribbean and the European Union Summit were hosted by the city of Lima.
Lima is headquarters to many major banks such as Banco de Crédito del Perú, Interbank, Bank of the Nation, Banco Continental, Banco Interamericano de Finanzas, Banco Finaciero, Banco de Comercio, MiBanco, and Banco del Trabajo. It is also a regional headquarters to Standard Chartered. Major insurance coorperations based in Lima include Rimac Seguros, Mapfre Peru, Interseguro, Pacifico, Protecta, and La Positiva. /ref>
The Government Palace in downtown Lima.Headquarters of the Andean Community of Nations
Lima is the capital city of the Republic of Peru and the department of Lima. As such, it is home to the three branches of the Government of Peru. The executive branch is headquartered in the Government Palace, located in the Plaza Mayor. The legislative branch is headquartered in the Legislative Palace and is home to the Congress of Peru. The Judicial branch is headquartered in the Palace of Justice and is home to the Supreme Court of Peru.
Likewise, all the ministries are located in the city of Lima. In international government, the city of Lima is home to the headquarters of the Andean Community of Nations and the South American Community of Nations, along with other regional and international organizations.
The city is roughly equivalent to the Province of Lima, which is subdivided into 43 districts. The Metropolitan Municipality of Lima is utmost authority of the entire city while each district further has it's own local government. Unlike the rest of the country, the Metropolitan Municipality, although a provincial municipality, acts as and has functions similar to a regional government, as it does not belong to any of the 25 regions of Peru.
The Palace of Justice, seat of the judicial branch
The Palace of Justice in Lima is seat of the Supreme Court of Justice the highest judicial court in Peru with jurisdiction over the entire territory of Peru.
Lima is also seat of two of the 28 second highest or Superior Courts of Justice. The first and oldest Superior Court in Lima is the Superior Court of Justice of Lima belonging to the Judicial District of Lima. Due to the judicial organization of Peru, the highest concentration of courts is located in Lima despite the fact that it's judicial district only has jurisdiction over 35 of the 43 districts of Lima. Judicial Power of Peru. Superior Court of Lima. Retrieved 3 December 2008. . The Superior Court of the Cono Norte is the second Superior Court located in Lima and is part of the Judicial District of North Lima. This judicial district has jurisdiction over the remaining eight districts all located in northern Lima. Judicial Power of Peru. Superior Court of North Lima. Retrieved 3 December 2008.
Paseo de los Heroes Navales
Lima's architecture is characterized by a mix in styles as reflected from shifts between trends throughout various time periods of the city's history. Examples of early colonial architecture include such structures as the Monastery of San Francisco, the Cathedral of Lima and the Torre Tagle Palace. These constructions are generally influenced by the Spanish baroque, /ref> Spanish Neoclassicism]], /ref> and Spanish Colonial /ref> styles. After independence, a gradual shift towards the neoclassical and Art Nouveau styles took place. Many of these constructions were greatly influenced by French architectural styles. /ref>Many government buildings as well as major cultural institutions were contracted in this architectural time period. During 1960s, constructions utilizing the brutalist style began appearing in Lima due to the military government of Juan Velasco. /ref> Examples of this architecture are the Museum of the Nation and the Ministry of Defense. The 21st century has seen the appearance of glass skyscrapers particularly around the city's financial district. /ref>
Lima's urban setting is characterized by green-lined streets as well as the abundance of plazas throughout the city. More important streets usually contain wider green areas and plaza's usually contain monuments or statues of historical figures of importance to Peruvian history. Parque Universitario in downtown Lima
The largest parks of Lima are located near the downtown area such as the Park of the Reserve, Park of the Exposition, /ref> Campo de Marte, and the University Park. The Park of the Reserve is home to the largest fountain complex in the world known as the Magical Circuit of Water. /ref>
A number of large parks lie outside the city center, including Reducto Park, Pantanos de Villa, The Golf, Park of the Legends, the malecon of Miraflores, and the Golf of the Incas. /ref>The street grid of the city of Lima, is laid out with a system of plazas of which serve a purpose similar to roundabouts or junctions. In addition to this practical purpose, plazas serve as one of Lima's principal green spaces and contain a variety of different types of architecture ranging from monuments to statues, and water fountains. /ref>
Strongly influenced by European, Andean, and Asian culture, Lima is a melting pot of cultures due to colonization, immigration, and indigenous influences. /ref>
Like many other world capitals, Lima is home to prestigious museums many of which are world renown. The Historic Center of Lima was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1988. Limean gastronomy is known to be among the best in the world and the city is known as the Gastronomical Capital of the Americas. Lima's gastronomy is a mix of Spanish, Andean, and Asian culinary traditions. /ref>
Lima's beaches, located along the northern and southern ends of the city, are heavily visited during the summer months. Numerous restaurants, clubs and hotels have been opened in these places to serve the many beachgoers. Lima has a vibrant and active theater scene as there are many theaters presenting not only classic theater, but also The Golf cultural presentations, modern theater, experimental theater, dramas, dance performances, and theater for children. Lima is home to many important theaters such as the Municipal Theater, Segura Theater, Japanese-Peruvian Theater, Marsano Theater, British theater, Theater of the PUCP Cultural Center, and the Yuyachkani Theater. /ref>
Known as Peruvian Coastal Spanish, Lima's Spanish is characterized by the lack of strong innotations as found in many other regions of the Spanish-speaking world. It is heavily influenced by the Spanish spoken in Castile as throughout the colonial era, the colonial Spanish nobility was based in Lima, of which most originated from Castile. /ref> Limean Spanish is also characterized by the lack of voseo, a trait present in the dialects of many other Latin American countries. This is due to the fact that voseo was primarily utilized by the lower socioeconomic classes of Spain, a social group that did not begin to appear in Lima until the late colonial era. Limean Spanish is often distinguished by its relative clarity The Museum of Art in comparison to other Latin American dialects. Limean Spanish has been influenced by a number of immigrant groups including Italians, Andalusians, Chinese and Japanese. It also has been influenced by anglicisms as a result of globalization as well as by Andean Spanish due to recent immigration from the Andean highlands to Lima. /ref>
Lima is home to the highest concentration of museums of the country, the most notable of which being the Museo Nacional de ArqueologÃa AntropologÃa e Historia del Perú, Museum of Art of Lima, the Museum of Natural History, the Museum of the Nation, the Museum of Italian Art, and the Museum of Gold, and the Larco Museum. These museums mostly focus on art, pre-Colombian cultures, natural history, science, and religion. /ref>
Lima, as the point of entry to the country, has developed an important tourism industry, characterized by it's historic center, archeological sites, nightlife, museums, art galleries, festivals, and popular traditions. Lima is home to an ample range of restaurants and bars where local as well as international cuisine is served. /ref>
The Historic Center of Lima, made up of the districts of Lima and Rimac, was declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1988 due to its importance during the colonial era leaving a testimony to architectural achievement. /ref> Some examples of this historical colonial architecture include the Monastery of San Francisco, the Plaza Mayor, the Cathedral, Covenant of Santo Domingo, the Palace of Torre Tagle, and much more.
A tour of the city's churches is a popular circuit among tourists. A short jaunt through the central district goes through many churches dating from as early as the 16th and 17th centuries the most noteworthy of which being the Cathedral of Lima and the Monastery of San Francisco, of which are said to be connected by their subterrestrial catacombs. /ref>Both of these churches contain paintings from various schools of art, Sevilian tile, and finely sculpted wood furnishings. Also notable is the Sanctuary of Las Nazarenas, the point of origin for the Lord of Miracles, whose festivities in the month of October constitute the most important religious event in Lima and arguably all of Peru. Some sections of the Lima City Walls still remain and are frequented by tourists. These examples of medieval Spanish fortifications were utilized to defend the city from attacks by pirates and privateers. /ref>
Beaches are visited during the summer months, which are located along the Pan-American Highway, to the south of the city in districts such as Lurin, Punta Hermosa, San Bartolo and Asia. Many restaurants, nightclubs, lounges, bars, clubs, and hotels have developed in said places to cater to beachgoers. /ref>
The suburban districts of Cieneguilla, Pachacamac, and the city of Chosica, are important tourist attractions among locals as they are located at a higher elevation than Lima therefore receiving sunshine in winter months, something that the city of Lima frequently lacks. /ref>
Lima is known as Gastronomical Capital of the Americas. A center of immigration and the center of the Spanish Viceroyalty, Lima has incorporated unique dishes brought from the arrival of the Spanish Conquistadors and the receiving of many waves of immigrants: African, European, Chinese, and Japanese. ref> /ref> Besides international immigrationâa large portion of which happened in Limaâthere has been, since the second half of the 20th century, a strong internal flow from rural areas to cities, in particular to Lima. /ref>This has strongly influenced Lima's cuisine with the incorporation of the immigrant's ingredients and techniques (for example, the Chinese extensive use of rice or the Japanese approach to preparing raw fish). The genres of restaurants in Lima include Creole food, Chifas, Cebicherias, and Pollerias. Peruvian cuisine, widely represented in Lima, holds various Guinness World Records, for its diversity and quality. /ref>
The Estadio Monumental "U" home of Universitario de Deportes
The city of Lima has varied sports venues for soccer, volleyball and basketball, many of which are located within private clubs. A popular sport among Limeans is fronton, a racquet sport similar to squash invented in Lima. The city is home to seven international-class golf links. Equestrian is popular in Lima with many private clubs as well as the Hipódromo de Monterrico horse racing track. The most popular sport in Lima by far is soccer with many professional club teams being located in the city.
/ref>
1. Central Lima
2. Residential Lima
3. Cono Norte
4. Cono Sur
5. Cono Este
6. Beach areas
7. Callao
Lima is made up of thirty densely-populated districts, each headed by a local mayor and the Mayor of Lima, whose authority extends to these and the thirteen outer districts of the Lima province.
The city's historic centre is located in the Cercado de Lima district, locally known as simply Lima, or as "El Centro" ("Downtown"), and it is home to most of the vestiges of Lima's colonial past, the Presidential Palace ( ), the Metropolitan Municipality of Lima ( ), and dozens of hotels, some operating and some defunct, that used to cater to the national and international elite.
The upscale San Isidro district is the city's financial center. It is home to many prominent figures such as politicians and celebrities. It is also where the main banks of Peru and branch offices of world banks are headquartered. San Isidro has many parks, including Parque El Olivar, which has olive trees that were brought from Spain during the seventeenth century.
Another upscale district is Miraflores, which has many luxury hotels, shops and restaurants. Miraflores has more parks and green areas in the south of Lima than most other districts. Larcomar, a popular shopping mall and entertainment center built on cliffs overlooking the Pacific Ocean, featuring bars, dance clubs, movie theaters, cafes, shops, boutiques and galleries, is also located in this district.
La Molina and San Borja, home to the American Embassy and the exclusive Club Polo Lima respectively, are the other two wealthy districts of Lima.
The most densely-populated districts of Lima lie in the northern and southern ends of the city (Spanish: Cono Norte and Cono Sur, respectively), and they are mostly composed of Andean immigrants who arrived during the mid and late 20th century looking for better living standards and economic opportunities, or as refugees of the country's internal conflict with the Shining Path during the late 80s and early 90s. In the case of Cono Norte(North Lima), certain shopping malls like Megaplaza and Royal Plaza have been recently built in the district of Los Olivos, which is the most residential neighborhood in the Northern part of Lima. Most of the inhabitants of this area belong to the middle class.
Barranco, which borders Miraflores by the Pacific Ocean, is known as the city's bohemian district, home or once home of many Peruvian writers and intellectuals like Mario Vargas Llosa, Chabuca Granda and Alfredo Bryce Echenique. This district has many acclaimed restaurants, music venues called "peñas" featuring the traditional folk music of coastal Peru (in Spanish, "música criolla"), and beautiful Victorian-style chalets. It along with Miraflores serves as the home to the foreign nightlife scene.
The University of Lima
Home to a range of universities, institutions, and schools, Lima has the highest concentration of institutions of higher learning in the country and is home to schools with world-wide recognition. The National University of San Marcos, founded on May 12, 1551 during Spanish colonial regime, is the oldest continuously functioning university in the Americas. /ref>
Other public universities also play key roles in teaching and research, such as the Universidad Nacional Agraria La Molina where ex-president Alberto Fujimori once taught, Universidad Nacional de IngenierÃa and the National University of Callao.
The Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú, established in 1917, is the oldest private university. Other private institutions that are located in the city are Universidad de Lima, Universidad CientÃfica del Sur, Universidad San MartÃn de Porres, Universidad del Pacifico, Universidad Inca Garcilaso de la Vega, Universidad Peruana Cayetano Heredia, Universidad Peruana de Ciencias Aplicadas and Universidad Ricardo Palma. /ref>
The Jorge Chávez International Airport
Lima is served by the Jorge Chavez International Airport, located in Callao. It is the largest airport of the country with the largest amount of domestic and international air traffic. It also serves as a major hub in the Latin American air network. Additionally, Lima possesses five other airports: the Las Palmas Air Force Base, Collique Airport, and runways in Santa MarÃa del Mar, San Bartolo and Chilca. /ref>
Lima is connected by highway to every country that borders Peru. Because of its location on the country's central coast, Lima is an important junction in Peru's highway system, three of the major highways originate in Lima.
*The Northern Panamerican Highway, this highway extends more than to the border with Ecuador connecting the northern districts of Lima with many major cities along the northern Peruvian coast.
*The Central Highway ( ), this highway connects the eastern districts of Lima with many cities in central Peru. The highway extends with its terminus at the city of Pucallpa near Brazil.
*The Southern Panamerican Highway, this highway connects the southern districts of Lima to cities on the southern coast. The highway extends to the border with Chile.
The proximity of Lima to the port of Callao allows Callao to act as the metropolitan area's foremost port. Callao concentrates nearly all of the maritime transport of the metropolitan area. There is, however, a small port in LurÃn whose transit mostly is accounted for by oil tankers due to a refinery being located nearby. Nonetheless, maritime transport inside Lima's city limits is relatively insignificant compared to that of Callao, the nation's leading port and one of Latin America's largest. There have been plans to build a new megaport on the island of San Lorenzo known as the San Lorenzo Megaport Project. This port is planned to become the largest of Latin America.
Lima is connected to the Central Andean region by the Ferrocarril Central Andino which runs from Lima through the departments of Junin, Huancavelica, Pasco, and Huanuco. /ref> Major cities along this line include Huancayo, La Oroya, Huancavelica, and Cerro de Pasco. Another inactive line runs from Lima northwards to the city of Huacho. /ref>
The urban transport system is composed of over 652 transit routes /ref> which are served by buses, microbuses, and combis. The system is unorganized and is characterized by the lack of formality. The service is run by 464 private companies which are poorly regulated by the local government. Fares average at around one sol or $0.30 USD. Due to the absence of a centralized bus terminal, individual bus companies use private terminals throughout Lima. /ref>
The Metropolitan Transportation System is a transport project which plans to integrate the Independent Corridor of Mass-Transit Buses known by its Spanish initials as (COSAC 1). This system plans to link the principal points of the Lima Metropolitan Area and the first phase of this project is already in development with the construction of a thirty three kilometer long line from Comas to Chorrillos.The Lima Metro mass transit system This system is similar to the TransMilenio of Bogota, Colombia. /ref>
Automobiles, known as colectivos, render express service on some major roads of the Lima Metropolitan Area. The colectivos signal their specific destination with a sign on the their windshield. Their routes are not generally publicitized but are understood by frequent users. The cost is generally higher than congenital public transport however they cover greater distances at greater speeds due to the lack of stops. /ref>
The Lima Metro, a above ground mass transit system, is under construction and one line has been completed while another six are scheduled for construction. Line 1 is also scheduled to be extended to the city's center, uniting Villa el Salvador with downtown Lima in a matter of only forty minutes, a trip which currently lasts one hour and forty minutes with the current public transport system. www.trenurbano.gob.pe/
The Via Expresa
Taxis in the city are relatively cheap. There are no meters so drivers are told the desired destination and the fare is agreed upon before the passenger enters the taxi. Taxis vary in sizes from small four door compacts to large vans. They are virtually everywhere, accounting for a large part of the car stock. In many cases they are just a private car with a taxi sticker on the windshield. Additionally, there are several companies that provide taxi service on-call. /ref>
Eighty percent of the city's history having occurred during the pre-automobile era, Lima's road network is based mostly on large divided avenues rather than freeways. In recent times however, Lima has developed a freeway network now made up of nine freeways which are, the Via Expresa Paseo de la Republica, Via Expresa Javier Prado, Via Expresa Grau, Panamericana Norte, Panamericana Sur, Carretera Central, Via Expresa Callao, Autopista Chillon Trapiche, and the Autopista Ramiro Priale. /ref> /ref>
Skyline from the Costa Verde
List of sister cities, designated by Sister Cities International: Sister Cities International, Online Directory: Peru, Americas. Retrieved July 14, 2007
* Arequipa, Peru
* Cusco, Peru
* Piura, Peru
* New York City, United States
* Los Angeles, United States
* Austin, United States, since 1981
* Cleveland, United States
* Miami, United States
* Bordeaux, France, since 1957
* Beijing, China, since November 21, 1983Buildings in the financial district
* Madrid, Spain
* Mexico City, Mexico
* São Paulo, Brazil
* Tegucigalpa, Honduras
* Akhisar, Turkey
* Buenos Aires, Argentina
* Guadalajara, Mexico
* Montreal, Canada
* Bogotá, Colombia
* Cairo, Egypt
* Cardiff, Wales, United Kingdom
*Lima Metropolitan Area
*List of people from Lima
*List of districts and neighborhoods of Lima
*List of sites of interest in the Lima Metropolitan area
* Nota etimológica: El topónimo Lima, Rodolfo Cerrón-Palomino, Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú
* Lima Monumento Histórico, Margarita Cubillas Soriano, Lima, 1996
;History
* Andrien, Kenneth. Crisis and decline: the Viceroyalty of Peru in the seventeenth century. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1985. ISBN 0-8263-0791-4
* Anna, Timothy. The fall of the royal government in Peru. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1979. ISBN 0-8032-1004-3
* Conlee, Christina, Jalh Dulanto, Carol Mackay and Charles Stanish. "Late Prehispanic sociopolitical complexity". In Helaine Silverman (ed.), Andean archaeology. Malden: Blackwell, 2004, pp. 209â236. ISBN 0-631-23400-4
* Dietz, Henry. Poverty and problem-solving under military rule: the urban poor in Lima, Peru. Austin : University of Texas Press, 1980. ISBN 0-292-76460-X
* Hemming, John. The conquest of the Incas. London: Macmillan, 1993. ISBN 0-333-51794-6
* Higgings, James. Lima. A cultural history. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005. ISBN 0-19-517891-2
* Instituto Nacional de EstadÃstica e Informática. Lima Metropolitana perfil socio-demográfico. Lima: INEI, 1996.
* Klarén, Peter. Peru: society and nationhood in the Andes. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000. ISBN 0-19-506928-5
* Ramón, Gabriel. "The script of urban surgery: Lima, 1850â1940". In Arturo Almandoz (ed.), Planning Latin America's capital cities, 1850â1950. New York: Routledge, 2002, pp. 170â192. ISBN 0-415-27265-3
* Walker, Charles. "The upper classes and their upper stories: architecture and the aftermath of the Lima earthquake of 1746". Hispanic American Historical Review 83 (1): 53â82 (February 2003).
;Demographics
* Instituto Nacional de EstadÃstica e Informática, Perfil Sociodemográfico del Perú. Lima: INEI, 2008.
* Municipality of Lima
* Geographia.com
* Maps
* Stock Exchange
*
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Lima | Is lima the capital and largest city of Peru? | Yes. | data/set3/a4 | Lima
Lima is the capital and largest city of Peru. It is located in the valleys of the Chillón, RÃmac and LurÃn rivers, on a coast overlooking the Pacific Ocean. It forms a contiguous urban area with the seaport of Callao.
Lima was founded by Spanish conquistador Francisco Pizarro on January 18, 1535, as La Ciudad de los Reyes, or "The City of Kings." It became the most important city in the Spanish Viceroyalty of Peru and, after the Peruvian War of Independence, was made the capital of the Republic of Peru. Today around one-third of the Peruvian population lives in the metropolitan area.
According to early Spanish chronicles the Lima area was once called Ichma, after its original inhabitants. However, even before the Inca occupation of the area in the 15th century, a famous oracle in the RÃmac valley had come to be known by visitors as Limaq (limaq, pronounced , which means "talker" in coastal Quechua). This oracle was eventually destroyed by the Spanish and replaced with a church, but the name persisted in the local language, thus the chronicles show "LÃmac" replacing "Ychma" as the common name for the area. /ref>
Modern scholars speculate that the word "Lima" originated as the Spanish pronunciation of the native name Limaq. Linguistic evidence seems to support this theory as spoken Spanish consistently rejects stop consonants in word-final position. The city was founded in 1535 under the name City of the Kings ( ) because its foundation was decided on January 6, date of the feast of the Epiphany. Nevertheless, this name quickly fell into disuse and Lima became the city's name of choice; on the oldest Spanish maps of Peru, both Lima and Ciudad de los Reyes can be seen together as names for the city.
It is worth noting that the river that feeds Lima is called RÃmac, and many people erroneously assume that this is because its original Inca name is "Talking River" (the Incas spoke a highland variety of Quechua where the word for "talker" was pronounced ). However, the original inhabitants of the valley were not the Incas, and this name is actually an innovation arising from an effort by the Cuzco nobility in colonial times to standardize the toponym so that it would conform to the phonology of Cuzco Quechua. Later, as the the original inhabitants of the valley died out and the local Quechua became extinct, the Cuzco pronunciation prevailed. In modern times, Spanish-speaking locals do not see the connection between the name of their city and the name of the river that runs through it. They often assume that the valley is named after the river; however, Spanish documents from the colonial period show the opposite to be true.
Lima City Walls were build between 1684 and 1687 by viceroy Melchor de Navarra y Rocafull.
In the pre-Columbian era, the location of what is now the city of Lima was inhabited by several amerindian groups under the Ychsma polity, which was incorporated into the Inca Empire in the 15th century. Conlee et al, "Late Prehispanic sociopolitical complexity", p. 218. In 1532, a group of Spanish conquistadors led by Francisco Pizarro defeated the Inca ruler Atahualpa and took over his Empire. As the Spanish Crown had named Pizarro governor of the lands he conquered, Hemming, The conquest, p. 28. he chose the RÃmac valley to found his capital on January 18, 1535 as Ciudad de los Reyes (City of the Kings). Klarén, Peru, p. 39. In August 1536, the new city was besieged by the troops of Manco Inca, however, the Spaniards and their native allies defeated the Inca rebels. Hemming, The conquest, p. 203â206.
Balconies were a major feature of Lima's architecture during the colonial period.
Over the next few years, Lima gained prestige as it was designated capital of the Viceroyalty of Peru and site of a Real Audiencia in 1543. Klarén, Peru, p. 87. During the next century Lima flourished as the center of an extensive trade network which integrated the Viceroyalty with the Americas, Europe and the Far East. Andrien, Crisis and decline, pp. 11â13. However, the city was not free from dangers; powerful earthquakes destroyed most of the city in 1687. Andrien, Crisis and decline, p. 26. A second threat was the presence of pirates and privateers in the Pacific Ocean, which led to the building of the Lima City Walls between 1684 and 1687. Higgings, Lima, p. 45. The 1687 earthquake marked a turning point in the history of Lima as it coincided with a recession in trade and economic competition by other cities such as Buenos Aires. Andrien, Crisis and decline, p. 28.
In 1746, a powerful earthquake severely damaged Lima and destroyed Callao, forcing a massive rebuilding effort under Viceroy José Antonio Manso de Velasco. Walker, "The upper classes", pp. 53â55. In the later half of the 18th century, the ideas of the Enlightenment on public health and social control shaped the development of the city. Ramón, "The script", pp. 173â174. During this period, Lima was adversely affected by the Bourbon Reforms as it lost its monopoly on overseas trade and its control over the important mining region of Upper Peru. Anna, Fall of the royal government, pp. 4â5. This economic decline made the city's elite dependent on royal and ecclesiastical appointment and thus, reluctant to advocate independence. Anna, Fall of the royal government, pp. 23â24.
A combined expedition of Argentine and Chilean patriots under General José de San MartÃn managed to land south of Lima in 1820 but did not attack the city. Faced with a naval blockade and the action of guerrillas on land, Viceroy José de la Serna was forced to evacuate the city on July 1821 to save the Royalist army. Anna, Fall of the royal government, pp. 176â177. Fearing a popular uprising and lacking any means to impose order, the city council invited San MartÃn to enter Lima and signed a Declaration of Independence at his request. Anna, Fall of the royal government, pp. 178â180. However, the war was not over; in the next two years the city changed hands several times and suffered exactions from both sides.
The Jiron de la Union was Lima's most important street for the first half of the 20th century
After the war of independence, Lima became the capital of the Republic of Peru but economic stagnation and political turmoil brought urban development to a halt. This hiatus ended in the 1850s, when increased public and private revenues from guano exports led to a rapid expansion of the city. Klarén, Peru, p. 169. However, the export-led economic expansion also widened the gap between rich and poor, fostering social unrest. Klarén, Peru, p. 170. During the 1879â1883 War of the Pacific, Chilean troops occupied Lima, looting public museums, libraries and educational institutions. Higgings, Lima, p. 107. At the same time, angry mobs attacked wealthy citizens and the Asian population; sacking their properties and businesses. Klarén, Peru, p. 192. After the war, the city underwent a process of renewal and expansion from the 1890s up to the 1920s. During this period the urban layout was modified by the construction of big avenues which crisscrossed the city and connected it with neighboring towns. Ramón, "The script", pp. 180â182.
In 1940, an earthquake destroyed most of the city, which at that time was mostly built out of adobe and quincha. In the 1940s, Lima started a period of rapid growth spurred by immigration from the Andean regions of Peru. Population, estimated at 0.6 million in 1940, reached 1.9M by 1960 and 4.8M by 1980. Instituto Nacional de EstadÃstica e Informática, Lima Metropolitana perfil socio-demográfico. Retrieved on August 12, 2007 At the start of this period, the urban area was confined to a triangular area bounded by the city's historic center, Callao and Chorrillos; in the following decades settlements spread to the north, beyond the RÃmac River, to the east, along the Central Highway, and to the south. Dietz, Poverty and problem-solving, p. 35. Immigrants, at first confined to slums in downtown Lima, led this expansion through large-scale land invasions which gave rise to the proliferation of shanty towns, known as pueblos jóvenes. Dietz, Poverty and problem-solving, p. 36.
Lima seen from Spot satellite
The urban area of Lima covers about . It is located on mostly flat terrain in the Peruvian coastal plain, within the valleys of the Chillón, RÃmac and LurÃn rivers. The city slopes gently from the shores of the Pacific Ocean into valleys and mountain slopes located as high as above mean sea level. Within the city exist isolated hills which are not connected to the surrounding hill chains, such as El Agustino, San Cosme, El Pino, La Milla, Muleria and Pro hills. The San Cristobal hill in the Rimac district, which faces directly north of the downtown area, is the local extreme of an Andean hill outgrowth.
Metropolitan Lima has an area of , of which (31%) comprise the actual city and (69%) the city outskirts. The urban area extends around from north to south and around from west to east. The city center is located inland at the shore of the Rimac river, a vital resource for the city, since it carries what will become drinking water for its inhabitants and fuels the hydro electrical dams that provide electricity to the area. While no official administrative definition for the city exists, it is usually considered to be composed of the central 30 out of the 43 districts of Lima Province, corresponding to an urban area centered around the historic Cercado de Lima district. The city is the core of the Lima Metropolitan Area, one of the ten largest metropolitan areas in the Americas. Lima is the second largest city in the world located in a desert, after Cairo, Egypt.
Weather averages for Lima International Airport.
Lima's climate is quite mild, despite being located in the Tropics. Lima has a subtropical and desert climate, yet the microclimate also makes it very humid throughout the year. The temperatures vary from mild to warm (neither very cold or hot).The average temperature in winter ranges from to . These days usually come accompanied by continuous overcast skies, fog, and mist. In the summer, the high averages around with lows around . During El Niño events, the climate of Lima gets severely disrupted, the water temperatures along the coast which usually average around 17 - 19 °C (65 - 68 °F) get much warmer (as in 1998 when the water temperature reached 26 °C (79 °F)), which causes the high and low temperatures to rise by several degrees. Such was the case when Lima hit its all-time record high of
Relative humidity is always very high particularly in the mornings /ref> , and produces brief morning fog from June to December and persistent low clouds from May to November. Sunny, less moist and warm summers follow from December to April and are followed by cloudy, damp and cool winters (June to October). The all-time record low in the metropolitan area is .
Rainfall is very low. The severely low rainfall impacts on water supply in the city. /ref> Inland locations receive 1 to of rainfall, which accumulates mainly during the winter months. Summer rain occurs in the form of isolated light and brief afternoon or evening events, leftover from afternoon storms that generate over the Andes. The peak of the 'rainy season,' which does not produce "rain" in the true sense of the word, occurs during winter when late-night/morning drizzle events (locally called 'garúa','llovizna' or 'camanchacas') become frequent, leaving a light coating of dampness on the ground. All these climatic phenomena arise from the combination of semi-permanent coastal upwelling and the presence of the cold Humboldt Current just offshore.
A Moorish arch built by Spanish immigrants in Lima /ref>
Lima ranks as the 17th most populous city in the world with a municipal population of 7,605,743, and 8,472,935 for the metropolitan area and a population density of as of 2007. Instituto Nacional de EstadÃstica e Informática, Perfil Sociodemográfico del Perú pp. 29â30, 32, 34. Its population features a very complex mix of racial and ethnic groups. Traditionally, Mestizos of mixed European (mostly Spanish) and Amerindian descent are the largest contingent. The second group are White Caucasians, mainly Spanish, Italians, Germans, French, English, Polish and Eastern Europeans. /ref> /ref> Also there is a large number of Jews, and Middle Easterners. Asians make up a large number of the metropolitan population, especially of Chinese (Cantonese) and Japanese descent. Afro-Peruvians, whose African ancestors were initially brought to the region as slaves, are yet another part of the city's ethnic quilt. Lima has by far the largest Chinese community in Latin America. /ref>
The Archbishop's Palace of Lima along with the Cathedral of Lima, the seat of the Roman Catholic Church in Peru.
The first settlement in what would become Lima was made up of only 117 housing blocks. In 1562, another district was built at the other side of the Rimac River and in 1610, the first stone bridge was built. Lima had, at this point in time, around 1600 inhabitants. In 1861, the amount of inhabitants surpassed 100,000, and by 1927 this amount was doubled.
During the early twentieth century thousands of immigrants came to the city, a significant number of French, Italians and Germans, many of them had been adapting to the Peruvian society. They organized in social clubs, and they built their own schools; for example, The American-Peruvian school which is located in Miraflores, The French Alliance (Alianza Francesa de Lima), famous Lycée Franco-Péruvien and the hospital Maison de Sante, the British-Peruvian school in Monterrico, and also several German-Peruvian schools.
They also influenced Peruvian cuisine, the Italians in particular exerting a strong influence in the Miraflores and San Isidro areas with their restaurants, called Trattorias.
A great number of Chinese immigrants, and a lesser amount of Japanese, came to Lima and established themselves in the Barrios Altos neighborhood near downtown Lima, coming in order to work on farms and domestic services. Lima residents refer to their Chinatown as "Calle Capon," and the city's ubiquitous Chifa restaurants a small, sit-down, usually Chinese-run restaurant serving the Peruvian spin on Chinese cuisine can be found by the dozen in this Chinese enclave.
A pueblo joven in the southern outskirts of Lima in 1997
The 1950s saw the exponential increase of the city inhabitants, most of them Andean immigrants and their descendants, who settled in the northern and southern outskirts. The political and economic instability in Peru during the latter half of the twentieth century created unprecedented poverty and violence in the towns of the countryside or Andean highlands, forcing hundreds of thousands of peasants of Amerindian descent to migrate to Lima thus greatly augmenting Lima's population. Instituto Nacional de Estadistica e Informatica In the 70âs, the lacking transportation facilities for the newcomers who had to travel for hours on end to reach the city center became a problem, and it was decided that Lima should not expand any further.
Buildings in the financial district of San Isidro
Lima is the industrial and financial center of Peru Infoplease. Lima. Retrieved on December 8, 2008. , home to many national companies. It accounts for more than two thirds of Peru's industrial production AttractionGuide. Lima Attractions. Retrieved on December 8, 2008. and most of its tertiary sector.
The Metropolitan area, with around 7000 factories /ref>, spearheads the industrial development of the country, thanks to the quantity and quality of the available workforce, cheap infrastructure and the mostly developed routes and highways in the city. The most relevant industrial sectors are textiles, clothing and food. Chemicals, fish, leather and oil derivatives are also manufactured and/or processed in Lima /ref>. The financial district is located in the district of San Isidro, while much of the industrial activity takes place in the area stretching west of Downtown Lima to the airport in Callao.
Industrialization began to take hold in Lima in 1930s and by 1950s, through import substitution policies, by 1950 manufacturing made up 14% of the GNP. In the late 1950s, up to 70% of consumer goods were manufactured in Peruvian, and primarily Limean, factories. /ref>
The Callao seaport is one of the main fishing and commerce ports in South America, with 75% of the country's imports and 25% of its exports /ref> using it as their entry/departure point. The main export goods leaving the country through Callao are oil, steel, silver, zinc, cotton, sugar and coffee.
A building in downtown Lima's financial district
In 2004, Lima's GDP represented 45% of the country's GDP (5% more than the previous year). The GDP per capita in Lima is $7,600 /ref>. Most of the foreign companies operating in the country have settled in Lima, which has led to the previously mentioned concentration of economic and financial activity on the city.
There has been a noticeable increase in slight industries, services and high technologies. In 2007, the Peruvian economy grew 9%, the largest growth rate in all of South America which was spearheaded by economic policies originating in Lima. CIA Factbook .The Lima Stock Exchange grew 185.24% in 2006 Bolsa de Valores de Lima and in 2007 grew 168.3% Bolsa de Valores de Lima making it one of the fastest growing stock exchanges in the world. In 2006, the Lima Stock Exchange was the most profitable in the world. /ref> The unemployment rate in metropolitan area is 7.2%.
The Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Summit and the Latin America, the Caribbean and the European Union Summit were hosted by the city of Lima.
Lima is headquarters to many major banks such as Banco de Crédito del Perú, Interbank, Bank of the Nation, Banco Continental, Banco Interamericano de Finanzas, Banco Finaciero, Banco de Comercio, MiBanco, and Banco del Trabajo. It is also a regional headquarters to Standard Chartered. Major insurance coorperations based in Lima include Rimac Seguros, Mapfre Peru, Interseguro, Pacifico, Protecta, and La Positiva. /ref>
The Government Palace in downtown Lima.Headquarters of the Andean Community of Nations
Lima is the capital city of the Republic of Peru and the department of Lima. As such, it is home to the three branches of the Government of Peru. The executive branch is headquartered in the Government Palace, located in the Plaza Mayor. The legislative branch is headquartered in the Legislative Palace and is home to the Congress of Peru. The Judicial branch is headquartered in the Palace of Justice and is home to the Supreme Court of Peru.
Likewise, all the ministries are located in the city of Lima. In international government, the city of Lima is home to the headquarters of the Andean Community of Nations and the South American Community of Nations, along with other regional and international organizations.
The city is roughly equivalent to the Province of Lima, which is subdivided into 43 districts. The Metropolitan Municipality of Lima is utmost authority of the entire city while each district further has it's own local government. Unlike the rest of the country, the Metropolitan Municipality, although a provincial municipality, acts as and has functions similar to a regional government, as it does not belong to any of the 25 regions of Peru.
The Palace of Justice, seat of the judicial branch
The Palace of Justice in Lima is seat of the Supreme Court of Justice the highest judicial court in Peru with jurisdiction over the entire territory of Peru.
Lima is also seat of two of the 28 second highest or Superior Courts of Justice. The first and oldest Superior Court in Lima is the Superior Court of Justice of Lima belonging to the Judicial District of Lima. Due to the judicial organization of Peru, the highest concentration of courts is located in Lima despite the fact that it's judicial district only has jurisdiction over 35 of the 43 districts of Lima. Judicial Power of Peru. Superior Court of Lima. Retrieved 3 December 2008. . The Superior Court of the Cono Norte is the second Superior Court located in Lima and is part of the Judicial District of North Lima. This judicial district has jurisdiction over the remaining eight districts all located in northern Lima. Judicial Power of Peru. Superior Court of North Lima. Retrieved 3 December 2008.
Paseo de los Heroes Navales
Lima's architecture is characterized by a mix in styles as reflected from shifts between trends throughout various time periods of the city's history. Examples of early colonial architecture include such structures as the Monastery of San Francisco, the Cathedral of Lima and the Torre Tagle Palace. These constructions are generally influenced by the Spanish baroque, /ref> Spanish Neoclassicism]], /ref> and Spanish Colonial /ref> styles. After independence, a gradual shift towards the neoclassical and Art Nouveau styles took place. Many of these constructions were greatly influenced by French architectural styles. /ref>Many government buildings as well as major cultural institutions were contracted in this architectural time period. During 1960s, constructions utilizing the brutalist style began appearing in Lima due to the military government of Juan Velasco. /ref> Examples of this architecture are the Museum of the Nation and the Ministry of Defense. The 21st century has seen the appearance of glass skyscrapers particularly around the city's financial district. /ref>
Lima's urban setting is characterized by green-lined streets as well as the abundance of plazas throughout the city. More important streets usually contain wider green areas and plaza's usually contain monuments or statues of historical figures of importance to Peruvian history. Parque Universitario in downtown Lima
The largest parks of Lima are located near the downtown area such as the Park of the Reserve, Park of the Exposition, /ref> Campo de Marte, and the University Park. The Park of the Reserve is home to the largest fountain complex in the world known as the Magical Circuit of Water. /ref>
A number of large parks lie outside the city center, including Reducto Park, Pantanos de Villa, The Golf, Park of the Legends, the malecon of Miraflores, and the Golf of the Incas. /ref>The street grid of the city of Lima, is laid out with a system of plazas of which serve a purpose similar to roundabouts or junctions. In addition to this practical purpose, plazas serve as one of Lima's principal green spaces and contain a variety of different types of architecture ranging from monuments to statues, and water fountains. /ref>
Strongly influenced by European, Andean, and Asian culture, Lima is a melting pot of cultures due to colonization, immigration, and indigenous influences. /ref>
Like many other world capitals, Lima is home to prestigious museums many of which are world renown. The Historic Center of Lima was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1988. Limean gastronomy is known to be among the best in the world and the city is known as the Gastronomical Capital of the Americas. Lima's gastronomy is a mix of Spanish, Andean, and Asian culinary traditions. /ref>
Lima's beaches, located along the northern and southern ends of the city, are heavily visited during the summer months. Numerous restaurants, clubs and hotels have been opened in these places to serve the many beachgoers. Lima has a vibrant and active theater scene as there are many theaters presenting not only classic theater, but also The Golf cultural presentations, modern theater, experimental theater, dramas, dance performances, and theater for children. Lima is home to many important theaters such as the Municipal Theater, Segura Theater, Japanese-Peruvian Theater, Marsano Theater, British theater, Theater of the PUCP Cultural Center, and the Yuyachkani Theater. /ref>
Known as Peruvian Coastal Spanish, Lima's Spanish is characterized by the lack of strong innotations as found in many other regions of the Spanish-speaking world. It is heavily influenced by the Spanish spoken in Castile as throughout the colonial era, the colonial Spanish nobility was based in Lima, of which most originated from Castile. /ref> Limean Spanish is also characterized by the lack of voseo, a trait present in the dialects of many other Latin American countries. This is due to the fact that voseo was primarily utilized by the lower socioeconomic classes of Spain, a social group that did not begin to appear in Lima until the late colonial era. Limean Spanish is often distinguished by its relative clarity The Museum of Art in comparison to other Latin American dialects. Limean Spanish has been influenced by a number of immigrant groups including Italians, Andalusians, Chinese and Japanese. It also has been influenced by anglicisms as a result of globalization as well as by Andean Spanish due to recent immigration from the Andean highlands to Lima. /ref>
Lima is home to the highest concentration of museums of the country, the most notable of which being the Museo Nacional de ArqueologÃa AntropologÃa e Historia del Perú, Museum of Art of Lima, the Museum of Natural History, the Museum of the Nation, the Museum of Italian Art, and the Museum of Gold, and the Larco Museum. These museums mostly focus on art, pre-Colombian cultures, natural history, science, and religion. /ref>
Lima, as the point of entry to the country, has developed an important tourism industry, characterized by it's historic center, archeological sites, nightlife, museums, art galleries, festivals, and popular traditions. Lima is home to an ample range of restaurants and bars where local as well as international cuisine is served. /ref>
The Historic Center of Lima, made up of the districts of Lima and Rimac, was declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1988 due to its importance during the colonial era leaving a testimony to architectural achievement. /ref> Some examples of this historical colonial architecture include the Monastery of San Francisco, the Plaza Mayor, the Cathedral, Covenant of Santo Domingo, the Palace of Torre Tagle, and much more.
A tour of the city's churches is a popular circuit among tourists. A short jaunt through the central district goes through many churches dating from as early as the 16th and 17th centuries the most noteworthy of which being the Cathedral of Lima and the Monastery of San Francisco, of which are said to be connected by their subterrestrial catacombs. /ref>Both of these churches contain paintings from various schools of art, Sevilian tile, and finely sculpted wood furnishings. Also notable is the Sanctuary of Las Nazarenas, the point of origin for the Lord of Miracles, whose festivities in the month of October constitute the most important religious event in Lima and arguably all of Peru. Some sections of the Lima City Walls still remain and are frequented by tourists. These examples of medieval Spanish fortifications were utilized to defend the city from attacks by pirates and privateers. /ref>
Beaches are visited during the summer months, which are located along the Pan-American Highway, to the south of the city in districts such as Lurin, Punta Hermosa, San Bartolo and Asia. Many restaurants, nightclubs, lounges, bars, clubs, and hotels have developed in said places to cater to beachgoers. /ref>
The suburban districts of Cieneguilla, Pachacamac, and the city of Chosica, are important tourist attractions among locals as they are located at a higher elevation than Lima therefore receiving sunshine in winter months, something that the city of Lima frequently lacks. /ref>
Lima is known as Gastronomical Capital of the Americas. A center of immigration and the center of the Spanish Viceroyalty, Lima has incorporated unique dishes brought from the arrival of the Spanish Conquistadors and the receiving of many waves of immigrants: African, European, Chinese, and Japanese. ref> /ref> Besides international immigrationâa large portion of which happened in Limaâthere has been, since the second half of the 20th century, a strong internal flow from rural areas to cities, in particular to Lima. /ref>This has strongly influenced Lima's cuisine with the incorporation of the immigrant's ingredients and techniques (for example, the Chinese extensive use of rice or the Japanese approach to preparing raw fish). The genres of restaurants in Lima include Creole food, Chifas, Cebicherias, and Pollerias. Peruvian cuisine, widely represented in Lima, holds various Guinness World Records, for its diversity and quality. /ref>
The Estadio Monumental "U" home of Universitario de Deportes
The city of Lima has varied sports venues for soccer, volleyball and basketball, many of which are located within private clubs. A popular sport among Limeans is fronton, a racquet sport similar to squash invented in Lima. The city is home to seven international-class golf links. Equestrian is popular in Lima with many private clubs as well as the Hipódromo de Monterrico horse racing track. The most popular sport in Lima by far is soccer with many professional club teams being located in the city.
/ref>
1. Central Lima
2. Residential Lima
3. Cono Norte
4. Cono Sur
5. Cono Este
6. Beach areas
7. Callao
Lima is made up of thirty densely-populated districts, each headed by a local mayor and the Mayor of Lima, whose authority extends to these and the thirteen outer districts of the Lima province.
The city's historic centre is located in the Cercado de Lima district, locally known as simply Lima, or as "El Centro" ("Downtown"), and it is home to most of the vestiges of Lima's colonial past, the Presidential Palace ( ), the Metropolitan Municipality of Lima ( ), and dozens of hotels, some operating and some defunct, that used to cater to the national and international elite.
The upscale San Isidro district is the city's financial center. It is home to many prominent figures such as politicians and celebrities. It is also where the main banks of Peru and branch offices of world banks are headquartered. San Isidro has many parks, including Parque El Olivar, which has olive trees that were brought from Spain during the seventeenth century.
Another upscale district is Miraflores, which has many luxury hotels, shops and restaurants. Miraflores has more parks and green areas in the south of Lima than most other districts. Larcomar, a popular shopping mall and entertainment center built on cliffs overlooking the Pacific Ocean, featuring bars, dance clubs, movie theaters, cafes, shops, boutiques and galleries, is also located in this district.
La Molina and San Borja, home to the American Embassy and the exclusive Club Polo Lima respectively, are the other two wealthy districts of Lima.
The most densely-populated districts of Lima lie in the northern and southern ends of the city (Spanish: Cono Norte and Cono Sur, respectively), and they are mostly composed of Andean immigrants who arrived during the mid and late 20th century looking for better living standards and economic opportunities, or as refugees of the country's internal conflict with the Shining Path during the late 80s and early 90s. In the case of Cono Norte(North Lima), certain shopping malls like Megaplaza and Royal Plaza have been recently built in the district of Los Olivos, which is the most residential neighborhood in the Northern part of Lima. Most of the inhabitants of this area belong to the middle class.
Barranco, which borders Miraflores by the Pacific Ocean, is known as the city's bohemian district, home or once home of many Peruvian writers and intellectuals like Mario Vargas Llosa, Chabuca Granda and Alfredo Bryce Echenique. This district has many acclaimed restaurants, music venues called "peñas" featuring the traditional folk music of coastal Peru (in Spanish, "música criolla"), and beautiful Victorian-style chalets. It along with Miraflores serves as the home to the foreign nightlife scene.
The University of Lima
Home to a range of universities, institutions, and schools, Lima has the highest concentration of institutions of higher learning in the country and is home to schools with world-wide recognition. The National University of San Marcos, founded on May 12, 1551 during Spanish colonial regime, is the oldest continuously functioning university in the Americas. /ref>
Other public universities also play key roles in teaching and research, such as the Universidad Nacional Agraria La Molina where ex-president Alberto Fujimori once taught, Universidad Nacional de IngenierÃa and the National University of Callao.
The Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú, established in 1917, is the oldest private university. Other private institutions that are located in the city are Universidad de Lima, Universidad CientÃfica del Sur, Universidad San MartÃn de Porres, Universidad del Pacifico, Universidad Inca Garcilaso de la Vega, Universidad Peruana Cayetano Heredia, Universidad Peruana de Ciencias Aplicadas and Universidad Ricardo Palma. /ref>
The Jorge Chávez International Airport
Lima is served by the Jorge Chavez International Airport, located in Callao. It is the largest airport of the country with the largest amount of domestic and international air traffic. It also serves as a major hub in the Latin American air network. Additionally, Lima possesses five other airports: the Las Palmas Air Force Base, Collique Airport, and runways in Santa MarÃa del Mar, San Bartolo and Chilca. /ref>
Lima is connected by highway to every country that borders Peru. Because of its location on the country's central coast, Lima is an important junction in Peru's highway system, three of the major highways originate in Lima.
*The Northern Panamerican Highway, this highway extends more than to the border with Ecuador connecting the northern districts of Lima with many major cities along the northern Peruvian coast.
*The Central Highway ( ), this highway connects the eastern districts of Lima with many cities in central Peru. The highway extends with its terminus at the city of Pucallpa near Brazil.
*The Southern Panamerican Highway, this highway connects the southern districts of Lima to cities on the southern coast. The highway extends to the border with Chile.
The proximity of Lima to the port of Callao allows Callao to act as the metropolitan area's foremost port. Callao concentrates nearly all of the maritime transport of the metropolitan area. There is, however, a small port in LurÃn whose transit mostly is accounted for by oil tankers due to a refinery being located nearby. Nonetheless, maritime transport inside Lima's city limits is relatively insignificant compared to that of Callao, the nation's leading port and one of Latin America's largest. There have been plans to build a new megaport on the island of San Lorenzo known as the San Lorenzo Megaport Project. This port is planned to become the largest of Latin America.
Lima is connected to the Central Andean region by the Ferrocarril Central Andino which runs from Lima through the departments of Junin, Huancavelica, Pasco, and Huanuco. /ref> Major cities along this line include Huancayo, La Oroya, Huancavelica, and Cerro de Pasco. Another inactive line runs from Lima northwards to the city of Huacho. /ref>
The urban transport system is composed of over 652 transit routes /ref> which are served by buses, microbuses, and combis. The system is unorganized and is characterized by the lack of formality. The service is run by 464 private companies which are poorly regulated by the local government. Fares average at around one sol or $0.30 USD. Due to the absence of a centralized bus terminal, individual bus companies use private terminals throughout Lima. /ref>
The Metropolitan Transportation System is a transport project which plans to integrate the Independent Corridor of Mass-Transit Buses known by its Spanish initials as (COSAC 1). This system plans to link the principal points of the Lima Metropolitan Area and the first phase of this project is already in development with the construction of a thirty three kilometer long line from Comas to Chorrillos.The Lima Metro mass transit system This system is similar to the TransMilenio of Bogota, Colombia. /ref>
Automobiles, known as colectivos, render express service on some major roads of the Lima Metropolitan Area. The colectivos signal their specific destination with a sign on the their windshield. Their routes are not generally publicitized but are understood by frequent users. The cost is generally higher than congenital public transport however they cover greater distances at greater speeds due to the lack of stops. /ref>
The Lima Metro, a above ground mass transit system, is under construction and one line has been completed while another six are scheduled for construction. Line 1 is also scheduled to be extended to the city's center, uniting Villa el Salvador with downtown Lima in a matter of only forty minutes, a trip which currently lasts one hour and forty minutes with the current public transport system. www.trenurbano.gob.pe/
The Via Expresa
Taxis in the city are relatively cheap. There are no meters so drivers are told the desired destination and the fare is agreed upon before the passenger enters the taxi. Taxis vary in sizes from small four door compacts to large vans. They are virtually everywhere, accounting for a large part of the car stock. In many cases they are just a private car with a taxi sticker on the windshield. Additionally, there are several companies that provide taxi service on-call. /ref>
Eighty percent of the city's history having occurred during the pre-automobile era, Lima's road network is based mostly on large divided avenues rather than freeways. In recent times however, Lima has developed a freeway network now made up of nine freeways which are, the Via Expresa Paseo de la Republica, Via Expresa Javier Prado, Via Expresa Grau, Panamericana Norte, Panamericana Sur, Carretera Central, Via Expresa Callao, Autopista Chillon Trapiche, and the Autopista Ramiro Priale. /ref> /ref>
Skyline from the Costa Verde
List of sister cities, designated by Sister Cities International: Sister Cities International, Online Directory: Peru, Americas. Retrieved July 14, 2007
* Arequipa, Peru
* Cusco, Peru
* Piura, Peru
* New York City, United States
* Los Angeles, United States
* Austin, United States, since 1981
* Cleveland, United States
* Miami, United States
* Bordeaux, France, since 1957
* Beijing, China, since November 21, 1983Buildings in the financial district
* Madrid, Spain
* Mexico City, Mexico
* São Paulo, Brazil
* Tegucigalpa, Honduras
* Akhisar, Turkey
* Buenos Aires, Argentina
* Guadalajara, Mexico
* Montreal, Canada
* Bogotá, Colombia
* Cairo, Egypt
* Cardiff, Wales, United Kingdom
*Lima Metropolitan Area
*List of people from Lima
*List of districts and neighborhoods of Lima
*List of sites of interest in the Lima Metropolitan area
* Nota etimológica: El topónimo Lima, Rodolfo Cerrón-Palomino, Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú
* Lima Monumento Histórico, Margarita Cubillas Soriano, Lima, 1996
;History
* Andrien, Kenneth. Crisis and decline: the Viceroyalty of Peru in the seventeenth century. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1985. ISBN 0-8263-0791-4
* Anna, Timothy. The fall of the royal government in Peru. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1979. ISBN 0-8032-1004-3
* Conlee, Christina, Jalh Dulanto, Carol Mackay and Charles Stanish. "Late Prehispanic sociopolitical complexity". In Helaine Silverman (ed.), Andean archaeology. Malden: Blackwell, 2004, pp. 209â236. ISBN 0-631-23400-4
* Dietz, Henry. Poverty and problem-solving under military rule: the urban poor in Lima, Peru. Austin : University of Texas Press, 1980. ISBN 0-292-76460-X
* Hemming, John. The conquest of the Incas. London: Macmillan, 1993. ISBN 0-333-51794-6
* Higgings, James. Lima. A cultural history. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005. ISBN 0-19-517891-2
* Instituto Nacional de EstadÃstica e Informática. Lima Metropolitana perfil socio-demográfico. Lima: INEI, 1996.
* Klarén, Peter. Peru: society and nationhood in the Andes. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000. ISBN 0-19-506928-5
* Ramón, Gabriel. "The script of urban surgery: Lima, 1850â1940". In Arturo Almandoz (ed.), Planning Latin America's capital cities, 1850â1950. New York: Routledge, 2002, pp. 170â192. ISBN 0-415-27265-3
* Walker, Charles. "The upper classes and their upper stories: architecture and the aftermath of the Lima earthquake of 1746". Hispanic American Historical Review 83 (1): 53â82 (February 2003).
;Demographics
* Instituto Nacional de EstadÃstica e Informática, Perfil Sociodemográfico del Perú. Lima: INEI, 2008.
* Municipality of Lima
* Geographia.com
* Maps
* Stock Exchange
*
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Lima | Is The GDP per capita in Lima $ 7,600 / ref )? | Yes. | data/set3/a4 | Lima
Lima is the capital and largest city of Peru. It is located in the valleys of the Chillón, RÃmac and LurÃn rivers, on a coast overlooking the Pacific Ocean. It forms a contiguous urban area with the seaport of Callao.
Lima was founded by Spanish conquistador Francisco Pizarro on January 18, 1535, as La Ciudad de los Reyes, or "The City of Kings." It became the most important city in the Spanish Viceroyalty of Peru and, after the Peruvian War of Independence, was made the capital of the Republic of Peru. Today around one-third of the Peruvian population lives in the metropolitan area.
According to early Spanish chronicles the Lima area was once called Ichma, after its original inhabitants. However, even before the Inca occupation of the area in the 15th century, a famous oracle in the RÃmac valley had come to be known by visitors as Limaq (limaq, pronounced , which means "talker" in coastal Quechua). This oracle was eventually destroyed by the Spanish and replaced with a church, but the name persisted in the local language, thus the chronicles show "LÃmac" replacing "Ychma" as the common name for the area. /ref>
Modern scholars speculate that the word "Lima" originated as the Spanish pronunciation of the native name Limaq. Linguistic evidence seems to support this theory as spoken Spanish consistently rejects stop consonants in word-final position. The city was founded in 1535 under the name City of the Kings ( ) because its foundation was decided on January 6, date of the feast of the Epiphany. Nevertheless, this name quickly fell into disuse and Lima became the city's name of choice; on the oldest Spanish maps of Peru, both Lima and Ciudad de los Reyes can be seen together as names for the city.
It is worth noting that the river that feeds Lima is called RÃmac, and many people erroneously assume that this is because its original Inca name is "Talking River" (the Incas spoke a highland variety of Quechua where the word for "talker" was pronounced ). However, the original inhabitants of the valley were not the Incas, and this name is actually an innovation arising from an effort by the Cuzco nobility in colonial times to standardize the toponym so that it would conform to the phonology of Cuzco Quechua. Later, as the the original inhabitants of the valley died out and the local Quechua became extinct, the Cuzco pronunciation prevailed. In modern times, Spanish-speaking locals do not see the connection between the name of their city and the name of the river that runs through it. They often assume that the valley is named after the river; however, Spanish documents from the colonial period show the opposite to be true.
Lima City Walls were build between 1684 and 1687 by viceroy Melchor de Navarra y Rocafull.
In the pre-Columbian era, the location of what is now the city of Lima was inhabited by several amerindian groups under the Ychsma polity, which was incorporated into the Inca Empire in the 15th century. Conlee et al, "Late Prehispanic sociopolitical complexity", p. 218. In 1532, a group of Spanish conquistadors led by Francisco Pizarro defeated the Inca ruler Atahualpa and took over his Empire. As the Spanish Crown had named Pizarro governor of the lands he conquered, Hemming, The conquest, p. 28. he chose the RÃmac valley to found his capital on January 18, 1535 as Ciudad de los Reyes (City of the Kings). Klarén, Peru, p. 39. In August 1536, the new city was besieged by the troops of Manco Inca, however, the Spaniards and their native allies defeated the Inca rebels. Hemming, The conquest, p. 203â206.
Balconies were a major feature of Lima's architecture during the colonial period.
Over the next few years, Lima gained prestige as it was designated capital of the Viceroyalty of Peru and site of a Real Audiencia in 1543. Klarén, Peru, p. 87. During the next century Lima flourished as the center of an extensive trade network which integrated the Viceroyalty with the Americas, Europe and the Far East. Andrien, Crisis and decline, pp. 11â13. However, the city was not free from dangers; powerful earthquakes destroyed most of the city in 1687. Andrien, Crisis and decline, p. 26. A second threat was the presence of pirates and privateers in the Pacific Ocean, which led to the building of the Lima City Walls between 1684 and 1687. Higgings, Lima, p. 45. The 1687 earthquake marked a turning point in the history of Lima as it coincided with a recession in trade and economic competition by other cities such as Buenos Aires. Andrien, Crisis and decline, p. 28.
In 1746, a powerful earthquake severely damaged Lima and destroyed Callao, forcing a massive rebuilding effort under Viceroy José Antonio Manso de Velasco. Walker, "The upper classes", pp. 53â55. In the later half of the 18th century, the ideas of the Enlightenment on public health and social control shaped the development of the city. Ramón, "The script", pp. 173â174. During this period, Lima was adversely affected by the Bourbon Reforms as it lost its monopoly on overseas trade and its control over the important mining region of Upper Peru. Anna, Fall of the royal government, pp. 4â5. This economic decline made the city's elite dependent on royal and ecclesiastical appointment and thus, reluctant to advocate independence. Anna, Fall of the royal government, pp. 23â24.
A combined expedition of Argentine and Chilean patriots under General José de San MartÃn managed to land south of Lima in 1820 but did not attack the city. Faced with a naval blockade and the action of guerrillas on land, Viceroy José de la Serna was forced to evacuate the city on July 1821 to save the Royalist army. Anna, Fall of the royal government, pp. 176â177. Fearing a popular uprising and lacking any means to impose order, the city council invited San MartÃn to enter Lima and signed a Declaration of Independence at his request. Anna, Fall of the royal government, pp. 178â180. However, the war was not over; in the next two years the city changed hands several times and suffered exactions from both sides.
The Jiron de la Union was Lima's most important street for the first half of the 20th century
After the war of independence, Lima became the capital of the Republic of Peru but economic stagnation and political turmoil brought urban development to a halt. This hiatus ended in the 1850s, when increased public and private revenues from guano exports led to a rapid expansion of the city. Klarén, Peru, p. 169. However, the export-led economic expansion also widened the gap between rich and poor, fostering social unrest. Klarén, Peru, p. 170. During the 1879â1883 War of the Pacific, Chilean troops occupied Lima, looting public museums, libraries and educational institutions. Higgings, Lima, p. 107. At the same time, angry mobs attacked wealthy citizens and the Asian population; sacking their properties and businesses. Klarén, Peru, p. 192. After the war, the city underwent a process of renewal and expansion from the 1890s up to the 1920s. During this period the urban layout was modified by the construction of big avenues which crisscrossed the city and connected it with neighboring towns. Ramón, "The script", pp. 180â182.
In 1940, an earthquake destroyed most of the city, which at that time was mostly built out of adobe and quincha. In the 1940s, Lima started a period of rapid growth spurred by immigration from the Andean regions of Peru. Population, estimated at 0.6 million in 1940, reached 1.9M by 1960 and 4.8M by 1980. Instituto Nacional de EstadÃstica e Informática, Lima Metropolitana perfil socio-demográfico. Retrieved on August 12, 2007 At the start of this period, the urban area was confined to a triangular area bounded by the city's historic center, Callao and Chorrillos; in the following decades settlements spread to the north, beyond the RÃmac River, to the east, along the Central Highway, and to the south. Dietz, Poverty and problem-solving, p. 35. Immigrants, at first confined to slums in downtown Lima, led this expansion through large-scale land invasions which gave rise to the proliferation of shanty towns, known as pueblos jóvenes. Dietz, Poverty and problem-solving, p. 36.
Lima seen from Spot satellite
The urban area of Lima covers about . It is located on mostly flat terrain in the Peruvian coastal plain, within the valleys of the Chillón, RÃmac and LurÃn rivers. The city slopes gently from the shores of the Pacific Ocean into valleys and mountain slopes located as high as above mean sea level. Within the city exist isolated hills which are not connected to the surrounding hill chains, such as El Agustino, San Cosme, El Pino, La Milla, Muleria and Pro hills. The San Cristobal hill in the Rimac district, which faces directly north of the downtown area, is the local extreme of an Andean hill outgrowth.
Metropolitan Lima has an area of , of which (31%) comprise the actual city and (69%) the city outskirts. The urban area extends around from north to south and around from west to east. The city center is located inland at the shore of the Rimac river, a vital resource for the city, since it carries what will become drinking water for its inhabitants and fuels the hydro electrical dams that provide electricity to the area. While no official administrative definition for the city exists, it is usually considered to be composed of the central 30 out of the 43 districts of Lima Province, corresponding to an urban area centered around the historic Cercado de Lima district. The city is the core of the Lima Metropolitan Area, one of the ten largest metropolitan areas in the Americas. Lima is the second largest city in the world located in a desert, after Cairo, Egypt.
Weather averages for Lima International Airport.
Lima's climate is quite mild, despite being located in the Tropics. Lima has a subtropical and desert climate, yet the microclimate also makes it very humid throughout the year. The temperatures vary from mild to warm (neither very cold or hot).The average temperature in winter ranges from to . These days usually come accompanied by continuous overcast skies, fog, and mist. In the summer, the high averages around with lows around . During El Niño events, the climate of Lima gets severely disrupted, the water temperatures along the coast which usually average around 17 - 19 °C (65 - 68 °F) get much warmer (as in 1998 when the water temperature reached 26 °C (79 °F)), which causes the high and low temperatures to rise by several degrees. Such was the case when Lima hit its all-time record high of
Relative humidity is always very high particularly in the mornings /ref> , and produces brief morning fog from June to December and persistent low clouds from May to November. Sunny, less moist and warm summers follow from December to April and are followed by cloudy, damp and cool winters (June to October). The all-time record low in the metropolitan area is .
Rainfall is very low. The severely low rainfall impacts on water supply in the city. /ref> Inland locations receive 1 to of rainfall, which accumulates mainly during the winter months. Summer rain occurs in the form of isolated light and brief afternoon or evening events, leftover from afternoon storms that generate over the Andes. The peak of the 'rainy season,' which does not produce "rain" in the true sense of the word, occurs during winter when late-night/morning drizzle events (locally called 'garúa','llovizna' or 'camanchacas') become frequent, leaving a light coating of dampness on the ground. All these climatic phenomena arise from the combination of semi-permanent coastal upwelling and the presence of the cold Humboldt Current just offshore.
A Moorish arch built by Spanish immigrants in Lima /ref>
Lima ranks as the 17th most populous city in the world with a municipal population of 7,605,743, and 8,472,935 for the metropolitan area and a population density of as of 2007. Instituto Nacional de EstadÃstica e Informática, Perfil Sociodemográfico del Perú pp. 29â30, 32, 34. Its population features a very complex mix of racial and ethnic groups. Traditionally, Mestizos of mixed European (mostly Spanish) and Amerindian descent are the largest contingent. The second group are White Caucasians, mainly Spanish, Italians, Germans, French, English, Polish and Eastern Europeans. /ref> /ref> Also there is a large number of Jews, and Middle Easterners. Asians make up a large number of the metropolitan population, especially of Chinese (Cantonese) and Japanese descent. Afro-Peruvians, whose African ancestors were initially brought to the region as slaves, are yet another part of the city's ethnic quilt. Lima has by far the largest Chinese community in Latin America. /ref>
The Archbishop's Palace of Lima along with the Cathedral of Lima, the seat of the Roman Catholic Church in Peru.
The first settlement in what would become Lima was made up of only 117 housing blocks. In 1562, another district was built at the other side of the Rimac River and in 1610, the first stone bridge was built. Lima had, at this point in time, around 1600 inhabitants. In 1861, the amount of inhabitants surpassed 100,000, and by 1927 this amount was doubled.
During the early twentieth century thousands of immigrants came to the city, a significant number of French, Italians and Germans, many of them had been adapting to the Peruvian society. They organized in social clubs, and they built their own schools; for example, The American-Peruvian school which is located in Miraflores, The French Alliance (Alianza Francesa de Lima), famous Lycée Franco-Péruvien and the hospital Maison de Sante, the British-Peruvian school in Monterrico, and also several German-Peruvian schools.
They also influenced Peruvian cuisine, the Italians in particular exerting a strong influence in the Miraflores and San Isidro areas with their restaurants, called Trattorias.
A great number of Chinese immigrants, and a lesser amount of Japanese, came to Lima and established themselves in the Barrios Altos neighborhood near downtown Lima, coming in order to work on farms and domestic services. Lima residents refer to their Chinatown as "Calle Capon," and the city's ubiquitous Chifa restaurants a small, sit-down, usually Chinese-run restaurant serving the Peruvian spin on Chinese cuisine can be found by the dozen in this Chinese enclave.
A pueblo joven in the southern outskirts of Lima in 1997
The 1950s saw the exponential increase of the city inhabitants, most of them Andean immigrants and their descendants, who settled in the northern and southern outskirts. The political and economic instability in Peru during the latter half of the twentieth century created unprecedented poverty and violence in the towns of the countryside or Andean highlands, forcing hundreds of thousands of peasants of Amerindian descent to migrate to Lima thus greatly augmenting Lima's population. Instituto Nacional de Estadistica e Informatica In the 70âs, the lacking transportation facilities for the newcomers who had to travel for hours on end to reach the city center became a problem, and it was decided that Lima should not expand any further.
Buildings in the financial district of San Isidro
Lima is the industrial and financial center of Peru Infoplease. Lima. Retrieved on December 8, 2008. , home to many national companies. It accounts for more than two thirds of Peru's industrial production AttractionGuide. Lima Attractions. Retrieved on December 8, 2008. and most of its tertiary sector.
The Metropolitan area, with around 7000 factories /ref>, spearheads the industrial development of the country, thanks to the quantity and quality of the available workforce, cheap infrastructure and the mostly developed routes and highways in the city. The most relevant industrial sectors are textiles, clothing and food. Chemicals, fish, leather and oil derivatives are also manufactured and/or processed in Lima /ref>. The financial district is located in the district of San Isidro, while much of the industrial activity takes place in the area stretching west of Downtown Lima to the airport in Callao.
Industrialization began to take hold in Lima in 1930s and by 1950s, through import substitution policies, by 1950 manufacturing made up 14% of the GNP. In the late 1950s, up to 70% of consumer goods were manufactured in Peruvian, and primarily Limean, factories. /ref>
The Callao seaport is one of the main fishing and commerce ports in South America, with 75% of the country's imports and 25% of its exports /ref> using it as their entry/departure point. The main export goods leaving the country through Callao are oil, steel, silver, zinc, cotton, sugar and coffee.
A building in downtown Lima's financial district
In 2004, Lima's GDP represented 45% of the country's GDP (5% more than the previous year). The GDP per capita in Lima is $7,600 /ref>. Most of the foreign companies operating in the country have settled in Lima, which has led to the previously mentioned concentration of economic and financial activity on the city.
There has been a noticeable increase in slight industries, services and high technologies. In 2007, the Peruvian economy grew 9%, the largest growth rate in all of South America which was spearheaded by economic policies originating in Lima. CIA Factbook .The Lima Stock Exchange grew 185.24% in 2006 Bolsa de Valores de Lima and in 2007 grew 168.3% Bolsa de Valores de Lima making it one of the fastest growing stock exchanges in the world. In 2006, the Lima Stock Exchange was the most profitable in the world. /ref> The unemployment rate in metropolitan area is 7.2%.
The Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Summit and the Latin America, the Caribbean and the European Union Summit were hosted by the city of Lima.
Lima is headquarters to many major banks such as Banco de Crédito del Perú, Interbank, Bank of the Nation, Banco Continental, Banco Interamericano de Finanzas, Banco Finaciero, Banco de Comercio, MiBanco, and Banco del Trabajo. It is also a regional headquarters to Standard Chartered. Major insurance coorperations based in Lima include Rimac Seguros, Mapfre Peru, Interseguro, Pacifico, Protecta, and La Positiva. /ref>
The Government Palace in downtown Lima.Headquarters of the Andean Community of Nations
Lima is the capital city of the Republic of Peru and the department of Lima. As such, it is home to the three branches of the Government of Peru. The executive branch is headquartered in the Government Palace, located in the Plaza Mayor. The legislative branch is headquartered in the Legislative Palace and is home to the Congress of Peru. The Judicial branch is headquartered in the Palace of Justice and is home to the Supreme Court of Peru.
Likewise, all the ministries are located in the city of Lima. In international government, the city of Lima is home to the headquarters of the Andean Community of Nations and the South American Community of Nations, along with other regional and international organizations.
The city is roughly equivalent to the Province of Lima, which is subdivided into 43 districts. The Metropolitan Municipality of Lima is utmost authority of the entire city while each district further has it's own local government. Unlike the rest of the country, the Metropolitan Municipality, although a provincial municipality, acts as and has functions similar to a regional government, as it does not belong to any of the 25 regions of Peru.
The Palace of Justice, seat of the judicial branch
The Palace of Justice in Lima is seat of the Supreme Court of Justice the highest judicial court in Peru with jurisdiction over the entire territory of Peru.
Lima is also seat of two of the 28 second highest or Superior Courts of Justice. The first and oldest Superior Court in Lima is the Superior Court of Justice of Lima belonging to the Judicial District of Lima. Due to the judicial organization of Peru, the highest concentration of courts is located in Lima despite the fact that it's judicial district only has jurisdiction over 35 of the 43 districts of Lima. Judicial Power of Peru. Superior Court of Lima. Retrieved 3 December 2008. . The Superior Court of the Cono Norte is the second Superior Court located in Lima and is part of the Judicial District of North Lima. This judicial district has jurisdiction over the remaining eight districts all located in northern Lima. Judicial Power of Peru. Superior Court of North Lima. Retrieved 3 December 2008.
Paseo de los Heroes Navales
Lima's architecture is characterized by a mix in styles as reflected from shifts between trends throughout various time periods of the city's history. Examples of early colonial architecture include such structures as the Monastery of San Francisco, the Cathedral of Lima and the Torre Tagle Palace. These constructions are generally influenced by the Spanish baroque, /ref> Spanish Neoclassicism]], /ref> and Spanish Colonial /ref> styles. After independence, a gradual shift towards the neoclassical and Art Nouveau styles took place. Many of these constructions were greatly influenced by French architectural styles. /ref>Many government buildings as well as major cultural institutions were contracted in this architectural time period. During 1960s, constructions utilizing the brutalist style began appearing in Lima due to the military government of Juan Velasco. /ref> Examples of this architecture are the Museum of the Nation and the Ministry of Defense. The 21st century has seen the appearance of glass skyscrapers particularly around the city's financial district. /ref>
Lima's urban setting is characterized by green-lined streets as well as the abundance of plazas throughout the city. More important streets usually contain wider green areas and plaza's usually contain monuments or statues of historical figures of importance to Peruvian history. Parque Universitario in downtown Lima
The largest parks of Lima are located near the downtown area such as the Park of the Reserve, Park of the Exposition, /ref> Campo de Marte, and the University Park. The Park of the Reserve is home to the largest fountain complex in the world known as the Magical Circuit of Water. /ref>
A number of large parks lie outside the city center, including Reducto Park, Pantanos de Villa, The Golf, Park of the Legends, the malecon of Miraflores, and the Golf of the Incas. /ref>The street grid of the city of Lima, is laid out with a system of plazas of which serve a purpose similar to roundabouts or junctions. In addition to this practical purpose, plazas serve as one of Lima's principal green spaces and contain a variety of different types of architecture ranging from monuments to statues, and water fountains. /ref>
Strongly influenced by European, Andean, and Asian culture, Lima is a melting pot of cultures due to colonization, immigration, and indigenous influences. /ref>
Like many other world capitals, Lima is home to prestigious museums many of which are world renown. The Historic Center of Lima was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1988. Limean gastronomy is known to be among the best in the world and the city is known as the Gastronomical Capital of the Americas. Lima's gastronomy is a mix of Spanish, Andean, and Asian culinary traditions. /ref>
Lima's beaches, located along the northern and southern ends of the city, are heavily visited during the summer months. Numerous restaurants, clubs and hotels have been opened in these places to serve the many beachgoers. Lima has a vibrant and active theater scene as there are many theaters presenting not only classic theater, but also The Golf cultural presentations, modern theater, experimental theater, dramas, dance performances, and theater for children. Lima is home to many important theaters such as the Municipal Theater, Segura Theater, Japanese-Peruvian Theater, Marsano Theater, British theater, Theater of the PUCP Cultural Center, and the Yuyachkani Theater. /ref>
Known as Peruvian Coastal Spanish, Lima's Spanish is characterized by the lack of strong innotations as found in many other regions of the Spanish-speaking world. It is heavily influenced by the Spanish spoken in Castile as throughout the colonial era, the colonial Spanish nobility was based in Lima, of which most originated from Castile. /ref> Limean Spanish is also characterized by the lack of voseo, a trait present in the dialects of many other Latin American countries. This is due to the fact that voseo was primarily utilized by the lower socioeconomic classes of Spain, a social group that did not begin to appear in Lima until the late colonial era. Limean Spanish is often distinguished by its relative clarity The Museum of Art in comparison to other Latin American dialects. Limean Spanish has been influenced by a number of immigrant groups including Italians, Andalusians, Chinese and Japanese. It also has been influenced by anglicisms as a result of globalization as well as by Andean Spanish due to recent immigration from the Andean highlands to Lima. /ref>
Lima is home to the highest concentration of museums of the country, the most notable of which being the Museo Nacional de ArqueologÃa AntropologÃa e Historia del Perú, Museum of Art of Lima, the Museum of Natural History, the Museum of the Nation, the Museum of Italian Art, and the Museum of Gold, and the Larco Museum. These museums mostly focus on art, pre-Colombian cultures, natural history, science, and religion. /ref>
Lima, as the point of entry to the country, has developed an important tourism industry, characterized by it's historic center, archeological sites, nightlife, museums, art galleries, festivals, and popular traditions. Lima is home to an ample range of restaurants and bars where local as well as international cuisine is served. /ref>
The Historic Center of Lima, made up of the districts of Lima and Rimac, was declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1988 due to its importance during the colonial era leaving a testimony to architectural achievement. /ref> Some examples of this historical colonial architecture include the Monastery of San Francisco, the Plaza Mayor, the Cathedral, Covenant of Santo Domingo, the Palace of Torre Tagle, and much more.
A tour of the city's churches is a popular circuit among tourists. A short jaunt through the central district goes through many churches dating from as early as the 16th and 17th centuries the most noteworthy of which being the Cathedral of Lima and the Monastery of San Francisco, of which are said to be connected by their subterrestrial catacombs. /ref>Both of these churches contain paintings from various schools of art, Sevilian tile, and finely sculpted wood furnishings. Also notable is the Sanctuary of Las Nazarenas, the point of origin for the Lord of Miracles, whose festivities in the month of October constitute the most important religious event in Lima and arguably all of Peru. Some sections of the Lima City Walls still remain and are frequented by tourists. These examples of medieval Spanish fortifications were utilized to defend the city from attacks by pirates and privateers. /ref>
Beaches are visited during the summer months, which are located along the Pan-American Highway, to the south of the city in districts such as Lurin, Punta Hermosa, San Bartolo and Asia. Many restaurants, nightclubs, lounges, bars, clubs, and hotels have developed in said places to cater to beachgoers. /ref>
The suburban districts of Cieneguilla, Pachacamac, and the city of Chosica, are important tourist attractions among locals as they are located at a higher elevation than Lima therefore receiving sunshine in winter months, something that the city of Lima frequently lacks. /ref>
Lima is known as Gastronomical Capital of the Americas. A center of immigration and the center of the Spanish Viceroyalty, Lima has incorporated unique dishes brought from the arrival of the Spanish Conquistadors and the receiving of many waves of immigrants: African, European, Chinese, and Japanese. ref> /ref> Besides international immigrationâa large portion of which happened in Limaâthere has been, since the second half of the 20th century, a strong internal flow from rural areas to cities, in particular to Lima. /ref>This has strongly influenced Lima's cuisine with the incorporation of the immigrant's ingredients and techniques (for example, the Chinese extensive use of rice or the Japanese approach to preparing raw fish). The genres of restaurants in Lima include Creole food, Chifas, Cebicherias, and Pollerias. Peruvian cuisine, widely represented in Lima, holds various Guinness World Records, for its diversity and quality. /ref>
The Estadio Monumental "U" home of Universitario de Deportes
The city of Lima has varied sports venues for soccer, volleyball and basketball, many of which are located within private clubs. A popular sport among Limeans is fronton, a racquet sport similar to squash invented in Lima. The city is home to seven international-class golf links. Equestrian is popular in Lima with many private clubs as well as the Hipódromo de Monterrico horse racing track. The most popular sport in Lima by far is soccer with many professional club teams being located in the city.
/ref>
1. Central Lima
2. Residential Lima
3. Cono Norte
4. Cono Sur
5. Cono Este
6. Beach areas
7. Callao
Lima is made up of thirty densely-populated districts, each headed by a local mayor and the Mayor of Lima, whose authority extends to these and the thirteen outer districts of the Lima province.
The city's historic centre is located in the Cercado de Lima district, locally known as simply Lima, or as "El Centro" ("Downtown"), and it is home to most of the vestiges of Lima's colonial past, the Presidential Palace ( ), the Metropolitan Municipality of Lima ( ), and dozens of hotels, some operating and some defunct, that used to cater to the national and international elite.
The upscale San Isidro district is the city's financial center. It is home to many prominent figures such as politicians and celebrities. It is also where the main banks of Peru and branch offices of world banks are headquartered. San Isidro has many parks, including Parque El Olivar, which has olive trees that were brought from Spain during the seventeenth century.
Another upscale district is Miraflores, which has many luxury hotels, shops and restaurants. Miraflores has more parks and green areas in the south of Lima than most other districts. Larcomar, a popular shopping mall and entertainment center built on cliffs overlooking the Pacific Ocean, featuring bars, dance clubs, movie theaters, cafes, shops, boutiques and galleries, is also located in this district.
La Molina and San Borja, home to the American Embassy and the exclusive Club Polo Lima respectively, are the other two wealthy districts of Lima.
The most densely-populated districts of Lima lie in the northern and southern ends of the city (Spanish: Cono Norte and Cono Sur, respectively), and they are mostly composed of Andean immigrants who arrived during the mid and late 20th century looking for better living standards and economic opportunities, or as refugees of the country's internal conflict with the Shining Path during the late 80s and early 90s. In the case of Cono Norte(North Lima), certain shopping malls like Megaplaza and Royal Plaza have been recently built in the district of Los Olivos, which is the most residential neighborhood in the Northern part of Lima. Most of the inhabitants of this area belong to the middle class.
Barranco, which borders Miraflores by the Pacific Ocean, is known as the city's bohemian district, home or once home of many Peruvian writers and intellectuals like Mario Vargas Llosa, Chabuca Granda and Alfredo Bryce Echenique. This district has many acclaimed restaurants, music venues called "peñas" featuring the traditional folk music of coastal Peru (in Spanish, "música criolla"), and beautiful Victorian-style chalets. It along with Miraflores serves as the home to the foreign nightlife scene.
The University of Lima
Home to a range of universities, institutions, and schools, Lima has the highest concentration of institutions of higher learning in the country and is home to schools with world-wide recognition. The National University of San Marcos, founded on May 12, 1551 during Spanish colonial regime, is the oldest continuously functioning university in the Americas. /ref>
Other public universities also play key roles in teaching and research, such as the Universidad Nacional Agraria La Molina where ex-president Alberto Fujimori once taught, Universidad Nacional de IngenierÃa and the National University of Callao.
The Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú, established in 1917, is the oldest private university. Other private institutions that are located in the city are Universidad de Lima, Universidad CientÃfica del Sur, Universidad San MartÃn de Porres, Universidad del Pacifico, Universidad Inca Garcilaso de la Vega, Universidad Peruana Cayetano Heredia, Universidad Peruana de Ciencias Aplicadas and Universidad Ricardo Palma. /ref>
The Jorge Chávez International Airport
Lima is served by the Jorge Chavez International Airport, located in Callao. It is the largest airport of the country with the largest amount of domestic and international air traffic. It also serves as a major hub in the Latin American air network. Additionally, Lima possesses five other airports: the Las Palmas Air Force Base, Collique Airport, and runways in Santa MarÃa del Mar, San Bartolo and Chilca. /ref>
Lima is connected by highway to every country that borders Peru. Because of its location on the country's central coast, Lima is an important junction in Peru's highway system, three of the major highways originate in Lima.
*The Northern Panamerican Highway, this highway extends more than to the border with Ecuador connecting the northern districts of Lima with many major cities along the northern Peruvian coast.
*The Central Highway ( ), this highway connects the eastern districts of Lima with many cities in central Peru. The highway extends with its terminus at the city of Pucallpa near Brazil.
*The Southern Panamerican Highway, this highway connects the southern districts of Lima to cities on the southern coast. The highway extends to the border with Chile.
The proximity of Lima to the port of Callao allows Callao to act as the metropolitan area's foremost port. Callao concentrates nearly all of the maritime transport of the metropolitan area. There is, however, a small port in LurÃn whose transit mostly is accounted for by oil tankers due to a refinery being located nearby. Nonetheless, maritime transport inside Lima's city limits is relatively insignificant compared to that of Callao, the nation's leading port and one of Latin America's largest. There have been plans to build a new megaport on the island of San Lorenzo known as the San Lorenzo Megaport Project. This port is planned to become the largest of Latin America.
Lima is connected to the Central Andean region by the Ferrocarril Central Andino which runs from Lima through the departments of Junin, Huancavelica, Pasco, and Huanuco. /ref> Major cities along this line include Huancayo, La Oroya, Huancavelica, and Cerro de Pasco. Another inactive line runs from Lima northwards to the city of Huacho. /ref>
The urban transport system is composed of over 652 transit routes /ref> which are served by buses, microbuses, and combis. The system is unorganized and is characterized by the lack of formality. The service is run by 464 private companies which are poorly regulated by the local government. Fares average at around one sol or $0.30 USD. Due to the absence of a centralized bus terminal, individual bus companies use private terminals throughout Lima. /ref>
The Metropolitan Transportation System is a transport project which plans to integrate the Independent Corridor of Mass-Transit Buses known by its Spanish initials as (COSAC 1). This system plans to link the principal points of the Lima Metropolitan Area and the first phase of this project is already in development with the construction of a thirty three kilometer long line from Comas to Chorrillos.The Lima Metro mass transit system This system is similar to the TransMilenio of Bogota, Colombia. /ref>
Automobiles, known as colectivos, render express service on some major roads of the Lima Metropolitan Area. The colectivos signal their specific destination with a sign on the their windshield. Their routes are not generally publicitized but are understood by frequent users. The cost is generally higher than congenital public transport however they cover greater distances at greater speeds due to the lack of stops. /ref>
The Lima Metro, a above ground mass transit system, is under construction and one line has been completed while another six are scheduled for construction. Line 1 is also scheduled to be extended to the city's center, uniting Villa el Salvador with downtown Lima in a matter of only forty minutes, a trip which currently lasts one hour and forty minutes with the current public transport system. www.trenurbano.gob.pe/
The Via Expresa
Taxis in the city are relatively cheap. There are no meters so drivers are told the desired destination and the fare is agreed upon before the passenger enters the taxi. Taxis vary in sizes from small four door compacts to large vans. They are virtually everywhere, accounting for a large part of the car stock. In many cases they are just a private car with a taxi sticker on the windshield. Additionally, there are several companies that provide taxi service on-call. /ref>
Eighty percent of the city's history having occurred during the pre-automobile era, Lima's road network is based mostly on large divided avenues rather than freeways. In recent times however, Lima has developed a freeway network now made up of nine freeways which are, the Via Expresa Paseo de la Republica, Via Expresa Javier Prado, Via Expresa Grau, Panamericana Norte, Panamericana Sur, Carretera Central, Via Expresa Callao, Autopista Chillon Trapiche, and the Autopista Ramiro Priale. /ref> /ref>
Skyline from the Costa Verde
List of sister cities, designated by Sister Cities International: Sister Cities International, Online Directory: Peru, Americas. Retrieved July 14, 2007
* Arequipa, Peru
* Cusco, Peru
* Piura, Peru
* New York City, United States
* Los Angeles, United States
* Austin, United States, since 1981
* Cleveland, United States
* Miami, United States
* Bordeaux, France, since 1957
* Beijing, China, since November 21, 1983Buildings in the financial district
* Madrid, Spain
* Mexico City, Mexico
* São Paulo, Brazil
* Tegucigalpa, Honduras
* Akhisar, Turkey
* Buenos Aires, Argentina
* Guadalajara, Mexico
* Montreal, Canada
* Bogotá, Colombia
* Cairo, Egypt
* Cardiff, Wales, United Kingdom
*Lima Metropolitan Area
*List of people from Lima
*List of districts and neighborhoods of Lima
*List of sites of interest in the Lima Metropolitan area
* Nota etimológica: El topónimo Lima, Rodolfo Cerrón-Palomino, Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú
* Lima Monumento Histórico, Margarita Cubillas Soriano, Lima, 1996
;History
* Andrien, Kenneth. Crisis and decline: the Viceroyalty of Peru in the seventeenth century. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1985. ISBN 0-8263-0791-4
* Anna, Timothy. The fall of the royal government in Peru. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1979. ISBN 0-8032-1004-3
* Conlee, Christina, Jalh Dulanto, Carol Mackay and Charles Stanish. "Late Prehispanic sociopolitical complexity". In Helaine Silverman (ed.), Andean archaeology. Malden: Blackwell, 2004, pp. 209â236. ISBN 0-631-23400-4
* Dietz, Henry. Poverty and problem-solving under military rule: the urban poor in Lima, Peru. Austin : University of Texas Press, 1980. ISBN 0-292-76460-X
* Hemming, John. The conquest of the Incas. London: Macmillan, 1993. ISBN 0-333-51794-6
* Higgings, James. Lima. A cultural history. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005. ISBN 0-19-517891-2
* Instituto Nacional de EstadÃstica e Informática. Lima Metropolitana perfil socio-demográfico. Lima: INEI, 1996.
* Klarén, Peter. Peru: society and nationhood in the Andes. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000. ISBN 0-19-506928-5
* Ramón, Gabriel. "The script of urban surgery: Lima, 1850â1940". In Arturo Almandoz (ed.), Planning Latin America's capital cities, 1850â1950. New York: Routledge, 2002, pp. 170â192. ISBN 0-415-27265-3
* Walker, Charles. "The upper classes and their upper stories: architecture and the aftermath of the Lima earthquake of 1746". Hispanic American Historical Review 83 (1): 53â82 (February 2003).
;Demographics
* Instituto Nacional de EstadÃstica e Informática, Perfil Sociodemográfico del Perú. Lima: INEI, 2008.
* Municipality of Lima
* Geographia.com
* Maps
* Stock Exchange
*
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Lima | The Spanish Crown named Pizarro governor of what? | Hemming. | data/set3/a4 | Lima
Lima is the capital and largest city of Peru. It is located in the valleys of the Chillón, RÃmac and LurÃn rivers, on a coast overlooking the Pacific Ocean. It forms a contiguous urban area with the seaport of Callao.
Lima was founded by Spanish conquistador Francisco Pizarro on January 18, 1535, as La Ciudad de los Reyes, or "The City of Kings." It became the most important city in the Spanish Viceroyalty of Peru and, after the Peruvian War of Independence, was made the capital of the Republic of Peru. Today around one-third of the Peruvian population lives in the metropolitan area.
According to early Spanish chronicles the Lima area was once called Ichma, after its original inhabitants. However, even before the Inca occupation of the area in the 15th century, a famous oracle in the RÃmac valley had come to be known by visitors as Limaq (limaq, pronounced , which means "talker" in coastal Quechua). This oracle was eventually destroyed by the Spanish and replaced with a church, but the name persisted in the local language, thus the chronicles show "LÃmac" replacing "Ychma" as the common name for the area. /ref>
Modern scholars speculate that the word "Lima" originated as the Spanish pronunciation of the native name Limaq. Linguistic evidence seems to support this theory as spoken Spanish consistently rejects stop consonants in word-final position. The city was founded in 1535 under the name City of the Kings ( ) because its foundation was decided on January 6, date of the feast of the Epiphany. Nevertheless, this name quickly fell into disuse and Lima became the city's name of choice; on the oldest Spanish maps of Peru, both Lima and Ciudad de los Reyes can be seen together as names for the city.
It is worth noting that the river that feeds Lima is called RÃmac, and many people erroneously assume that this is because its original Inca name is "Talking River" (the Incas spoke a highland variety of Quechua where the word for "talker" was pronounced ). However, the original inhabitants of the valley were not the Incas, and this name is actually an innovation arising from an effort by the Cuzco nobility in colonial times to standardize the toponym so that it would conform to the phonology of Cuzco Quechua. Later, as the the original inhabitants of the valley died out and the local Quechua became extinct, the Cuzco pronunciation prevailed. In modern times, Spanish-speaking locals do not see the connection between the name of their city and the name of the river that runs through it. They often assume that the valley is named after the river; however, Spanish documents from the colonial period show the opposite to be true.
Lima City Walls were build between 1684 and 1687 by viceroy Melchor de Navarra y Rocafull.
In the pre-Columbian era, the location of what is now the city of Lima was inhabited by several amerindian groups under the Ychsma polity, which was incorporated into the Inca Empire in the 15th century. Conlee et al, "Late Prehispanic sociopolitical complexity", p. 218. In 1532, a group of Spanish conquistadors led by Francisco Pizarro defeated the Inca ruler Atahualpa and took over his Empire. As the Spanish Crown had named Pizarro governor of the lands he conquered, Hemming, The conquest, p. 28. he chose the RÃmac valley to found his capital on January 18, 1535 as Ciudad de los Reyes (City of the Kings). Klarén, Peru, p. 39. In August 1536, the new city was besieged by the troops of Manco Inca, however, the Spaniards and their native allies defeated the Inca rebels. Hemming, The conquest, p. 203â206.
Balconies were a major feature of Lima's architecture during the colonial period.
Over the next few years, Lima gained prestige as it was designated capital of the Viceroyalty of Peru and site of a Real Audiencia in 1543. Klarén, Peru, p. 87. During the next century Lima flourished as the center of an extensive trade network which integrated the Viceroyalty with the Americas, Europe and the Far East. Andrien, Crisis and decline, pp. 11â13. However, the city was not free from dangers; powerful earthquakes destroyed most of the city in 1687. Andrien, Crisis and decline, p. 26. A second threat was the presence of pirates and privateers in the Pacific Ocean, which led to the building of the Lima City Walls between 1684 and 1687. Higgings, Lima, p. 45. The 1687 earthquake marked a turning point in the history of Lima as it coincided with a recession in trade and economic competition by other cities such as Buenos Aires. Andrien, Crisis and decline, p. 28.
In 1746, a powerful earthquake severely damaged Lima and destroyed Callao, forcing a massive rebuilding effort under Viceroy José Antonio Manso de Velasco. Walker, "The upper classes", pp. 53â55. In the later half of the 18th century, the ideas of the Enlightenment on public health and social control shaped the development of the city. Ramón, "The script", pp. 173â174. During this period, Lima was adversely affected by the Bourbon Reforms as it lost its monopoly on overseas trade and its control over the important mining region of Upper Peru. Anna, Fall of the royal government, pp. 4â5. This economic decline made the city's elite dependent on royal and ecclesiastical appointment and thus, reluctant to advocate independence. Anna, Fall of the royal government, pp. 23â24.
A combined expedition of Argentine and Chilean patriots under General José de San MartÃn managed to land south of Lima in 1820 but did not attack the city. Faced with a naval blockade and the action of guerrillas on land, Viceroy José de la Serna was forced to evacuate the city on July 1821 to save the Royalist army. Anna, Fall of the royal government, pp. 176â177. Fearing a popular uprising and lacking any means to impose order, the city council invited San MartÃn to enter Lima and signed a Declaration of Independence at his request. Anna, Fall of the royal government, pp. 178â180. However, the war was not over; in the next two years the city changed hands several times and suffered exactions from both sides.
The Jiron de la Union was Lima's most important street for the first half of the 20th century
After the war of independence, Lima became the capital of the Republic of Peru but economic stagnation and political turmoil brought urban development to a halt. This hiatus ended in the 1850s, when increased public and private revenues from guano exports led to a rapid expansion of the city. Klarén, Peru, p. 169. However, the export-led economic expansion also widened the gap between rich and poor, fostering social unrest. Klarén, Peru, p. 170. During the 1879â1883 War of the Pacific, Chilean troops occupied Lima, looting public museums, libraries and educational institutions. Higgings, Lima, p. 107. At the same time, angry mobs attacked wealthy citizens and the Asian population; sacking their properties and businesses. Klarén, Peru, p. 192. After the war, the city underwent a process of renewal and expansion from the 1890s up to the 1920s. During this period the urban layout was modified by the construction of big avenues which crisscrossed the city and connected it with neighboring towns. Ramón, "The script", pp. 180â182.
In 1940, an earthquake destroyed most of the city, which at that time was mostly built out of adobe and quincha. In the 1940s, Lima started a period of rapid growth spurred by immigration from the Andean regions of Peru. Population, estimated at 0.6 million in 1940, reached 1.9M by 1960 and 4.8M by 1980. Instituto Nacional de EstadÃstica e Informática, Lima Metropolitana perfil socio-demográfico. Retrieved on August 12, 2007 At the start of this period, the urban area was confined to a triangular area bounded by the city's historic center, Callao and Chorrillos; in the following decades settlements spread to the north, beyond the RÃmac River, to the east, along the Central Highway, and to the south. Dietz, Poverty and problem-solving, p. 35. Immigrants, at first confined to slums in downtown Lima, led this expansion through large-scale land invasions which gave rise to the proliferation of shanty towns, known as pueblos jóvenes. Dietz, Poverty and problem-solving, p. 36.
Lima seen from Spot satellite
The urban area of Lima covers about . It is located on mostly flat terrain in the Peruvian coastal plain, within the valleys of the Chillón, RÃmac and LurÃn rivers. The city slopes gently from the shores of the Pacific Ocean into valleys and mountain slopes located as high as above mean sea level. Within the city exist isolated hills which are not connected to the surrounding hill chains, such as El Agustino, San Cosme, El Pino, La Milla, Muleria and Pro hills. The San Cristobal hill in the Rimac district, which faces directly north of the downtown area, is the local extreme of an Andean hill outgrowth.
Metropolitan Lima has an area of , of which (31%) comprise the actual city and (69%) the city outskirts. The urban area extends around from north to south and around from west to east. The city center is located inland at the shore of the Rimac river, a vital resource for the city, since it carries what will become drinking water for its inhabitants and fuels the hydro electrical dams that provide electricity to the area. While no official administrative definition for the city exists, it is usually considered to be composed of the central 30 out of the 43 districts of Lima Province, corresponding to an urban area centered around the historic Cercado de Lima district. The city is the core of the Lima Metropolitan Area, one of the ten largest metropolitan areas in the Americas. Lima is the second largest city in the world located in a desert, after Cairo, Egypt.
Weather averages for Lima International Airport.
Lima's climate is quite mild, despite being located in the Tropics. Lima has a subtropical and desert climate, yet the microclimate also makes it very humid throughout the year. The temperatures vary from mild to warm (neither very cold or hot).The average temperature in winter ranges from to . These days usually come accompanied by continuous overcast skies, fog, and mist. In the summer, the high averages around with lows around . During El Niño events, the climate of Lima gets severely disrupted, the water temperatures along the coast which usually average around 17 - 19 °C (65 - 68 °F) get much warmer (as in 1998 when the water temperature reached 26 °C (79 °F)), which causes the high and low temperatures to rise by several degrees. Such was the case when Lima hit its all-time record high of
Relative humidity is always very high particularly in the mornings /ref> , and produces brief morning fog from June to December and persistent low clouds from May to November. Sunny, less moist and warm summers follow from December to April and are followed by cloudy, damp and cool winters (June to October). The all-time record low in the metropolitan area is .
Rainfall is very low. The severely low rainfall impacts on water supply in the city. /ref> Inland locations receive 1 to of rainfall, which accumulates mainly during the winter months. Summer rain occurs in the form of isolated light and brief afternoon or evening events, leftover from afternoon storms that generate over the Andes. The peak of the 'rainy season,' which does not produce "rain" in the true sense of the word, occurs during winter when late-night/morning drizzle events (locally called 'garúa','llovizna' or 'camanchacas') become frequent, leaving a light coating of dampness on the ground. All these climatic phenomena arise from the combination of semi-permanent coastal upwelling and the presence of the cold Humboldt Current just offshore.
A Moorish arch built by Spanish immigrants in Lima /ref>
Lima ranks as the 17th most populous city in the world with a municipal population of 7,605,743, and 8,472,935 for the metropolitan area and a population density of as of 2007. Instituto Nacional de EstadÃstica e Informática, Perfil Sociodemográfico del Perú pp. 29â30, 32, 34. Its population features a very complex mix of racial and ethnic groups. Traditionally, Mestizos of mixed European (mostly Spanish) and Amerindian descent are the largest contingent. The second group are White Caucasians, mainly Spanish, Italians, Germans, French, English, Polish and Eastern Europeans. /ref> /ref> Also there is a large number of Jews, and Middle Easterners. Asians make up a large number of the metropolitan population, especially of Chinese (Cantonese) and Japanese descent. Afro-Peruvians, whose African ancestors were initially brought to the region as slaves, are yet another part of the city's ethnic quilt. Lima has by far the largest Chinese community in Latin America. /ref>
The Archbishop's Palace of Lima along with the Cathedral of Lima, the seat of the Roman Catholic Church in Peru.
The first settlement in what would become Lima was made up of only 117 housing blocks. In 1562, another district was built at the other side of the Rimac River and in 1610, the first stone bridge was built. Lima had, at this point in time, around 1600 inhabitants. In 1861, the amount of inhabitants surpassed 100,000, and by 1927 this amount was doubled.
During the early twentieth century thousands of immigrants came to the city, a significant number of French, Italians and Germans, many of them had been adapting to the Peruvian society. They organized in social clubs, and they built their own schools; for example, The American-Peruvian school which is located in Miraflores, The French Alliance (Alianza Francesa de Lima), famous Lycée Franco-Péruvien and the hospital Maison de Sante, the British-Peruvian school in Monterrico, and also several German-Peruvian schools.
They also influenced Peruvian cuisine, the Italians in particular exerting a strong influence in the Miraflores and San Isidro areas with their restaurants, called Trattorias.
A great number of Chinese immigrants, and a lesser amount of Japanese, came to Lima and established themselves in the Barrios Altos neighborhood near downtown Lima, coming in order to work on farms and domestic services. Lima residents refer to their Chinatown as "Calle Capon," and the city's ubiquitous Chifa restaurants a small, sit-down, usually Chinese-run restaurant serving the Peruvian spin on Chinese cuisine can be found by the dozen in this Chinese enclave.
A pueblo joven in the southern outskirts of Lima in 1997
The 1950s saw the exponential increase of the city inhabitants, most of them Andean immigrants and their descendants, who settled in the northern and southern outskirts. The political and economic instability in Peru during the latter half of the twentieth century created unprecedented poverty and violence in the towns of the countryside or Andean highlands, forcing hundreds of thousands of peasants of Amerindian descent to migrate to Lima thus greatly augmenting Lima's population. Instituto Nacional de Estadistica e Informatica In the 70âs, the lacking transportation facilities for the newcomers who had to travel for hours on end to reach the city center became a problem, and it was decided that Lima should not expand any further.
Buildings in the financial district of San Isidro
Lima is the industrial and financial center of Peru Infoplease. Lima. Retrieved on December 8, 2008. , home to many national companies. It accounts for more than two thirds of Peru's industrial production AttractionGuide. Lima Attractions. Retrieved on December 8, 2008. and most of its tertiary sector.
The Metropolitan area, with around 7000 factories /ref>, spearheads the industrial development of the country, thanks to the quantity and quality of the available workforce, cheap infrastructure and the mostly developed routes and highways in the city. The most relevant industrial sectors are textiles, clothing and food. Chemicals, fish, leather and oil derivatives are also manufactured and/or processed in Lima /ref>. The financial district is located in the district of San Isidro, while much of the industrial activity takes place in the area stretching west of Downtown Lima to the airport in Callao.
Industrialization began to take hold in Lima in 1930s and by 1950s, through import substitution policies, by 1950 manufacturing made up 14% of the GNP. In the late 1950s, up to 70% of consumer goods were manufactured in Peruvian, and primarily Limean, factories. /ref>
The Callao seaport is one of the main fishing and commerce ports in South America, with 75% of the country's imports and 25% of its exports /ref> using it as their entry/departure point. The main export goods leaving the country through Callao are oil, steel, silver, zinc, cotton, sugar and coffee.
A building in downtown Lima's financial district
In 2004, Lima's GDP represented 45% of the country's GDP (5% more than the previous year). The GDP per capita in Lima is $7,600 /ref>. Most of the foreign companies operating in the country have settled in Lima, which has led to the previously mentioned concentration of economic and financial activity on the city.
There has been a noticeable increase in slight industries, services and high technologies. In 2007, the Peruvian economy grew 9%, the largest growth rate in all of South America which was spearheaded by economic policies originating in Lima. CIA Factbook .The Lima Stock Exchange grew 185.24% in 2006 Bolsa de Valores de Lima and in 2007 grew 168.3% Bolsa de Valores de Lima making it one of the fastest growing stock exchanges in the world. In 2006, the Lima Stock Exchange was the most profitable in the world. /ref> The unemployment rate in metropolitan area is 7.2%.
The Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Summit and the Latin America, the Caribbean and the European Union Summit were hosted by the city of Lima.
Lima is headquarters to many major banks such as Banco de Crédito del Perú, Interbank, Bank of the Nation, Banco Continental, Banco Interamericano de Finanzas, Banco Finaciero, Banco de Comercio, MiBanco, and Banco del Trabajo. It is also a regional headquarters to Standard Chartered. Major insurance coorperations based in Lima include Rimac Seguros, Mapfre Peru, Interseguro, Pacifico, Protecta, and La Positiva. /ref>
The Government Palace in downtown Lima.Headquarters of the Andean Community of Nations
Lima is the capital city of the Republic of Peru and the department of Lima. As such, it is home to the three branches of the Government of Peru. The executive branch is headquartered in the Government Palace, located in the Plaza Mayor. The legislative branch is headquartered in the Legislative Palace and is home to the Congress of Peru. The Judicial branch is headquartered in the Palace of Justice and is home to the Supreme Court of Peru.
Likewise, all the ministries are located in the city of Lima. In international government, the city of Lima is home to the headquarters of the Andean Community of Nations and the South American Community of Nations, along with other regional and international organizations.
The city is roughly equivalent to the Province of Lima, which is subdivided into 43 districts. The Metropolitan Municipality of Lima is utmost authority of the entire city while each district further has it's own local government. Unlike the rest of the country, the Metropolitan Municipality, although a provincial municipality, acts as and has functions similar to a regional government, as it does not belong to any of the 25 regions of Peru.
The Palace of Justice, seat of the judicial branch
The Palace of Justice in Lima is seat of the Supreme Court of Justice the highest judicial court in Peru with jurisdiction over the entire territory of Peru.
Lima is also seat of two of the 28 second highest or Superior Courts of Justice. The first and oldest Superior Court in Lima is the Superior Court of Justice of Lima belonging to the Judicial District of Lima. Due to the judicial organization of Peru, the highest concentration of courts is located in Lima despite the fact that it's judicial district only has jurisdiction over 35 of the 43 districts of Lima. Judicial Power of Peru. Superior Court of Lima. Retrieved 3 December 2008. . The Superior Court of the Cono Norte is the second Superior Court located in Lima and is part of the Judicial District of North Lima. This judicial district has jurisdiction over the remaining eight districts all located in northern Lima. Judicial Power of Peru. Superior Court of North Lima. Retrieved 3 December 2008.
Paseo de los Heroes Navales
Lima's architecture is characterized by a mix in styles as reflected from shifts between trends throughout various time periods of the city's history. Examples of early colonial architecture include such structures as the Monastery of San Francisco, the Cathedral of Lima and the Torre Tagle Palace. These constructions are generally influenced by the Spanish baroque, /ref> Spanish Neoclassicism]], /ref> and Spanish Colonial /ref> styles. After independence, a gradual shift towards the neoclassical and Art Nouveau styles took place. Many of these constructions were greatly influenced by French architectural styles. /ref>Many government buildings as well as major cultural institutions were contracted in this architectural time period. During 1960s, constructions utilizing the brutalist style began appearing in Lima due to the military government of Juan Velasco. /ref> Examples of this architecture are the Museum of the Nation and the Ministry of Defense. The 21st century has seen the appearance of glass skyscrapers particularly around the city's financial district. /ref>
Lima's urban setting is characterized by green-lined streets as well as the abundance of plazas throughout the city. More important streets usually contain wider green areas and plaza's usually contain monuments or statues of historical figures of importance to Peruvian history. Parque Universitario in downtown Lima
The largest parks of Lima are located near the downtown area such as the Park of the Reserve, Park of the Exposition, /ref> Campo de Marte, and the University Park. The Park of the Reserve is home to the largest fountain complex in the world known as the Magical Circuit of Water. /ref>
A number of large parks lie outside the city center, including Reducto Park, Pantanos de Villa, The Golf, Park of the Legends, the malecon of Miraflores, and the Golf of the Incas. /ref>The street grid of the city of Lima, is laid out with a system of plazas of which serve a purpose similar to roundabouts or junctions. In addition to this practical purpose, plazas serve as one of Lima's principal green spaces and contain a variety of different types of architecture ranging from monuments to statues, and water fountains. /ref>
Strongly influenced by European, Andean, and Asian culture, Lima is a melting pot of cultures due to colonization, immigration, and indigenous influences. /ref>
Like many other world capitals, Lima is home to prestigious museums many of which are world renown. The Historic Center of Lima was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1988. Limean gastronomy is known to be among the best in the world and the city is known as the Gastronomical Capital of the Americas. Lima's gastronomy is a mix of Spanish, Andean, and Asian culinary traditions. /ref>
Lima's beaches, located along the northern and southern ends of the city, are heavily visited during the summer months. Numerous restaurants, clubs and hotels have been opened in these places to serve the many beachgoers. Lima has a vibrant and active theater scene as there are many theaters presenting not only classic theater, but also The Golf cultural presentations, modern theater, experimental theater, dramas, dance performances, and theater for children. Lima is home to many important theaters such as the Municipal Theater, Segura Theater, Japanese-Peruvian Theater, Marsano Theater, British theater, Theater of the PUCP Cultural Center, and the Yuyachkani Theater. /ref>
Known as Peruvian Coastal Spanish, Lima's Spanish is characterized by the lack of strong innotations as found in many other regions of the Spanish-speaking world. It is heavily influenced by the Spanish spoken in Castile as throughout the colonial era, the colonial Spanish nobility was based in Lima, of which most originated from Castile. /ref> Limean Spanish is also characterized by the lack of voseo, a trait present in the dialects of many other Latin American countries. This is due to the fact that voseo was primarily utilized by the lower socioeconomic classes of Spain, a social group that did not begin to appear in Lima until the late colonial era. Limean Spanish is often distinguished by its relative clarity The Museum of Art in comparison to other Latin American dialects. Limean Spanish has been influenced by a number of immigrant groups including Italians, Andalusians, Chinese and Japanese. It also has been influenced by anglicisms as a result of globalization as well as by Andean Spanish due to recent immigration from the Andean highlands to Lima. /ref>
Lima is home to the highest concentration of museums of the country, the most notable of which being the Museo Nacional de ArqueologÃa AntropologÃa e Historia del Perú, Museum of Art of Lima, the Museum of Natural History, the Museum of the Nation, the Museum of Italian Art, and the Museum of Gold, and the Larco Museum. These museums mostly focus on art, pre-Colombian cultures, natural history, science, and religion. /ref>
Lima, as the point of entry to the country, has developed an important tourism industry, characterized by it's historic center, archeological sites, nightlife, museums, art galleries, festivals, and popular traditions. Lima is home to an ample range of restaurants and bars where local as well as international cuisine is served. /ref>
The Historic Center of Lima, made up of the districts of Lima and Rimac, was declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1988 due to its importance during the colonial era leaving a testimony to architectural achievement. /ref> Some examples of this historical colonial architecture include the Monastery of San Francisco, the Plaza Mayor, the Cathedral, Covenant of Santo Domingo, the Palace of Torre Tagle, and much more.
A tour of the city's churches is a popular circuit among tourists. A short jaunt through the central district goes through many churches dating from as early as the 16th and 17th centuries the most noteworthy of which being the Cathedral of Lima and the Monastery of San Francisco, of which are said to be connected by their subterrestrial catacombs. /ref>Both of these churches contain paintings from various schools of art, Sevilian tile, and finely sculpted wood furnishings. Also notable is the Sanctuary of Las Nazarenas, the point of origin for the Lord of Miracles, whose festivities in the month of October constitute the most important religious event in Lima and arguably all of Peru. Some sections of the Lima City Walls still remain and are frequented by tourists. These examples of medieval Spanish fortifications were utilized to defend the city from attacks by pirates and privateers. /ref>
Beaches are visited during the summer months, which are located along the Pan-American Highway, to the south of the city in districts such as Lurin, Punta Hermosa, San Bartolo and Asia. Many restaurants, nightclubs, lounges, bars, clubs, and hotels have developed in said places to cater to beachgoers. /ref>
The suburban districts of Cieneguilla, Pachacamac, and the city of Chosica, are important tourist attractions among locals as they are located at a higher elevation than Lima therefore receiving sunshine in winter months, something that the city of Lima frequently lacks. /ref>
Lima is known as Gastronomical Capital of the Americas. A center of immigration and the center of the Spanish Viceroyalty, Lima has incorporated unique dishes brought from the arrival of the Spanish Conquistadors and the receiving of many waves of immigrants: African, European, Chinese, and Japanese. ref> /ref> Besides international immigrationâa large portion of which happened in Limaâthere has been, since the second half of the 20th century, a strong internal flow from rural areas to cities, in particular to Lima. /ref>This has strongly influenced Lima's cuisine with the incorporation of the immigrant's ingredients and techniques (for example, the Chinese extensive use of rice or the Japanese approach to preparing raw fish). The genres of restaurants in Lima include Creole food, Chifas, Cebicherias, and Pollerias. Peruvian cuisine, widely represented in Lima, holds various Guinness World Records, for its diversity and quality. /ref>
The Estadio Monumental "U" home of Universitario de Deportes
The city of Lima has varied sports venues for soccer, volleyball and basketball, many of which are located within private clubs. A popular sport among Limeans is fronton, a racquet sport similar to squash invented in Lima. The city is home to seven international-class golf links. Equestrian is popular in Lima with many private clubs as well as the Hipódromo de Monterrico horse racing track. The most popular sport in Lima by far is soccer with many professional club teams being located in the city.
/ref>
1. Central Lima
2. Residential Lima
3. Cono Norte
4. Cono Sur
5. Cono Este
6. Beach areas
7. Callao
Lima is made up of thirty densely-populated districts, each headed by a local mayor and the Mayor of Lima, whose authority extends to these and the thirteen outer districts of the Lima province.
The city's historic centre is located in the Cercado de Lima district, locally known as simply Lima, or as "El Centro" ("Downtown"), and it is home to most of the vestiges of Lima's colonial past, the Presidential Palace ( ), the Metropolitan Municipality of Lima ( ), and dozens of hotels, some operating and some defunct, that used to cater to the national and international elite.
The upscale San Isidro district is the city's financial center. It is home to many prominent figures such as politicians and celebrities. It is also where the main banks of Peru and branch offices of world banks are headquartered. San Isidro has many parks, including Parque El Olivar, which has olive trees that were brought from Spain during the seventeenth century.
Another upscale district is Miraflores, which has many luxury hotels, shops and restaurants. Miraflores has more parks and green areas in the south of Lima than most other districts. Larcomar, a popular shopping mall and entertainment center built on cliffs overlooking the Pacific Ocean, featuring bars, dance clubs, movie theaters, cafes, shops, boutiques and galleries, is also located in this district.
La Molina and San Borja, home to the American Embassy and the exclusive Club Polo Lima respectively, are the other two wealthy districts of Lima.
The most densely-populated districts of Lima lie in the northern and southern ends of the city (Spanish: Cono Norte and Cono Sur, respectively), and they are mostly composed of Andean immigrants who arrived during the mid and late 20th century looking for better living standards and economic opportunities, or as refugees of the country's internal conflict with the Shining Path during the late 80s and early 90s. In the case of Cono Norte(North Lima), certain shopping malls like Megaplaza and Royal Plaza have been recently built in the district of Los Olivos, which is the most residential neighborhood in the Northern part of Lima. Most of the inhabitants of this area belong to the middle class.
Barranco, which borders Miraflores by the Pacific Ocean, is known as the city's bohemian district, home or once home of many Peruvian writers and intellectuals like Mario Vargas Llosa, Chabuca Granda and Alfredo Bryce Echenique. This district has many acclaimed restaurants, music venues called "peñas" featuring the traditional folk music of coastal Peru (in Spanish, "música criolla"), and beautiful Victorian-style chalets. It along with Miraflores serves as the home to the foreign nightlife scene.
The University of Lima
Home to a range of universities, institutions, and schools, Lima has the highest concentration of institutions of higher learning in the country and is home to schools with world-wide recognition. The National University of San Marcos, founded on May 12, 1551 during Spanish colonial regime, is the oldest continuously functioning university in the Americas. /ref>
Other public universities also play key roles in teaching and research, such as the Universidad Nacional Agraria La Molina where ex-president Alberto Fujimori once taught, Universidad Nacional de IngenierÃa and the National University of Callao.
The Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú, established in 1917, is the oldest private university. Other private institutions that are located in the city are Universidad de Lima, Universidad CientÃfica del Sur, Universidad San MartÃn de Porres, Universidad del Pacifico, Universidad Inca Garcilaso de la Vega, Universidad Peruana Cayetano Heredia, Universidad Peruana de Ciencias Aplicadas and Universidad Ricardo Palma. /ref>
The Jorge Chávez International Airport
Lima is served by the Jorge Chavez International Airport, located in Callao. It is the largest airport of the country with the largest amount of domestic and international air traffic. It also serves as a major hub in the Latin American air network. Additionally, Lima possesses five other airports: the Las Palmas Air Force Base, Collique Airport, and runways in Santa MarÃa del Mar, San Bartolo and Chilca. /ref>
Lima is connected by highway to every country that borders Peru. Because of its location on the country's central coast, Lima is an important junction in Peru's highway system, three of the major highways originate in Lima.
*The Northern Panamerican Highway, this highway extends more than to the border with Ecuador connecting the northern districts of Lima with many major cities along the northern Peruvian coast.
*The Central Highway ( ), this highway connects the eastern districts of Lima with many cities in central Peru. The highway extends with its terminus at the city of Pucallpa near Brazil.
*The Southern Panamerican Highway, this highway connects the southern districts of Lima to cities on the southern coast. The highway extends to the border with Chile.
The proximity of Lima to the port of Callao allows Callao to act as the metropolitan area's foremost port. Callao concentrates nearly all of the maritime transport of the metropolitan area. There is, however, a small port in LurÃn whose transit mostly is accounted for by oil tankers due to a refinery being located nearby. Nonetheless, maritime transport inside Lima's city limits is relatively insignificant compared to that of Callao, the nation's leading port and one of Latin America's largest. There have been plans to build a new megaport on the island of San Lorenzo known as the San Lorenzo Megaport Project. This port is planned to become the largest of Latin America.
Lima is connected to the Central Andean region by the Ferrocarril Central Andino which runs from Lima through the departments of Junin, Huancavelica, Pasco, and Huanuco. /ref> Major cities along this line include Huancayo, La Oroya, Huancavelica, and Cerro de Pasco. Another inactive line runs from Lima northwards to the city of Huacho. /ref>
The urban transport system is composed of over 652 transit routes /ref> which are served by buses, microbuses, and combis. The system is unorganized and is characterized by the lack of formality. The service is run by 464 private companies which are poorly regulated by the local government. Fares average at around one sol or $0.30 USD. Due to the absence of a centralized bus terminal, individual bus companies use private terminals throughout Lima. /ref>
The Metropolitan Transportation System is a transport project which plans to integrate the Independent Corridor of Mass-Transit Buses known by its Spanish initials as (COSAC 1). This system plans to link the principal points of the Lima Metropolitan Area and the first phase of this project is already in development with the construction of a thirty three kilometer long line from Comas to Chorrillos.The Lima Metro mass transit system This system is similar to the TransMilenio of Bogota, Colombia. /ref>
Automobiles, known as colectivos, render express service on some major roads of the Lima Metropolitan Area. The colectivos signal their specific destination with a sign on the their windshield. Their routes are not generally publicitized but are understood by frequent users. The cost is generally higher than congenital public transport however they cover greater distances at greater speeds due to the lack of stops. /ref>
The Lima Metro, a above ground mass transit system, is under construction and one line has been completed while another six are scheduled for construction. Line 1 is also scheduled to be extended to the city's center, uniting Villa el Salvador with downtown Lima in a matter of only forty minutes, a trip which currently lasts one hour and forty minutes with the current public transport system. www.trenurbano.gob.pe/
The Via Expresa
Taxis in the city are relatively cheap. There are no meters so drivers are told the desired destination and the fare is agreed upon before the passenger enters the taxi. Taxis vary in sizes from small four door compacts to large vans. They are virtually everywhere, accounting for a large part of the car stock. In many cases they are just a private car with a taxi sticker on the windshield. Additionally, there are several companies that provide taxi service on-call. /ref>
Eighty percent of the city's history having occurred during the pre-automobile era, Lima's road network is based mostly on large divided avenues rather than freeways. In recent times however, Lima has developed a freeway network now made up of nine freeways which are, the Via Expresa Paseo de la Republica, Via Expresa Javier Prado, Via Expresa Grau, Panamericana Norte, Panamericana Sur, Carretera Central, Via Expresa Callao, Autopista Chillon Trapiche, and the Autopista Ramiro Priale. /ref> /ref>
Skyline from the Costa Verde
List of sister cities, designated by Sister Cities International: Sister Cities International, Online Directory: Peru, Americas. Retrieved July 14, 2007
* Arequipa, Peru
* Cusco, Peru
* Piura, Peru
* New York City, United States
* Los Angeles, United States
* Austin, United States, since 1981
* Cleveland, United States
* Miami, United States
* Bordeaux, France, since 1957
* Beijing, China, since November 21, 1983Buildings in the financial district
* Madrid, Spain
* Mexico City, Mexico
* São Paulo, Brazil
* Tegucigalpa, Honduras
* Akhisar, Turkey
* Buenos Aires, Argentina
* Guadalajara, Mexico
* Montreal, Canada
* Bogotá, Colombia
* Cairo, Egypt
* Cardiff, Wales, United Kingdom
*Lima Metropolitan Area
*List of people from Lima
*List of districts and neighborhoods of Lima
*List of sites of interest in the Lima Metropolitan area
* Nota etimológica: El topónimo Lima, Rodolfo Cerrón-Palomino, Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú
* Lima Monumento Histórico, Margarita Cubillas Soriano, Lima, 1996
;History
* Andrien, Kenneth. Crisis and decline: the Viceroyalty of Peru in the seventeenth century. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1985. ISBN 0-8263-0791-4
* Anna, Timothy. The fall of the royal government in Peru. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1979. ISBN 0-8032-1004-3
* Conlee, Christina, Jalh Dulanto, Carol Mackay and Charles Stanish. "Late Prehispanic sociopolitical complexity". In Helaine Silverman (ed.), Andean archaeology. Malden: Blackwell, 2004, pp. 209â236. ISBN 0-631-23400-4
* Dietz, Henry. Poverty and problem-solving under military rule: the urban poor in Lima, Peru. Austin : University of Texas Press, 1980. ISBN 0-292-76460-X
* Hemming, John. The conquest of the Incas. London: Macmillan, 1993. ISBN 0-333-51794-6
* Higgings, James. Lima. A cultural history. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005. ISBN 0-19-517891-2
* Instituto Nacional de EstadÃstica e Informática. Lima Metropolitana perfil socio-demográfico. Lima: INEI, 1996.
* Klarén, Peter. Peru: society and nationhood in the Andes. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000. ISBN 0-19-506928-5
* Ramón, Gabriel. "The script of urban surgery: Lima, 1850â1940". In Arturo Almandoz (ed.), Planning Latin America's capital cities, 1850â1950. New York: Routledge, 2002, pp. 170â192. ISBN 0-415-27265-3
* Walker, Charles. "The upper classes and their upper stories: architecture and the aftermath of the Lima earthquake of 1746". Hispanic American Historical Review 83 (1): 53â82 (February 2003).
;Demographics
* Instituto Nacional de EstadÃstica e Informática, Perfil Sociodemográfico del Perú. Lima: INEI, 2008.
* Municipality of Lima
* Geographia.com
* Maps
* Stock Exchange
*
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Lima | Is it true that the ideas of the Enlightenment shaped the development of the city? | Yes. | data/set3/a4 | Lima
Lima is the capital and largest city of Peru. It is located in the valleys of the Chillón, RÃmac and LurÃn rivers, on a coast overlooking the Pacific Ocean. It forms a contiguous urban area with the seaport of Callao.
Lima was founded by Spanish conquistador Francisco Pizarro on January 18, 1535, as La Ciudad de los Reyes, or "The City of Kings." It became the most important city in the Spanish Viceroyalty of Peru and, after the Peruvian War of Independence, was made the capital of the Republic of Peru. Today around one-third of the Peruvian population lives in the metropolitan area.
According to early Spanish chronicles the Lima area was once called Ichma, after its original inhabitants. However, even before the Inca occupation of the area in the 15th century, a famous oracle in the RÃmac valley had come to be known by visitors as Limaq (limaq, pronounced , which means "talker" in coastal Quechua). This oracle was eventually destroyed by the Spanish and replaced with a church, but the name persisted in the local language, thus the chronicles show "LÃmac" replacing "Ychma" as the common name for the area. /ref>
Modern scholars speculate that the word "Lima" originated as the Spanish pronunciation of the native name Limaq. Linguistic evidence seems to support this theory as spoken Spanish consistently rejects stop consonants in word-final position. The city was founded in 1535 under the name City of the Kings ( ) because its foundation was decided on January 6, date of the feast of the Epiphany. Nevertheless, this name quickly fell into disuse and Lima became the city's name of choice; on the oldest Spanish maps of Peru, both Lima and Ciudad de los Reyes can be seen together as names for the city.
It is worth noting that the river that feeds Lima is called RÃmac, and many people erroneously assume that this is because its original Inca name is "Talking River" (the Incas spoke a highland variety of Quechua where the word for "talker" was pronounced ). However, the original inhabitants of the valley were not the Incas, and this name is actually an innovation arising from an effort by the Cuzco nobility in colonial times to standardize the toponym so that it would conform to the phonology of Cuzco Quechua. Later, as the the original inhabitants of the valley died out and the local Quechua became extinct, the Cuzco pronunciation prevailed. In modern times, Spanish-speaking locals do not see the connection between the name of their city and the name of the river that runs through it. They often assume that the valley is named after the river; however, Spanish documents from the colonial period show the opposite to be true.
Lima City Walls were build between 1684 and 1687 by viceroy Melchor de Navarra y Rocafull.
In the pre-Columbian era, the location of what is now the city of Lima was inhabited by several amerindian groups under the Ychsma polity, which was incorporated into the Inca Empire in the 15th century. Conlee et al, "Late Prehispanic sociopolitical complexity", p. 218. In 1532, a group of Spanish conquistadors led by Francisco Pizarro defeated the Inca ruler Atahualpa and took over his Empire. As the Spanish Crown had named Pizarro governor of the lands he conquered, Hemming, The conquest, p. 28. he chose the RÃmac valley to found his capital on January 18, 1535 as Ciudad de los Reyes (City of the Kings). Klarén, Peru, p. 39. In August 1536, the new city was besieged by the troops of Manco Inca, however, the Spaniards and their native allies defeated the Inca rebels. Hemming, The conquest, p. 203â206.
Balconies were a major feature of Lima's architecture during the colonial period.
Over the next few years, Lima gained prestige as it was designated capital of the Viceroyalty of Peru and site of a Real Audiencia in 1543. Klarén, Peru, p. 87. During the next century Lima flourished as the center of an extensive trade network which integrated the Viceroyalty with the Americas, Europe and the Far East. Andrien, Crisis and decline, pp. 11â13. However, the city was not free from dangers; powerful earthquakes destroyed most of the city in 1687. Andrien, Crisis and decline, p. 26. A second threat was the presence of pirates and privateers in the Pacific Ocean, which led to the building of the Lima City Walls between 1684 and 1687. Higgings, Lima, p. 45. The 1687 earthquake marked a turning point in the history of Lima as it coincided with a recession in trade and economic competition by other cities such as Buenos Aires. Andrien, Crisis and decline, p. 28.
In 1746, a powerful earthquake severely damaged Lima and destroyed Callao, forcing a massive rebuilding effort under Viceroy José Antonio Manso de Velasco. Walker, "The upper classes", pp. 53â55. In the later half of the 18th century, the ideas of the Enlightenment on public health and social control shaped the development of the city. Ramón, "The script", pp. 173â174. During this period, Lima was adversely affected by the Bourbon Reforms as it lost its monopoly on overseas trade and its control over the important mining region of Upper Peru. Anna, Fall of the royal government, pp. 4â5. This economic decline made the city's elite dependent on royal and ecclesiastical appointment and thus, reluctant to advocate independence. Anna, Fall of the royal government, pp. 23â24.
A combined expedition of Argentine and Chilean patriots under General José de San MartÃn managed to land south of Lima in 1820 but did not attack the city. Faced with a naval blockade and the action of guerrillas on land, Viceroy José de la Serna was forced to evacuate the city on July 1821 to save the Royalist army. Anna, Fall of the royal government, pp. 176â177. Fearing a popular uprising and lacking any means to impose order, the city council invited San MartÃn to enter Lima and signed a Declaration of Independence at his request. Anna, Fall of the royal government, pp. 178â180. However, the war was not over; in the next two years the city changed hands several times and suffered exactions from both sides.
The Jiron de la Union was Lima's most important street for the first half of the 20th century
After the war of independence, Lima became the capital of the Republic of Peru but economic stagnation and political turmoil brought urban development to a halt. This hiatus ended in the 1850s, when increased public and private revenues from guano exports led to a rapid expansion of the city. Klarén, Peru, p. 169. However, the export-led economic expansion also widened the gap between rich and poor, fostering social unrest. Klarén, Peru, p. 170. During the 1879â1883 War of the Pacific, Chilean troops occupied Lima, looting public museums, libraries and educational institutions. Higgings, Lima, p. 107. At the same time, angry mobs attacked wealthy citizens and the Asian population; sacking their properties and businesses. Klarén, Peru, p. 192. After the war, the city underwent a process of renewal and expansion from the 1890s up to the 1920s. During this period the urban layout was modified by the construction of big avenues which crisscrossed the city and connected it with neighboring towns. Ramón, "The script", pp. 180â182.
In 1940, an earthquake destroyed most of the city, which at that time was mostly built out of adobe and quincha. In the 1940s, Lima started a period of rapid growth spurred by immigration from the Andean regions of Peru. Population, estimated at 0.6 million in 1940, reached 1.9M by 1960 and 4.8M by 1980. Instituto Nacional de EstadÃstica e Informática, Lima Metropolitana perfil socio-demográfico. Retrieved on August 12, 2007 At the start of this period, the urban area was confined to a triangular area bounded by the city's historic center, Callao and Chorrillos; in the following decades settlements spread to the north, beyond the RÃmac River, to the east, along the Central Highway, and to the south. Dietz, Poverty and problem-solving, p. 35. Immigrants, at first confined to slums in downtown Lima, led this expansion through large-scale land invasions which gave rise to the proliferation of shanty towns, known as pueblos jóvenes. Dietz, Poverty and problem-solving, p. 36.
Lima seen from Spot satellite
The urban area of Lima covers about . It is located on mostly flat terrain in the Peruvian coastal plain, within the valleys of the Chillón, RÃmac and LurÃn rivers. The city slopes gently from the shores of the Pacific Ocean into valleys and mountain slopes located as high as above mean sea level. Within the city exist isolated hills which are not connected to the surrounding hill chains, such as El Agustino, San Cosme, El Pino, La Milla, Muleria and Pro hills. The San Cristobal hill in the Rimac district, which faces directly north of the downtown area, is the local extreme of an Andean hill outgrowth.
Metropolitan Lima has an area of , of which (31%) comprise the actual city and (69%) the city outskirts. The urban area extends around from north to south and around from west to east. The city center is located inland at the shore of the Rimac river, a vital resource for the city, since it carries what will become drinking water for its inhabitants and fuels the hydro electrical dams that provide electricity to the area. While no official administrative definition for the city exists, it is usually considered to be composed of the central 30 out of the 43 districts of Lima Province, corresponding to an urban area centered around the historic Cercado de Lima district. The city is the core of the Lima Metropolitan Area, one of the ten largest metropolitan areas in the Americas. Lima is the second largest city in the world located in a desert, after Cairo, Egypt.
Weather averages for Lima International Airport.
Lima's climate is quite mild, despite being located in the Tropics. Lima has a subtropical and desert climate, yet the microclimate also makes it very humid throughout the year. The temperatures vary from mild to warm (neither very cold or hot).The average temperature in winter ranges from to . These days usually come accompanied by continuous overcast skies, fog, and mist. In the summer, the high averages around with lows around . During El Niño events, the climate of Lima gets severely disrupted, the water temperatures along the coast which usually average around 17 - 19 °C (65 - 68 °F) get much warmer (as in 1998 when the water temperature reached 26 °C (79 °F)), which causes the high and low temperatures to rise by several degrees. Such was the case when Lima hit its all-time record high of
Relative humidity is always very high particularly in the mornings /ref> , and produces brief morning fog from June to December and persistent low clouds from May to November. Sunny, less moist and warm summers follow from December to April and are followed by cloudy, damp and cool winters (June to October). The all-time record low in the metropolitan area is .
Rainfall is very low. The severely low rainfall impacts on water supply in the city. /ref> Inland locations receive 1 to of rainfall, which accumulates mainly during the winter months. Summer rain occurs in the form of isolated light and brief afternoon or evening events, leftover from afternoon storms that generate over the Andes. The peak of the 'rainy season,' which does not produce "rain" in the true sense of the word, occurs during winter when late-night/morning drizzle events (locally called 'garúa','llovizna' or 'camanchacas') become frequent, leaving a light coating of dampness on the ground. All these climatic phenomena arise from the combination of semi-permanent coastal upwelling and the presence of the cold Humboldt Current just offshore.
A Moorish arch built by Spanish immigrants in Lima /ref>
Lima ranks as the 17th most populous city in the world with a municipal population of 7,605,743, and 8,472,935 for the metropolitan area and a population density of as of 2007. Instituto Nacional de EstadÃstica e Informática, Perfil Sociodemográfico del Perú pp. 29â30, 32, 34. Its population features a very complex mix of racial and ethnic groups. Traditionally, Mestizos of mixed European (mostly Spanish) and Amerindian descent are the largest contingent. The second group are White Caucasians, mainly Spanish, Italians, Germans, French, English, Polish and Eastern Europeans. /ref> /ref> Also there is a large number of Jews, and Middle Easterners. Asians make up a large number of the metropolitan population, especially of Chinese (Cantonese) and Japanese descent. Afro-Peruvians, whose African ancestors were initially brought to the region as slaves, are yet another part of the city's ethnic quilt. Lima has by far the largest Chinese community in Latin America. /ref>
The Archbishop's Palace of Lima along with the Cathedral of Lima, the seat of the Roman Catholic Church in Peru.
The first settlement in what would become Lima was made up of only 117 housing blocks. In 1562, another district was built at the other side of the Rimac River and in 1610, the first stone bridge was built. Lima had, at this point in time, around 1600 inhabitants. In 1861, the amount of inhabitants surpassed 100,000, and by 1927 this amount was doubled.
During the early twentieth century thousands of immigrants came to the city, a significant number of French, Italians and Germans, many of them had been adapting to the Peruvian society. They organized in social clubs, and they built their own schools; for example, The American-Peruvian school which is located in Miraflores, The French Alliance (Alianza Francesa de Lima), famous Lycée Franco-Péruvien and the hospital Maison de Sante, the British-Peruvian school in Monterrico, and also several German-Peruvian schools.
They also influenced Peruvian cuisine, the Italians in particular exerting a strong influence in the Miraflores and San Isidro areas with their restaurants, called Trattorias.
A great number of Chinese immigrants, and a lesser amount of Japanese, came to Lima and established themselves in the Barrios Altos neighborhood near downtown Lima, coming in order to work on farms and domestic services. Lima residents refer to their Chinatown as "Calle Capon," and the city's ubiquitous Chifa restaurants a small, sit-down, usually Chinese-run restaurant serving the Peruvian spin on Chinese cuisine can be found by the dozen in this Chinese enclave.
A pueblo joven in the southern outskirts of Lima in 1997
The 1950s saw the exponential increase of the city inhabitants, most of them Andean immigrants and their descendants, who settled in the northern and southern outskirts. The political and economic instability in Peru during the latter half of the twentieth century created unprecedented poverty and violence in the towns of the countryside or Andean highlands, forcing hundreds of thousands of peasants of Amerindian descent to migrate to Lima thus greatly augmenting Lima's population. Instituto Nacional de Estadistica e Informatica In the 70âs, the lacking transportation facilities for the newcomers who had to travel for hours on end to reach the city center became a problem, and it was decided that Lima should not expand any further.
Buildings in the financial district of San Isidro
Lima is the industrial and financial center of Peru Infoplease. Lima. Retrieved on December 8, 2008. , home to many national companies. It accounts for more than two thirds of Peru's industrial production AttractionGuide. Lima Attractions. Retrieved on December 8, 2008. and most of its tertiary sector.
The Metropolitan area, with around 7000 factories /ref>, spearheads the industrial development of the country, thanks to the quantity and quality of the available workforce, cheap infrastructure and the mostly developed routes and highways in the city. The most relevant industrial sectors are textiles, clothing and food. Chemicals, fish, leather and oil derivatives are also manufactured and/or processed in Lima /ref>. The financial district is located in the district of San Isidro, while much of the industrial activity takes place in the area stretching west of Downtown Lima to the airport in Callao.
Industrialization began to take hold in Lima in 1930s and by 1950s, through import substitution policies, by 1950 manufacturing made up 14% of the GNP. In the late 1950s, up to 70% of consumer goods were manufactured in Peruvian, and primarily Limean, factories. /ref>
The Callao seaport is one of the main fishing and commerce ports in South America, with 75% of the country's imports and 25% of its exports /ref> using it as their entry/departure point. The main export goods leaving the country through Callao are oil, steel, silver, zinc, cotton, sugar and coffee.
A building in downtown Lima's financial district
In 2004, Lima's GDP represented 45% of the country's GDP (5% more than the previous year). The GDP per capita in Lima is $7,600 /ref>. Most of the foreign companies operating in the country have settled in Lima, which has led to the previously mentioned concentration of economic and financial activity on the city.
There has been a noticeable increase in slight industries, services and high technologies. In 2007, the Peruvian economy grew 9%, the largest growth rate in all of South America which was spearheaded by economic policies originating in Lima. CIA Factbook .The Lima Stock Exchange grew 185.24% in 2006 Bolsa de Valores de Lima and in 2007 grew 168.3% Bolsa de Valores de Lima making it one of the fastest growing stock exchanges in the world. In 2006, the Lima Stock Exchange was the most profitable in the world. /ref> The unemployment rate in metropolitan area is 7.2%.
The Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Summit and the Latin America, the Caribbean and the European Union Summit were hosted by the city of Lima.
Lima is headquarters to many major banks such as Banco de Crédito del Perú, Interbank, Bank of the Nation, Banco Continental, Banco Interamericano de Finanzas, Banco Finaciero, Banco de Comercio, MiBanco, and Banco del Trabajo. It is also a regional headquarters to Standard Chartered. Major insurance coorperations based in Lima include Rimac Seguros, Mapfre Peru, Interseguro, Pacifico, Protecta, and La Positiva. /ref>
The Government Palace in downtown Lima.Headquarters of the Andean Community of Nations
Lima is the capital city of the Republic of Peru and the department of Lima. As such, it is home to the three branches of the Government of Peru. The executive branch is headquartered in the Government Palace, located in the Plaza Mayor. The legislative branch is headquartered in the Legislative Palace and is home to the Congress of Peru. The Judicial branch is headquartered in the Palace of Justice and is home to the Supreme Court of Peru.
Likewise, all the ministries are located in the city of Lima. In international government, the city of Lima is home to the headquarters of the Andean Community of Nations and the South American Community of Nations, along with other regional and international organizations.
The city is roughly equivalent to the Province of Lima, which is subdivided into 43 districts. The Metropolitan Municipality of Lima is utmost authority of the entire city while each district further has it's own local government. Unlike the rest of the country, the Metropolitan Municipality, although a provincial municipality, acts as and has functions similar to a regional government, as it does not belong to any of the 25 regions of Peru.
The Palace of Justice, seat of the judicial branch
The Palace of Justice in Lima is seat of the Supreme Court of Justice the highest judicial court in Peru with jurisdiction over the entire territory of Peru.
Lima is also seat of two of the 28 second highest or Superior Courts of Justice. The first and oldest Superior Court in Lima is the Superior Court of Justice of Lima belonging to the Judicial District of Lima. Due to the judicial organization of Peru, the highest concentration of courts is located in Lima despite the fact that it's judicial district only has jurisdiction over 35 of the 43 districts of Lima. Judicial Power of Peru. Superior Court of Lima. Retrieved 3 December 2008. . The Superior Court of the Cono Norte is the second Superior Court located in Lima and is part of the Judicial District of North Lima. This judicial district has jurisdiction over the remaining eight districts all located in northern Lima. Judicial Power of Peru. Superior Court of North Lima. Retrieved 3 December 2008.
Paseo de los Heroes Navales
Lima's architecture is characterized by a mix in styles as reflected from shifts between trends throughout various time periods of the city's history. Examples of early colonial architecture include such structures as the Monastery of San Francisco, the Cathedral of Lima and the Torre Tagle Palace. These constructions are generally influenced by the Spanish baroque, /ref> Spanish Neoclassicism]], /ref> and Spanish Colonial /ref> styles. After independence, a gradual shift towards the neoclassical and Art Nouveau styles took place. Many of these constructions were greatly influenced by French architectural styles. /ref>Many government buildings as well as major cultural institutions were contracted in this architectural time period. During 1960s, constructions utilizing the brutalist style began appearing in Lima due to the military government of Juan Velasco. /ref> Examples of this architecture are the Museum of the Nation and the Ministry of Defense. The 21st century has seen the appearance of glass skyscrapers particularly around the city's financial district. /ref>
Lima's urban setting is characterized by green-lined streets as well as the abundance of plazas throughout the city. More important streets usually contain wider green areas and plaza's usually contain monuments or statues of historical figures of importance to Peruvian history. Parque Universitario in downtown Lima
The largest parks of Lima are located near the downtown area such as the Park of the Reserve, Park of the Exposition, /ref> Campo de Marte, and the University Park. The Park of the Reserve is home to the largest fountain complex in the world known as the Magical Circuit of Water. /ref>
A number of large parks lie outside the city center, including Reducto Park, Pantanos de Villa, The Golf, Park of the Legends, the malecon of Miraflores, and the Golf of the Incas. /ref>The street grid of the city of Lima, is laid out with a system of plazas of which serve a purpose similar to roundabouts or junctions. In addition to this practical purpose, plazas serve as one of Lima's principal green spaces and contain a variety of different types of architecture ranging from monuments to statues, and water fountains. /ref>
Strongly influenced by European, Andean, and Asian culture, Lima is a melting pot of cultures due to colonization, immigration, and indigenous influences. /ref>
Like many other world capitals, Lima is home to prestigious museums many of which are world renown. The Historic Center of Lima was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1988. Limean gastronomy is known to be among the best in the world and the city is known as the Gastronomical Capital of the Americas. Lima's gastronomy is a mix of Spanish, Andean, and Asian culinary traditions. /ref>
Lima's beaches, located along the northern and southern ends of the city, are heavily visited during the summer months. Numerous restaurants, clubs and hotels have been opened in these places to serve the many beachgoers. Lima has a vibrant and active theater scene as there are many theaters presenting not only classic theater, but also The Golf cultural presentations, modern theater, experimental theater, dramas, dance performances, and theater for children. Lima is home to many important theaters such as the Municipal Theater, Segura Theater, Japanese-Peruvian Theater, Marsano Theater, British theater, Theater of the PUCP Cultural Center, and the Yuyachkani Theater. /ref>
Known as Peruvian Coastal Spanish, Lima's Spanish is characterized by the lack of strong innotations as found in many other regions of the Spanish-speaking world. It is heavily influenced by the Spanish spoken in Castile as throughout the colonial era, the colonial Spanish nobility was based in Lima, of which most originated from Castile. /ref> Limean Spanish is also characterized by the lack of voseo, a trait present in the dialects of many other Latin American countries. This is due to the fact that voseo was primarily utilized by the lower socioeconomic classes of Spain, a social group that did not begin to appear in Lima until the late colonial era. Limean Spanish is often distinguished by its relative clarity The Museum of Art in comparison to other Latin American dialects. Limean Spanish has been influenced by a number of immigrant groups including Italians, Andalusians, Chinese and Japanese. It also has been influenced by anglicisms as a result of globalization as well as by Andean Spanish due to recent immigration from the Andean highlands to Lima. /ref>
Lima is home to the highest concentration of museums of the country, the most notable of which being the Museo Nacional de ArqueologÃa AntropologÃa e Historia del Perú, Museum of Art of Lima, the Museum of Natural History, the Museum of the Nation, the Museum of Italian Art, and the Museum of Gold, and the Larco Museum. These museums mostly focus on art, pre-Colombian cultures, natural history, science, and religion. /ref>
Lima, as the point of entry to the country, has developed an important tourism industry, characterized by it's historic center, archeological sites, nightlife, museums, art galleries, festivals, and popular traditions. Lima is home to an ample range of restaurants and bars where local as well as international cuisine is served. /ref>
The Historic Center of Lima, made up of the districts of Lima and Rimac, was declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1988 due to its importance during the colonial era leaving a testimony to architectural achievement. /ref> Some examples of this historical colonial architecture include the Monastery of San Francisco, the Plaza Mayor, the Cathedral, Covenant of Santo Domingo, the Palace of Torre Tagle, and much more.
A tour of the city's churches is a popular circuit among tourists. A short jaunt through the central district goes through many churches dating from as early as the 16th and 17th centuries the most noteworthy of which being the Cathedral of Lima and the Monastery of San Francisco, of which are said to be connected by their subterrestrial catacombs. /ref>Both of these churches contain paintings from various schools of art, Sevilian tile, and finely sculpted wood furnishings. Also notable is the Sanctuary of Las Nazarenas, the point of origin for the Lord of Miracles, whose festivities in the month of October constitute the most important religious event in Lima and arguably all of Peru. Some sections of the Lima City Walls still remain and are frequented by tourists. These examples of medieval Spanish fortifications were utilized to defend the city from attacks by pirates and privateers. /ref>
Beaches are visited during the summer months, which are located along the Pan-American Highway, to the south of the city in districts such as Lurin, Punta Hermosa, San Bartolo and Asia. Many restaurants, nightclubs, lounges, bars, clubs, and hotels have developed in said places to cater to beachgoers. /ref>
The suburban districts of Cieneguilla, Pachacamac, and the city of Chosica, are important tourist attractions among locals as they are located at a higher elevation than Lima therefore receiving sunshine in winter months, something that the city of Lima frequently lacks. /ref>
Lima is known as Gastronomical Capital of the Americas. A center of immigration and the center of the Spanish Viceroyalty, Lima has incorporated unique dishes brought from the arrival of the Spanish Conquistadors and the receiving of many waves of immigrants: African, European, Chinese, and Japanese. ref> /ref> Besides international immigrationâa large portion of which happened in Limaâthere has been, since the second half of the 20th century, a strong internal flow from rural areas to cities, in particular to Lima. /ref>This has strongly influenced Lima's cuisine with the incorporation of the immigrant's ingredients and techniques (for example, the Chinese extensive use of rice or the Japanese approach to preparing raw fish). The genres of restaurants in Lima include Creole food, Chifas, Cebicherias, and Pollerias. Peruvian cuisine, widely represented in Lima, holds various Guinness World Records, for its diversity and quality. /ref>
The Estadio Monumental "U" home of Universitario de Deportes
The city of Lima has varied sports venues for soccer, volleyball and basketball, many of which are located within private clubs. A popular sport among Limeans is fronton, a racquet sport similar to squash invented in Lima. The city is home to seven international-class golf links. Equestrian is popular in Lima with many private clubs as well as the Hipódromo de Monterrico horse racing track. The most popular sport in Lima by far is soccer with many professional club teams being located in the city.
/ref>
1. Central Lima
2. Residential Lima
3. Cono Norte
4. Cono Sur
5. Cono Este
6. Beach areas
7. Callao
Lima is made up of thirty densely-populated districts, each headed by a local mayor and the Mayor of Lima, whose authority extends to these and the thirteen outer districts of the Lima province.
The city's historic centre is located in the Cercado de Lima district, locally known as simply Lima, or as "El Centro" ("Downtown"), and it is home to most of the vestiges of Lima's colonial past, the Presidential Palace ( ), the Metropolitan Municipality of Lima ( ), and dozens of hotels, some operating and some defunct, that used to cater to the national and international elite.
The upscale San Isidro district is the city's financial center. It is home to many prominent figures such as politicians and celebrities. It is also where the main banks of Peru and branch offices of world banks are headquartered. San Isidro has many parks, including Parque El Olivar, which has olive trees that were brought from Spain during the seventeenth century.
Another upscale district is Miraflores, which has many luxury hotels, shops and restaurants. Miraflores has more parks and green areas in the south of Lima than most other districts. Larcomar, a popular shopping mall and entertainment center built on cliffs overlooking the Pacific Ocean, featuring bars, dance clubs, movie theaters, cafes, shops, boutiques and galleries, is also located in this district.
La Molina and San Borja, home to the American Embassy and the exclusive Club Polo Lima respectively, are the other two wealthy districts of Lima.
The most densely-populated districts of Lima lie in the northern and southern ends of the city (Spanish: Cono Norte and Cono Sur, respectively), and they are mostly composed of Andean immigrants who arrived during the mid and late 20th century looking for better living standards and economic opportunities, or as refugees of the country's internal conflict with the Shining Path during the late 80s and early 90s. In the case of Cono Norte(North Lima), certain shopping malls like Megaplaza and Royal Plaza have been recently built in the district of Los Olivos, which is the most residential neighborhood in the Northern part of Lima. Most of the inhabitants of this area belong to the middle class.
Barranco, which borders Miraflores by the Pacific Ocean, is known as the city's bohemian district, home or once home of many Peruvian writers and intellectuals like Mario Vargas Llosa, Chabuca Granda and Alfredo Bryce Echenique. This district has many acclaimed restaurants, music venues called "peñas" featuring the traditional folk music of coastal Peru (in Spanish, "música criolla"), and beautiful Victorian-style chalets. It along with Miraflores serves as the home to the foreign nightlife scene.
The University of Lima
Home to a range of universities, institutions, and schools, Lima has the highest concentration of institutions of higher learning in the country and is home to schools with world-wide recognition. The National University of San Marcos, founded on May 12, 1551 during Spanish colonial regime, is the oldest continuously functioning university in the Americas. /ref>
Other public universities also play key roles in teaching and research, such as the Universidad Nacional Agraria La Molina where ex-president Alberto Fujimori once taught, Universidad Nacional de IngenierÃa and the National University of Callao.
The Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú, established in 1917, is the oldest private university. Other private institutions that are located in the city are Universidad de Lima, Universidad CientÃfica del Sur, Universidad San MartÃn de Porres, Universidad del Pacifico, Universidad Inca Garcilaso de la Vega, Universidad Peruana Cayetano Heredia, Universidad Peruana de Ciencias Aplicadas and Universidad Ricardo Palma. /ref>
The Jorge Chávez International Airport
Lima is served by the Jorge Chavez International Airport, located in Callao. It is the largest airport of the country with the largest amount of domestic and international air traffic. It also serves as a major hub in the Latin American air network. Additionally, Lima possesses five other airports: the Las Palmas Air Force Base, Collique Airport, and runways in Santa MarÃa del Mar, San Bartolo and Chilca. /ref>
Lima is connected by highway to every country that borders Peru. Because of its location on the country's central coast, Lima is an important junction in Peru's highway system, three of the major highways originate in Lima.
*The Northern Panamerican Highway, this highway extends more than to the border with Ecuador connecting the northern districts of Lima with many major cities along the northern Peruvian coast.
*The Central Highway ( ), this highway connects the eastern districts of Lima with many cities in central Peru. The highway extends with its terminus at the city of Pucallpa near Brazil.
*The Southern Panamerican Highway, this highway connects the southern districts of Lima to cities on the southern coast. The highway extends to the border with Chile.
The proximity of Lima to the port of Callao allows Callao to act as the metropolitan area's foremost port. Callao concentrates nearly all of the maritime transport of the metropolitan area. There is, however, a small port in LurÃn whose transit mostly is accounted for by oil tankers due to a refinery being located nearby. Nonetheless, maritime transport inside Lima's city limits is relatively insignificant compared to that of Callao, the nation's leading port and one of Latin America's largest. There have been plans to build a new megaport on the island of San Lorenzo known as the San Lorenzo Megaport Project. This port is planned to become the largest of Latin America.
Lima is connected to the Central Andean region by the Ferrocarril Central Andino which runs from Lima through the departments of Junin, Huancavelica, Pasco, and Huanuco. /ref> Major cities along this line include Huancayo, La Oroya, Huancavelica, and Cerro de Pasco. Another inactive line runs from Lima northwards to the city of Huacho. /ref>
The urban transport system is composed of over 652 transit routes /ref> which are served by buses, microbuses, and combis. The system is unorganized and is characterized by the lack of formality. The service is run by 464 private companies which are poorly regulated by the local government. Fares average at around one sol or $0.30 USD. Due to the absence of a centralized bus terminal, individual bus companies use private terminals throughout Lima. /ref>
The Metropolitan Transportation System is a transport project which plans to integrate the Independent Corridor of Mass-Transit Buses known by its Spanish initials as (COSAC 1). This system plans to link the principal points of the Lima Metropolitan Area and the first phase of this project is already in development with the construction of a thirty three kilometer long line from Comas to Chorrillos.The Lima Metro mass transit system This system is similar to the TransMilenio of Bogota, Colombia. /ref>
Automobiles, known as colectivos, render express service on some major roads of the Lima Metropolitan Area. The colectivos signal their specific destination with a sign on the their windshield. Their routes are not generally publicitized but are understood by frequent users. The cost is generally higher than congenital public transport however they cover greater distances at greater speeds due to the lack of stops. /ref>
The Lima Metro, a above ground mass transit system, is under construction and one line has been completed while another six are scheduled for construction. Line 1 is also scheduled to be extended to the city's center, uniting Villa el Salvador with downtown Lima in a matter of only forty minutes, a trip which currently lasts one hour and forty minutes with the current public transport system. www.trenurbano.gob.pe/
The Via Expresa
Taxis in the city are relatively cheap. There are no meters so drivers are told the desired destination and the fare is agreed upon before the passenger enters the taxi. Taxis vary in sizes from small four door compacts to large vans. They are virtually everywhere, accounting for a large part of the car stock. In many cases they are just a private car with a taxi sticker on the windshield. Additionally, there are several companies that provide taxi service on-call. /ref>
Eighty percent of the city's history having occurred during the pre-automobile era, Lima's road network is based mostly on large divided avenues rather than freeways. In recent times however, Lima has developed a freeway network now made up of nine freeways which are, the Via Expresa Paseo de la Republica, Via Expresa Javier Prado, Via Expresa Grau, Panamericana Norte, Panamericana Sur, Carretera Central, Via Expresa Callao, Autopista Chillon Trapiche, and the Autopista Ramiro Priale. /ref> /ref>
Skyline from the Costa Verde
List of sister cities, designated by Sister Cities International: Sister Cities International, Online Directory: Peru, Americas. Retrieved July 14, 2007
* Arequipa, Peru
* Cusco, Peru
* Piura, Peru
* New York City, United States
* Los Angeles, United States
* Austin, United States, since 1981
* Cleveland, United States
* Miami, United States
* Bordeaux, France, since 1957
* Beijing, China, since November 21, 1983Buildings in the financial district
* Madrid, Spain
* Mexico City, Mexico
* São Paulo, Brazil
* Tegucigalpa, Honduras
* Akhisar, Turkey
* Buenos Aires, Argentina
* Guadalajara, Mexico
* Montreal, Canada
* Bogotá, Colombia
* Cairo, Egypt
* Cardiff, Wales, United Kingdom
*Lima Metropolitan Area
*List of people from Lima
*List of districts and neighborhoods of Lima
*List of sites of interest in the Lima Metropolitan area
* Nota etimológica: El topónimo Lima, Rodolfo Cerrón-Palomino, Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú
* Lima Monumento Histórico, Margarita Cubillas Soriano, Lima, 1996
;History
* Andrien, Kenneth. Crisis and decline: the Viceroyalty of Peru in the seventeenth century. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1985. ISBN 0-8263-0791-4
* Anna, Timothy. The fall of the royal government in Peru. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1979. ISBN 0-8032-1004-3
* Conlee, Christina, Jalh Dulanto, Carol Mackay and Charles Stanish. "Late Prehispanic sociopolitical complexity". In Helaine Silverman (ed.), Andean archaeology. Malden: Blackwell, 2004, pp. 209â236. ISBN 0-631-23400-4
* Dietz, Henry. Poverty and problem-solving under military rule: the urban poor in Lima, Peru. Austin : University of Texas Press, 1980. ISBN 0-292-76460-X
* Hemming, John. The conquest of the Incas. London: Macmillan, 1993. ISBN 0-333-51794-6
* Higgings, James. Lima. A cultural history. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005. ISBN 0-19-517891-2
* Instituto Nacional de EstadÃstica e Informática. Lima Metropolitana perfil socio-demográfico. Lima: INEI, 1996.
* Klarén, Peter. Peru: society and nationhood in the Andes. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000. ISBN 0-19-506928-5
* Ramón, Gabriel. "The script of urban surgery: Lima, 1850â1940". In Arturo Almandoz (ed.), Planning Latin America's capital cities, 1850â1950. New York: Routledge, 2002, pp. 170â192. ISBN 0-415-27265-3
* Walker, Charles. "The upper classes and their upper stories: architecture and the aftermath of the Lima earthquake of 1746". Hispanic American Historical Review 83 (1): 53â82 (February 2003).
;Demographics
* Instituto Nacional de EstadÃstica e Informática, Perfil Sociodemográfico del Perú. Lima: INEI, 2008.
* Municipality of Lima
* Geographia.com
* Maps
* Stock Exchange
*
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Lima | The ideas of the Enlightenment shaped the development of what? | the city, Lima | data/set3/a4 | Lima
Lima is the capital and largest city of Peru. It is located in the valleys of the Chillón, RÃmac and LurÃn rivers, on a coast overlooking the Pacific Ocean. It forms a contiguous urban area with the seaport of Callao.
Lima was founded by Spanish conquistador Francisco Pizarro on January 18, 1535, as La Ciudad de los Reyes, or "The City of Kings." It became the most important city in the Spanish Viceroyalty of Peru and, after the Peruvian War of Independence, was made the capital of the Republic of Peru. Today around one-third of the Peruvian population lives in the metropolitan area.
According to early Spanish chronicles the Lima area was once called Ichma, after its original inhabitants. However, even before the Inca occupation of the area in the 15th century, a famous oracle in the RÃmac valley had come to be known by visitors as Limaq (limaq, pronounced , which means "talker" in coastal Quechua). This oracle was eventually destroyed by the Spanish and replaced with a church, but the name persisted in the local language, thus the chronicles show "LÃmac" replacing "Ychma" as the common name for the area. /ref>
Modern scholars speculate that the word "Lima" originated as the Spanish pronunciation of the native name Limaq. Linguistic evidence seems to support this theory as spoken Spanish consistently rejects stop consonants in word-final position. The city was founded in 1535 under the name City of the Kings ( ) because its foundation was decided on January 6, date of the feast of the Epiphany. Nevertheless, this name quickly fell into disuse and Lima became the city's name of choice; on the oldest Spanish maps of Peru, both Lima and Ciudad de los Reyes can be seen together as names for the city.
It is worth noting that the river that feeds Lima is called RÃmac, and many people erroneously assume that this is because its original Inca name is "Talking River" (the Incas spoke a highland variety of Quechua where the word for "talker" was pronounced ). However, the original inhabitants of the valley were not the Incas, and this name is actually an innovation arising from an effort by the Cuzco nobility in colonial times to standardize the toponym so that it would conform to the phonology of Cuzco Quechua. Later, as the the original inhabitants of the valley died out and the local Quechua became extinct, the Cuzco pronunciation prevailed. In modern times, Spanish-speaking locals do not see the connection between the name of their city and the name of the river that runs through it. They often assume that the valley is named after the river; however, Spanish documents from the colonial period show the opposite to be true.
Lima City Walls were build between 1684 and 1687 by viceroy Melchor de Navarra y Rocafull.
In the pre-Columbian era, the location of what is now the city of Lima was inhabited by several amerindian groups under the Ychsma polity, which was incorporated into the Inca Empire in the 15th century. Conlee et al, "Late Prehispanic sociopolitical complexity", p. 218. In 1532, a group of Spanish conquistadors led by Francisco Pizarro defeated the Inca ruler Atahualpa and took over his Empire. As the Spanish Crown had named Pizarro governor of the lands he conquered, Hemming, The conquest, p. 28. he chose the RÃmac valley to found his capital on January 18, 1535 as Ciudad de los Reyes (City of the Kings). Klarén, Peru, p. 39. In August 1536, the new city was besieged by the troops of Manco Inca, however, the Spaniards and their native allies defeated the Inca rebels. Hemming, The conquest, p. 203â206.
Balconies were a major feature of Lima's architecture during the colonial period.
Over the next few years, Lima gained prestige as it was designated capital of the Viceroyalty of Peru and site of a Real Audiencia in 1543. Klarén, Peru, p. 87. During the next century Lima flourished as the center of an extensive trade network which integrated the Viceroyalty with the Americas, Europe and the Far East. Andrien, Crisis and decline, pp. 11â13. However, the city was not free from dangers; powerful earthquakes destroyed most of the city in 1687. Andrien, Crisis and decline, p. 26. A second threat was the presence of pirates and privateers in the Pacific Ocean, which led to the building of the Lima City Walls between 1684 and 1687. Higgings, Lima, p. 45. The 1687 earthquake marked a turning point in the history of Lima as it coincided with a recession in trade and economic competition by other cities such as Buenos Aires. Andrien, Crisis and decline, p. 28.
In 1746, a powerful earthquake severely damaged Lima and destroyed Callao, forcing a massive rebuilding effort under Viceroy José Antonio Manso de Velasco. Walker, "The upper classes", pp. 53â55. In the later half of the 18th century, the ideas of the Enlightenment on public health and social control shaped the development of the city. Ramón, "The script", pp. 173â174. During this period, Lima was adversely affected by the Bourbon Reforms as it lost its monopoly on overseas trade and its control over the important mining region of Upper Peru. Anna, Fall of the royal government, pp. 4â5. This economic decline made the city's elite dependent on royal and ecclesiastical appointment and thus, reluctant to advocate independence. Anna, Fall of the royal government, pp. 23â24.
A combined expedition of Argentine and Chilean patriots under General José de San MartÃn managed to land south of Lima in 1820 but did not attack the city. Faced with a naval blockade and the action of guerrillas on land, Viceroy José de la Serna was forced to evacuate the city on July 1821 to save the Royalist army. Anna, Fall of the royal government, pp. 176â177. Fearing a popular uprising and lacking any means to impose order, the city council invited San MartÃn to enter Lima and signed a Declaration of Independence at his request. Anna, Fall of the royal government, pp. 178â180. However, the war was not over; in the next two years the city changed hands several times and suffered exactions from both sides.
The Jiron de la Union was Lima's most important street for the first half of the 20th century
After the war of independence, Lima became the capital of the Republic of Peru but economic stagnation and political turmoil brought urban development to a halt. This hiatus ended in the 1850s, when increased public and private revenues from guano exports led to a rapid expansion of the city. Klarén, Peru, p. 169. However, the export-led economic expansion also widened the gap between rich and poor, fostering social unrest. Klarén, Peru, p. 170. During the 1879â1883 War of the Pacific, Chilean troops occupied Lima, looting public museums, libraries and educational institutions. Higgings, Lima, p. 107. At the same time, angry mobs attacked wealthy citizens and the Asian population; sacking their properties and businesses. Klarén, Peru, p. 192. After the war, the city underwent a process of renewal and expansion from the 1890s up to the 1920s. During this period the urban layout was modified by the construction of big avenues which crisscrossed the city and connected it with neighboring towns. Ramón, "The script", pp. 180â182.
In 1940, an earthquake destroyed most of the city, which at that time was mostly built out of adobe and quincha. In the 1940s, Lima started a period of rapid growth spurred by immigration from the Andean regions of Peru. Population, estimated at 0.6 million in 1940, reached 1.9M by 1960 and 4.8M by 1980. Instituto Nacional de EstadÃstica e Informática, Lima Metropolitana perfil socio-demográfico. Retrieved on August 12, 2007 At the start of this period, the urban area was confined to a triangular area bounded by the city's historic center, Callao and Chorrillos; in the following decades settlements spread to the north, beyond the RÃmac River, to the east, along the Central Highway, and to the south. Dietz, Poverty and problem-solving, p. 35. Immigrants, at first confined to slums in downtown Lima, led this expansion through large-scale land invasions which gave rise to the proliferation of shanty towns, known as pueblos jóvenes. Dietz, Poverty and problem-solving, p. 36.
Lima seen from Spot satellite
The urban area of Lima covers about . It is located on mostly flat terrain in the Peruvian coastal plain, within the valleys of the Chillón, RÃmac and LurÃn rivers. The city slopes gently from the shores of the Pacific Ocean into valleys and mountain slopes located as high as above mean sea level. Within the city exist isolated hills which are not connected to the surrounding hill chains, such as El Agustino, San Cosme, El Pino, La Milla, Muleria and Pro hills. The San Cristobal hill in the Rimac district, which faces directly north of the downtown area, is the local extreme of an Andean hill outgrowth.
Metropolitan Lima has an area of , of which (31%) comprise the actual city and (69%) the city outskirts. The urban area extends around from north to south and around from west to east. The city center is located inland at the shore of the Rimac river, a vital resource for the city, since it carries what will become drinking water for its inhabitants and fuels the hydro electrical dams that provide electricity to the area. While no official administrative definition for the city exists, it is usually considered to be composed of the central 30 out of the 43 districts of Lima Province, corresponding to an urban area centered around the historic Cercado de Lima district. The city is the core of the Lima Metropolitan Area, one of the ten largest metropolitan areas in the Americas. Lima is the second largest city in the world located in a desert, after Cairo, Egypt.
Weather averages for Lima International Airport.
Lima's climate is quite mild, despite being located in the Tropics. Lima has a subtropical and desert climate, yet the microclimate also makes it very humid throughout the year. The temperatures vary from mild to warm (neither very cold or hot).The average temperature in winter ranges from to . These days usually come accompanied by continuous overcast skies, fog, and mist. In the summer, the high averages around with lows around . During El Niño events, the climate of Lima gets severely disrupted, the water temperatures along the coast which usually average around 17 - 19 °C (65 - 68 °F) get much warmer (as in 1998 when the water temperature reached 26 °C (79 °F)), which causes the high and low temperatures to rise by several degrees. Such was the case when Lima hit its all-time record high of
Relative humidity is always very high particularly in the mornings /ref> , and produces brief morning fog from June to December and persistent low clouds from May to November. Sunny, less moist and warm summers follow from December to April and are followed by cloudy, damp and cool winters (June to October). The all-time record low in the metropolitan area is .
Rainfall is very low. The severely low rainfall impacts on water supply in the city. /ref> Inland locations receive 1 to of rainfall, which accumulates mainly during the winter months. Summer rain occurs in the form of isolated light and brief afternoon or evening events, leftover from afternoon storms that generate over the Andes. The peak of the 'rainy season,' which does not produce "rain" in the true sense of the word, occurs during winter when late-night/morning drizzle events (locally called 'garúa','llovizna' or 'camanchacas') become frequent, leaving a light coating of dampness on the ground. All these climatic phenomena arise from the combination of semi-permanent coastal upwelling and the presence of the cold Humboldt Current just offshore.
A Moorish arch built by Spanish immigrants in Lima /ref>
Lima ranks as the 17th most populous city in the world with a municipal population of 7,605,743, and 8,472,935 for the metropolitan area and a population density of as of 2007. Instituto Nacional de EstadÃstica e Informática, Perfil Sociodemográfico del Perú pp. 29â30, 32, 34. Its population features a very complex mix of racial and ethnic groups. Traditionally, Mestizos of mixed European (mostly Spanish) and Amerindian descent are the largest contingent. The second group are White Caucasians, mainly Spanish, Italians, Germans, French, English, Polish and Eastern Europeans. /ref> /ref> Also there is a large number of Jews, and Middle Easterners. Asians make up a large number of the metropolitan population, especially of Chinese (Cantonese) and Japanese descent. Afro-Peruvians, whose African ancestors were initially brought to the region as slaves, are yet another part of the city's ethnic quilt. Lima has by far the largest Chinese community in Latin America. /ref>
The Archbishop's Palace of Lima along with the Cathedral of Lima, the seat of the Roman Catholic Church in Peru.
The first settlement in what would become Lima was made up of only 117 housing blocks. In 1562, another district was built at the other side of the Rimac River and in 1610, the first stone bridge was built. Lima had, at this point in time, around 1600 inhabitants. In 1861, the amount of inhabitants surpassed 100,000, and by 1927 this amount was doubled.
During the early twentieth century thousands of immigrants came to the city, a significant number of French, Italians and Germans, many of them had been adapting to the Peruvian society. They organized in social clubs, and they built their own schools; for example, The American-Peruvian school which is located in Miraflores, The French Alliance (Alianza Francesa de Lima), famous Lycée Franco-Péruvien and the hospital Maison de Sante, the British-Peruvian school in Monterrico, and also several German-Peruvian schools.
They also influenced Peruvian cuisine, the Italians in particular exerting a strong influence in the Miraflores and San Isidro areas with their restaurants, called Trattorias.
A great number of Chinese immigrants, and a lesser amount of Japanese, came to Lima and established themselves in the Barrios Altos neighborhood near downtown Lima, coming in order to work on farms and domestic services. Lima residents refer to their Chinatown as "Calle Capon," and the city's ubiquitous Chifa restaurants a small, sit-down, usually Chinese-run restaurant serving the Peruvian spin on Chinese cuisine can be found by the dozen in this Chinese enclave.
A pueblo joven in the southern outskirts of Lima in 1997
The 1950s saw the exponential increase of the city inhabitants, most of them Andean immigrants and their descendants, who settled in the northern and southern outskirts. The political and economic instability in Peru during the latter half of the twentieth century created unprecedented poverty and violence in the towns of the countryside or Andean highlands, forcing hundreds of thousands of peasants of Amerindian descent to migrate to Lima thus greatly augmenting Lima's population. Instituto Nacional de Estadistica e Informatica In the 70âs, the lacking transportation facilities for the newcomers who had to travel for hours on end to reach the city center became a problem, and it was decided that Lima should not expand any further.
Buildings in the financial district of San Isidro
Lima is the industrial and financial center of Peru Infoplease. Lima. Retrieved on December 8, 2008. , home to many national companies. It accounts for more than two thirds of Peru's industrial production AttractionGuide. Lima Attractions. Retrieved on December 8, 2008. and most of its tertiary sector.
The Metropolitan area, with around 7000 factories /ref>, spearheads the industrial development of the country, thanks to the quantity and quality of the available workforce, cheap infrastructure and the mostly developed routes and highways in the city. The most relevant industrial sectors are textiles, clothing and food. Chemicals, fish, leather and oil derivatives are also manufactured and/or processed in Lima /ref>. The financial district is located in the district of San Isidro, while much of the industrial activity takes place in the area stretching west of Downtown Lima to the airport in Callao.
Industrialization began to take hold in Lima in 1930s and by 1950s, through import substitution policies, by 1950 manufacturing made up 14% of the GNP. In the late 1950s, up to 70% of consumer goods were manufactured in Peruvian, and primarily Limean, factories. /ref>
The Callao seaport is one of the main fishing and commerce ports in South America, with 75% of the country's imports and 25% of its exports /ref> using it as their entry/departure point. The main export goods leaving the country through Callao are oil, steel, silver, zinc, cotton, sugar and coffee.
A building in downtown Lima's financial district
In 2004, Lima's GDP represented 45% of the country's GDP (5% more than the previous year). The GDP per capita in Lima is $7,600 /ref>. Most of the foreign companies operating in the country have settled in Lima, which has led to the previously mentioned concentration of economic and financial activity on the city.
There has been a noticeable increase in slight industries, services and high technologies. In 2007, the Peruvian economy grew 9%, the largest growth rate in all of South America which was spearheaded by economic policies originating in Lima. CIA Factbook .The Lima Stock Exchange grew 185.24% in 2006 Bolsa de Valores de Lima and in 2007 grew 168.3% Bolsa de Valores de Lima making it one of the fastest growing stock exchanges in the world. In 2006, the Lima Stock Exchange was the most profitable in the world. /ref> The unemployment rate in metropolitan area is 7.2%.
The Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Summit and the Latin America, the Caribbean and the European Union Summit were hosted by the city of Lima.
Lima is headquarters to many major banks such as Banco de Crédito del Perú, Interbank, Bank of the Nation, Banco Continental, Banco Interamericano de Finanzas, Banco Finaciero, Banco de Comercio, MiBanco, and Banco del Trabajo. It is also a regional headquarters to Standard Chartered. Major insurance coorperations based in Lima include Rimac Seguros, Mapfre Peru, Interseguro, Pacifico, Protecta, and La Positiva. /ref>
The Government Palace in downtown Lima.Headquarters of the Andean Community of Nations
Lima is the capital city of the Republic of Peru and the department of Lima. As such, it is home to the three branches of the Government of Peru. The executive branch is headquartered in the Government Palace, located in the Plaza Mayor. The legislative branch is headquartered in the Legislative Palace and is home to the Congress of Peru. The Judicial branch is headquartered in the Palace of Justice and is home to the Supreme Court of Peru.
Likewise, all the ministries are located in the city of Lima. In international government, the city of Lima is home to the headquarters of the Andean Community of Nations and the South American Community of Nations, along with other regional and international organizations.
The city is roughly equivalent to the Province of Lima, which is subdivided into 43 districts. The Metropolitan Municipality of Lima is utmost authority of the entire city while each district further has it's own local government. Unlike the rest of the country, the Metropolitan Municipality, although a provincial municipality, acts as and has functions similar to a regional government, as it does not belong to any of the 25 regions of Peru.
The Palace of Justice, seat of the judicial branch
The Palace of Justice in Lima is seat of the Supreme Court of Justice the highest judicial court in Peru with jurisdiction over the entire territory of Peru.
Lima is also seat of two of the 28 second highest or Superior Courts of Justice. The first and oldest Superior Court in Lima is the Superior Court of Justice of Lima belonging to the Judicial District of Lima. Due to the judicial organization of Peru, the highest concentration of courts is located in Lima despite the fact that it's judicial district only has jurisdiction over 35 of the 43 districts of Lima. Judicial Power of Peru. Superior Court of Lima. Retrieved 3 December 2008. . The Superior Court of the Cono Norte is the second Superior Court located in Lima and is part of the Judicial District of North Lima. This judicial district has jurisdiction over the remaining eight districts all located in northern Lima. Judicial Power of Peru. Superior Court of North Lima. Retrieved 3 December 2008.
Paseo de los Heroes Navales
Lima's architecture is characterized by a mix in styles as reflected from shifts between trends throughout various time periods of the city's history. Examples of early colonial architecture include such structures as the Monastery of San Francisco, the Cathedral of Lima and the Torre Tagle Palace. These constructions are generally influenced by the Spanish baroque, /ref> Spanish Neoclassicism]], /ref> and Spanish Colonial /ref> styles. After independence, a gradual shift towards the neoclassical and Art Nouveau styles took place. Many of these constructions were greatly influenced by French architectural styles. /ref>Many government buildings as well as major cultural institutions were contracted in this architectural time period. During 1960s, constructions utilizing the brutalist style began appearing in Lima due to the military government of Juan Velasco. /ref> Examples of this architecture are the Museum of the Nation and the Ministry of Defense. The 21st century has seen the appearance of glass skyscrapers particularly around the city's financial district. /ref>
Lima's urban setting is characterized by green-lined streets as well as the abundance of plazas throughout the city. More important streets usually contain wider green areas and plaza's usually contain monuments or statues of historical figures of importance to Peruvian history. Parque Universitario in downtown Lima
The largest parks of Lima are located near the downtown area such as the Park of the Reserve, Park of the Exposition, /ref> Campo de Marte, and the University Park. The Park of the Reserve is home to the largest fountain complex in the world known as the Magical Circuit of Water. /ref>
A number of large parks lie outside the city center, including Reducto Park, Pantanos de Villa, The Golf, Park of the Legends, the malecon of Miraflores, and the Golf of the Incas. /ref>The street grid of the city of Lima, is laid out with a system of plazas of which serve a purpose similar to roundabouts or junctions. In addition to this practical purpose, plazas serve as one of Lima's principal green spaces and contain a variety of different types of architecture ranging from monuments to statues, and water fountains. /ref>
Strongly influenced by European, Andean, and Asian culture, Lima is a melting pot of cultures due to colonization, immigration, and indigenous influences. /ref>
Like many other world capitals, Lima is home to prestigious museums many of which are world renown. The Historic Center of Lima was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1988. Limean gastronomy is known to be among the best in the world and the city is known as the Gastronomical Capital of the Americas. Lima's gastronomy is a mix of Spanish, Andean, and Asian culinary traditions. /ref>
Lima's beaches, located along the northern and southern ends of the city, are heavily visited during the summer months. Numerous restaurants, clubs and hotels have been opened in these places to serve the many beachgoers. Lima has a vibrant and active theater scene as there are many theaters presenting not only classic theater, but also The Golf cultural presentations, modern theater, experimental theater, dramas, dance performances, and theater for children. Lima is home to many important theaters such as the Municipal Theater, Segura Theater, Japanese-Peruvian Theater, Marsano Theater, British theater, Theater of the PUCP Cultural Center, and the Yuyachkani Theater. /ref>
Known as Peruvian Coastal Spanish, Lima's Spanish is characterized by the lack of strong innotations as found in many other regions of the Spanish-speaking world. It is heavily influenced by the Spanish spoken in Castile as throughout the colonial era, the colonial Spanish nobility was based in Lima, of which most originated from Castile. /ref> Limean Spanish is also characterized by the lack of voseo, a trait present in the dialects of many other Latin American countries. This is due to the fact that voseo was primarily utilized by the lower socioeconomic classes of Spain, a social group that did not begin to appear in Lima until the late colonial era. Limean Spanish is often distinguished by its relative clarity The Museum of Art in comparison to other Latin American dialects. Limean Spanish has been influenced by a number of immigrant groups including Italians, Andalusians, Chinese and Japanese. It also has been influenced by anglicisms as a result of globalization as well as by Andean Spanish due to recent immigration from the Andean highlands to Lima. /ref>
Lima is home to the highest concentration of museums of the country, the most notable of which being the Museo Nacional de ArqueologÃa AntropologÃa e Historia del Perú, Museum of Art of Lima, the Museum of Natural History, the Museum of the Nation, the Museum of Italian Art, and the Museum of Gold, and the Larco Museum. These museums mostly focus on art, pre-Colombian cultures, natural history, science, and religion. /ref>
Lima, as the point of entry to the country, has developed an important tourism industry, characterized by it's historic center, archeological sites, nightlife, museums, art galleries, festivals, and popular traditions. Lima is home to an ample range of restaurants and bars where local as well as international cuisine is served. /ref>
The Historic Center of Lima, made up of the districts of Lima and Rimac, was declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1988 due to its importance during the colonial era leaving a testimony to architectural achievement. /ref> Some examples of this historical colonial architecture include the Monastery of San Francisco, the Plaza Mayor, the Cathedral, Covenant of Santo Domingo, the Palace of Torre Tagle, and much more.
A tour of the city's churches is a popular circuit among tourists. A short jaunt through the central district goes through many churches dating from as early as the 16th and 17th centuries the most noteworthy of which being the Cathedral of Lima and the Monastery of San Francisco, of which are said to be connected by their subterrestrial catacombs. /ref>Both of these churches contain paintings from various schools of art, Sevilian tile, and finely sculpted wood furnishings. Also notable is the Sanctuary of Las Nazarenas, the point of origin for the Lord of Miracles, whose festivities in the month of October constitute the most important religious event in Lima and arguably all of Peru. Some sections of the Lima City Walls still remain and are frequented by tourists. These examples of medieval Spanish fortifications were utilized to defend the city from attacks by pirates and privateers. /ref>
Beaches are visited during the summer months, which are located along the Pan-American Highway, to the south of the city in districts such as Lurin, Punta Hermosa, San Bartolo and Asia. Many restaurants, nightclubs, lounges, bars, clubs, and hotels have developed in said places to cater to beachgoers. /ref>
The suburban districts of Cieneguilla, Pachacamac, and the city of Chosica, are important tourist attractions among locals as they are located at a higher elevation than Lima therefore receiving sunshine in winter months, something that the city of Lima frequently lacks. /ref>
Lima is known as Gastronomical Capital of the Americas. A center of immigration and the center of the Spanish Viceroyalty, Lima has incorporated unique dishes brought from the arrival of the Spanish Conquistadors and the receiving of many waves of immigrants: African, European, Chinese, and Japanese. ref> /ref> Besides international immigrationâa large portion of which happened in Limaâthere has been, since the second half of the 20th century, a strong internal flow from rural areas to cities, in particular to Lima. /ref>This has strongly influenced Lima's cuisine with the incorporation of the immigrant's ingredients and techniques (for example, the Chinese extensive use of rice or the Japanese approach to preparing raw fish). The genres of restaurants in Lima include Creole food, Chifas, Cebicherias, and Pollerias. Peruvian cuisine, widely represented in Lima, holds various Guinness World Records, for its diversity and quality. /ref>
The Estadio Monumental "U" home of Universitario de Deportes
The city of Lima has varied sports venues for soccer, volleyball and basketball, many of which are located within private clubs. A popular sport among Limeans is fronton, a racquet sport similar to squash invented in Lima. The city is home to seven international-class golf links. Equestrian is popular in Lima with many private clubs as well as the Hipódromo de Monterrico horse racing track. The most popular sport in Lima by far is soccer with many professional club teams being located in the city.
/ref>
1. Central Lima
2. Residential Lima
3. Cono Norte
4. Cono Sur
5. Cono Este
6. Beach areas
7. Callao
Lima is made up of thirty densely-populated districts, each headed by a local mayor and the Mayor of Lima, whose authority extends to these and the thirteen outer districts of the Lima province.
The city's historic centre is located in the Cercado de Lima district, locally known as simply Lima, or as "El Centro" ("Downtown"), and it is home to most of the vestiges of Lima's colonial past, the Presidential Palace ( ), the Metropolitan Municipality of Lima ( ), and dozens of hotels, some operating and some defunct, that used to cater to the national and international elite.
The upscale San Isidro district is the city's financial center. It is home to many prominent figures such as politicians and celebrities. It is also where the main banks of Peru and branch offices of world banks are headquartered. San Isidro has many parks, including Parque El Olivar, which has olive trees that were brought from Spain during the seventeenth century.
Another upscale district is Miraflores, which has many luxury hotels, shops and restaurants. Miraflores has more parks and green areas in the south of Lima than most other districts. Larcomar, a popular shopping mall and entertainment center built on cliffs overlooking the Pacific Ocean, featuring bars, dance clubs, movie theaters, cafes, shops, boutiques and galleries, is also located in this district.
La Molina and San Borja, home to the American Embassy and the exclusive Club Polo Lima respectively, are the other two wealthy districts of Lima.
The most densely-populated districts of Lima lie in the northern and southern ends of the city (Spanish: Cono Norte and Cono Sur, respectively), and they are mostly composed of Andean immigrants who arrived during the mid and late 20th century looking for better living standards and economic opportunities, or as refugees of the country's internal conflict with the Shining Path during the late 80s and early 90s. In the case of Cono Norte(North Lima), certain shopping malls like Megaplaza and Royal Plaza have been recently built in the district of Los Olivos, which is the most residential neighborhood in the Northern part of Lima. Most of the inhabitants of this area belong to the middle class.
Barranco, which borders Miraflores by the Pacific Ocean, is known as the city's bohemian district, home or once home of many Peruvian writers and intellectuals like Mario Vargas Llosa, Chabuca Granda and Alfredo Bryce Echenique. This district has many acclaimed restaurants, music venues called "peñas" featuring the traditional folk music of coastal Peru (in Spanish, "música criolla"), and beautiful Victorian-style chalets. It along with Miraflores serves as the home to the foreign nightlife scene.
The University of Lima
Home to a range of universities, institutions, and schools, Lima has the highest concentration of institutions of higher learning in the country and is home to schools with world-wide recognition. The National University of San Marcos, founded on May 12, 1551 during Spanish colonial regime, is the oldest continuously functioning university in the Americas. /ref>
Other public universities also play key roles in teaching and research, such as the Universidad Nacional Agraria La Molina where ex-president Alberto Fujimori once taught, Universidad Nacional de IngenierÃa and the National University of Callao.
The Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú, established in 1917, is the oldest private university. Other private institutions that are located in the city are Universidad de Lima, Universidad CientÃfica del Sur, Universidad San MartÃn de Porres, Universidad del Pacifico, Universidad Inca Garcilaso de la Vega, Universidad Peruana Cayetano Heredia, Universidad Peruana de Ciencias Aplicadas and Universidad Ricardo Palma. /ref>
The Jorge Chávez International Airport
Lima is served by the Jorge Chavez International Airport, located in Callao. It is the largest airport of the country with the largest amount of domestic and international air traffic. It also serves as a major hub in the Latin American air network. Additionally, Lima possesses five other airports: the Las Palmas Air Force Base, Collique Airport, and runways in Santa MarÃa del Mar, San Bartolo and Chilca. /ref>
Lima is connected by highway to every country that borders Peru. Because of its location on the country's central coast, Lima is an important junction in Peru's highway system, three of the major highways originate in Lima.
*The Northern Panamerican Highway, this highway extends more than to the border with Ecuador connecting the northern districts of Lima with many major cities along the northern Peruvian coast.
*The Central Highway ( ), this highway connects the eastern districts of Lima with many cities in central Peru. The highway extends with its terminus at the city of Pucallpa near Brazil.
*The Southern Panamerican Highway, this highway connects the southern districts of Lima to cities on the southern coast. The highway extends to the border with Chile.
The proximity of Lima to the port of Callao allows Callao to act as the metropolitan area's foremost port. Callao concentrates nearly all of the maritime transport of the metropolitan area. There is, however, a small port in LurÃn whose transit mostly is accounted for by oil tankers due to a refinery being located nearby. Nonetheless, maritime transport inside Lima's city limits is relatively insignificant compared to that of Callao, the nation's leading port and one of Latin America's largest. There have been plans to build a new megaport on the island of San Lorenzo known as the San Lorenzo Megaport Project. This port is planned to become the largest of Latin America.
Lima is connected to the Central Andean region by the Ferrocarril Central Andino which runs from Lima through the departments of Junin, Huancavelica, Pasco, and Huanuco. /ref> Major cities along this line include Huancayo, La Oroya, Huancavelica, and Cerro de Pasco. Another inactive line runs from Lima northwards to the city of Huacho. /ref>
The urban transport system is composed of over 652 transit routes /ref> which are served by buses, microbuses, and combis. The system is unorganized and is characterized by the lack of formality. The service is run by 464 private companies which are poorly regulated by the local government. Fares average at around one sol or $0.30 USD. Due to the absence of a centralized bus terminal, individual bus companies use private terminals throughout Lima. /ref>
The Metropolitan Transportation System is a transport project which plans to integrate the Independent Corridor of Mass-Transit Buses known by its Spanish initials as (COSAC 1). This system plans to link the principal points of the Lima Metropolitan Area and the first phase of this project is already in development with the construction of a thirty three kilometer long line from Comas to Chorrillos.The Lima Metro mass transit system This system is similar to the TransMilenio of Bogota, Colombia. /ref>
Automobiles, known as colectivos, render express service on some major roads of the Lima Metropolitan Area. The colectivos signal their specific destination with a sign on the their windshield. Their routes are not generally publicitized but are understood by frequent users. The cost is generally higher than congenital public transport however they cover greater distances at greater speeds due to the lack of stops. /ref>
The Lima Metro, a above ground mass transit system, is under construction and one line has been completed while another six are scheduled for construction. Line 1 is also scheduled to be extended to the city's center, uniting Villa el Salvador with downtown Lima in a matter of only forty minutes, a trip which currently lasts one hour and forty minutes with the current public transport system. www.trenurbano.gob.pe/
The Via Expresa
Taxis in the city are relatively cheap. There are no meters so drivers are told the desired destination and the fare is agreed upon before the passenger enters the taxi. Taxis vary in sizes from small four door compacts to large vans. They are virtually everywhere, accounting for a large part of the car stock. In many cases they are just a private car with a taxi sticker on the windshield. Additionally, there are several companies that provide taxi service on-call. /ref>
Eighty percent of the city's history having occurred during the pre-automobile era, Lima's road network is based mostly on large divided avenues rather than freeways. In recent times however, Lima has developed a freeway network now made up of nine freeways which are, the Via Expresa Paseo de la Republica, Via Expresa Javier Prado, Via Expresa Grau, Panamericana Norte, Panamericana Sur, Carretera Central, Via Expresa Callao, Autopista Chillon Trapiche, and the Autopista Ramiro Priale. /ref> /ref>
Skyline from the Costa Verde
List of sister cities, designated by Sister Cities International: Sister Cities International, Online Directory: Peru, Americas. Retrieved July 14, 2007
* Arequipa, Peru
* Cusco, Peru
* Piura, Peru
* New York City, United States
* Los Angeles, United States
* Austin, United States, since 1981
* Cleveland, United States
* Miami, United States
* Bordeaux, France, since 1957
* Beijing, China, since November 21, 1983Buildings in the financial district
* Madrid, Spain
* Mexico City, Mexico
* São Paulo, Brazil
* Tegucigalpa, Honduras
* Akhisar, Turkey
* Buenos Aires, Argentina
* Guadalajara, Mexico
* Montreal, Canada
* Bogotá, Colombia
* Cairo, Egypt
* Cardiff, Wales, United Kingdom
*Lima Metropolitan Area
*List of people from Lima
*List of districts and neighborhoods of Lima
*List of sites of interest in the Lima Metropolitan area
* Nota etimológica: El topónimo Lima, Rodolfo Cerrón-Palomino, Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú
* Lima Monumento Histórico, Margarita Cubillas Soriano, Lima, 1996
;History
* Andrien, Kenneth. Crisis and decline: the Viceroyalty of Peru in the seventeenth century. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1985. ISBN 0-8263-0791-4
* Anna, Timothy. The fall of the royal government in Peru. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1979. ISBN 0-8032-1004-3
* Conlee, Christina, Jalh Dulanto, Carol Mackay and Charles Stanish. "Late Prehispanic sociopolitical complexity". In Helaine Silverman (ed.), Andean archaeology. Malden: Blackwell, 2004, pp. 209â236. ISBN 0-631-23400-4
* Dietz, Henry. Poverty and problem-solving under military rule: the urban poor in Lima, Peru. Austin : University of Texas Press, 1980. ISBN 0-292-76460-X
* Hemming, John. The conquest of the Incas. London: Macmillan, 1993. ISBN 0-333-51794-6
* Higgings, James. Lima. A cultural history. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005. ISBN 0-19-517891-2
* Instituto Nacional de EstadÃstica e Informática. Lima Metropolitana perfil socio-demográfico. Lima: INEI, 1996.
* Klarén, Peter. Peru: society and nationhood in the Andes. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000. ISBN 0-19-506928-5
* Ramón, Gabriel. "The script of urban surgery: Lima, 1850â1940". In Arturo Almandoz (ed.), Planning Latin America's capital cities, 1850â1950. New York: Routledge, 2002, pp. 170â192. ISBN 0-415-27265-3
* Walker, Charles. "The upper classes and their upper stories: architecture and the aftermath of the Lima earthquake of 1746". Hispanic American Historical Review 83 (1): 53â82 (February 2003).
;Demographics
* Instituto Nacional de EstadÃstica e Informática, Perfil Sociodemográfico del Perú. Lima: INEI, 2008.
* Municipality of Lima
* Geographia.com
* Maps
* Stock Exchange
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London | Is London the capital of the United Kingdom? | Yes | data/set3/a1 | London
London ( ; ) is the capital of both England and the United Kingdom, and the largest urban area in the European Union. {{cite web|url= title=Largest EU City An important settlement for two millennia, London's history goes back to its founding by the Romans. Since its foundation, London has been part of many movements and phenomena throughout history, including the English Renaissance, the Industrial Revolution, and the Gothic Revival. The city's core, the ancient City of London, still retains its limited medieval boundaries; but since at least the 19th century, the name "London" has also referred to the whole metropolis that has developed around it. Today the bulk of this conurbation forms the London region of England and the Greater London administrative area, with its own elected mayor and assembly.
London is one of the the world's most important business, financial and cultural centres and its influence in politics, education, entertainment, media, fashion and the arts contribute to its status as a major global city. Global Cities: GaWC Inventory of World Cities 1999 Global cities#GaWC Inventory of World Cities (1999 Edition); Global Cities: GaWC Inventory of World Cities 2004 Global cities#GaWC Leading World Cities (2004 Edition) Central London is the headquarters of more than half of the UK's top 100 listed companies (the FTSE 100) and over 100 of Europe's 500 largest companies. The city is a major tourist destination both for domestic and overseas visitors, with annual expenditure by tourists of around £15 billion. London hosted the 1908 and 1948 Summer Olympic Games and will host the 2012 Summer Olympic Games.
Greater London contains four World Heritage Sites: the Tower of London; the historic settlement of Greenwich; the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew; and the site comprising the Palace of Westminster, Westminster Abbey and St. Margaret's Church.
London's population draws from a wide range of peoples, cultures, and religions, and over 300 languages are spoken within the city. As of 2006, it had an official population of 7,512,400 within the boundaries of Greater London and is the most populous municipality in the European Union. As of 2001, the Greater London Urban Area had a population of 8,278,251 and the metropolitan area is estimated to have a total population of between 12 and 14 million , the largest metropolitan area in the EU. The public transport network, administered by Transport for London, is one of the most extensive in the world, and Heathrow Airport is the busiest airport in the world by international passenger traffic and the air space is the busiest of any city in the world. International Passenger Traffic, Airports Council International
The etymology of London remains a mystery. The earliest etymological explanation can be attributed to Geoffrey of Monmouth in Historia Regum Britanniae. The name is described as originating from King Lud, who had allegedly taken over the city and named it Kaerlud. This was slurred into Kaerludein and finally London. Many other theories have been advanced over the centuries, most of them deriving the name from Welsh or British, and occasionally from Anglo-Saxon or even Hebrew.
Map of London in 1300, showing the medieval boundaries of the City of London
Although there is evidence of scattered Brythonic settlements in the area, the first major settlement was founded by the Romans in AD 43 as Londinium, following the Roman conquest of Britain. This Londinium lasted for just seventeen years. Around 61, the Iceni tribe led by Queen Boudica stormed this first London, burning it to the ground. The next, heavily planned incarnation of the city prospered and superseded Colchester as the capital of the Roman province of Britannia in 100. At its height in the 2nd century, Roman London had a population of around 60,000.
By the 600s, the Anglo-Saxons had created a new settlement called Lundenwic approximately upstream from the old Roman city,
around what is now Covent Garden. It is likely that there was a harbour at the mouth of the River Fleet for fishing and trading, and this trading grew until the city was overcome by the Vikings and forced to relocate the city back to the location of the Roman Londinium to use its walls for protection. Viking attacks continued to increase around the rest of South East England, until 886 when Alfred the Great recaptured London and made peace with the Danish leader, Guthrum. The original Saxon city of Lundenwic became Ealdwic ("old city"), a name surviving to the present day as Aldwych, which is in the modern City of Westminster.
In a retaliatory attack, Ethelred's army achieved victory by pulling down London Bridge with the Danish garrison on top, and English control was re-established. Canute took control of the English throne in 1017, controlling the city and country until 1042, when his death resulted in a reversion to Saxon control under his pious stepson Edward the Confessor, who re-founded Westminster Abbey and the adjacent Palace of Westminster. By this time, London had become the largest and most prosperous city in England, although the official seat of government was still at Winchester.
Following a victory at the Battle of Hastings, William the Conqueror, the then Duke of Normandy, was crowned King of England in the newly finished Westminster Abbey on Christmas Day 1066. William granted the citizens of London special privileges, while building what is now known as the Tower of London, in the south-east corner of the city, to keep them under control. .
The Great Exhibition
In 1097, William II began the building of Westminster Hall, close by the abbey of the same name. The hall became the basis of a new Palace of Westminster, the prime royal residence throughout the Middle Ages. Westminster became the seat of the royal court and government (persisting until the present day), while its distinct neighbour, the City of London, was a centre of trade and commerce and flourished under its own unique administration, the Corporation of London. London grew in wealth and population during the Middle Ages. In 1100 its population was around 18,000; by 1300 it had grown to nearly 100,000. King Edward I issued an edict in 1290, expelling all Jews from England. Before the edict, there was an increasing population of Jews, whereas after this time, the population of Jews began to drop considerably. Disaster struck during the Black Death in the mid-14th century, when London lost nearly a third of its population. Apart from the invasion of London during the Peasants' Revolt in 1381, London remained relatively untouched by the various civil wars during the Middle Ages, such as the first and second Barons' Wars and the Wars of the Roses.
After the successful defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588, political stability in England allowed London to grow further. In 1603, James VI of Scotland came to the throne of England, essentially uniting the two countries. His enactment of harsh anti-Catholic laws made him unpopular, and an assassination attempt was made on 5 November 1605âthe well-known Gunpowder Plot.
The Great Fire of London destroyed many parts of the city in 1666
Plague caused extensive problems for London in the early 17th century, culminating in the Great Plague in 1665â1666. This was the last major outbreak in England, possibly thanks to the disastrous fire of 1666. The Great Fire of London broke out in the original City and quickly swept through London's wooden buildings, destroying large swathes of the city. A first hand narrative of both plague and fire was provided by Sir Samuel Pepys. Rebuilding took over ten years, largely under direction of a Commission appointed by King Charles II and chaired by Sir Christopher Wren.
Following London's growth in the 18th century, it became the world's largest city from about 1831 to 1925. Rising traffic congestion on city centre roads led to the creation of the world's first metro system â the London Underground â in 1863, driving further expansion and urbanisation. London's local government system struggled to cope with the rapid growth, especially in providing the city with adequate infrastructure. Between 1855 and 1889, the Metropolitan Board of Works oversaw infrastructure expansion. It was then replaced by the County of London, overseen by the London County Council, London's first elected city-wide administration.
A London street hit during the Blitz of World War II
The Blitz and other bombing by the German Luftwaffe during World War II killed over 30,000 Londoners and destroyed large tracts of housing and other buildings across London. In 1965 London's political boundaries were expanded to take into account the growth of the urban area outside the County of London's borders. The expanded area was called Greater London and was administered by the Greater London Council. An eco revival from the 1980s onwards re-established London's position as a pre-eminent international centre. However, as the seat of government and the most important city in the UK, it has been subjected to bouts of terrorism. Provisional Irish Republican Army bombers sought to pressure the government into negotiations over Northern Ireland, frequently disrupting city activities with bomb threats â some of which were carried out â until their 1997 cease-fire. More recently, a series of coordinated bomb attacks were carried out by Islamic extremist suicide bombers on the public transport network on 7 July 2005âjust 24 hours after London was awarded the 2012 Summer Olympics.
City Hall at night, home of the Greater London Authority
The administration of London is formed of two tiers â a city-wide, strategic tier and a local tier. City-wide administration is coordinated by the Greater London Authority (GLA), while local administration is carried out by 33 smaller authorities. The GLA consists of two elected parts; the Mayor of London, who has executive powers, and the London Assembly, who scrutinise the Mayor's decisions and can accept or reject his budget proposals each year. The GLA was set up in 2000 to replace the similar Greater London Council (GLC) which had been abolished in 1986. The headquarters of the GLA and the Mayor of London is at City Hall; the Mayor is Boris Johnson. The 33 local authorities are the councils of the 32 London boroughs and the City of London Corporation. They are responsible for local services not overseen by the GLA, such as local planning, schools, social services, local roads and refuse collection.
London is the home of the Government of the United Kingdom which is located around the Houses of Parliament in Westminster. Many government departments are located close to Parliament, particularly along Whitehall, including the Prime Minister's residence at 10 Downing Street. The British Parliament is often referred to as the "Mother of Parliaments" (although this sobriquet was first applied to England itself by John Bright) because it has been the model for most other parliamentary systems, and its Acts have created many other parliaments. There are 74 Members of Parliament (MPs) from London, who correspond to local parliamentary constituencies in the national Parliament by . Of these 74 MPs, currently 44 are from the Labour Party, 21 are Conservatives, 8 are Liberal Democrats and one is from the RESPECT party.
West and central London seen from SPOT satellite
London can be geographically defined in a number of ways, although the situation was once even more ambiguous than it is now and open to periodic legal debate. At London's core is the small, ancient City of London which is commonly known as 'the City' or 'the Square Mile'. London's metropolitan area grew considerably during the Victorian era and again during the Interwar period, but expansion halted in the 1940s because of World War II and Green Belt legislation, and the area has been largely static since. The London region of England, also commonly known as Greater London, is the area administered by the Greater London Authority. The urban sprawl of the conurbation â or Greater London Urban Area â covers a roughly similar area, with a slightly larger population. Beyond this is the vast London commuter belt.
Map of Central LondonForty percent of Greater London is covered by the London postal district, within which 'LONDON' forms part of the postal address. The London telephone area code covers a larger area, similar in size to Greater London, although some outer districts are omitted and some places just outside are included. The area within the orbital M25 motorway is sometimes used to define the "London area" and the Greater London boundary has been aligned to it in places. Greater London is split for some purposes into Inner London and Outer London. Informally, the city is split into North, South, East, West and often also Central London.
The Metropolitan Police District, city-wide local government area and London transport area have varied over time, but broadly coincide with the Greater London boundary. The Romans may have marked the centre of Londinium with the London Stone, still visible on Cannon Street. The coordinates of the nominal centre of London (traditionally considered to be the original Eleanor Cross at Charing Cross, near the junction of Trafalgar Square and Whitehall) are approximately . Trafalgar Square has also become a point for celebrations and protests.
Within London, both the City of London and the City of Westminster have City status and both the City of London and the remainder of Greater London are the ceremonial counties. The current area of Greater London was historically part of the counties of Middlesex, Kent, Surrey, Essex and Hertfordshire. Unlike most capital cities, London's status as the capital of the UK has never been granted or confirmed officially â by statute or in written form. Its position as the capital has formed through constitutional convention, making its position as de facto capital a part of the UK's unwritten constitution. The capital of England was moved to London from Winchester as the Palace of Westminster developed in the 12th and 13th centuries to become the permanent location of the royal court, and thus the political capital of the nation. According to the Collins English Dictionary definition (1994) Collins English Dictionary. Collins Education plc. of 'the seat of government,' London is not the capital of England, as England does not have its own government. However according to the Oxford English Reference dictionary definition Oxford English Reference Dictionary. Oxford English. of 'the most important town...' and many other authorities, "HC 501 0304.PDF" (PDF). Parliament Publications. Retrieved on 2008-06-06. 'England' (1994) Collins English Dictionary. Collins Education plc. London is the capital of England.
Greater London covers an area of . Its primary geographical feature is the Thames, a navigable river which crosses the city from the south-west to the east. The Thames Valley is a floodplain surrounded by gently rolling hills including Parliament Hill, Addington Hills, and Primrose Hill. The Thames was once a much broader, shallower river with extensive marshlands; at high tide, its shores reached five times their present width. Since the Victorian era it has been extensively embanked, and many of its London tributaries now flow underground. The Thames is a tidal river, and London is vulnerable to flooding. The threat has increased over time due to a slow but continuous rise in high water level by the slow 'tilting' of Britain (up in the north and down in the south) caused by post-glacial rebound. In 1974, a decade of work began on the construction of the Thames Barrier across the Thames at Woolwich to deal with this threat. While the barrier is expected to function as designed until roughly 2030, concepts for its future enlargement or redesign are already being discussed.
London has a temperate marine climate, like much of the British Isles, so the city rarely sees extremely high or low temperatures. Summers are warm with average high temperatures of and lows of , however, temperatures could exceed on many days.
Winters in London are chilly, but rarely below freezing with daytime temperatures around 2 - 8 °C (36 - 46 °F), while spring has mild days and cool evenings.
London has regular but generally light precipitation throughout the year, with average precipitation of every year.
Snow is relatively uncommon, particularly because heat from the urban area can make London up to 5 °C (9 °F) hotter than the surrounding areas in winter. Snowfall, however, is usually, but not always, seen up to a few times a year. London is in USDA Hardiness zone 9, and AHS Heat Zone 2.
In the second half of the 19th century and the first half of the 20th, London was noted for its dense fogs and smogs. Following the deadly Great Smog of 1952, the Clean Air Act 1956 was passed, leading to the decline of such severe pollution in the capital.
London's vast urban area is often described using a set of district names (e.g. Bloomsbury, Knightsbridge, Mayfair, Whitechapel, Fitzrovia). These are either informal designations, or reflect the names of superseded villages, parishes and city wards. Such names have remained in use through tradition, each referring to a local area with its own distinctive character, but often with no modern official boundaries. However, since 1965 Greater London has been divided into 32 London boroughs in addition to the ancient City of London.
The City of London is one of the world's three largest financial centres (alongside New York and Tokyo) with a dominant role in several international financial markets, including cross-border bank lending, international bond issuance and trading, foreign-exchange trading, over-the-counter derivatives, fund management and foreign equities trading. It also has the world's largest insurance market, the leading exchange for dealing in non-precious metals, the largest spot gold and gold lending markets, the largest ship broking market, and more foreign banks and investment houses than any other centre. The City has its own governance and boundaries, giving it a status as the only completely autonomous local authority in London. London's new financial and commercial hub is the Docklands area to the east of the City, dominated by the Canary Wharf complex. Other businesses locate in the City of Westminster, the home of the UK's national government and the well-known Westminster Abbey.
The West End is London's main entertainment and shopping district, with locations such as Oxford Street, Leicester Square, Covent Garden and Piccadilly Circus acting as tourist magnets. The West London area is known for fashionable and expensive residential areas such as Notting Hill, Knightsbridge and Chelsea â where properties can sell for tens of millions of pounds. The average price for all properties in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea is £894,000 with similar average outlay in most of Central London.
The eastern region of London contains the East End and East London. The East End is the area closest to the original Port of London, known for its high immigrant population, as well as for being one of the poorest areas in London. The surrounding East London area saw much of London's early industrial development; now, brownfield sites throughout the area are being redeveloped as part of the Thames Gateway including the London Riverside and Lower Lea Valley, which is being developed into the Olympic Park for the 2012 Olympics.
With increasing industrialisation, London's population grew rapidly throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries, and it was the most populous city in the world until overtaken by New York in 1925. Its population peaked at 8,615,245 in 1939 immediately before the outbreak of World War 2. There were an estimated 7,512,400 official residents in Greater London as of mid-2006. However, London's continuous urban area extends beyond the borders of Greater London and was home to 8,278,251 people in 2001, while its wider metropolitan area has a population of between 12 and 14 million depending on the definition used. According to Eurostat, London is the most populous city and metropolitan area of the European Union and the second most populous in Europe (or third if Istanbul is included).
The region covers an area of . The population density is , more than ten times that of any other British region. In terms of population, London is the 25th largest city and the 17th largest metropolitan region in the world. It is also ranked 4th in the world in number of billionaires (United States Dollars) residing in the city. London ranks as one of the most expensive cities in the world, alongside Tokyo and Moscow.
According to 2008 estimates, 51% of these seven million and seven hundred thousand people people are classed as the indigenous White British, White Irish (2.5%) and "Other White" 10%, the majority of whom are other Europeans. 15% of people are of South Asian descent, including Indian (mainly Punjabi, Hindi, Tamil and Gujarati), Pakistani, Bangladeshi (Bengali) and "Other Asian" (mostly Sri Lankan (Tamil) and other Southern Asian ethnicities). 13% of people are Black (around 7% are Black African, 5% as Black Caribbean, 1% as "Other Black"). 5.5% are of mixed race; 1.5% are Chinese; and 1.5% of people belong to another ethnic group. 30% of inhabitants were born outside the European Union. The Irish born, from both the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland, number approximately 250,000 and are the largest group born outside of Britain.
In January 2005, a survey of London's ethnic and religious diversity claimed that there were more than 300 languages spoken and more than 50 non-indigenous communities which have a population of more than 10,000 in London. Figures from the Office for National Statistics show that, as of 2006, London's foreign-born population is 2,288,000 (31%), up from 1,630,000 in 1997. The 2001 census showed that 27.1% of Greater London's population were born outside the UK, and a slightly higher proportion were classed as non-white.
The table to the right shows the 'Country of Birth' of London residents in 2001, the date of the last UK Census. (Top 21). Note that a portion of the German-born population are likely to be British nationals born to parents serving in the British armed forces in Germany.
Westminster Abbey is one of London's oldest and most important buildings and a World Heritage Site.
The majority of Londoners - 58.2% - identify themselves as Christians. This is followed by those of no religion (15.8%), Muslims (8.5%), Hindus (4.1%), Jews (2.1%), Sikhs (1.5%), Buddhists (0.8%) and other (0.5%), though 8.7% of people did not answer this question in the 2001 Census.
London has traditionally been dominated by Christianity, and has a large number of churches, particularly in the City of London. The well-known St Paul's Cathedral in the City and Southwark Cathedral south of the river are Anglican administrative centres, while the Archbishop of Canterbury, principal bishop of the Church of England and worldwide Anglican Communion, has his main residence at Lambeth Palace in the London Borough of Lambeth.
Important national and royal ceremonies are shared between St Paul's and Westminster Abbey. The Abbey is not to be confused with nearby Westminster Cathedral, which is the largest Roman Catholic cathedral in England and Wales. Religious practice is lower in London than any other part of the UK or Western Europe and is around seven times lower than American averages. Despite the prevalence of Anglican churches, observance is very low within the Anglican denomination, although church attendance, particularly at evangelical Anglican churches in London, has started to increase.
The Swaminarayan Hindu Temple in Neasden
London is also home to sizeable Muslim, Hindu, Sikh, and Jewish communities. Many Muslims live in Tower Hamlets and Newham; the most important Muslim edifice is London Central Mosque on the edge of Regent's Park. London's large Hindu community is found in the north-western boroughs of Harrow and Brent, the latter of which is home to one of Europe's largest Hindu temples, Neasden Temple. Sikh communities are located in East and West London, which is also home to the largest Sikh temple in the world, outside India.
The majority of British Jews live in London, with significant Jewish communities in Stamford Hill, Stanmore, Golders Green, Hendon, and Edgware in North London. Stanmore and Canons Park Synagogue has the largest membership of any single Orthodox synagogue in the whole of Europe, overtaking Ilford synagogue (also in London) in 1998. The community set up the London Jewish Forum in 2007 in response to the growing significance of devolved London Government.
The City of London is the world's largest financial centre . It is home to the London Stock Exchange and Lloyds of London.
London is a major centre for international business and commerce and is one of three "command centres" for the world economy (along with New York City and Tokyo). According to 2005 estimates by the PricewaterhouseCoopers accounting firm, London has the 6th largest city economy in the world after Tokyo, New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Paris. London generates approximately 20% of the UK's GDP (or $446 billion in 2005); while the economy of the London metropolitan area â the second largest in Europe â generates approximately 30% of the UK's GDP (or an estimated $669 billion in 2005).
London's success as a service industry and business centre can be attributed to factors such as English being the native and dominant language of business, close relationship with the U.S. and various countries in Asia. Other factors include English law being the most important and most used contract law in international business and the multi-cultural infrastructure. Government policies such as low taxes, particularly for foreigners (non-UK domiciled residents do not get taxed on their foreign earnings), a business friendly environment, good transport infrastructure and a deregulated economy with little intervention by the government have all contributed to London's economy becoming more service based. Over 85% (3.2 million) of the employed population of Greater London works in service industries. Another half a million employees resident in Greater London work in manufacturing and construction, almost equally divided between both.
The three tallest skyscrapers as of 2008 in Canary Wharf as viewed from Cabot Square. It is home to such companies as HSBC and Clifford Chance.
London's largest industry remains finance, and its financial exports make it a large contributor to the UK's balance of payments. Over 300,000 people are employed in financial services in London. London has over 480 overseas banks, more than any other city in the world. Due to New York's tightening of market regulations, London stock exchanges had approximately 20% more initial public offerings in 2006.
London is home to banks, brokers, insurers and legal and accounting firms. A second, smaller financial district is developing at Canary Wharf to the east of the city which includes the global headquarters of HSBC, Reuters, Barclays and the Magic Circle, which includes Clifford Chance, the largest law firm in the world. London handled 31% of global currency transactions â an average daily turnover of US$753 billion â with more US dollars traded in London than New York, and more euros traded than in every other city in Europe combined.
More than half of the UK's top 100 listed companies (the FTSE 100) and over 100 of Europe's 500 largest companies are headquartered in central London. Over 70% of the FTSE 100 are located within London's metropolitan area, and 75% of Fortune 500 companies have offices in London. Along with professional services, media companies are concentrated in London (see Media in London) and the media distribution industry is London's second most competitive sector (after central banking, the most competitive sector). The BBC is a key employer, while other broadcasters also have headquarters around the city. Many national newspapers are edited in London, having traditionally been associated with Fleet Street in the city; they are now primarily based around Canary Wharf.
Due to its prominant global role, London is getting hit harder than any other financial centre in the subprime crisis. The City of London estimates that 70,000 jobs in finance will be cut within barely a year.
Several foreign banks have started to move off employees from London to their national financial centres, notably Dresdner Kleinwort, BNP Paribas and Santander.
Tourism is one of London's prime industries and employs the equivalent of 350,000 full-time workers in London in 2003, while annual expenditure by tourists is around £15 billion. " ", Visit London. Retrieved on 3 June 2006. A study carried out by Euromonitor in October 2007 places London at first place out of 150 of the world's most popular cities, attracting 15.6 million international tourists in 2006. This puts London far ahead of 2nd place Bangkok (10.35 million) and 3rd place Paris (just 9.7 million). London attracts 27 million overnight-stay visitors every year. " ", Visit London. Retrieved on 3 June 2006. The Port of London is currently the third-largest in the United Kingdom, handling 50 million tonnes of cargo each year.
London is too diverse to be characterised by any particular architectural style, having accumulated its buildings over a long period of time and drawn on a wide range of influences. It is, however, mainly brick built, most commonly the yellow London stock brick or a warm orange-red variety, often decorated with carvings and white plaster mouldings. Many grand houses and public buildings (such as the National Gallery) are constructed from Portland stone. Some areas of the city, particularly those just west of the centre, are characterised by white stucco or whitewashed buildings. Few structures pre-date the Great Fire of 1666, except for a few trace Roman remains, the Tower of London and a few scattered Tudor survivors in the City. The disused (but soon to be rejuvenated) 1939 Battersea Power Station by the river in the south-west is a local landmark, while some railway termini are excellent examples of Victorian architecture, most notably St Pancras and Paddington (at least internally).
The O 2 , one of the largest dome structures in the world.
The density of London varies, with high employment density in the central area, high residential densities in inner London and lower densities in the suburbs. In the dense areas, most of the concentration is achieved with medium- and high-rise buildings. London's skyscrapers such as the notable "Gherkin", Tower 42, the Broadgate Tower and One Canada Square are usually found in the two financial districts, the City of London and Canary Wharf. Other notable modern buildings include City Hall in Southwark with its distinctive oval shape, the British Library in Somers Town/Kings Cross, What was formerly the Millennium Dome, located by the Thames to the east of Canary Wharf, is now used as an entertainment venue known as The O 2 .
The development of tall buildings has been encouraged in the London Plan, which will lead to the erection of many new skyscrapers over the next decade, particularly in the City of London and Canary Wharf. The 72-storey, "Shard London Bridge" by London Bridge station, the Bishopsgate Tower and many other skyscrapers over are either proposed or approved and could transform the city's skyline. As of July 2008, there are 426 high-rise buildings (between 23 m to 150 m/75 ft to 491 ft) under construction, approved for construction, and proposed for construction in London.
A great many monuments pay homage to people and events in the city. The Monument in the City of London provides views of the surrounding area while commemorating the Great Fire of London, which originated nearby. Marble Arch and Wellington Arch, at the north and south ends of Park Lane respectively, have royal connections, as do the Albert Memorial and Royal Albert Hall in Kensington. Nelson's Column is a nationally recognised monument in Trafalgar Square, one of the focal points of the centre.
The largest parks in the central area of London are the Royal Parks of Hyde Park and its neighbour Kensington Gardens at the western edge of central London and Regent's Park on the northern edge. This park contains London Zoo, the world's oldest scientific zoo, and is located near the tourist attraction of Madame Tussauds Wax Museum. Closer to central London are the smaller Royal Parks of Green Park and St. James's Park. Hyde Park in particular is popular for sports and sometimes hosts open-air concerts.
A number of large parks lie outside the city centre, including the remaining Royal Parks of Greenwich Park to the south-east and Bushy Park and Richmond Park to the south-west, as well as Victoria Park, East London to the east. Primrose Hill to the north of Regent's Park is a popular spot to view the city skyline. Some more informal, semi-natural open spaces also exist, including the Hampstead Heath of North London. This incorporates Kenwood House, the former stately home and a popular location in the summer months where classical musical concerts are held by the lake, attracting thousands of people every weekend to enjoy the music, scenery and fireworks.
Traditionally the London accent has been given the famous Cockney label, and was similar to many accents of the South East of England, developing a unique form of slang known as Cockney Rhyming Slang. The accent of a 21st century Londoner varies widely; what is becoming more and more common amongst the under 30s however is some fusion of Cockney, Received Pronunciation, and a whole array of 'ethnic' accents, in particular Caribbean, which form an accent labelled Multicultural London English (MLE), with a large amount of slang in use as well.
Piccadilly Circus at night
The Trooping the Colour held in 2006 to mark the Queen's 80th birthday.
Within the City of Westminster, the entertainment district of the West End has its focus around Leicester Square, where London and world film premieres are held, and Piccadilly Circus, with its giant electronic advertisements. London's theatre district is here, as are many cinemas, bars, clubs and restaurants, including the city's Chinatown district, and just to the east is Covent Garden, an area housing speciality shops. The United Kingdom's Royal Ballet,English National Ballet, Royal Opera and English National Opera are based in London and perform at the Royal Opera House, The London Coliseum, Sadler's Wells Theatre and the Royal Albert Hall as well as touring the country. Islington's long Upper Street, extending Northwards from The Angel, has more bars and restaurants than any other street in the UK. Europe's busiest shopping area is Oxford Street, a shopping street nearly long â which makes it the longest shopping street in the world â and home to many shops and department stores including Selfridges. Knightsbridge â home to the Harrods department store â lies just to the southwest. London is home to designers Vivienne Westwood, Galliano, Stella McCartney, Manolo Blahnik, and Jimmy Choo among others; its renowned art and fashion schools make it an international centre of fashion alongside Paris, Milan and New York.
London offers a great variety of cuisine as a result of its ethnically diverse population. Gastronomic centres include the Bangladeshi restaurants of Brick Lane and the Chinese food restaurants of Chinatown.
There are a variety of regular annual events in the city. The beginning of the year is celebrated with the relatively new New Year's Day Parade, while traditional parades include November's Lord Mayor's Show, a centuries-old event celebrating the annual appointment of a new Lord Mayor of the City of London with a procession along the streets of the City, and June's Trooping the Colour, a formal military pageant performed by regiments of the Commonwealth and British armies to celebrate the Queen's Official Birthday.
Charles Dickens (1812â1870), whose works formed a pervasive image of Victorian London.
London has been the setting for many works of literature. Two writers closely associated with the city are the diarist Samuel Pepys, noted for his eyewitness account of the Great Fire, and Charles Dickens, whose representation of a foggy, snowy, grimy London of street sweepers and pickpockets has been a major influence on people's vision of early Victorian London. The earlier (1722) A Journal of the Plague Year by Daniel Defoe is a fictionalisation of the events of the 1665 Great Plague. William Shakespeare spent a large part of his life living and working in London; his contemporary Ben Jonson was also based in London, and some of his work â most notably his play The Alchemist â was set in the city. Later important depictions of London from the 19th and early 20th centuries are the afore-mentioned Dickens novels, and Arthur Conan Doyle's illustrious Sherlock Holmes stories. A modern writer pervasively influenced by the city is Peter Ackroyd, in works such as London: The Biography, The Lambs of London and Hawksmoor.
London has played a significant role in the film industry, and has major studios at Pinewood, Ealing, Shepperton, Elstree and Leavesden, as well as an important special effects and post-production community centred in Soho in central London. Working Title Films has its headquarters in London. The city also hosts a number of performing arts schools, including The Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA), the Central School of Speech and Drama (alumni: Judi Dench and Laurence Olivier) and the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art (alumni: Jim Broadbent). The London Film Festival is held each year in October.
London is home to many museums, galleries, and other institutions which are major tourist attractions as well as playing a research role. The Natural History Museum (biology and geology), Science Museum and Victoria and Albert Museum (fashion and design) are clustered in South Kensington's "museum quarter", while the British Museum houses historic artefacts from around the world. The British Library at St Pancras is the UK's national library, housing 150 million items. The city also houses extensive art collections, primarily in the National Gallery, Tate Britain and Tate Modern.
The Royal Albert Hall hosts a wide range of concerts and musical events.
London is one of the major classical and popular music capitals of the world and is home to major music corporations, such as EMI and Decca Records, as well as countless bands, musicians and industry professionals. London is home to many orchestras and concert halls such as the Barbican Arts Centre (principal base of the London Symphony Orchestra), Cadogan Hall (Royal Philharmonic Orchestra) and the Royal Albert Hall (BBC Promenade Concerts). London's two main opera houses are the Royal Opera House and the Coliseum Theatre.
Several conservatoires are located within the city: Royal Academy of Music, Royal College of Music, Guildhall School of Music and Drama, and Trinity College of Music.
London has numerous renowned venues for rock and pop concerts, including large arenas such as Earls Court, Wembley Arena and the O2 Arena, as well as numerous mid-size venues, such as Brixton Academy, Hammersmith Apollo and The London Astoria. London also hosts many music festivals, including the 02 Wireless Festival and Latitude Festival.
London is home to the first and original Hard Rock Cafe and the illustrious Abbey Road Studios where The Beatles created many of their hits. Musicians such as Bob Marley, Jimi Hendrix and Freddie Mercury have lived in London. A large number of musical artists originate from or are most strongly associated with London, including David Bowie, Ian Dury, The Kinks, Adam Faith, The Rolling Stones, The Who, Madness, The Jam, Blur, Iron Maiden, Phil Collins, Rod Stewart, Elvis Costello, Dusty Springfield, The Yardbirds and The Small Faces.
London was instrumental in the development of punk music, with figures such as the Sex Pistols, The Clash, and Vivienne Westwood all based in the city.
More recent artists to emerge from the London music scene include The Libertines, one of the most influential British rock acts of the 2000s, Bloc Party, Amy Winehouse, Lily Allen, The Kooks, Razorlight, Laura Marling, Dizzee Rascal, Natasha Bedingfield and Leona Lewis.
London is also a centre for Urban music. In particular the genres UK Garage, Drum and Bass and Grime evolved in the city from the foreign genres of hiphop and reggae, alongside local rave music. Black music station BBC 1Xtra was set up to support the rise of homegrown urban music both in London and the rest of the UK.
Wembley Stadium is home to English football and is the most expensive stadium in the world.
The Wimbledon Championships, a tennis Grand Slam tournament.
London has hosted the Summer Olympics twice, in 1908 and 1948. In July 2005 London was chosen to host the Games in 2012, which will make it the first city in the world to host the Summer Olympics three times. London was also the host of the British Empire Games in 1934.
London's most popular sport (for both participants and spectators) is football. London has thirteen League football clubs, including five in the Premier League: Arsenal, Chelsea, Fulham, Tottenham Hotspur and West Ham United. London also has four rugby union teams in the Guinness Premiership (London Irish, Saracens, Wasps and Harlequins), although only the Harlequins play in London (all the other three now play outside Greater London, although Saracens still play within the M25). There are two professional rugby league clubs in London - Harlequins Rugby League who play in the Super League at the Stoop and the National League 2 side the London Skolars (based in Haringey).
Since 1924, the original Wembley Stadium was the home of the English national football team, and served as the venue for the FA Cup final as well as rugby league's Challenge Cup final. The new Wembley Stadium serves exactly the same purposes and has a capacity of 90,000. Twickenham Stadium in west London is the national rugby union stadium, and has a capacity of 84,000 now that the new south stand has been completed.
Cricket in London centres on its two Test cricket grounds at Lord's (home of Middlesex C.C.C) in St John's Wood, and The Oval (home of Surrey C.C.C) in Kennington. One of London's best-known annual sports competitions is the Wimbledon Tennis Championships, held at the All England Club in the south-western suburb of Wimbledon. Other key events are the annual mass-participation London Marathon which sees some 35,000 runners attempt a course around the city, and the Oxford vs. Cambridge Boat Race on the River Thames between Putney and Mortlake.
Transport is one of the four areas of policy administered by the Mayor of London, however the mayor's financial control is limited and he does not control the heavy rail network, although in November 2007 he assumed responsibility for the North London Railway as well as several other lines, to form London Overground. The public transport network, administered by Transport for London (TfL), is one of the most extensive in the world, but faces congestion and reliability issues, which a large investment programme is attempting to address, including £7 billion (â¬10 billion) of improvements planned for the Olympics. London has been commended as the city with the best public transport. Cycling is an increasingly popular way to get around London. The London Cycling Campaign lobbies for better provision.
The London Underground is the oldest, longest, and most expansive metro system in the world, dating from 1863.
The centrepiece of the public transport network is the London Underground â commonly referred to as The Tube â which has eleven interconnecting lines. It is the oldest, longest, and most expansive metro system in the world, dating from 1863. The system was home to the world's first underground electric line, the City & South London Railway, which began service in 1890. Over three million journeys a day are made on the Underground network, nearly 1 billion journeys each year. The Underground serves the central area and most suburbs to the north of the Thames, while those to the south are served by an extensive suburban rail surface network.
The Docklands Light Railway is a second metro system using smaller and lighter trains, which opened in 1987, serving East London and Greenwich on both sides of the Thames. Commuter and intercity railways generally do not cross the city, instead running into fourteen terminal stations scattered around its historic centre; the exception is the Thameslink route operated by First Capital Connect, with terminus stations at Bedford, Brighton and Moorgate. Since the early 1990s, increasing pressures on the commuter rail and Underground networks have led to increasing demands â particularly from businesses and the City of London Corporation â for Crossrail: a £10 billion east â west heavy rail connection under central London, which was given the green light in early October 2007.
High-speed Eurostar trains link St Pancras International with Lille and Paris in France, and Brussels in Belgium. Journey times to Paris and Brussels of 2h 15 and 1h 51 respectively make London closer to continental Europe than the rest of Britain by virtue of the newly completed High Speed 1 rail link to the Channel Tunnel. From 2009 this line will also allow for high speed domestic travel from Kent into London. The redevelopment of St. Pancras was key to London's Olympic bid, as the station also serves two international airports through Thameslink, and will also provide direct rail links to the Olympic site at Stratford using British Rail Class 395 trains running under the Olympic Javelin name; these will be based on Japanese Shinkansen high-speed trains.
The modern Enviro400 double-decker bus
London's bus network is one of the largest in the world, running 24 hours a day, with 8,000 buses, 700 bus routes, and over 6 million passenger journeys made every weekday. In 2003, the network's ridership was estimated at over 1.5 billion passenger trips per annum, more than the Underground. Around £850 m is taken in revenue each year.
London has the largest wheelchair accessible network in the world and, from the 3rd quarter of 2007, became more accessible to hearing and visually impaired passengers as audio-visual announcements were introduced. The distinctive red double-decker buses are internationally recognised, and are a trademark of London transport along with black cabs and the Tube.
Terminal 5 at Heathrow Airport, which is the world's busiest airport by international passenger traffic.
London is a major international air transport hub with the largest city airspace in the world. Eight airports use the words London Airport in their name, but most traffic passes through one of five major airports. London Heathrow Airport is the busiest airport in the world for international traffic, and is the major hub of the nation's flag carrier, British Airways. In March 2008 its fifth terminal was opened, and plans are already being considered for a sixth terminal. Similar traffic, with the addition of some low-cost short-haul flights, is also handled at London Gatwick Airport. London Stansted Airport and London Luton Airport cater mostly for low-cost short-haul flights. London City Airport, the smallest and most central airport, is focused on business travellers, with a mixture of full service short-haul scheduled flights and considerable business jet traffic.
Although the majority of journeys involving central London are made by public transport, travel in outer London is car-dominated. The inner ring road (around the city centre), the North and South Circular roads (in the suburbs), and the outer orbital motorway (the M25, outside the built-up area) encircle the city and are intersected by a number of busy radial routes â but very few motorways penetrate into inner London. The M25 is the longest ring-road motorway in the world at long. A plan for a comprehensive network of motorways throughout the city (the Ringways Plan) was prepared in the 1960s but was mostly cancelled in the early 1970s. In 2003, a congestion charge was introduced to reduce traffic volumes in the city centre. With a few exceptions, motorists are required to pay £8 per day to drive within a defined zone encompassing much of congested central London. Motorists who are residents of the defined zone can buy a vastly reduced season pass which is renewed monthly and is cheaper than a corresponding bus fare.
Royal Holloway, as a part of the University of London, a federation of London higher education institutions
Home to a range of universities, colleges and schools, London has a student population of about 378,000 and is a centre of research and development. Most primary and secondary schools in London follow the same system as the rest of England â comprehensive schooling.
With 125,000 students, the University of London is the largest contact teaching university in the United Kingdom and in Europe. It comprises 20 colleges as well as several smaller institutes each with a high degree of autonomy. Constituent colleges have their own admissions procedures, and are effectively universities in their own right, although most degrees are awarded by the University of London rather than the individual colleges. Its constituents include multi-disciplinary colleges such as UCL, King's, Goldsmiths, Queen Mary and more specialised institutions such as the London School of Economics, SOAS, the Royal Academy of Music, the Courtauld Institute of Art and the Institute of Education.
Imperial College London and University College London have been ranked among the top ten universities in the world by The Times Higher Education Supplement: in 2008 Imperial was ranked the 6th best and UCL the 7th best university in the world.
In addition, the London School of Economics is the worldâs leading social science institution for teaching and research, plus has the most international student body of any university in the world today.
A number of colleges are dedicated to the fine arts, including the Royal College of Music, Royal College of Art, and Guildhall School of Music and Drama.
Senate House, the headquarters of the federal University of London
London's other universities, such as Brunel University, City University, London Metropolitan University, Middlesex University, University of East London, University of the Arts London, University of Westminster, Kingston University and London South Bank University are not part of the University of London but are still leaders in their field and popular choices among students both nationally and internationally. Some were polytechnics until these were granted university status in 1992, and others which were founded much earlier. Imperial College London left the federal University of London in 2007. Since the merger of University of North London and London Guildhall University in 2003, London Metropolitan University is the largest unitary university in the capital, with over 34,000 students from 155 countries. About London Met London Metropolitan University, August 2008 London is also known globally for its business education, with the London Business School (ranked 1st in Europe â Business Week) and Cass Business School (Europe's largest finance school) both being top world-rated business schools. In addition there are three international universities: Schiller International University, Richmond University and Regent's College.
There are 46 other places on six continents named after London. Jack Malvern. Richmond, in Surrey, is the most widely copied British place name worldwide, timesonline 2008-12-29. The original byline for the article in The Times of the same day was "The 55 corners of foreign fields that will be for ever ... Richmond" (page 9). Cites The Times Universal Atlas of the World. As well as London's twinning, the Boroughs of London have twinnings with parts of other cities across the world. Shown below is the list of cities that the Greater London Authority is twinned with.
* New York City,
* Moscow,
* Berlin,
The following cities have a friendship agreement with London:
* Sofia,
* Delhi,
* Mumbai,
* Beijing,
* Istanbul,
* Paris,
* Tehran,
* Tokyo,
* Bogotá,
* Podgorica,
* Algiers,
* Global city
* Geography of England
* Large Cities Climate Leadership Group
* Largest European cities and metropolitan areas
* London Assembly
* Megacity
*
*
*
*
* Mayor of London, London Assembly and the Greater London Authority â Official city government site
* Transport for London (TfL) â city transport authority
* BBC London
* Office for National Statistics: Focus on London 2007 â compendium of official statistics about London
* Museum of London Group Portal - Home
* VisitLondon.com â Official London site
* Map of Early Modern London â Historical Map and Encyclopaedia of Shakespeare's London (Scholarly)
* London Bridges â A view of London Bridges over the River Thames
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London | Is London the capital of the United Kingdom? | Yes | data/set3/a1 | London
London ( ; ) is the capital of both England and the United Kingdom, and the largest urban area in the European Union. {{cite web|url= title=Largest EU City An important settlement for two millennia, London's history goes back to its founding by the Romans. Since its foundation, London has been part of many movements and phenomena throughout history, including the English Renaissance, the Industrial Revolution, and the Gothic Revival. The city's core, the ancient City of London, still retains its limited medieval boundaries; but since at least the 19th century, the name "London" has also referred to the whole metropolis that has developed around it. Today the bulk of this conurbation forms the London region of England and the Greater London administrative area, with its own elected mayor and assembly.
London is one of the the world's most important business, financial and cultural centres and its influence in politics, education, entertainment, media, fashion and the arts contribute to its status as a major global city. Global Cities: GaWC Inventory of World Cities 1999 Global cities#GaWC Inventory of World Cities (1999 Edition); Global Cities: GaWC Inventory of World Cities 2004 Global cities#GaWC Leading World Cities (2004 Edition) Central London is the headquarters of more than half of the UK's top 100 listed companies (the FTSE 100) and over 100 of Europe's 500 largest companies. The city is a major tourist destination both for domestic and overseas visitors, with annual expenditure by tourists of around £15 billion. London hosted the 1908 and 1948 Summer Olympic Games and will host the 2012 Summer Olympic Games.
Greater London contains four World Heritage Sites: the Tower of London; the historic settlement of Greenwich; the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew; and the site comprising the Palace of Westminster, Westminster Abbey and St. Margaret's Church.
London's population draws from a wide range of peoples, cultures, and religions, and over 300 languages are spoken within the city. As of 2006, it had an official population of 7,512,400 within the boundaries of Greater London and is the most populous municipality in the European Union. As of 2001, the Greater London Urban Area had a population of 8,278,251 and the metropolitan area is estimated to have a total population of between 12 and 14 million , the largest metropolitan area in the EU. The public transport network, administered by Transport for London, is one of the most extensive in the world, and Heathrow Airport is the busiest airport in the world by international passenger traffic and the air space is the busiest of any city in the world. International Passenger Traffic, Airports Council International
The etymology of London remains a mystery. The earliest etymological explanation can be attributed to Geoffrey of Monmouth in Historia Regum Britanniae. The name is described as originating from King Lud, who had allegedly taken over the city and named it Kaerlud. This was slurred into Kaerludein and finally London. Many other theories have been advanced over the centuries, most of them deriving the name from Welsh or British, and occasionally from Anglo-Saxon or even Hebrew.
Map of London in 1300, showing the medieval boundaries of the City of London
Although there is evidence of scattered Brythonic settlements in the area, the first major settlement was founded by the Romans in AD 43 as Londinium, following the Roman conquest of Britain. This Londinium lasted for just seventeen years. Around 61, the Iceni tribe led by Queen Boudica stormed this first London, burning it to the ground. The next, heavily planned incarnation of the city prospered and superseded Colchester as the capital of the Roman province of Britannia in 100. At its height in the 2nd century, Roman London had a population of around 60,000.
By the 600s, the Anglo-Saxons had created a new settlement called Lundenwic approximately upstream from the old Roman city,
around what is now Covent Garden. It is likely that there was a harbour at the mouth of the River Fleet for fishing and trading, and this trading grew until the city was overcome by the Vikings and forced to relocate the city back to the location of the Roman Londinium to use its walls for protection. Viking attacks continued to increase around the rest of South East England, until 886 when Alfred the Great recaptured London and made peace with the Danish leader, Guthrum. The original Saxon city of Lundenwic became Ealdwic ("old city"), a name surviving to the present day as Aldwych, which is in the modern City of Westminster.
In a retaliatory attack, Ethelred's army achieved victory by pulling down London Bridge with the Danish garrison on top, and English control was re-established. Canute took control of the English throne in 1017, controlling the city and country until 1042, when his death resulted in a reversion to Saxon control under his pious stepson Edward the Confessor, who re-founded Westminster Abbey and the adjacent Palace of Westminster. By this time, London had become the largest and most prosperous city in England, although the official seat of government was still at Winchester.
Following a victory at the Battle of Hastings, William the Conqueror, the then Duke of Normandy, was crowned King of England in the newly finished Westminster Abbey on Christmas Day 1066. William granted the citizens of London special privileges, while building what is now known as the Tower of London, in the south-east corner of the city, to keep them under control. .
The Great Exhibition
In 1097, William II began the building of Westminster Hall, close by the abbey of the same name. The hall became the basis of a new Palace of Westminster, the prime royal residence throughout the Middle Ages. Westminster became the seat of the royal court and government (persisting until the present day), while its distinct neighbour, the City of London, was a centre of trade and commerce and flourished under its own unique administration, the Corporation of London. London grew in wealth and population during the Middle Ages. In 1100 its population was around 18,000; by 1300 it had grown to nearly 100,000. King Edward I issued an edict in 1290, expelling all Jews from England. Before the edict, there was an increasing population of Jews, whereas after this time, the population of Jews began to drop considerably. Disaster struck during the Black Death in the mid-14th century, when London lost nearly a third of its population. Apart from the invasion of London during the Peasants' Revolt in 1381, London remained relatively untouched by the various civil wars during the Middle Ages, such as the first and second Barons' Wars and the Wars of the Roses.
After the successful defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588, political stability in England allowed London to grow further. In 1603, James VI of Scotland came to the throne of England, essentially uniting the two countries. His enactment of harsh anti-Catholic laws made him unpopular, and an assassination attempt was made on 5 November 1605âthe well-known Gunpowder Plot.
The Great Fire of London destroyed many parts of the city in 1666
Plague caused extensive problems for London in the early 17th century, culminating in the Great Plague in 1665â1666. This was the last major outbreak in England, possibly thanks to the disastrous fire of 1666. The Great Fire of London broke out in the original City and quickly swept through London's wooden buildings, destroying large swathes of the city. A first hand narrative of both plague and fire was provided by Sir Samuel Pepys. Rebuilding took over ten years, largely under direction of a Commission appointed by King Charles II and chaired by Sir Christopher Wren.
Following London's growth in the 18th century, it became the world's largest city from about 1831 to 1925. Rising traffic congestion on city centre roads led to the creation of the world's first metro system â the London Underground â in 1863, driving further expansion and urbanisation. London's local government system struggled to cope with the rapid growth, especially in providing the city with adequate infrastructure. Between 1855 and 1889, the Metropolitan Board of Works oversaw infrastructure expansion. It was then replaced by the County of London, overseen by the London County Council, London's first elected city-wide administration.
A London street hit during the Blitz of World War II
The Blitz and other bombing by the German Luftwaffe during World War II killed over 30,000 Londoners and destroyed large tracts of housing and other buildings across London. In 1965 London's political boundaries were expanded to take into account the growth of the urban area outside the County of London's borders. The expanded area was called Greater London and was administered by the Greater London Council. An eco revival from the 1980s onwards re-established London's position as a pre-eminent international centre. However, as the seat of government and the most important city in the UK, it has been subjected to bouts of terrorism. Provisional Irish Republican Army bombers sought to pressure the government into negotiations over Northern Ireland, frequently disrupting city activities with bomb threats â some of which were carried out â until their 1997 cease-fire. More recently, a series of coordinated bomb attacks were carried out by Islamic extremist suicide bombers on the public transport network on 7 July 2005âjust 24 hours after London was awarded the 2012 Summer Olympics.
City Hall at night, home of the Greater London Authority
The administration of London is formed of two tiers â a city-wide, strategic tier and a local tier. City-wide administration is coordinated by the Greater London Authority (GLA), while local administration is carried out by 33 smaller authorities. The GLA consists of two elected parts; the Mayor of London, who has executive powers, and the London Assembly, who scrutinise the Mayor's decisions and can accept or reject his budget proposals each year. The GLA was set up in 2000 to replace the similar Greater London Council (GLC) which had been abolished in 1986. The headquarters of the GLA and the Mayor of London is at City Hall; the Mayor is Boris Johnson. The 33 local authorities are the councils of the 32 London boroughs and the City of London Corporation. They are responsible for local services not overseen by the GLA, such as local planning, schools, social services, local roads and refuse collection.
London is the home of the Government of the United Kingdom which is located around the Houses of Parliament in Westminster. Many government departments are located close to Parliament, particularly along Whitehall, including the Prime Minister's residence at 10 Downing Street. The British Parliament is often referred to as the "Mother of Parliaments" (although this sobriquet was first applied to England itself by John Bright) because it has been the model for most other parliamentary systems, and its Acts have created many other parliaments. There are 74 Members of Parliament (MPs) from London, who correspond to local parliamentary constituencies in the national Parliament by . Of these 74 MPs, currently 44 are from the Labour Party, 21 are Conservatives, 8 are Liberal Democrats and one is from the RESPECT party.
West and central London seen from SPOT satellite
London can be geographically defined in a number of ways, although the situation was once even more ambiguous than it is now and open to periodic legal debate. At London's core is the small, ancient City of London which is commonly known as 'the City' or 'the Square Mile'. London's metropolitan area grew considerably during the Victorian era and again during the Interwar period, but expansion halted in the 1940s because of World War II and Green Belt legislation, and the area has been largely static since. The London region of England, also commonly known as Greater London, is the area administered by the Greater London Authority. The urban sprawl of the conurbation â or Greater London Urban Area â covers a roughly similar area, with a slightly larger population. Beyond this is the vast London commuter belt.
Map of Central LondonForty percent of Greater London is covered by the London postal district, within which 'LONDON' forms part of the postal address. The London telephone area code covers a larger area, similar in size to Greater London, although some outer districts are omitted and some places just outside are included. The area within the orbital M25 motorway is sometimes used to define the "London area" and the Greater London boundary has been aligned to it in places. Greater London is split for some purposes into Inner London and Outer London. Informally, the city is split into North, South, East, West and often also Central London.
The Metropolitan Police District, city-wide local government area and London transport area have varied over time, but broadly coincide with the Greater London boundary. The Romans may have marked the centre of Londinium with the London Stone, still visible on Cannon Street. The coordinates of the nominal centre of London (traditionally considered to be the original Eleanor Cross at Charing Cross, near the junction of Trafalgar Square and Whitehall) are approximately . Trafalgar Square has also become a point for celebrations and protests.
Within London, both the City of London and the City of Westminster have City status and both the City of London and the remainder of Greater London are the ceremonial counties. The current area of Greater London was historically part of the counties of Middlesex, Kent, Surrey, Essex and Hertfordshire. Unlike most capital cities, London's status as the capital of the UK has never been granted or confirmed officially â by statute or in written form. Its position as the capital has formed through constitutional convention, making its position as de facto capital a part of the UK's unwritten constitution. The capital of England was moved to London from Winchester as the Palace of Westminster developed in the 12th and 13th centuries to become the permanent location of the royal court, and thus the political capital of the nation. According to the Collins English Dictionary definition (1994) Collins English Dictionary. Collins Education plc. of 'the seat of government,' London is not the capital of England, as England does not have its own government. However according to the Oxford English Reference dictionary definition Oxford English Reference Dictionary. Oxford English. of 'the most important town...' and many other authorities, "HC 501 0304.PDF" (PDF). Parliament Publications. Retrieved on 2008-06-06. 'England' (1994) Collins English Dictionary. Collins Education plc. London is the capital of England.
Greater London covers an area of . Its primary geographical feature is the Thames, a navigable river which crosses the city from the south-west to the east. The Thames Valley is a floodplain surrounded by gently rolling hills including Parliament Hill, Addington Hills, and Primrose Hill. The Thames was once a much broader, shallower river with extensive marshlands; at high tide, its shores reached five times their present width. Since the Victorian era it has been extensively embanked, and many of its London tributaries now flow underground. The Thames is a tidal river, and London is vulnerable to flooding. The threat has increased over time due to a slow but continuous rise in high water level by the slow 'tilting' of Britain (up in the north and down in the south) caused by post-glacial rebound. In 1974, a decade of work began on the construction of the Thames Barrier across the Thames at Woolwich to deal with this threat. While the barrier is expected to function as designed until roughly 2030, concepts for its future enlargement or redesign are already being discussed.
London has a temperate marine climate, like much of the British Isles, so the city rarely sees extremely high or low temperatures. Summers are warm with average high temperatures of and lows of , however, temperatures could exceed on many days.
Winters in London are chilly, but rarely below freezing with daytime temperatures around 2 - 8 °C (36 - 46 °F), while spring has mild days and cool evenings.
London has regular but generally light precipitation throughout the year, with average precipitation of every year.
Snow is relatively uncommon, particularly because heat from the urban area can make London up to 5 °C (9 °F) hotter than the surrounding areas in winter. Snowfall, however, is usually, but not always, seen up to a few times a year. London is in USDA Hardiness zone 9, and AHS Heat Zone 2.
In the second half of the 19th century and the first half of the 20th, London was noted for its dense fogs and smogs. Following the deadly Great Smog of 1952, the Clean Air Act 1956 was passed, leading to the decline of such severe pollution in the capital.
London's vast urban area is often described using a set of district names (e.g. Bloomsbury, Knightsbridge, Mayfair, Whitechapel, Fitzrovia). These are either informal designations, or reflect the names of superseded villages, parishes and city wards. Such names have remained in use through tradition, each referring to a local area with its own distinctive character, but often with no modern official boundaries. However, since 1965 Greater London has been divided into 32 London boroughs in addition to the ancient City of London.
The City of London is one of the world's three largest financial centres (alongside New York and Tokyo) with a dominant role in several international financial markets, including cross-border bank lending, international bond issuance and trading, foreign-exchange trading, over-the-counter derivatives, fund management and foreign equities trading. It also has the world's largest insurance market, the leading exchange for dealing in non-precious metals, the largest spot gold and gold lending markets, the largest ship broking market, and more foreign banks and investment houses than any other centre. The City has its own governance and boundaries, giving it a status as the only completely autonomous local authority in London. London's new financial and commercial hub is the Docklands area to the east of the City, dominated by the Canary Wharf complex. Other businesses locate in the City of Westminster, the home of the UK's national government and the well-known Westminster Abbey.
The West End is London's main entertainment and shopping district, with locations such as Oxford Street, Leicester Square, Covent Garden and Piccadilly Circus acting as tourist magnets. The West London area is known for fashionable and expensive residential areas such as Notting Hill, Knightsbridge and Chelsea â where properties can sell for tens of millions of pounds. The average price for all properties in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea is £894,000 with similar average outlay in most of Central London.
The eastern region of London contains the East End and East London. The East End is the area closest to the original Port of London, known for its high immigrant population, as well as for being one of the poorest areas in London. The surrounding East London area saw much of London's early industrial development; now, brownfield sites throughout the area are being redeveloped as part of the Thames Gateway including the London Riverside and Lower Lea Valley, which is being developed into the Olympic Park for the 2012 Olympics.
With increasing industrialisation, London's population grew rapidly throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries, and it was the most populous city in the world until overtaken by New York in 1925. Its population peaked at 8,615,245 in 1939 immediately before the outbreak of World War 2. There were an estimated 7,512,400 official residents in Greater London as of mid-2006. However, London's continuous urban area extends beyond the borders of Greater London and was home to 8,278,251 people in 2001, while its wider metropolitan area has a population of between 12 and 14 million depending on the definition used. According to Eurostat, London is the most populous city and metropolitan area of the European Union and the second most populous in Europe (or third if Istanbul is included).
The region covers an area of . The population density is , more than ten times that of any other British region. In terms of population, London is the 25th largest city and the 17th largest metropolitan region in the world. It is also ranked 4th in the world in number of billionaires (United States Dollars) residing in the city. London ranks as one of the most expensive cities in the world, alongside Tokyo and Moscow.
According to 2008 estimates, 51% of these seven million and seven hundred thousand people people are classed as the indigenous White British, White Irish (2.5%) and "Other White" 10%, the majority of whom are other Europeans. 15% of people are of South Asian descent, including Indian (mainly Punjabi, Hindi, Tamil and Gujarati), Pakistani, Bangladeshi (Bengali) and "Other Asian" (mostly Sri Lankan (Tamil) and other Southern Asian ethnicities). 13% of people are Black (around 7% are Black African, 5% as Black Caribbean, 1% as "Other Black"). 5.5% are of mixed race; 1.5% are Chinese; and 1.5% of people belong to another ethnic group. 30% of inhabitants were born outside the European Union. The Irish born, from both the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland, number approximately 250,000 and are the largest group born outside of Britain.
In January 2005, a survey of London's ethnic and religious diversity claimed that there were more than 300 languages spoken and more than 50 non-indigenous communities which have a population of more than 10,000 in London. Figures from the Office for National Statistics show that, as of 2006, London's foreign-born population is 2,288,000 (31%), up from 1,630,000 in 1997. The 2001 census showed that 27.1% of Greater London's population were born outside the UK, and a slightly higher proportion were classed as non-white.
The table to the right shows the 'Country of Birth' of London residents in 2001, the date of the last UK Census. (Top 21). Note that a portion of the German-born population are likely to be British nationals born to parents serving in the British armed forces in Germany.
Westminster Abbey is one of London's oldest and most important buildings and a World Heritage Site.
The majority of Londoners - 58.2% - identify themselves as Christians. This is followed by those of no religion (15.8%), Muslims (8.5%), Hindus (4.1%), Jews (2.1%), Sikhs (1.5%), Buddhists (0.8%) and other (0.5%), though 8.7% of people did not answer this question in the 2001 Census.
London has traditionally been dominated by Christianity, and has a large number of churches, particularly in the City of London. The well-known St Paul's Cathedral in the City and Southwark Cathedral south of the river are Anglican administrative centres, while the Archbishop of Canterbury, principal bishop of the Church of England and worldwide Anglican Communion, has his main residence at Lambeth Palace in the London Borough of Lambeth.
Important national and royal ceremonies are shared between St Paul's and Westminster Abbey. The Abbey is not to be confused with nearby Westminster Cathedral, which is the largest Roman Catholic cathedral in England and Wales. Religious practice is lower in London than any other part of the UK or Western Europe and is around seven times lower than American averages. Despite the prevalence of Anglican churches, observance is very low within the Anglican denomination, although church attendance, particularly at evangelical Anglican churches in London, has started to increase.
The Swaminarayan Hindu Temple in Neasden
London is also home to sizeable Muslim, Hindu, Sikh, and Jewish communities. Many Muslims live in Tower Hamlets and Newham; the most important Muslim edifice is London Central Mosque on the edge of Regent's Park. London's large Hindu community is found in the north-western boroughs of Harrow and Brent, the latter of which is home to one of Europe's largest Hindu temples, Neasden Temple. Sikh communities are located in East and West London, which is also home to the largest Sikh temple in the world, outside India.
The majority of British Jews live in London, with significant Jewish communities in Stamford Hill, Stanmore, Golders Green, Hendon, and Edgware in North London. Stanmore and Canons Park Synagogue has the largest membership of any single Orthodox synagogue in the whole of Europe, overtaking Ilford synagogue (also in London) in 1998. The community set up the London Jewish Forum in 2007 in response to the growing significance of devolved London Government.
The City of London is the world's largest financial centre . It is home to the London Stock Exchange and Lloyds of London.
London is a major centre for international business and commerce and is one of three "command centres" for the world economy (along with New York City and Tokyo). According to 2005 estimates by the PricewaterhouseCoopers accounting firm, London has the 6th largest city economy in the world after Tokyo, New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Paris. London generates approximately 20% of the UK's GDP (or $446 billion in 2005); while the economy of the London metropolitan area â the second largest in Europe â generates approximately 30% of the UK's GDP (or an estimated $669 billion in 2005).
London's success as a service industry and business centre can be attributed to factors such as English being the native and dominant language of business, close relationship with the U.S. and various countries in Asia. Other factors include English law being the most important and most used contract law in international business and the multi-cultural infrastructure. Government policies such as low taxes, particularly for foreigners (non-UK domiciled residents do not get taxed on their foreign earnings), a business friendly environment, good transport infrastructure and a deregulated economy with little intervention by the government have all contributed to London's economy becoming more service based. Over 85% (3.2 million) of the employed population of Greater London works in service industries. Another half a million employees resident in Greater London work in manufacturing and construction, almost equally divided between both.
The three tallest skyscrapers as of 2008 in Canary Wharf as viewed from Cabot Square. It is home to such companies as HSBC and Clifford Chance.
London's largest industry remains finance, and its financial exports make it a large contributor to the UK's balance of payments. Over 300,000 people are employed in financial services in London. London has over 480 overseas banks, more than any other city in the world. Due to New York's tightening of market regulations, London stock exchanges had approximately 20% more initial public offerings in 2006.
London is home to banks, brokers, insurers and legal and accounting firms. A second, smaller financial district is developing at Canary Wharf to the east of the city which includes the global headquarters of HSBC, Reuters, Barclays and the Magic Circle, which includes Clifford Chance, the largest law firm in the world. London handled 31% of global currency transactions â an average daily turnover of US$753 billion â with more US dollars traded in London than New York, and more euros traded than in every other city in Europe combined.
More than half of the UK's top 100 listed companies (the FTSE 100) and over 100 of Europe's 500 largest companies are headquartered in central London. Over 70% of the FTSE 100 are located within London's metropolitan area, and 75% of Fortune 500 companies have offices in London. Along with professional services, media companies are concentrated in London (see Media in London) and the media distribution industry is London's second most competitive sector (after central banking, the most competitive sector). The BBC is a key employer, while other broadcasters also have headquarters around the city. Many national newspapers are edited in London, having traditionally been associated with Fleet Street in the city; they are now primarily based around Canary Wharf.
Due to its prominant global role, London is getting hit harder than any other financial centre in the subprime crisis. The City of London estimates that 70,000 jobs in finance will be cut within barely a year.
Several foreign banks have started to move off employees from London to their national financial centres, notably Dresdner Kleinwort, BNP Paribas and Santander.
Tourism is one of London's prime industries and employs the equivalent of 350,000 full-time workers in London in 2003, while annual expenditure by tourists is around £15 billion. " ", Visit London. Retrieved on 3 June 2006. A study carried out by Euromonitor in October 2007 places London at first place out of 150 of the world's most popular cities, attracting 15.6 million international tourists in 2006. This puts London far ahead of 2nd place Bangkok (10.35 million) and 3rd place Paris (just 9.7 million). London attracts 27 million overnight-stay visitors every year. " ", Visit London. Retrieved on 3 June 2006. The Port of London is currently the third-largest in the United Kingdom, handling 50 million tonnes of cargo each year.
London is too diverse to be characterised by any particular architectural style, having accumulated its buildings over a long period of time and drawn on a wide range of influences. It is, however, mainly brick built, most commonly the yellow London stock brick or a warm orange-red variety, often decorated with carvings and white plaster mouldings. Many grand houses and public buildings (such as the National Gallery) are constructed from Portland stone. Some areas of the city, particularly those just west of the centre, are characterised by white stucco or whitewashed buildings. Few structures pre-date the Great Fire of 1666, except for a few trace Roman remains, the Tower of London and a few scattered Tudor survivors in the City. The disused (but soon to be rejuvenated) 1939 Battersea Power Station by the river in the south-west is a local landmark, while some railway termini are excellent examples of Victorian architecture, most notably St Pancras and Paddington (at least internally).
The O 2 , one of the largest dome structures in the world.
The density of London varies, with high employment density in the central area, high residential densities in inner London and lower densities in the suburbs. In the dense areas, most of the concentration is achieved with medium- and high-rise buildings. London's skyscrapers such as the notable "Gherkin", Tower 42, the Broadgate Tower and One Canada Square are usually found in the two financial districts, the City of London and Canary Wharf. Other notable modern buildings include City Hall in Southwark with its distinctive oval shape, the British Library in Somers Town/Kings Cross, What was formerly the Millennium Dome, located by the Thames to the east of Canary Wharf, is now used as an entertainment venue known as The O 2 .
The development of tall buildings has been encouraged in the London Plan, which will lead to the erection of many new skyscrapers over the next decade, particularly in the City of London and Canary Wharf. The 72-storey, "Shard London Bridge" by London Bridge station, the Bishopsgate Tower and many other skyscrapers over are either proposed or approved and could transform the city's skyline. As of July 2008, there are 426 high-rise buildings (between 23 m to 150 m/75 ft to 491 ft) under construction, approved for construction, and proposed for construction in London.
A great many monuments pay homage to people and events in the city. The Monument in the City of London provides views of the surrounding area while commemorating the Great Fire of London, which originated nearby. Marble Arch and Wellington Arch, at the north and south ends of Park Lane respectively, have royal connections, as do the Albert Memorial and Royal Albert Hall in Kensington. Nelson's Column is a nationally recognised monument in Trafalgar Square, one of the focal points of the centre.
The largest parks in the central area of London are the Royal Parks of Hyde Park and its neighbour Kensington Gardens at the western edge of central London and Regent's Park on the northern edge. This park contains London Zoo, the world's oldest scientific zoo, and is located near the tourist attraction of Madame Tussauds Wax Museum. Closer to central London are the smaller Royal Parks of Green Park and St. James's Park. Hyde Park in particular is popular for sports and sometimes hosts open-air concerts.
A number of large parks lie outside the city centre, including the remaining Royal Parks of Greenwich Park to the south-east and Bushy Park and Richmond Park to the south-west, as well as Victoria Park, East London to the east. Primrose Hill to the north of Regent's Park is a popular spot to view the city skyline. Some more informal, semi-natural open spaces also exist, including the Hampstead Heath of North London. This incorporates Kenwood House, the former stately home and a popular location in the summer months where classical musical concerts are held by the lake, attracting thousands of people every weekend to enjoy the music, scenery and fireworks.
Traditionally the London accent has been given the famous Cockney label, and was similar to many accents of the South East of England, developing a unique form of slang known as Cockney Rhyming Slang. The accent of a 21st century Londoner varies widely; what is becoming more and more common amongst the under 30s however is some fusion of Cockney, Received Pronunciation, and a whole array of 'ethnic' accents, in particular Caribbean, which form an accent labelled Multicultural London English (MLE), with a large amount of slang in use as well.
Piccadilly Circus at night
The Trooping the Colour held in 2006 to mark the Queen's 80th birthday.
Within the City of Westminster, the entertainment district of the West End has its focus around Leicester Square, where London and world film premieres are held, and Piccadilly Circus, with its giant electronic advertisements. London's theatre district is here, as are many cinemas, bars, clubs and restaurants, including the city's Chinatown district, and just to the east is Covent Garden, an area housing speciality shops. The United Kingdom's Royal Ballet,English National Ballet, Royal Opera and English National Opera are based in London and perform at the Royal Opera House, The London Coliseum, Sadler's Wells Theatre and the Royal Albert Hall as well as touring the country. Islington's long Upper Street, extending Northwards from The Angel, has more bars and restaurants than any other street in the UK. Europe's busiest shopping area is Oxford Street, a shopping street nearly long â which makes it the longest shopping street in the world â and home to many shops and department stores including Selfridges. Knightsbridge â home to the Harrods department store â lies just to the southwest. London is home to designers Vivienne Westwood, Galliano, Stella McCartney, Manolo Blahnik, and Jimmy Choo among others; its renowned art and fashion schools make it an international centre of fashion alongside Paris, Milan and New York.
London offers a great variety of cuisine as a result of its ethnically diverse population. Gastronomic centres include the Bangladeshi restaurants of Brick Lane and the Chinese food restaurants of Chinatown.
There are a variety of regular annual events in the city. The beginning of the year is celebrated with the relatively new New Year's Day Parade, while traditional parades include November's Lord Mayor's Show, a centuries-old event celebrating the annual appointment of a new Lord Mayor of the City of London with a procession along the streets of the City, and June's Trooping the Colour, a formal military pageant performed by regiments of the Commonwealth and British armies to celebrate the Queen's Official Birthday.
Charles Dickens (1812â1870), whose works formed a pervasive image of Victorian London.
London has been the setting for many works of literature. Two writers closely associated with the city are the diarist Samuel Pepys, noted for his eyewitness account of the Great Fire, and Charles Dickens, whose representation of a foggy, snowy, grimy London of street sweepers and pickpockets has been a major influence on people's vision of early Victorian London. The earlier (1722) A Journal of the Plague Year by Daniel Defoe is a fictionalisation of the events of the 1665 Great Plague. William Shakespeare spent a large part of his life living and working in London; his contemporary Ben Jonson was also based in London, and some of his work â most notably his play The Alchemist â was set in the city. Later important depictions of London from the 19th and early 20th centuries are the afore-mentioned Dickens novels, and Arthur Conan Doyle's illustrious Sherlock Holmes stories. A modern writer pervasively influenced by the city is Peter Ackroyd, in works such as London: The Biography, The Lambs of London and Hawksmoor.
London has played a significant role in the film industry, and has major studios at Pinewood, Ealing, Shepperton, Elstree and Leavesden, as well as an important special effects and post-production community centred in Soho in central London. Working Title Films has its headquarters in London. The city also hosts a number of performing arts schools, including The Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA), the Central School of Speech and Drama (alumni: Judi Dench and Laurence Olivier) and the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art (alumni: Jim Broadbent). The London Film Festival is held each year in October.
London is home to many museums, galleries, and other institutions which are major tourist attractions as well as playing a research role. The Natural History Museum (biology and geology), Science Museum and Victoria and Albert Museum (fashion and design) are clustered in South Kensington's "museum quarter", while the British Museum houses historic artefacts from around the world. The British Library at St Pancras is the UK's national library, housing 150 million items. The city also houses extensive art collections, primarily in the National Gallery, Tate Britain and Tate Modern.
The Royal Albert Hall hosts a wide range of concerts and musical events.
London is one of the major classical and popular music capitals of the world and is home to major music corporations, such as EMI and Decca Records, as well as countless bands, musicians and industry professionals. London is home to many orchestras and concert halls such as the Barbican Arts Centre (principal base of the London Symphony Orchestra), Cadogan Hall (Royal Philharmonic Orchestra) and the Royal Albert Hall (BBC Promenade Concerts). London's two main opera houses are the Royal Opera House and the Coliseum Theatre.
Several conservatoires are located within the city: Royal Academy of Music, Royal College of Music, Guildhall School of Music and Drama, and Trinity College of Music.
London has numerous renowned venues for rock and pop concerts, including large arenas such as Earls Court, Wembley Arena and the O2 Arena, as well as numerous mid-size venues, such as Brixton Academy, Hammersmith Apollo and The London Astoria. London also hosts many music festivals, including the 02 Wireless Festival and Latitude Festival.
London is home to the first and original Hard Rock Cafe and the illustrious Abbey Road Studios where The Beatles created many of their hits. Musicians such as Bob Marley, Jimi Hendrix and Freddie Mercury have lived in London. A large number of musical artists originate from or are most strongly associated with London, including David Bowie, Ian Dury, The Kinks, Adam Faith, The Rolling Stones, The Who, Madness, The Jam, Blur, Iron Maiden, Phil Collins, Rod Stewart, Elvis Costello, Dusty Springfield, The Yardbirds and The Small Faces.
London was instrumental in the development of punk music, with figures such as the Sex Pistols, The Clash, and Vivienne Westwood all based in the city.
More recent artists to emerge from the London music scene include The Libertines, one of the most influential British rock acts of the 2000s, Bloc Party, Amy Winehouse, Lily Allen, The Kooks, Razorlight, Laura Marling, Dizzee Rascal, Natasha Bedingfield and Leona Lewis.
London is also a centre for Urban music. In particular the genres UK Garage, Drum and Bass and Grime evolved in the city from the foreign genres of hiphop and reggae, alongside local rave music. Black music station BBC 1Xtra was set up to support the rise of homegrown urban music both in London and the rest of the UK.
Wembley Stadium is home to English football and is the most expensive stadium in the world.
The Wimbledon Championships, a tennis Grand Slam tournament.
London has hosted the Summer Olympics twice, in 1908 and 1948. In July 2005 London was chosen to host the Games in 2012, which will make it the first city in the world to host the Summer Olympics three times. London was also the host of the British Empire Games in 1934.
London's most popular sport (for both participants and spectators) is football. London has thirteen League football clubs, including five in the Premier League: Arsenal, Chelsea, Fulham, Tottenham Hotspur and West Ham United. London also has four rugby union teams in the Guinness Premiership (London Irish, Saracens, Wasps and Harlequins), although only the Harlequins play in London (all the other three now play outside Greater London, although Saracens still play within the M25). There are two professional rugby league clubs in London - Harlequins Rugby League who play in the Super League at the Stoop and the National League 2 side the London Skolars (based in Haringey).
Since 1924, the original Wembley Stadium was the home of the English national football team, and served as the venue for the FA Cup final as well as rugby league's Challenge Cup final. The new Wembley Stadium serves exactly the same purposes and has a capacity of 90,000. Twickenham Stadium in west London is the national rugby union stadium, and has a capacity of 84,000 now that the new south stand has been completed.
Cricket in London centres on its two Test cricket grounds at Lord's (home of Middlesex C.C.C) in St John's Wood, and The Oval (home of Surrey C.C.C) in Kennington. One of London's best-known annual sports competitions is the Wimbledon Tennis Championships, held at the All England Club in the south-western suburb of Wimbledon. Other key events are the annual mass-participation London Marathon which sees some 35,000 runners attempt a course around the city, and the Oxford vs. Cambridge Boat Race on the River Thames between Putney and Mortlake.
Transport is one of the four areas of policy administered by the Mayor of London, however the mayor's financial control is limited and he does not control the heavy rail network, although in November 2007 he assumed responsibility for the North London Railway as well as several other lines, to form London Overground. The public transport network, administered by Transport for London (TfL), is one of the most extensive in the world, but faces congestion and reliability issues, which a large investment programme is attempting to address, including £7 billion (â¬10 billion) of improvements planned for the Olympics. London has been commended as the city with the best public transport. Cycling is an increasingly popular way to get around London. The London Cycling Campaign lobbies for better provision.
The London Underground is the oldest, longest, and most expansive metro system in the world, dating from 1863.
The centrepiece of the public transport network is the London Underground â commonly referred to as The Tube â which has eleven interconnecting lines. It is the oldest, longest, and most expansive metro system in the world, dating from 1863. The system was home to the world's first underground electric line, the City & South London Railway, which began service in 1890. Over three million journeys a day are made on the Underground network, nearly 1 billion journeys each year. The Underground serves the central area and most suburbs to the north of the Thames, while those to the south are served by an extensive suburban rail surface network.
The Docklands Light Railway is a second metro system using smaller and lighter trains, which opened in 1987, serving East London and Greenwich on both sides of the Thames. Commuter and intercity railways generally do not cross the city, instead running into fourteen terminal stations scattered around its historic centre; the exception is the Thameslink route operated by First Capital Connect, with terminus stations at Bedford, Brighton and Moorgate. Since the early 1990s, increasing pressures on the commuter rail and Underground networks have led to increasing demands â particularly from businesses and the City of London Corporation â for Crossrail: a £10 billion east â west heavy rail connection under central London, which was given the green light in early October 2007.
High-speed Eurostar trains link St Pancras International with Lille and Paris in France, and Brussels in Belgium. Journey times to Paris and Brussels of 2h 15 and 1h 51 respectively make London closer to continental Europe than the rest of Britain by virtue of the newly completed High Speed 1 rail link to the Channel Tunnel. From 2009 this line will also allow for high speed domestic travel from Kent into London. The redevelopment of St. Pancras was key to London's Olympic bid, as the station also serves two international airports through Thameslink, and will also provide direct rail links to the Olympic site at Stratford using British Rail Class 395 trains running under the Olympic Javelin name; these will be based on Japanese Shinkansen high-speed trains.
The modern Enviro400 double-decker bus
London's bus network is one of the largest in the world, running 24 hours a day, with 8,000 buses, 700 bus routes, and over 6 million passenger journeys made every weekday. In 2003, the network's ridership was estimated at over 1.5 billion passenger trips per annum, more than the Underground. Around £850 m is taken in revenue each year.
London has the largest wheelchair accessible network in the world and, from the 3rd quarter of 2007, became more accessible to hearing and visually impaired passengers as audio-visual announcements were introduced. The distinctive red double-decker buses are internationally recognised, and are a trademark of London transport along with black cabs and the Tube.
Terminal 5 at Heathrow Airport, which is the world's busiest airport by international passenger traffic.
London is a major international air transport hub with the largest city airspace in the world. Eight airports use the words London Airport in their name, but most traffic passes through one of five major airports. London Heathrow Airport is the busiest airport in the world for international traffic, and is the major hub of the nation's flag carrier, British Airways. In March 2008 its fifth terminal was opened, and plans are already being considered for a sixth terminal. Similar traffic, with the addition of some low-cost short-haul flights, is also handled at London Gatwick Airport. London Stansted Airport and London Luton Airport cater mostly for low-cost short-haul flights. London City Airport, the smallest and most central airport, is focused on business travellers, with a mixture of full service short-haul scheduled flights and considerable business jet traffic.
Although the majority of journeys involving central London are made by public transport, travel in outer London is car-dominated. The inner ring road (around the city centre), the North and South Circular roads (in the suburbs), and the outer orbital motorway (the M25, outside the built-up area) encircle the city and are intersected by a number of busy radial routes â but very few motorways penetrate into inner London. The M25 is the longest ring-road motorway in the world at long. A plan for a comprehensive network of motorways throughout the city (the Ringways Plan) was prepared in the 1960s but was mostly cancelled in the early 1970s. In 2003, a congestion charge was introduced to reduce traffic volumes in the city centre. With a few exceptions, motorists are required to pay £8 per day to drive within a defined zone encompassing much of congested central London. Motorists who are residents of the defined zone can buy a vastly reduced season pass which is renewed monthly and is cheaper than a corresponding bus fare.
Royal Holloway, as a part of the University of London, a federation of London higher education institutions
Home to a range of universities, colleges and schools, London has a student population of about 378,000 and is a centre of research and development. Most primary and secondary schools in London follow the same system as the rest of England â comprehensive schooling.
With 125,000 students, the University of London is the largest contact teaching university in the United Kingdom and in Europe. It comprises 20 colleges as well as several smaller institutes each with a high degree of autonomy. Constituent colleges have their own admissions procedures, and are effectively universities in their own right, although most degrees are awarded by the University of London rather than the individual colleges. Its constituents include multi-disciplinary colleges such as UCL, King's, Goldsmiths, Queen Mary and more specialised institutions such as the London School of Economics, SOAS, the Royal Academy of Music, the Courtauld Institute of Art and the Institute of Education.
Imperial College London and University College London have been ranked among the top ten universities in the world by The Times Higher Education Supplement: in 2008 Imperial was ranked the 6th best and UCL the 7th best university in the world.
In addition, the London School of Economics is the worldâs leading social science institution for teaching and research, plus has the most international student body of any university in the world today.
A number of colleges are dedicated to the fine arts, including the Royal College of Music, Royal College of Art, and Guildhall School of Music and Drama.
Senate House, the headquarters of the federal University of London
London's other universities, such as Brunel University, City University, London Metropolitan University, Middlesex University, University of East London, University of the Arts London, University of Westminster, Kingston University and London South Bank University are not part of the University of London but are still leaders in their field and popular choices among students both nationally and internationally. Some were polytechnics until these were granted university status in 1992, and others which were founded much earlier. Imperial College London left the federal University of London in 2007. Since the merger of University of North London and London Guildhall University in 2003, London Metropolitan University is the largest unitary university in the capital, with over 34,000 students from 155 countries. About London Met London Metropolitan University, August 2008 London is also known globally for its business education, with the London Business School (ranked 1st in Europe â Business Week) and Cass Business School (Europe's largest finance school) both being top world-rated business schools. In addition there are three international universities: Schiller International University, Richmond University and Regent's College.
There are 46 other places on six continents named after London. Jack Malvern. Richmond, in Surrey, is the most widely copied British place name worldwide, timesonline 2008-12-29. The original byline for the article in The Times of the same day was "The 55 corners of foreign fields that will be for ever ... Richmond" (page 9). Cites The Times Universal Atlas of the World. As well as London's twinning, the Boroughs of London have twinnings with parts of other cities across the world. Shown below is the list of cities that the Greater London Authority is twinned with.
* New York City,
* Moscow,
* Berlin,
The following cities have a friendship agreement with London:
* Sofia,
* Delhi,
* Mumbai,
* Beijing,
* Istanbul,
* Paris,
* Tehran,
* Tokyo,
* Bogotá,
* Podgorica,
* Algiers,
* Global city
* Geography of England
* Large Cities Climate Leadership Group
* Largest European cities and metropolitan areas
* London Assembly
* Megacity
*
*
*
*
* Mayor of London, London Assembly and the Greater London Authority â Official city government site
* Transport for London (TfL) â city transport authority
* BBC London
* Office for National Statistics: Focus on London 2007 â compendium of official statistics about London
* Museum of London Group Portal - Home
* VisitLondon.com â Official London site
* Map of Early Modern London â Historical Map and Encyclopaedia of Shakespeare's London (Scholarly)
* London Bridges â A view of London Bridges over the River Thames
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London | Does London's population draw from a wide range of religions? | Yes | data/set3/a1 | London
London ( ; ) is the capital of both England and the United Kingdom, and the largest urban area in the European Union. {{cite web|url= title=Largest EU City An important settlement for two millennia, London's history goes back to its founding by the Romans. Since its foundation, London has been part of many movements and phenomena throughout history, including the English Renaissance, the Industrial Revolution, and the Gothic Revival. The city's core, the ancient City of London, still retains its limited medieval boundaries; but since at least the 19th century, the name "London" has also referred to the whole metropolis that has developed around it. Today the bulk of this conurbation forms the London region of England and the Greater London administrative area, with its own elected mayor and assembly.
London is one of the the world's most important business, financial and cultural centres and its influence in politics, education, entertainment, media, fashion and the arts contribute to its status as a major global city. Global Cities: GaWC Inventory of World Cities 1999 Global cities#GaWC Inventory of World Cities (1999 Edition); Global Cities: GaWC Inventory of World Cities 2004 Global cities#GaWC Leading World Cities (2004 Edition) Central London is the headquarters of more than half of the UK's top 100 listed companies (the FTSE 100) and over 100 of Europe's 500 largest companies. The city is a major tourist destination both for domestic and overseas visitors, with annual expenditure by tourists of around £15 billion. London hosted the 1908 and 1948 Summer Olympic Games and will host the 2012 Summer Olympic Games.
Greater London contains four World Heritage Sites: the Tower of London; the historic settlement of Greenwich; the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew; and the site comprising the Palace of Westminster, Westminster Abbey and St. Margaret's Church.
London's population draws from a wide range of peoples, cultures, and religions, and over 300 languages are spoken within the city. As of 2006, it had an official population of 7,512,400 within the boundaries of Greater London and is the most populous municipality in the European Union. As of 2001, the Greater London Urban Area had a population of 8,278,251 and the metropolitan area is estimated to have a total population of between 12 and 14 million , the largest metropolitan area in the EU. The public transport network, administered by Transport for London, is one of the most extensive in the world, and Heathrow Airport is the busiest airport in the world by international passenger traffic and the air space is the busiest of any city in the world. International Passenger Traffic, Airports Council International
The etymology of London remains a mystery. The earliest etymological explanation can be attributed to Geoffrey of Monmouth in Historia Regum Britanniae. The name is described as originating from King Lud, who had allegedly taken over the city and named it Kaerlud. This was slurred into Kaerludein and finally London. Many other theories have been advanced over the centuries, most of them deriving the name from Welsh or British, and occasionally from Anglo-Saxon or even Hebrew.
Map of London in 1300, showing the medieval boundaries of the City of London
Although there is evidence of scattered Brythonic settlements in the area, the first major settlement was founded by the Romans in AD 43 as Londinium, following the Roman conquest of Britain. This Londinium lasted for just seventeen years. Around 61, the Iceni tribe led by Queen Boudica stormed this first London, burning it to the ground. The next, heavily planned incarnation of the city prospered and superseded Colchester as the capital of the Roman province of Britannia in 100. At its height in the 2nd century, Roman London had a population of around 60,000.
By the 600s, the Anglo-Saxons had created a new settlement called Lundenwic approximately upstream from the old Roman city,
around what is now Covent Garden. It is likely that there was a harbour at the mouth of the River Fleet for fishing and trading, and this trading grew until the city was overcome by the Vikings and forced to relocate the city back to the location of the Roman Londinium to use its walls for protection. Viking attacks continued to increase around the rest of South East England, until 886 when Alfred the Great recaptured London and made peace with the Danish leader, Guthrum. The original Saxon city of Lundenwic became Ealdwic ("old city"), a name surviving to the present day as Aldwych, which is in the modern City of Westminster.
In a retaliatory attack, Ethelred's army achieved victory by pulling down London Bridge with the Danish garrison on top, and English control was re-established. Canute took control of the English throne in 1017, controlling the city and country until 1042, when his death resulted in a reversion to Saxon control under his pious stepson Edward the Confessor, who re-founded Westminster Abbey and the adjacent Palace of Westminster. By this time, London had become the largest and most prosperous city in England, although the official seat of government was still at Winchester.
Following a victory at the Battle of Hastings, William the Conqueror, the then Duke of Normandy, was crowned King of England in the newly finished Westminster Abbey on Christmas Day 1066. William granted the citizens of London special privileges, while building what is now known as the Tower of London, in the south-east corner of the city, to keep them under control. .
The Great Exhibition
In 1097, William II began the building of Westminster Hall, close by the abbey of the same name. The hall became the basis of a new Palace of Westminster, the prime royal residence throughout the Middle Ages. Westminster became the seat of the royal court and government (persisting until the present day), while its distinct neighbour, the City of London, was a centre of trade and commerce and flourished under its own unique administration, the Corporation of London. London grew in wealth and population during the Middle Ages. In 1100 its population was around 18,000; by 1300 it had grown to nearly 100,000. King Edward I issued an edict in 1290, expelling all Jews from England. Before the edict, there was an increasing population of Jews, whereas after this time, the population of Jews began to drop considerably. Disaster struck during the Black Death in the mid-14th century, when London lost nearly a third of its population. Apart from the invasion of London during the Peasants' Revolt in 1381, London remained relatively untouched by the various civil wars during the Middle Ages, such as the first and second Barons' Wars and the Wars of the Roses.
After the successful defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588, political stability in England allowed London to grow further. In 1603, James VI of Scotland came to the throne of England, essentially uniting the two countries. His enactment of harsh anti-Catholic laws made him unpopular, and an assassination attempt was made on 5 November 1605âthe well-known Gunpowder Plot.
The Great Fire of London destroyed many parts of the city in 1666
Plague caused extensive problems for London in the early 17th century, culminating in the Great Plague in 1665â1666. This was the last major outbreak in England, possibly thanks to the disastrous fire of 1666. The Great Fire of London broke out in the original City and quickly swept through London's wooden buildings, destroying large swathes of the city. A first hand narrative of both plague and fire was provided by Sir Samuel Pepys. Rebuilding took over ten years, largely under direction of a Commission appointed by King Charles II and chaired by Sir Christopher Wren.
Following London's growth in the 18th century, it became the world's largest city from about 1831 to 1925. Rising traffic congestion on city centre roads led to the creation of the world's first metro system â the London Underground â in 1863, driving further expansion and urbanisation. London's local government system struggled to cope with the rapid growth, especially in providing the city with adequate infrastructure. Between 1855 and 1889, the Metropolitan Board of Works oversaw infrastructure expansion. It was then replaced by the County of London, overseen by the London County Council, London's first elected city-wide administration.
A London street hit during the Blitz of World War II
The Blitz and other bombing by the German Luftwaffe during World War II killed over 30,000 Londoners and destroyed large tracts of housing and other buildings across London. In 1965 London's political boundaries were expanded to take into account the growth of the urban area outside the County of London's borders. The expanded area was called Greater London and was administered by the Greater London Council. An eco revival from the 1980s onwards re-established London's position as a pre-eminent international centre. However, as the seat of government and the most important city in the UK, it has been subjected to bouts of terrorism. Provisional Irish Republican Army bombers sought to pressure the government into negotiations over Northern Ireland, frequently disrupting city activities with bomb threats â some of which were carried out â until their 1997 cease-fire. More recently, a series of coordinated bomb attacks were carried out by Islamic extremist suicide bombers on the public transport network on 7 July 2005âjust 24 hours after London was awarded the 2012 Summer Olympics.
City Hall at night, home of the Greater London Authority
The administration of London is formed of two tiers â a city-wide, strategic tier and a local tier. City-wide administration is coordinated by the Greater London Authority (GLA), while local administration is carried out by 33 smaller authorities. The GLA consists of two elected parts; the Mayor of London, who has executive powers, and the London Assembly, who scrutinise the Mayor's decisions and can accept or reject his budget proposals each year. The GLA was set up in 2000 to replace the similar Greater London Council (GLC) which had been abolished in 1986. The headquarters of the GLA and the Mayor of London is at City Hall; the Mayor is Boris Johnson. The 33 local authorities are the councils of the 32 London boroughs and the City of London Corporation. They are responsible for local services not overseen by the GLA, such as local planning, schools, social services, local roads and refuse collection.
London is the home of the Government of the United Kingdom which is located around the Houses of Parliament in Westminster. Many government departments are located close to Parliament, particularly along Whitehall, including the Prime Minister's residence at 10 Downing Street. The British Parliament is often referred to as the "Mother of Parliaments" (although this sobriquet was first applied to England itself by John Bright) because it has been the model for most other parliamentary systems, and its Acts have created many other parliaments. There are 74 Members of Parliament (MPs) from London, who correspond to local parliamentary constituencies in the national Parliament by . Of these 74 MPs, currently 44 are from the Labour Party, 21 are Conservatives, 8 are Liberal Democrats and one is from the RESPECT party.
West and central London seen from SPOT satellite
London can be geographically defined in a number of ways, although the situation was once even more ambiguous than it is now and open to periodic legal debate. At London's core is the small, ancient City of London which is commonly known as 'the City' or 'the Square Mile'. London's metropolitan area grew considerably during the Victorian era and again during the Interwar period, but expansion halted in the 1940s because of World War II and Green Belt legislation, and the area has been largely static since. The London region of England, also commonly known as Greater London, is the area administered by the Greater London Authority. The urban sprawl of the conurbation â or Greater London Urban Area â covers a roughly similar area, with a slightly larger population. Beyond this is the vast London commuter belt.
Map of Central LondonForty percent of Greater London is covered by the London postal district, within which 'LONDON' forms part of the postal address. The London telephone area code covers a larger area, similar in size to Greater London, although some outer districts are omitted and some places just outside are included. The area within the orbital M25 motorway is sometimes used to define the "London area" and the Greater London boundary has been aligned to it in places. Greater London is split for some purposes into Inner London and Outer London. Informally, the city is split into North, South, East, West and often also Central London.
The Metropolitan Police District, city-wide local government area and London transport area have varied over time, but broadly coincide with the Greater London boundary. The Romans may have marked the centre of Londinium with the London Stone, still visible on Cannon Street. The coordinates of the nominal centre of London (traditionally considered to be the original Eleanor Cross at Charing Cross, near the junction of Trafalgar Square and Whitehall) are approximately . Trafalgar Square has also become a point for celebrations and protests.
Within London, both the City of London and the City of Westminster have City status and both the City of London and the remainder of Greater London are the ceremonial counties. The current area of Greater London was historically part of the counties of Middlesex, Kent, Surrey, Essex and Hertfordshire. Unlike most capital cities, London's status as the capital of the UK has never been granted or confirmed officially â by statute or in written form. Its position as the capital has formed through constitutional convention, making its position as de facto capital a part of the UK's unwritten constitution. The capital of England was moved to London from Winchester as the Palace of Westminster developed in the 12th and 13th centuries to become the permanent location of the royal court, and thus the political capital of the nation. According to the Collins English Dictionary definition (1994) Collins English Dictionary. Collins Education plc. of 'the seat of government,' London is not the capital of England, as England does not have its own government. However according to the Oxford English Reference dictionary definition Oxford English Reference Dictionary. Oxford English. of 'the most important town...' and many other authorities, "HC 501 0304.PDF" (PDF). Parliament Publications. Retrieved on 2008-06-06. 'England' (1994) Collins English Dictionary. Collins Education plc. London is the capital of England.
Greater London covers an area of . Its primary geographical feature is the Thames, a navigable river which crosses the city from the south-west to the east. The Thames Valley is a floodplain surrounded by gently rolling hills including Parliament Hill, Addington Hills, and Primrose Hill. The Thames was once a much broader, shallower river with extensive marshlands; at high tide, its shores reached five times their present width. Since the Victorian era it has been extensively embanked, and many of its London tributaries now flow underground. The Thames is a tidal river, and London is vulnerable to flooding. The threat has increased over time due to a slow but continuous rise in high water level by the slow 'tilting' of Britain (up in the north and down in the south) caused by post-glacial rebound. In 1974, a decade of work began on the construction of the Thames Barrier across the Thames at Woolwich to deal with this threat. While the barrier is expected to function as designed until roughly 2030, concepts for its future enlargement or redesign are already being discussed.
London has a temperate marine climate, like much of the British Isles, so the city rarely sees extremely high or low temperatures. Summers are warm with average high temperatures of and lows of , however, temperatures could exceed on many days.
Winters in London are chilly, but rarely below freezing with daytime temperatures around 2 - 8 °C (36 - 46 °F), while spring has mild days and cool evenings.
London has regular but generally light precipitation throughout the year, with average precipitation of every year.
Snow is relatively uncommon, particularly because heat from the urban area can make London up to 5 °C (9 °F) hotter than the surrounding areas in winter. Snowfall, however, is usually, but not always, seen up to a few times a year. London is in USDA Hardiness zone 9, and AHS Heat Zone 2.
In the second half of the 19th century and the first half of the 20th, London was noted for its dense fogs and smogs. Following the deadly Great Smog of 1952, the Clean Air Act 1956 was passed, leading to the decline of such severe pollution in the capital.
London's vast urban area is often described using a set of district names (e.g. Bloomsbury, Knightsbridge, Mayfair, Whitechapel, Fitzrovia). These are either informal designations, or reflect the names of superseded villages, parishes and city wards. Such names have remained in use through tradition, each referring to a local area with its own distinctive character, but often with no modern official boundaries. However, since 1965 Greater London has been divided into 32 London boroughs in addition to the ancient City of London.
The City of London is one of the world's three largest financial centres (alongside New York and Tokyo) with a dominant role in several international financial markets, including cross-border bank lending, international bond issuance and trading, foreign-exchange trading, over-the-counter derivatives, fund management and foreign equities trading. It also has the world's largest insurance market, the leading exchange for dealing in non-precious metals, the largest spot gold and gold lending markets, the largest ship broking market, and more foreign banks and investment houses than any other centre. The City has its own governance and boundaries, giving it a status as the only completely autonomous local authority in London. London's new financial and commercial hub is the Docklands area to the east of the City, dominated by the Canary Wharf complex. Other businesses locate in the City of Westminster, the home of the UK's national government and the well-known Westminster Abbey.
The West End is London's main entertainment and shopping district, with locations such as Oxford Street, Leicester Square, Covent Garden and Piccadilly Circus acting as tourist magnets. The West London area is known for fashionable and expensive residential areas such as Notting Hill, Knightsbridge and Chelsea â where properties can sell for tens of millions of pounds. The average price for all properties in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea is £894,000 with similar average outlay in most of Central London.
The eastern region of London contains the East End and East London. The East End is the area closest to the original Port of London, known for its high immigrant population, as well as for being one of the poorest areas in London. The surrounding East London area saw much of London's early industrial development; now, brownfield sites throughout the area are being redeveloped as part of the Thames Gateway including the London Riverside and Lower Lea Valley, which is being developed into the Olympic Park for the 2012 Olympics.
With increasing industrialisation, London's population grew rapidly throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries, and it was the most populous city in the world until overtaken by New York in 1925. Its population peaked at 8,615,245 in 1939 immediately before the outbreak of World War 2. There were an estimated 7,512,400 official residents in Greater London as of mid-2006. However, London's continuous urban area extends beyond the borders of Greater London and was home to 8,278,251 people in 2001, while its wider metropolitan area has a population of between 12 and 14 million depending on the definition used. According to Eurostat, London is the most populous city and metropolitan area of the European Union and the second most populous in Europe (or third if Istanbul is included).
The region covers an area of . The population density is , more than ten times that of any other British region. In terms of population, London is the 25th largest city and the 17th largest metropolitan region in the world. It is also ranked 4th in the world in number of billionaires (United States Dollars) residing in the city. London ranks as one of the most expensive cities in the world, alongside Tokyo and Moscow.
According to 2008 estimates, 51% of these seven million and seven hundred thousand people people are classed as the indigenous White British, White Irish (2.5%) and "Other White" 10%, the majority of whom are other Europeans. 15% of people are of South Asian descent, including Indian (mainly Punjabi, Hindi, Tamil and Gujarati), Pakistani, Bangladeshi (Bengali) and "Other Asian" (mostly Sri Lankan (Tamil) and other Southern Asian ethnicities). 13% of people are Black (around 7% are Black African, 5% as Black Caribbean, 1% as "Other Black"). 5.5% are of mixed race; 1.5% are Chinese; and 1.5% of people belong to another ethnic group. 30% of inhabitants were born outside the European Union. The Irish born, from both the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland, number approximately 250,000 and are the largest group born outside of Britain.
In January 2005, a survey of London's ethnic and religious diversity claimed that there were more than 300 languages spoken and more than 50 non-indigenous communities which have a population of more than 10,000 in London. Figures from the Office for National Statistics show that, as of 2006, London's foreign-born population is 2,288,000 (31%), up from 1,630,000 in 1997. The 2001 census showed that 27.1% of Greater London's population were born outside the UK, and a slightly higher proportion were classed as non-white.
The table to the right shows the 'Country of Birth' of London residents in 2001, the date of the last UK Census. (Top 21). Note that a portion of the German-born population are likely to be British nationals born to parents serving in the British armed forces in Germany.
Westminster Abbey is one of London's oldest and most important buildings and a World Heritage Site.
The majority of Londoners - 58.2% - identify themselves as Christians. This is followed by those of no religion (15.8%), Muslims (8.5%), Hindus (4.1%), Jews (2.1%), Sikhs (1.5%), Buddhists (0.8%) and other (0.5%), though 8.7% of people did not answer this question in the 2001 Census.
London has traditionally been dominated by Christianity, and has a large number of churches, particularly in the City of London. The well-known St Paul's Cathedral in the City and Southwark Cathedral south of the river are Anglican administrative centres, while the Archbishop of Canterbury, principal bishop of the Church of England and worldwide Anglican Communion, has his main residence at Lambeth Palace in the London Borough of Lambeth.
Important national and royal ceremonies are shared between St Paul's and Westminster Abbey. The Abbey is not to be confused with nearby Westminster Cathedral, which is the largest Roman Catholic cathedral in England and Wales. Religious practice is lower in London than any other part of the UK or Western Europe and is around seven times lower than American averages. Despite the prevalence of Anglican churches, observance is very low within the Anglican denomination, although church attendance, particularly at evangelical Anglican churches in London, has started to increase.
The Swaminarayan Hindu Temple in Neasden
London is also home to sizeable Muslim, Hindu, Sikh, and Jewish communities. Many Muslims live in Tower Hamlets and Newham; the most important Muslim edifice is London Central Mosque on the edge of Regent's Park. London's large Hindu community is found in the north-western boroughs of Harrow and Brent, the latter of which is home to one of Europe's largest Hindu temples, Neasden Temple. Sikh communities are located in East and West London, which is also home to the largest Sikh temple in the world, outside India.
The majority of British Jews live in London, with significant Jewish communities in Stamford Hill, Stanmore, Golders Green, Hendon, and Edgware in North London. Stanmore and Canons Park Synagogue has the largest membership of any single Orthodox synagogue in the whole of Europe, overtaking Ilford synagogue (also in London) in 1998. The community set up the London Jewish Forum in 2007 in response to the growing significance of devolved London Government.
The City of London is the world's largest financial centre . It is home to the London Stock Exchange and Lloyds of London.
London is a major centre for international business and commerce and is one of three "command centres" for the world economy (along with New York City and Tokyo). According to 2005 estimates by the PricewaterhouseCoopers accounting firm, London has the 6th largest city economy in the world after Tokyo, New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Paris. London generates approximately 20% of the UK's GDP (or $446 billion in 2005); while the economy of the London metropolitan area â the second largest in Europe â generates approximately 30% of the UK's GDP (or an estimated $669 billion in 2005).
London's success as a service industry and business centre can be attributed to factors such as English being the native and dominant language of business, close relationship with the U.S. and various countries in Asia. Other factors include English law being the most important and most used contract law in international business and the multi-cultural infrastructure. Government policies such as low taxes, particularly for foreigners (non-UK domiciled residents do not get taxed on their foreign earnings), a business friendly environment, good transport infrastructure and a deregulated economy with little intervention by the government have all contributed to London's economy becoming more service based. Over 85% (3.2 million) of the employed population of Greater London works in service industries. Another half a million employees resident in Greater London work in manufacturing and construction, almost equally divided between both.
The three tallest skyscrapers as of 2008 in Canary Wharf as viewed from Cabot Square. It is home to such companies as HSBC and Clifford Chance.
London's largest industry remains finance, and its financial exports make it a large contributor to the UK's balance of payments. Over 300,000 people are employed in financial services in London. London has over 480 overseas banks, more than any other city in the world. Due to New York's tightening of market regulations, London stock exchanges had approximately 20% more initial public offerings in 2006.
London is home to banks, brokers, insurers and legal and accounting firms. A second, smaller financial district is developing at Canary Wharf to the east of the city which includes the global headquarters of HSBC, Reuters, Barclays and the Magic Circle, which includes Clifford Chance, the largest law firm in the world. London handled 31% of global currency transactions â an average daily turnover of US$753 billion â with more US dollars traded in London than New York, and more euros traded than in every other city in Europe combined.
More than half of the UK's top 100 listed companies (the FTSE 100) and over 100 of Europe's 500 largest companies are headquartered in central London. Over 70% of the FTSE 100 are located within London's metropolitan area, and 75% of Fortune 500 companies have offices in London. Along with professional services, media companies are concentrated in London (see Media in London) and the media distribution industry is London's second most competitive sector (after central banking, the most competitive sector). The BBC is a key employer, while other broadcasters also have headquarters around the city. Many national newspapers are edited in London, having traditionally been associated with Fleet Street in the city; they are now primarily based around Canary Wharf.
Due to its prominant global role, London is getting hit harder than any other financial centre in the subprime crisis. The City of London estimates that 70,000 jobs in finance will be cut within barely a year.
Several foreign banks have started to move off employees from London to their national financial centres, notably Dresdner Kleinwort, BNP Paribas and Santander.
Tourism is one of London's prime industries and employs the equivalent of 350,000 full-time workers in London in 2003, while annual expenditure by tourists is around £15 billion. " ", Visit London. Retrieved on 3 June 2006. A study carried out by Euromonitor in October 2007 places London at first place out of 150 of the world's most popular cities, attracting 15.6 million international tourists in 2006. This puts London far ahead of 2nd place Bangkok (10.35 million) and 3rd place Paris (just 9.7 million). London attracts 27 million overnight-stay visitors every year. " ", Visit London. Retrieved on 3 June 2006. The Port of London is currently the third-largest in the United Kingdom, handling 50 million tonnes of cargo each year.
London is too diverse to be characterised by any particular architectural style, having accumulated its buildings over a long period of time and drawn on a wide range of influences. It is, however, mainly brick built, most commonly the yellow London stock brick or a warm orange-red variety, often decorated with carvings and white plaster mouldings. Many grand houses and public buildings (such as the National Gallery) are constructed from Portland stone. Some areas of the city, particularly those just west of the centre, are characterised by white stucco or whitewashed buildings. Few structures pre-date the Great Fire of 1666, except for a few trace Roman remains, the Tower of London and a few scattered Tudor survivors in the City. The disused (but soon to be rejuvenated) 1939 Battersea Power Station by the river in the south-west is a local landmark, while some railway termini are excellent examples of Victorian architecture, most notably St Pancras and Paddington (at least internally).
The O 2 , one of the largest dome structures in the world.
The density of London varies, with high employment density in the central area, high residential densities in inner London and lower densities in the suburbs. In the dense areas, most of the concentration is achieved with medium- and high-rise buildings. London's skyscrapers such as the notable "Gherkin", Tower 42, the Broadgate Tower and One Canada Square are usually found in the two financial districts, the City of London and Canary Wharf. Other notable modern buildings include City Hall in Southwark with its distinctive oval shape, the British Library in Somers Town/Kings Cross, What was formerly the Millennium Dome, located by the Thames to the east of Canary Wharf, is now used as an entertainment venue known as The O 2 .
The development of tall buildings has been encouraged in the London Plan, which will lead to the erection of many new skyscrapers over the next decade, particularly in the City of London and Canary Wharf. The 72-storey, "Shard London Bridge" by London Bridge station, the Bishopsgate Tower and many other skyscrapers over are either proposed or approved and could transform the city's skyline. As of July 2008, there are 426 high-rise buildings (between 23 m to 150 m/75 ft to 491 ft) under construction, approved for construction, and proposed for construction in London.
A great many monuments pay homage to people and events in the city. The Monument in the City of London provides views of the surrounding area while commemorating the Great Fire of London, which originated nearby. Marble Arch and Wellington Arch, at the north and south ends of Park Lane respectively, have royal connections, as do the Albert Memorial and Royal Albert Hall in Kensington. Nelson's Column is a nationally recognised monument in Trafalgar Square, one of the focal points of the centre.
The largest parks in the central area of London are the Royal Parks of Hyde Park and its neighbour Kensington Gardens at the western edge of central London and Regent's Park on the northern edge. This park contains London Zoo, the world's oldest scientific zoo, and is located near the tourist attraction of Madame Tussauds Wax Museum. Closer to central London are the smaller Royal Parks of Green Park and St. James's Park. Hyde Park in particular is popular for sports and sometimes hosts open-air concerts.
A number of large parks lie outside the city centre, including the remaining Royal Parks of Greenwich Park to the south-east and Bushy Park and Richmond Park to the south-west, as well as Victoria Park, East London to the east. Primrose Hill to the north of Regent's Park is a popular spot to view the city skyline. Some more informal, semi-natural open spaces also exist, including the Hampstead Heath of North London. This incorporates Kenwood House, the former stately home and a popular location in the summer months where classical musical concerts are held by the lake, attracting thousands of people every weekend to enjoy the music, scenery and fireworks.
Traditionally the London accent has been given the famous Cockney label, and was similar to many accents of the South East of England, developing a unique form of slang known as Cockney Rhyming Slang. The accent of a 21st century Londoner varies widely; what is becoming more and more common amongst the under 30s however is some fusion of Cockney, Received Pronunciation, and a whole array of 'ethnic' accents, in particular Caribbean, which form an accent labelled Multicultural London English (MLE), with a large amount of slang in use as well.
Piccadilly Circus at night
The Trooping the Colour held in 2006 to mark the Queen's 80th birthday.
Within the City of Westminster, the entertainment district of the West End has its focus around Leicester Square, where London and world film premieres are held, and Piccadilly Circus, with its giant electronic advertisements. London's theatre district is here, as are many cinemas, bars, clubs and restaurants, including the city's Chinatown district, and just to the east is Covent Garden, an area housing speciality shops. The United Kingdom's Royal Ballet,English National Ballet, Royal Opera and English National Opera are based in London and perform at the Royal Opera House, The London Coliseum, Sadler's Wells Theatre and the Royal Albert Hall as well as touring the country. Islington's long Upper Street, extending Northwards from The Angel, has more bars and restaurants than any other street in the UK. Europe's busiest shopping area is Oxford Street, a shopping street nearly long â which makes it the longest shopping street in the world â and home to many shops and department stores including Selfridges. Knightsbridge â home to the Harrods department store â lies just to the southwest. London is home to designers Vivienne Westwood, Galliano, Stella McCartney, Manolo Blahnik, and Jimmy Choo among others; its renowned art and fashion schools make it an international centre of fashion alongside Paris, Milan and New York.
London offers a great variety of cuisine as a result of its ethnically diverse population. Gastronomic centres include the Bangladeshi restaurants of Brick Lane and the Chinese food restaurants of Chinatown.
There are a variety of regular annual events in the city. The beginning of the year is celebrated with the relatively new New Year's Day Parade, while traditional parades include November's Lord Mayor's Show, a centuries-old event celebrating the annual appointment of a new Lord Mayor of the City of London with a procession along the streets of the City, and June's Trooping the Colour, a formal military pageant performed by regiments of the Commonwealth and British armies to celebrate the Queen's Official Birthday.
Charles Dickens (1812â1870), whose works formed a pervasive image of Victorian London.
London has been the setting for many works of literature. Two writers closely associated with the city are the diarist Samuel Pepys, noted for his eyewitness account of the Great Fire, and Charles Dickens, whose representation of a foggy, snowy, grimy London of street sweepers and pickpockets has been a major influence on people's vision of early Victorian London. The earlier (1722) A Journal of the Plague Year by Daniel Defoe is a fictionalisation of the events of the 1665 Great Plague. William Shakespeare spent a large part of his life living and working in London; his contemporary Ben Jonson was also based in London, and some of his work â most notably his play The Alchemist â was set in the city. Later important depictions of London from the 19th and early 20th centuries are the afore-mentioned Dickens novels, and Arthur Conan Doyle's illustrious Sherlock Holmes stories. A modern writer pervasively influenced by the city is Peter Ackroyd, in works such as London: The Biography, The Lambs of London and Hawksmoor.
London has played a significant role in the film industry, and has major studios at Pinewood, Ealing, Shepperton, Elstree and Leavesden, as well as an important special effects and post-production community centred in Soho in central London. Working Title Films has its headquarters in London. The city also hosts a number of performing arts schools, including The Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA), the Central School of Speech and Drama (alumni: Judi Dench and Laurence Olivier) and the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art (alumni: Jim Broadbent). The London Film Festival is held each year in October.
London is home to many museums, galleries, and other institutions which are major tourist attractions as well as playing a research role. The Natural History Museum (biology and geology), Science Museum and Victoria and Albert Museum (fashion and design) are clustered in South Kensington's "museum quarter", while the British Museum houses historic artefacts from around the world. The British Library at St Pancras is the UK's national library, housing 150 million items. The city also houses extensive art collections, primarily in the National Gallery, Tate Britain and Tate Modern.
The Royal Albert Hall hosts a wide range of concerts and musical events.
London is one of the major classical and popular music capitals of the world and is home to major music corporations, such as EMI and Decca Records, as well as countless bands, musicians and industry professionals. London is home to many orchestras and concert halls such as the Barbican Arts Centre (principal base of the London Symphony Orchestra), Cadogan Hall (Royal Philharmonic Orchestra) and the Royal Albert Hall (BBC Promenade Concerts). London's two main opera houses are the Royal Opera House and the Coliseum Theatre.
Several conservatoires are located within the city: Royal Academy of Music, Royal College of Music, Guildhall School of Music and Drama, and Trinity College of Music.
London has numerous renowned venues for rock and pop concerts, including large arenas such as Earls Court, Wembley Arena and the O2 Arena, as well as numerous mid-size venues, such as Brixton Academy, Hammersmith Apollo and The London Astoria. London also hosts many music festivals, including the 02 Wireless Festival and Latitude Festival.
London is home to the first and original Hard Rock Cafe and the illustrious Abbey Road Studios where The Beatles created many of their hits. Musicians such as Bob Marley, Jimi Hendrix and Freddie Mercury have lived in London. A large number of musical artists originate from or are most strongly associated with London, including David Bowie, Ian Dury, The Kinks, Adam Faith, The Rolling Stones, The Who, Madness, The Jam, Blur, Iron Maiden, Phil Collins, Rod Stewart, Elvis Costello, Dusty Springfield, The Yardbirds and The Small Faces.
London was instrumental in the development of punk music, with figures such as the Sex Pistols, The Clash, and Vivienne Westwood all based in the city.
More recent artists to emerge from the London music scene include The Libertines, one of the most influential British rock acts of the 2000s, Bloc Party, Amy Winehouse, Lily Allen, The Kooks, Razorlight, Laura Marling, Dizzee Rascal, Natasha Bedingfield and Leona Lewis.
London is also a centre for Urban music. In particular the genres UK Garage, Drum and Bass and Grime evolved in the city from the foreign genres of hiphop and reggae, alongside local rave music. Black music station BBC 1Xtra was set up to support the rise of homegrown urban music both in London and the rest of the UK.
Wembley Stadium is home to English football and is the most expensive stadium in the world.
The Wimbledon Championships, a tennis Grand Slam tournament.
London has hosted the Summer Olympics twice, in 1908 and 1948. In July 2005 London was chosen to host the Games in 2012, which will make it the first city in the world to host the Summer Olympics three times. London was also the host of the British Empire Games in 1934.
London's most popular sport (for both participants and spectators) is football. London has thirteen League football clubs, including five in the Premier League: Arsenal, Chelsea, Fulham, Tottenham Hotspur and West Ham United. London also has four rugby union teams in the Guinness Premiership (London Irish, Saracens, Wasps and Harlequins), although only the Harlequins play in London (all the other three now play outside Greater London, although Saracens still play within the M25). There are two professional rugby league clubs in London - Harlequins Rugby League who play in the Super League at the Stoop and the National League 2 side the London Skolars (based in Haringey).
Since 1924, the original Wembley Stadium was the home of the English national football team, and served as the venue for the FA Cup final as well as rugby league's Challenge Cup final. The new Wembley Stadium serves exactly the same purposes and has a capacity of 90,000. Twickenham Stadium in west London is the national rugby union stadium, and has a capacity of 84,000 now that the new south stand has been completed.
Cricket in London centres on its two Test cricket grounds at Lord's (home of Middlesex C.C.C) in St John's Wood, and The Oval (home of Surrey C.C.C) in Kennington. One of London's best-known annual sports competitions is the Wimbledon Tennis Championships, held at the All England Club in the south-western suburb of Wimbledon. Other key events are the annual mass-participation London Marathon which sees some 35,000 runners attempt a course around the city, and the Oxford vs. Cambridge Boat Race on the River Thames between Putney and Mortlake.
Transport is one of the four areas of policy administered by the Mayor of London, however the mayor's financial control is limited and he does not control the heavy rail network, although in November 2007 he assumed responsibility for the North London Railway as well as several other lines, to form London Overground. The public transport network, administered by Transport for London (TfL), is one of the most extensive in the world, but faces congestion and reliability issues, which a large investment programme is attempting to address, including £7 billion (â¬10 billion) of improvements planned for the Olympics. London has been commended as the city with the best public transport. Cycling is an increasingly popular way to get around London. The London Cycling Campaign lobbies for better provision.
The London Underground is the oldest, longest, and most expansive metro system in the world, dating from 1863.
The centrepiece of the public transport network is the London Underground â commonly referred to as The Tube â which has eleven interconnecting lines. It is the oldest, longest, and most expansive metro system in the world, dating from 1863. The system was home to the world's first underground electric line, the City & South London Railway, which began service in 1890. Over three million journeys a day are made on the Underground network, nearly 1 billion journeys each year. The Underground serves the central area and most suburbs to the north of the Thames, while those to the south are served by an extensive suburban rail surface network.
The Docklands Light Railway is a second metro system using smaller and lighter trains, which opened in 1987, serving East London and Greenwich on both sides of the Thames. Commuter and intercity railways generally do not cross the city, instead running into fourteen terminal stations scattered around its historic centre; the exception is the Thameslink route operated by First Capital Connect, with terminus stations at Bedford, Brighton and Moorgate. Since the early 1990s, increasing pressures on the commuter rail and Underground networks have led to increasing demands â particularly from businesses and the City of London Corporation â for Crossrail: a £10 billion east â west heavy rail connection under central London, which was given the green light in early October 2007.
High-speed Eurostar trains link St Pancras International with Lille and Paris in France, and Brussels in Belgium. Journey times to Paris and Brussels of 2h 15 and 1h 51 respectively make London closer to continental Europe than the rest of Britain by virtue of the newly completed High Speed 1 rail link to the Channel Tunnel. From 2009 this line will also allow for high speed domestic travel from Kent into London. The redevelopment of St. Pancras was key to London's Olympic bid, as the station also serves two international airports through Thameslink, and will also provide direct rail links to the Olympic site at Stratford using British Rail Class 395 trains running under the Olympic Javelin name; these will be based on Japanese Shinkansen high-speed trains.
The modern Enviro400 double-decker bus
London's bus network is one of the largest in the world, running 24 hours a day, with 8,000 buses, 700 bus routes, and over 6 million passenger journeys made every weekday. In 2003, the network's ridership was estimated at over 1.5 billion passenger trips per annum, more than the Underground. Around £850 m is taken in revenue each year.
London has the largest wheelchair accessible network in the world and, from the 3rd quarter of 2007, became more accessible to hearing and visually impaired passengers as audio-visual announcements were introduced. The distinctive red double-decker buses are internationally recognised, and are a trademark of London transport along with black cabs and the Tube.
Terminal 5 at Heathrow Airport, which is the world's busiest airport by international passenger traffic.
London is a major international air transport hub with the largest city airspace in the world. Eight airports use the words London Airport in their name, but most traffic passes through one of five major airports. London Heathrow Airport is the busiest airport in the world for international traffic, and is the major hub of the nation's flag carrier, British Airways. In March 2008 its fifth terminal was opened, and plans are already being considered for a sixth terminal. Similar traffic, with the addition of some low-cost short-haul flights, is also handled at London Gatwick Airport. London Stansted Airport and London Luton Airport cater mostly for low-cost short-haul flights. London City Airport, the smallest and most central airport, is focused on business travellers, with a mixture of full service short-haul scheduled flights and considerable business jet traffic.
Although the majority of journeys involving central London are made by public transport, travel in outer London is car-dominated. The inner ring road (around the city centre), the North and South Circular roads (in the suburbs), and the outer orbital motorway (the M25, outside the built-up area) encircle the city and are intersected by a number of busy radial routes â but very few motorways penetrate into inner London. The M25 is the longest ring-road motorway in the world at long. A plan for a comprehensive network of motorways throughout the city (the Ringways Plan) was prepared in the 1960s but was mostly cancelled in the early 1970s. In 2003, a congestion charge was introduced to reduce traffic volumes in the city centre. With a few exceptions, motorists are required to pay £8 per day to drive within a defined zone encompassing much of congested central London. Motorists who are residents of the defined zone can buy a vastly reduced season pass which is renewed monthly and is cheaper than a corresponding bus fare.
Royal Holloway, as a part of the University of London, a federation of London higher education institutions
Home to a range of universities, colleges and schools, London has a student population of about 378,000 and is a centre of research and development. Most primary and secondary schools in London follow the same system as the rest of England â comprehensive schooling.
With 125,000 students, the University of London is the largest contact teaching university in the United Kingdom and in Europe. It comprises 20 colleges as well as several smaller institutes each with a high degree of autonomy. Constituent colleges have their own admissions procedures, and are effectively universities in their own right, although most degrees are awarded by the University of London rather than the individual colleges. Its constituents include multi-disciplinary colleges such as UCL, King's, Goldsmiths, Queen Mary and more specialised institutions such as the London School of Economics, SOAS, the Royal Academy of Music, the Courtauld Institute of Art and the Institute of Education.
Imperial College London and University College London have been ranked among the top ten universities in the world by The Times Higher Education Supplement: in 2008 Imperial was ranked the 6th best and UCL the 7th best university in the world.
In addition, the London School of Economics is the worldâs leading social science institution for teaching and research, plus has the most international student body of any university in the world today.
A number of colleges are dedicated to the fine arts, including the Royal College of Music, Royal College of Art, and Guildhall School of Music and Drama.
Senate House, the headquarters of the federal University of London
London's other universities, such as Brunel University, City University, London Metropolitan University, Middlesex University, University of East London, University of the Arts London, University of Westminster, Kingston University and London South Bank University are not part of the University of London but are still leaders in their field and popular choices among students both nationally and internationally. Some were polytechnics until these were granted university status in 1992, and others which were founded much earlier. Imperial College London left the federal University of London in 2007. Since the merger of University of North London and London Guildhall University in 2003, London Metropolitan University is the largest unitary university in the capital, with over 34,000 students from 155 countries. About London Met London Metropolitan University, August 2008 London is also known globally for its business education, with the London Business School (ranked 1st in Europe â Business Week) and Cass Business School (Europe's largest finance school) both being top world-rated business schools. In addition there are three international universities: Schiller International University, Richmond University and Regent's College.
There are 46 other places on six continents named after London. Jack Malvern. Richmond, in Surrey, is the most widely copied British place name worldwide, timesonline 2008-12-29. The original byline for the article in The Times of the same day was "The 55 corners of foreign fields that will be for ever ... Richmond" (page 9). Cites The Times Universal Atlas of the World. As well as London's twinning, the Boroughs of London have twinnings with parts of other cities across the world. Shown below is the list of cities that the Greater London Authority is twinned with.
* New York City,
* Moscow,
* Berlin,
The following cities have a friendship agreement with London:
* Sofia,
* Delhi,
* Mumbai,
* Beijing,
* Istanbul,
* Paris,
* Tehran,
* Tokyo,
* Bogotá,
* Podgorica,
* Algiers,
* Global city
* Geography of England
* Large Cities Climate Leadership Group
* Largest European cities and metropolitan areas
* London Assembly
* Megacity
*
*
*
*
* Mayor of London, London Assembly and the Greater London Authority â Official city government site
* Transport for London (TfL) â city transport authority
* BBC London
* Office for National Statistics: Focus on London 2007 â compendium of official statistics about London
* Museum of London Group Portal - Home
* VisitLondon.com â Official London site
* Map of Early Modern London â Historical Map and Encyclopaedia of Shakespeare's London (Scholarly)
* London Bridges â A view of London Bridges over the River Thames
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London | Does London's population draw from a wide range of religions? | Yes | data/set3/a1 | London
London ( ; ) is the capital of both England and the United Kingdom, and the largest urban area in the European Union. {{cite web|url= title=Largest EU City An important settlement for two millennia, London's history goes back to its founding by the Romans. Since its foundation, London has been part of many movements and phenomena throughout history, including the English Renaissance, the Industrial Revolution, and the Gothic Revival. The city's core, the ancient City of London, still retains its limited medieval boundaries; but since at least the 19th century, the name "London" has also referred to the whole metropolis that has developed around it. Today the bulk of this conurbation forms the London region of England and the Greater London administrative area, with its own elected mayor and assembly.
London is one of the the world's most important business, financial and cultural centres and its influence in politics, education, entertainment, media, fashion and the arts contribute to its status as a major global city. Global Cities: GaWC Inventory of World Cities 1999 Global cities#GaWC Inventory of World Cities (1999 Edition); Global Cities: GaWC Inventory of World Cities 2004 Global cities#GaWC Leading World Cities (2004 Edition) Central London is the headquarters of more than half of the UK's top 100 listed companies (the FTSE 100) and over 100 of Europe's 500 largest companies. The city is a major tourist destination both for domestic and overseas visitors, with annual expenditure by tourists of around £15 billion. London hosted the 1908 and 1948 Summer Olympic Games and will host the 2012 Summer Olympic Games.
Greater London contains four World Heritage Sites: the Tower of London; the historic settlement of Greenwich; the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew; and the site comprising the Palace of Westminster, Westminster Abbey and St. Margaret's Church.
London's population draws from a wide range of peoples, cultures, and religions, and over 300 languages are spoken within the city. As of 2006, it had an official population of 7,512,400 within the boundaries of Greater London and is the most populous municipality in the European Union. As of 2001, the Greater London Urban Area had a population of 8,278,251 and the metropolitan area is estimated to have a total population of between 12 and 14 million , the largest metropolitan area in the EU. The public transport network, administered by Transport for London, is one of the most extensive in the world, and Heathrow Airport is the busiest airport in the world by international passenger traffic and the air space is the busiest of any city in the world. International Passenger Traffic, Airports Council International
The etymology of London remains a mystery. The earliest etymological explanation can be attributed to Geoffrey of Monmouth in Historia Regum Britanniae. The name is described as originating from King Lud, who had allegedly taken over the city and named it Kaerlud. This was slurred into Kaerludein and finally London. Many other theories have been advanced over the centuries, most of them deriving the name from Welsh or British, and occasionally from Anglo-Saxon or even Hebrew.
Map of London in 1300, showing the medieval boundaries of the City of London
Although there is evidence of scattered Brythonic settlements in the area, the first major settlement was founded by the Romans in AD 43 as Londinium, following the Roman conquest of Britain. This Londinium lasted for just seventeen years. Around 61, the Iceni tribe led by Queen Boudica stormed this first London, burning it to the ground. The next, heavily planned incarnation of the city prospered and superseded Colchester as the capital of the Roman province of Britannia in 100. At its height in the 2nd century, Roman London had a population of around 60,000.
By the 600s, the Anglo-Saxons had created a new settlement called Lundenwic approximately upstream from the old Roman city,
around what is now Covent Garden. It is likely that there was a harbour at the mouth of the River Fleet for fishing and trading, and this trading grew until the city was overcome by the Vikings and forced to relocate the city back to the location of the Roman Londinium to use its walls for protection. Viking attacks continued to increase around the rest of South East England, until 886 when Alfred the Great recaptured London and made peace with the Danish leader, Guthrum. The original Saxon city of Lundenwic became Ealdwic ("old city"), a name surviving to the present day as Aldwych, which is in the modern City of Westminster.
In a retaliatory attack, Ethelred's army achieved victory by pulling down London Bridge with the Danish garrison on top, and English control was re-established. Canute took control of the English throne in 1017, controlling the city and country until 1042, when his death resulted in a reversion to Saxon control under his pious stepson Edward the Confessor, who re-founded Westminster Abbey and the adjacent Palace of Westminster. By this time, London had become the largest and most prosperous city in England, although the official seat of government was still at Winchester.
Following a victory at the Battle of Hastings, William the Conqueror, the then Duke of Normandy, was crowned King of England in the newly finished Westminster Abbey on Christmas Day 1066. William granted the citizens of London special privileges, while building what is now known as the Tower of London, in the south-east corner of the city, to keep them under control. .
The Great Exhibition
In 1097, William II began the building of Westminster Hall, close by the abbey of the same name. The hall became the basis of a new Palace of Westminster, the prime royal residence throughout the Middle Ages. Westminster became the seat of the royal court and government (persisting until the present day), while its distinct neighbour, the City of London, was a centre of trade and commerce and flourished under its own unique administration, the Corporation of London. London grew in wealth and population during the Middle Ages. In 1100 its population was around 18,000; by 1300 it had grown to nearly 100,000. King Edward I issued an edict in 1290, expelling all Jews from England. Before the edict, there was an increasing population of Jews, whereas after this time, the population of Jews began to drop considerably. Disaster struck during the Black Death in the mid-14th century, when London lost nearly a third of its population. Apart from the invasion of London during the Peasants' Revolt in 1381, London remained relatively untouched by the various civil wars during the Middle Ages, such as the first and second Barons' Wars and the Wars of the Roses.
After the successful defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588, political stability in England allowed London to grow further. In 1603, James VI of Scotland came to the throne of England, essentially uniting the two countries. His enactment of harsh anti-Catholic laws made him unpopular, and an assassination attempt was made on 5 November 1605âthe well-known Gunpowder Plot.
The Great Fire of London destroyed many parts of the city in 1666
Plague caused extensive problems for London in the early 17th century, culminating in the Great Plague in 1665â1666. This was the last major outbreak in England, possibly thanks to the disastrous fire of 1666. The Great Fire of London broke out in the original City and quickly swept through London's wooden buildings, destroying large swathes of the city. A first hand narrative of both plague and fire was provided by Sir Samuel Pepys. Rebuilding took over ten years, largely under direction of a Commission appointed by King Charles II and chaired by Sir Christopher Wren.
Following London's growth in the 18th century, it became the world's largest city from about 1831 to 1925. Rising traffic congestion on city centre roads led to the creation of the world's first metro system â the London Underground â in 1863, driving further expansion and urbanisation. London's local government system struggled to cope with the rapid growth, especially in providing the city with adequate infrastructure. Between 1855 and 1889, the Metropolitan Board of Works oversaw infrastructure expansion. It was then replaced by the County of London, overseen by the London County Council, London's first elected city-wide administration.
A London street hit during the Blitz of World War II
The Blitz and other bombing by the German Luftwaffe during World War II killed over 30,000 Londoners and destroyed large tracts of housing and other buildings across London. In 1965 London's political boundaries were expanded to take into account the growth of the urban area outside the County of London's borders. The expanded area was called Greater London and was administered by the Greater London Council. An eco revival from the 1980s onwards re-established London's position as a pre-eminent international centre. However, as the seat of government and the most important city in the UK, it has been subjected to bouts of terrorism. Provisional Irish Republican Army bombers sought to pressure the government into negotiations over Northern Ireland, frequently disrupting city activities with bomb threats â some of which were carried out â until their 1997 cease-fire. More recently, a series of coordinated bomb attacks were carried out by Islamic extremist suicide bombers on the public transport network on 7 July 2005âjust 24 hours after London was awarded the 2012 Summer Olympics.
City Hall at night, home of the Greater London Authority
The administration of London is formed of two tiers â a city-wide, strategic tier and a local tier. City-wide administration is coordinated by the Greater London Authority (GLA), while local administration is carried out by 33 smaller authorities. The GLA consists of two elected parts; the Mayor of London, who has executive powers, and the London Assembly, who scrutinise the Mayor's decisions and can accept or reject his budget proposals each year. The GLA was set up in 2000 to replace the similar Greater London Council (GLC) which had been abolished in 1986. The headquarters of the GLA and the Mayor of London is at City Hall; the Mayor is Boris Johnson. The 33 local authorities are the councils of the 32 London boroughs and the City of London Corporation. They are responsible for local services not overseen by the GLA, such as local planning, schools, social services, local roads and refuse collection.
London is the home of the Government of the United Kingdom which is located around the Houses of Parliament in Westminster. Many government departments are located close to Parliament, particularly along Whitehall, including the Prime Minister's residence at 10 Downing Street. The British Parliament is often referred to as the "Mother of Parliaments" (although this sobriquet was first applied to England itself by John Bright) because it has been the model for most other parliamentary systems, and its Acts have created many other parliaments. There are 74 Members of Parliament (MPs) from London, who correspond to local parliamentary constituencies in the national Parliament by . Of these 74 MPs, currently 44 are from the Labour Party, 21 are Conservatives, 8 are Liberal Democrats and one is from the RESPECT party.
West and central London seen from SPOT satellite
London can be geographically defined in a number of ways, although the situation was once even more ambiguous than it is now and open to periodic legal debate. At London's core is the small, ancient City of London which is commonly known as 'the City' or 'the Square Mile'. London's metropolitan area grew considerably during the Victorian era and again during the Interwar period, but expansion halted in the 1940s because of World War II and Green Belt legislation, and the area has been largely static since. The London region of England, also commonly known as Greater London, is the area administered by the Greater London Authority. The urban sprawl of the conurbation â or Greater London Urban Area â covers a roughly similar area, with a slightly larger population. Beyond this is the vast London commuter belt.
Map of Central LondonForty percent of Greater London is covered by the London postal district, within which 'LONDON' forms part of the postal address. The London telephone area code covers a larger area, similar in size to Greater London, although some outer districts are omitted and some places just outside are included. The area within the orbital M25 motorway is sometimes used to define the "London area" and the Greater London boundary has been aligned to it in places. Greater London is split for some purposes into Inner London and Outer London. Informally, the city is split into North, South, East, West and often also Central London.
The Metropolitan Police District, city-wide local government area and London transport area have varied over time, but broadly coincide with the Greater London boundary. The Romans may have marked the centre of Londinium with the London Stone, still visible on Cannon Street. The coordinates of the nominal centre of London (traditionally considered to be the original Eleanor Cross at Charing Cross, near the junction of Trafalgar Square and Whitehall) are approximately . Trafalgar Square has also become a point for celebrations and protests.
Within London, both the City of London and the City of Westminster have City status and both the City of London and the remainder of Greater London are the ceremonial counties. The current area of Greater London was historically part of the counties of Middlesex, Kent, Surrey, Essex and Hertfordshire. Unlike most capital cities, London's status as the capital of the UK has never been granted or confirmed officially â by statute or in written form. Its position as the capital has formed through constitutional convention, making its position as de facto capital a part of the UK's unwritten constitution. The capital of England was moved to London from Winchester as the Palace of Westminster developed in the 12th and 13th centuries to become the permanent location of the royal court, and thus the political capital of the nation. According to the Collins English Dictionary definition (1994) Collins English Dictionary. Collins Education plc. of 'the seat of government,' London is not the capital of England, as England does not have its own government. However according to the Oxford English Reference dictionary definition Oxford English Reference Dictionary. Oxford English. of 'the most important town...' and many other authorities, "HC 501 0304.PDF" (PDF). Parliament Publications. Retrieved on 2008-06-06. 'England' (1994) Collins English Dictionary. Collins Education plc. London is the capital of England.
Greater London covers an area of . Its primary geographical feature is the Thames, a navigable river which crosses the city from the south-west to the east. The Thames Valley is a floodplain surrounded by gently rolling hills including Parliament Hill, Addington Hills, and Primrose Hill. The Thames was once a much broader, shallower river with extensive marshlands; at high tide, its shores reached five times their present width. Since the Victorian era it has been extensively embanked, and many of its London tributaries now flow underground. The Thames is a tidal river, and London is vulnerable to flooding. The threat has increased over time due to a slow but continuous rise in high water level by the slow 'tilting' of Britain (up in the north and down in the south) caused by post-glacial rebound. In 1974, a decade of work began on the construction of the Thames Barrier across the Thames at Woolwich to deal with this threat. While the barrier is expected to function as designed until roughly 2030, concepts for its future enlargement or redesign are already being discussed.
London has a temperate marine climate, like much of the British Isles, so the city rarely sees extremely high or low temperatures. Summers are warm with average high temperatures of and lows of , however, temperatures could exceed on many days.
Winters in London are chilly, but rarely below freezing with daytime temperatures around 2 - 8 °C (36 - 46 °F), while spring has mild days and cool evenings.
London has regular but generally light precipitation throughout the year, with average precipitation of every year.
Snow is relatively uncommon, particularly because heat from the urban area can make London up to 5 °C (9 °F) hotter than the surrounding areas in winter. Snowfall, however, is usually, but not always, seen up to a few times a year. London is in USDA Hardiness zone 9, and AHS Heat Zone 2.
In the second half of the 19th century and the first half of the 20th, London was noted for its dense fogs and smogs. Following the deadly Great Smog of 1952, the Clean Air Act 1956 was passed, leading to the decline of such severe pollution in the capital.
London's vast urban area is often described using a set of district names (e.g. Bloomsbury, Knightsbridge, Mayfair, Whitechapel, Fitzrovia). These are either informal designations, or reflect the names of superseded villages, parishes and city wards. Such names have remained in use through tradition, each referring to a local area with its own distinctive character, but often with no modern official boundaries. However, since 1965 Greater London has been divided into 32 London boroughs in addition to the ancient City of London.
The City of London is one of the world's three largest financial centres (alongside New York and Tokyo) with a dominant role in several international financial markets, including cross-border bank lending, international bond issuance and trading, foreign-exchange trading, over-the-counter derivatives, fund management and foreign equities trading. It also has the world's largest insurance market, the leading exchange for dealing in non-precious metals, the largest spot gold and gold lending markets, the largest ship broking market, and more foreign banks and investment houses than any other centre. The City has its own governance and boundaries, giving it a status as the only completely autonomous local authority in London. London's new financial and commercial hub is the Docklands area to the east of the City, dominated by the Canary Wharf complex. Other businesses locate in the City of Westminster, the home of the UK's national government and the well-known Westminster Abbey.
The West End is London's main entertainment and shopping district, with locations such as Oxford Street, Leicester Square, Covent Garden and Piccadilly Circus acting as tourist magnets. The West London area is known for fashionable and expensive residential areas such as Notting Hill, Knightsbridge and Chelsea â where properties can sell for tens of millions of pounds. The average price for all properties in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea is £894,000 with similar average outlay in most of Central London.
The eastern region of London contains the East End and East London. The East End is the area closest to the original Port of London, known for its high immigrant population, as well as for being one of the poorest areas in London. The surrounding East London area saw much of London's early industrial development; now, brownfield sites throughout the area are being redeveloped as part of the Thames Gateway including the London Riverside and Lower Lea Valley, which is being developed into the Olympic Park for the 2012 Olympics.
With increasing industrialisation, London's population grew rapidly throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries, and it was the most populous city in the world until overtaken by New York in 1925. Its population peaked at 8,615,245 in 1939 immediately before the outbreak of World War 2. There were an estimated 7,512,400 official residents in Greater London as of mid-2006. However, London's continuous urban area extends beyond the borders of Greater London and was home to 8,278,251 people in 2001, while its wider metropolitan area has a population of between 12 and 14 million depending on the definition used. According to Eurostat, London is the most populous city and metropolitan area of the European Union and the second most populous in Europe (or third if Istanbul is included).
The region covers an area of . The population density is , more than ten times that of any other British region. In terms of population, London is the 25th largest city and the 17th largest metropolitan region in the world. It is also ranked 4th in the world in number of billionaires (United States Dollars) residing in the city. London ranks as one of the most expensive cities in the world, alongside Tokyo and Moscow.
According to 2008 estimates, 51% of these seven million and seven hundred thousand people people are classed as the indigenous White British, White Irish (2.5%) and "Other White" 10%, the majority of whom are other Europeans. 15% of people are of South Asian descent, including Indian (mainly Punjabi, Hindi, Tamil and Gujarati), Pakistani, Bangladeshi (Bengali) and "Other Asian" (mostly Sri Lankan (Tamil) and other Southern Asian ethnicities). 13% of people are Black (around 7% are Black African, 5% as Black Caribbean, 1% as "Other Black"). 5.5% are of mixed race; 1.5% are Chinese; and 1.5% of people belong to another ethnic group. 30% of inhabitants were born outside the European Union. The Irish born, from both the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland, number approximately 250,000 and are the largest group born outside of Britain.
In January 2005, a survey of London's ethnic and religious diversity claimed that there were more than 300 languages spoken and more than 50 non-indigenous communities which have a population of more than 10,000 in London. Figures from the Office for National Statistics show that, as of 2006, London's foreign-born population is 2,288,000 (31%), up from 1,630,000 in 1997. The 2001 census showed that 27.1% of Greater London's population were born outside the UK, and a slightly higher proportion were classed as non-white.
The table to the right shows the 'Country of Birth' of London residents in 2001, the date of the last UK Census. (Top 21). Note that a portion of the German-born population are likely to be British nationals born to parents serving in the British armed forces in Germany.
Westminster Abbey is one of London's oldest and most important buildings and a World Heritage Site.
The majority of Londoners - 58.2% - identify themselves as Christians. This is followed by those of no religion (15.8%), Muslims (8.5%), Hindus (4.1%), Jews (2.1%), Sikhs (1.5%), Buddhists (0.8%) and other (0.5%), though 8.7% of people did not answer this question in the 2001 Census.
London has traditionally been dominated by Christianity, and has a large number of churches, particularly in the City of London. The well-known St Paul's Cathedral in the City and Southwark Cathedral south of the river are Anglican administrative centres, while the Archbishop of Canterbury, principal bishop of the Church of England and worldwide Anglican Communion, has his main residence at Lambeth Palace in the London Borough of Lambeth.
Important national and royal ceremonies are shared between St Paul's and Westminster Abbey. The Abbey is not to be confused with nearby Westminster Cathedral, which is the largest Roman Catholic cathedral in England and Wales. Religious practice is lower in London than any other part of the UK or Western Europe and is around seven times lower than American averages. Despite the prevalence of Anglican churches, observance is very low within the Anglican denomination, although church attendance, particularly at evangelical Anglican churches in London, has started to increase.
The Swaminarayan Hindu Temple in Neasden
London is also home to sizeable Muslim, Hindu, Sikh, and Jewish communities. Many Muslims live in Tower Hamlets and Newham; the most important Muslim edifice is London Central Mosque on the edge of Regent's Park. London's large Hindu community is found in the north-western boroughs of Harrow and Brent, the latter of which is home to one of Europe's largest Hindu temples, Neasden Temple. Sikh communities are located in East and West London, which is also home to the largest Sikh temple in the world, outside India.
The majority of British Jews live in London, with significant Jewish communities in Stamford Hill, Stanmore, Golders Green, Hendon, and Edgware in North London. Stanmore and Canons Park Synagogue has the largest membership of any single Orthodox synagogue in the whole of Europe, overtaking Ilford synagogue (also in London) in 1998. The community set up the London Jewish Forum in 2007 in response to the growing significance of devolved London Government.
The City of London is the world's largest financial centre . It is home to the London Stock Exchange and Lloyds of London.
London is a major centre for international business and commerce and is one of three "command centres" for the world economy (along with New York City and Tokyo). According to 2005 estimates by the PricewaterhouseCoopers accounting firm, London has the 6th largest city economy in the world after Tokyo, New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Paris. London generates approximately 20% of the UK's GDP (or $446 billion in 2005); while the economy of the London metropolitan area â the second largest in Europe â generates approximately 30% of the UK's GDP (or an estimated $669 billion in 2005).
London's success as a service industry and business centre can be attributed to factors such as English being the native and dominant language of business, close relationship with the U.S. and various countries in Asia. Other factors include English law being the most important and most used contract law in international business and the multi-cultural infrastructure. Government policies such as low taxes, particularly for foreigners (non-UK domiciled residents do not get taxed on their foreign earnings), a business friendly environment, good transport infrastructure and a deregulated economy with little intervention by the government have all contributed to London's economy becoming more service based. Over 85% (3.2 million) of the employed population of Greater London works in service industries. Another half a million employees resident in Greater London work in manufacturing and construction, almost equally divided between both.
The three tallest skyscrapers as of 2008 in Canary Wharf as viewed from Cabot Square. It is home to such companies as HSBC and Clifford Chance.
London's largest industry remains finance, and its financial exports make it a large contributor to the UK's balance of payments. Over 300,000 people are employed in financial services in London. London has over 480 overseas banks, more than any other city in the world. Due to New York's tightening of market regulations, London stock exchanges had approximately 20% more initial public offerings in 2006.
London is home to banks, brokers, insurers and legal and accounting firms. A second, smaller financial district is developing at Canary Wharf to the east of the city which includes the global headquarters of HSBC, Reuters, Barclays and the Magic Circle, which includes Clifford Chance, the largest law firm in the world. London handled 31% of global currency transactions â an average daily turnover of US$753 billion â with more US dollars traded in London than New York, and more euros traded than in every other city in Europe combined.
More than half of the UK's top 100 listed companies (the FTSE 100) and over 100 of Europe's 500 largest companies are headquartered in central London. Over 70% of the FTSE 100 are located within London's metropolitan area, and 75% of Fortune 500 companies have offices in London. Along with professional services, media companies are concentrated in London (see Media in London) and the media distribution industry is London's second most competitive sector (after central banking, the most competitive sector). The BBC is a key employer, while other broadcasters also have headquarters around the city. Many national newspapers are edited in London, having traditionally been associated with Fleet Street in the city; they are now primarily based around Canary Wharf.
Due to its prominant global role, London is getting hit harder than any other financial centre in the subprime crisis. The City of London estimates that 70,000 jobs in finance will be cut within barely a year.
Several foreign banks have started to move off employees from London to their national financial centres, notably Dresdner Kleinwort, BNP Paribas and Santander.
Tourism is one of London's prime industries and employs the equivalent of 350,000 full-time workers in London in 2003, while annual expenditure by tourists is around £15 billion. " ", Visit London. Retrieved on 3 June 2006. A study carried out by Euromonitor in October 2007 places London at first place out of 150 of the world's most popular cities, attracting 15.6 million international tourists in 2006. This puts London far ahead of 2nd place Bangkok (10.35 million) and 3rd place Paris (just 9.7 million). London attracts 27 million overnight-stay visitors every year. " ", Visit London. Retrieved on 3 June 2006. The Port of London is currently the third-largest in the United Kingdom, handling 50 million tonnes of cargo each year.
London is too diverse to be characterised by any particular architectural style, having accumulated its buildings over a long period of time and drawn on a wide range of influences. It is, however, mainly brick built, most commonly the yellow London stock brick or a warm orange-red variety, often decorated with carvings and white plaster mouldings. Many grand houses and public buildings (such as the National Gallery) are constructed from Portland stone. Some areas of the city, particularly those just west of the centre, are characterised by white stucco or whitewashed buildings. Few structures pre-date the Great Fire of 1666, except for a few trace Roman remains, the Tower of London and a few scattered Tudor survivors in the City. The disused (but soon to be rejuvenated) 1939 Battersea Power Station by the river in the south-west is a local landmark, while some railway termini are excellent examples of Victorian architecture, most notably St Pancras and Paddington (at least internally).
The O 2 , one of the largest dome structures in the world.
The density of London varies, with high employment density in the central area, high residential densities in inner London and lower densities in the suburbs. In the dense areas, most of the concentration is achieved with medium- and high-rise buildings. London's skyscrapers such as the notable "Gherkin", Tower 42, the Broadgate Tower and One Canada Square are usually found in the two financial districts, the City of London and Canary Wharf. Other notable modern buildings include City Hall in Southwark with its distinctive oval shape, the British Library in Somers Town/Kings Cross, What was formerly the Millennium Dome, located by the Thames to the east of Canary Wharf, is now used as an entertainment venue known as The O 2 .
The development of tall buildings has been encouraged in the London Plan, which will lead to the erection of many new skyscrapers over the next decade, particularly in the City of London and Canary Wharf. The 72-storey, "Shard London Bridge" by London Bridge station, the Bishopsgate Tower and many other skyscrapers over are either proposed or approved and could transform the city's skyline. As of July 2008, there are 426 high-rise buildings (between 23 m to 150 m/75 ft to 491 ft) under construction, approved for construction, and proposed for construction in London.
A great many monuments pay homage to people and events in the city. The Monument in the City of London provides views of the surrounding area while commemorating the Great Fire of London, which originated nearby. Marble Arch and Wellington Arch, at the north and south ends of Park Lane respectively, have royal connections, as do the Albert Memorial and Royal Albert Hall in Kensington. Nelson's Column is a nationally recognised monument in Trafalgar Square, one of the focal points of the centre.
The largest parks in the central area of London are the Royal Parks of Hyde Park and its neighbour Kensington Gardens at the western edge of central London and Regent's Park on the northern edge. This park contains London Zoo, the world's oldest scientific zoo, and is located near the tourist attraction of Madame Tussauds Wax Museum. Closer to central London are the smaller Royal Parks of Green Park and St. James's Park. Hyde Park in particular is popular for sports and sometimes hosts open-air concerts.
A number of large parks lie outside the city centre, including the remaining Royal Parks of Greenwich Park to the south-east and Bushy Park and Richmond Park to the south-west, as well as Victoria Park, East London to the east. Primrose Hill to the north of Regent's Park is a popular spot to view the city skyline. Some more informal, semi-natural open spaces also exist, including the Hampstead Heath of North London. This incorporates Kenwood House, the former stately home and a popular location in the summer months where classical musical concerts are held by the lake, attracting thousands of people every weekend to enjoy the music, scenery and fireworks.
Traditionally the London accent has been given the famous Cockney label, and was similar to many accents of the South East of England, developing a unique form of slang known as Cockney Rhyming Slang. The accent of a 21st century Londoner varies widely; what is becoming more and more common amongst the under 30s however is some fusion of Cockney, Received Pronunciation, and a whole array of 'ethnic' accents, in particular Caribbean, which form an accent labelled Multicultural London English (MLE), with a large amount of slang in use as well.
Piccadilly Circus at night
The Trooping the Colour held in 2006 to mark the Queen's 80th birthday.
Within the City of Westminster, the entertainment district of the West End has its focus around Leicester Square, where London and world film premieres are held, and Piccadilly Circus, with its giant electronic advertisements. London's theatre district is here, as are many cinemas, bars, clubs and restaurants, including the city's Chinatown district, and just to the east is Covent Garden, an area housing speciality shops. The United Kingdom's Royal Ballet,English National Ballet, Royal Opera and English National Opera are based in London and perform at the Royal Opera House, The London Coliseum, Sadler's Wells Theatre and the Royal Albert Hall as well as touring the country. Islington's long Upper Street, extending Northwards from The Angel, has more bars and restaurants than any other street in the UK. Europe's busiest shopping area is Oxford Street, a shopping street nearly long â which makes it the longest shopping street in the world â and home to many shops and department stores including Selfridges. Knightsbridge â home to the Harrods department store â lies just to the southwest. London is home to designers Vivienne Westwood, Galliano, Stella McCartney, Manolo Blahnik, and Jimmy Choo among others; its renowned art and fashion schools make it an international centre of fashion alongside Paris, Milan and New York.
London offers a great variety of cuisine as a result of its ethnically diverse population. Gastronomic centres include the Bangladeshi restaurants of Brick Lane and the Chinese food restaurants of Chinatown.
There are a variety of regular annual events in the city. The beginning of the year is celebrated with the relatively new New Year's Day Parade, while traditional parades include November's Lord Mayor's Show, a centuries-old event celebrating the annual appointment of a new Lord Mayor of the City of London with a procession along the streets of the City, and June's Trooping the Colour, a formal military pageant performed by regiments of the Commonwealth and British armies to celebrate the Queen's Official Birthday.
Charles Dickens (1812â1870), whose works formed a pervasive image of Victorian London.
London has been the setting for many works of literature. Two writers closely associated with the city are the diarist Samuel Pepys, noted for his eyewitness account of the Great Fire, and Charles Dickens, whose representation of a foggy, snowy, grimy London of street sweepers and pickpockets has been a major influence on people's vision of early Victorian London. The earlier (1722) A Journal of the Plague Year by Daniel Defoe is a fictionalisation of the events of the 1665 Great Plague. William Shakespeare spent a large part of his life living and working in London; his contemporary Ben Jonson was also based in London, and some of his work â most notably his play The Alchemist â was set in the city. Later important depictions of London from the 19th and early 20th centuries are the afore-mentioned Dickens novels, and Arthur Conan Doyle's illustrious Sherlock Holmes stories. A modern writer pervasively influenced by the city is Peter Ackroyd, in works such as London: The Biography, The Lambs of London and Hawksmoor.
London has played a significant role in the film industry, and has major studios at Pinewood, Ealing, Shepperton, Elstree and Leavesden, as well as an important special effects and post-production community centred in Soho in central London. Working Title Films has its headquarters in London. The city also hosts a number of performing arts schools, including The Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA), the Central School of Speech and Drama (alumni: Judi Dench and Laurence Olivier) and the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art (alumni: Jim Broadbent). The London Film Festival is held each year in October.
London is home to many museums, galleries, and other institutions which are major tourist attractions as well as playing a research role. The Natural History Museum (biology and geology), Science Museum and Victoria and Albert Museum (fashion and design) are clustered in South Kensington's "museum quarter", while the British Museum houses historic artefacts from around the world. The British Library at St Pancras is the UK's national library, housing 150 million items. The city also houses extensive art collections, primarily in the National Gallery, Tate Britain and Tate Modern.
The Royal Albert Hall hosts a wide range of concerts and musical events.
London is one of the major classical and popular music capitals of the world and is home to major music corporations, such as EMI and Decca Records, as well as countless bands, musicians and industry professionals. London is home to many orchestras and concert halls such as the Barbican Arts Centre (principal base of the London Symphony Orchestra), Cadogan Hall (Royal Philharmonic Orchestra) and the Royal Albert Hall (BBC Promenade Concerts). London's two main opera houses are the Royal Opera House and the Coliseum Theatre.
Several conservatoires are located within the city: Royal Academy of Music, Royal College of Music, Guildhall School of Music and Drama, and Trinity College of Music.
London has numerous renowned venues for rock and pop concerts, including large arenas such as Earls Court, Wembley Arena and the O2 Arena, as well as numerous mid-size venues, such as Brixton Academy, Hammersmith Apollo and The London Astoria. London also hosts many music festivals, including the 02 Wireless Festival and Latitude Festival.
London is home to the first and original Hard Rock Cafe and the illustrious Abbey Road Studios where The Beatles created many of their hits. Musicians such as Bob Marley, Jimi Hendrix and Freddie Mercury have lived in London. A large number of musical artists originate from or are most strongly associated with London, including David Bowie, Ian Dury, The Kinks, Adam Faith, The Rolling Stones, The Who, Madness, The Jam, Blur, Iron Maiden, Phil Collins, Rod Stewart, Elvis Costello, Dusty Springfield, The Yardbirds and The Small Faces.
London was instrumental in the development of punk music, with figures such as the Sex Pistols, The Clash, and Vivienne Westwood all based in the city.
More recent artists to emerge from the London music scene include The Libertines, one of the most influential British rock acts of the 2000s, Bloc Party, Amy Winehouse, Lily Allen, The Kooks, Razorlight, Laura Marling, Dizzee Rascal, Natasha Bedingfield and Leona Lewis.
London is also a centre for Urban music. In particular the genres UK Garage, Drum and Bass and Grime evolved in the city from the foreign genres of hiphop and reggae, alongside local rave music. Black music station BBC 1Xtra was set up to support the rise of homegrown urban music both in London and the rest of the UK.
Wembley Stadium is home to English football and is the most expensive stadium in the world.
The Wimbledon Championships, a tennis Grand Slam tournament.
London has hosted the Summer Olympics twice, in 1908 and 1948. In July 2005 London was chosen to host the Games in 2012, which will make it the first city in the world to host the Summer Olympics three times. London was also the host of the British Empire Games in 1934.
London's most popular sport (for both participants and spectators) is football. London has thirteen League football clubs, including five in the Premier League: Arsenal, Chelsea, Fulham, Tottenham Hotspur and West Ham United. London also has four rugby union teams in the Guinness Premiership (London Irish, Saracens, Wasps and Harlequins), although only the Harlequins play in London (all the other three now play outside Greater London, although Saracens still play within the M25). There are two professional rugby league clubs in London - Harlequins Rugby League who play in the Super League at the Stoop and the National League 2 side the London Skolars (based in Haringey).
Since 1924, the original Wembley Stadium was the home of the English national football team, and served as the venue for the FA Cup final as well as rugby league's Challenge Cup final. The new Wembley Stadium serves exactly the same purposes and has a capacity of 90,000. Twickenham Stadium in west London is the national rugby union stadium, and has a capacity of 84,000 now that the new south stand has been completed.
Cricket in London centres on its two Test cricket grounds at Lord's (home of Middlesex C.C.C) in St John's Wood, and The Oval (home of Surrey C.C.C) in Kennington. One of London's best-known annual sports competitions is the Wimbledon Tennis Championships, held at the All England Club in the south-western suburb of Wimbledon. Other key events are the annual mass-participation London Marathon which sees some 35,000 runners attempt a course around the city, and the Oxford vs. Cambridge Boat Race on the River Thames between Putney and Mortlake.
Transport is one of the four areas of policy administered by the Mayor of London, however the mayor's financial control is limited and he does not control the heavy rail network, although in November 2007 he assumed responsibility for the North London Railway as well as several other lines, to form London Overground. The public transport network, administered by Transport for London (TfL), is one of the most extensive in the world, but faces congestion and reliability issues, which a large investment programme is attempting to address, including £7 billion (â¬10 billion) of improvements planned for the Olympics. London has been commended as the city with the best public transport. Cycling is an increasingly popular way to get around London. The London Cycling Campaign lobbies for better provision.
The London Underground is the oldest, longest, and most expansive metro system in the world, dating from 1863.
The centrepiece of the public transport network is the London Underground â commonly referred to as The Tube â which has eleven interconnecting lines. It is the oldest, longest, and most expansive metro system in the world, dating from 1863. The system was home to the world's first underground electric line, the City & South London Railway, which began service in 1890. Over three million journeys a day are made on the Underground network, nearly 1 billion journeys each year. The Underground serves the central area and most suburbs to the north of the Thames, while those to the south are served by an extensive suburban rail surface network.
The Docklands Light Railway is a second metro system using smaller and lighter trains, which opened in 1987, serving East London and Greenwich on both sides of the Thames. Commuter and intercity railways generally do not cross the city, instead running into fourteen terminal stations scattered around its historic centre; the exception is the Thameslink route operated by First Capital Connect, with terminus stations at Bedford, Brighton and Moorgate. Since the early 1990s, increasing pressures on the commuter rail and Underground networks have led to increasing demands â particularly from businesses and the City of London Corporation â for Crossrail: a £10 billion east â west heavy rail connection under central London, which was given the green light in early October 2007.
High-speed Eurostar trains link St Pancras International with Lille and Paris in France, and Brussels in Belgium. Journey times to Paris and Brussels of 2h 15 and 1h 51 respectively make London closer to continental Europe than the rest of Britain by virtue of the newly completed High Speed 1 rail link to the Channel Tunnel. From 2009 this line will also allow for high speed domestic travel from Kent into London. The redevelopment of St. Pancras was key to London's Olympic bid, as the station also serves two international airports through Thameslink, and will also provide direct rail links to the Olympic site at Stratford using British Rail Class 395 trains running under the Olympic Javelin name; these will be based on Japanese Shinkansen high-speed trains.
The modern Enviro400 double-decker bus
London's bus network is one of the largest in the world, running 24 hours a day, with 8,000 buses, 700 bus routes, and over 6 million passenger journeys made every weekday. In 2003, the network's ridership was estimated at over 1.5 billion passenger trips per annum, more than the Underground. Around £850 m is taken in revenue each year.
London has the largest wheelchair accessible network in the world and, from the 3rd quarter of 2007, became more accessible to hearing and visually impaired passengers as audio-visual announcements were introduced. The distinctive red double-decker buses are internationally recognised, and are a trademark of London transport along with black cabs and the Tube.
Terminal 5 at Heathrow Airport, which is the world's busiest airport by international passenger traffic.
London is a major international air transport hub with the largest city airspace in the world. Eight airports use the words London Airport in their name, but most traffic passes through one of five major airports. London Heathrow Airport is the busiest airport in the world for international traffic, and is the major hub of the nation's flag carrier, British Airways. In March 2008 its fifth terminal was opened, and plans are already being considered for a sixth terminal. Similar traffic, with the addition of some low-cost short-haul flights, is also handled at London Gatwick Airport. London Stansted Airport and London Luton Airport cater mostly for low-cost short-haul flights. London City Airport, the smallest and most central airport, is focused on business travellers, with a mixture of full service short-haul scheduled flights and considerable business jet traffic.
Although the majority of journeys involving central London are made by public transport, travel in outer London is car-dominated. The inner ring road (around the city centre), the North and South Circular roads (in the suburbs), and the outer orbital motorway (the M25, outside the built-up area) encircle the city and are intersected by a number of busy radial routes â but very few motorways penetrate into inner London. The M25 is the longest ring-road motorway in the world at long. A plan for a comprehensive network of motorways throughout the city (the Ringways Plan) was prepared in the 1960s but was mostly cancelled in the early 1970s. In 2003, a congestion charge was introduced to reduce traffic volumes in the city centre. With a few exceptions, motorists are required to pay £8 per day to drive within a defined zone encompassing much of congested central London. Motorists who are residents of the defined zone can buy a vastly reduced season pass which is renewed monthly and is cheaper than a corresponding bus fare.
Royal Holloway, as a part of the University of London, a federation of London higher education institutions
Home to a range of universities, colleges and schools, London has a student population of about 378,000 and is a centre of research and development. Most primary and secondary schools in London follow the same system as the rest of England â comprehensive schooling.
With 125,000 students, the University of London is the largest contact teaching university in the United Kingdom and in Europe. It comprises 20 colleges as well as several smaller institutes each with a high degree of autonomy. Constituent colleges have their own admissions procedures, and are effectively universities in their own right, although most degrees are awarded by the University of London rather than the individual colleges. Its constituents include multi-disciplinary colleges such as UCL, King's, Goldsmiths, Queen Mary and more specialised institutions such as the London School of Economics, SOAS, the Royal Academy of Music, the Courtauld Institute of Art and the Institute of Education.
Imperial College London and University College London have been ranked among the top ten universities in the world by The Times Higher Education Supplement: in 2008 Imperial was ranked the 6th best and UCL the 7th best university in the world.
In addition, the London School of Economics is the worldâs leading social science institution for teaching and research, plus has the most international student body of any university in the world today.
A number of colleges are dedicated to the fine arts, including the Royal College of Music, Royal College of Art, and Guildhall School of Music and Drama.
Senate House, the headquarters of the federal University of London
London's other universities, such as Brunel University, City University, London Metropolitan University, Middlesex University, University of East London, University of the Arts London, University of Westminster, Kingston University and London South Bank University are not part of the University of London but are still leaders in their field and popular choices among students both nationally and internationally. Some were polytechnics until these were granted university status in 1992, and others which were founded much earlier. Imperial College London left the federal University of London in 2007. Since the merger of University of North London and London Guildhall University in 2003, London Metropolitan University is the largest unitary university in the capital, with over 34,000 students from 155 countries. About London Met London Metropolitan University, August 2008 London is also known globally for its business education, with the London Business School (ranked 1st in Europe â Business Week) and Cass Business School (Europe's largest finance school) both being top world-rated business schools. In addition there are three international universities: Schiller International University, Richmond University and Regent's College.
There are 46 other places on six continents named after London. Jack Malvern. Richmond, in Surrey, is the most widely copied British place name worldwide, timesonline 2008-12-29. The original byline for the article in The Times of the same day was "The 55 corners of foreign fields that will be for ever ... Richmond" (page 9). Cites The Times Universal Atlas of the World. As well as London's twinning, the Boroughs of London have twinnings with parts of other cities across the world. Shown below is the list of cities that the Greater London Authority is twinned with.
* New York City,
* Moscow,
* Berlin,
The following cities have a friendship agreement with London:
* Sofia,
* Delhi,
* Mumbai,
* Beijing,
* Istanbul,
* Paris,
* Tehran,
* Tokyo,
* Bogotá,
* Podgorica,
* Algiers,
* Global city
* Geography of England
* Large Cities Climate Leadership Group
* Largest European cities and metropolitan areas
* London Assembly
* Megacity
*
*
*
*
* Mayor of London, London Assembly and the Greater London Authority â Official city government site
* Transport for London (TfL) â city transport authority
* BBC London
* Office for National Statistics: Focus on London 2007 â compendium of official statistics about London
* Museum of London Group Portal - Home
* VisitLondon.com â Official London site
* Map of Early Modern London â Historical Map and Encyclopaedia of Shakespeare's London (Scholarly)
* London Bridges â A view of London Bridges over the River Thames
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London | Did Caunte take control of the English throne in 101? | No | data/set3/a1 | London
London ( ; ) is the capital of both England and the United Kingdom, and the largest urban area in the European Union. {{cite web|url= title=Largest EU City An important settlement for two millennia, London's history goes back to its founding by the Romans. Since its foundation, London has been part of many movements and phenomena throughout history, including the English Renaissance, the Industrial Revolution, and the Gothic Revival. The city's core, the ancient City of London, still retains its limited medieval boundaries; but since at least the 19th century, the name "London" has also referred to the whole metropolis that has developed around it. Today the bulk of this conurbation forms the London region of England and the Greater London administrative area, with its own elected mayor and assembly.
London is one of the the world's most important business, financial and cultural centres and its influence in politics, education, entertainment, media, fashion and the arts contribute to its status as a major global city. Global Cities: GaWC Inventory of World Cities 1999 Global cities#GaWC Inventory of World Cities (1999 Edition); Global Cities: GaWC Inventory of World Cities 2004 Global cities#GaWC Leading World Cities (2004 Edition) Central London is the headquarters of more than half of the UK's top 100 listed companies (the FTSE 100) and over 100 of Europe's 500 largest companies. The city is a major tourist destination both for domestic and overseas visitors, with annual expenditure by tourists of around £15 billion. London hosted the 1908 and 1948 Summer Olympic Games and will host the 2012 Summer Olympic Games.
Greater London contains four World Heritage Sites: the Tower of London; the historic settlement of Greenwich; the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew; and the site comprising the Palace of Westminster, Westminster Abbey and St. Margaret's Church.
London's population draws from a wide range of peoples, cultures, and religions, and over 300 languages are spoken within the city. As of 2006, it had an official population of 7,512,400 within the boundaries of Greater London and is the most populous municipality in the European Union. As of 2001, the Greater London Urban Area had a population of 8,278,251 and the metropolitan area is estimated to have a total population of between 12 and 14 million , the largest metropolitan area in the EU. The public transport network, administered by Transport for London, is one of the most extensive in the world, and Heathrow Airport is the busiest airport in the world by international passenger traffic and the air space is the busiest of any city in the world. International Passenger Traffic, Airports Council International
The etymology of London remains a mystery. The earliest etymological explanation can be attributed to Geoffrey of Monmouth in Historia Regum Britanniae. The name is described as originating from King Lud, who had allegedly taken over the city and named it Kaerlud. This was slurred into Kaerludein and finally London. Many other theories have been advanced over the centuries, most of them deriving the name from Welsh or British, and occasionally from Anglo-Saxon or even Hebrew.
Map of London in 1300, showing the medieval boundaries of the City of London
Although there is evidence of scattered Brythonic settlements in the area, the first major settlement was founded by the Romans in AD 43 as Londinium, following the Roman conquest of Britain. This Londinium lasted for just seventeen years. Around 61, the Iceni tribe led by Queen Boudica stormed this first London, burning it to the ground. The next, heavily planned incarnation of the city prospered and superseded Colchester as the capital of the Roman province of Britannia in 100. At its height in the 2nd century, Roman London had a population of around 60,000.
By the 600s, the Anglo-Saxons had created a new settlement called Lundenwic approximately upstream from the old Roman city,
around what is now Covent Garden. It is likely that there was a harbour at the mouth of the River Fleet for fishing and trading, and this trading grew until the city was overcome by the Vikings and forced to relocate the city back to the location of the Roman Londinium to use its walls for protection. Viking attacks continued to increase around the rest of South East England, until 886 when Alfred the Great recaptured London and made peace with the Danish leader, Guthrum. The original Saxon city of Lundenwic became Ealdwic ("old city"), a name surviving to the present day as Aldwych, which is in the modern City of Westminster.
In a retaliatory attack, Ethelred's army achieved victory by pulling down London Bridge with the Danish garrison on top, and English control was re-established. Canute took control of the English throne in 1017, controlling the city and country until 1042, when his death resulted in a reversion to Saxon control under his pious stepson Edward the Confessor, who re-founded Westminster Abbey and the adjacent Palace of Westminster. By this time, London had become the largest and most prosperous city in England, although the official seat of government was still at Winchester.
Following a victory at the Battle of Hastings, William the Conqueror, the then Duke of Normandy, was crowned King of England in the newly finished Westminster Abbey on Christmas Day 1066. William granted the citizens of London special privileges, while building what is now known as the Tower of London, in the south-east corner of the city, to keep them under control. .
The Great Exhibition
In 1097, William II began the building of Westminster Hall, close by the abbey of the same name. The hall became the basis of a new Palace of Westminster, the prime royal residence throughout the Middle Ages. Westminster became the seat of the royal court and government (persisting until the present day), while its distinct neighbour, the City of London, was a centre of trade and commerce and flourished under its own unique administration, the Corporation of London. London grew in wealth and population during the Middle Ages. In 1100 its population was around 18,000; by 1300 it had grown to nearly 100,000. King Edward I issued an edict in 1290, expelling all Jews from England. Before the edict, there was an increasing population of Jews, whereas after this time, the population of Jews began to drop considerably. Disaster struck during the Black Death in the mid-14th century, when London lost nearly a third of its population. Apart from the invasion of London during the Peasants' Revolt in 1381, London remained relatively untouched by the various civil wars during the Middle Ages, such as the first and second Barons' Wars and the Wars of the Roses.
After the successful defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588, political stability in England allowed London to grow further. In 1603, James VI of Scotland came to the throne of England, essentially uniting the two countries. His enactment of harsh anti-Catholic laws made him unpopular, and an assassination attempt was made on 5 November 1605âthe well-known Gunpowder Plot.
The Great Fire of London destroyed many parts of the city in 1666
Plague caused extensive problems for London in the early 17th century, culminating in the Great Plague in 1665â1666. This was the last major outbreak in England, possibly thanks to the disastrous fire of 1666. The Great Fire of London broke out in the original City and quickly swept through London's wooden buildings, destroying large swathes of the city. A first hand narrative of both plague and fire was provided by Sir Samuel Pepys. Rebuilding took over ten years, largely under direction of a Commission appointed by King Charles II and chaired by Sir Christopher Wren.
Following London's growth in the 18th century, it became the world's largest city from about 1831 to 1925. Rising traffic congestion on city centre roads led to the creation of the world's first metro system â the London Underground â in 1863, driving further expansion and urbanisation. London's local government system struggled to cope with the rapid growth, especially in providing the city with adequate infrastructure. Between 1855 and 1889, the Metropolitan Board of Works oversaw infrastructure expansion. It was then replaced by the County of London, overseen by the London County Council, London's first elected city-wide administration.
A London street hit during the Blitz of World War II
The Blitz and other bombing by the German Luftwaffe during World War II killed over 30,000 Londoners and destroyed large tracts of housing and other buildings across London. In 1965 London's political boundaries were expanded to take into account the growth of the urban area outside the County of London's borders. The expanded area was called Greater London and was administered by the Greater London Council. An eco revival from the 1980s onwards re-established London's position as a pre-eminent international centre. However, as the seat of government and the most important city in the UK, it has been subjected to bouts of terrorism. Provisional Irish Republican Army bombers sought to pressure the government into negotiations over Northern Ireland, frequently disrupting city activities with bomb threats â some of which were carried out â until their 1997 cease-fire. More recently, a series of coordinated bomb attacks were carried out by Islamic extremist suicide bombers on the public transport network on 7 July 2005âjust 24 hours after London was awarded the 2012 Summer Olympics.
City Hall at night, home of the Greater London Authority
The administration of London is formed of two tiers â a city-wide, strategic tier and a local tier. City-wide administration is coordinated by the Greater London Authority (GLA), while local administration is carried out by 33 smaller authorities. The GLA consists of two elected parts; the Mayor of London, who has executive powers, and the London Assembly, who scrutinise the Mayor's decisions and can accept or reject his budget proposals each year. The GLA was set up in 2000 to replace the similar Greater London Council (GLC) which had been abolished in 1986. The headquarters of the GLA and the Mayor of London is at City Hall; the Mayor is Boris Johnson. The 33 local authorities are the councils of the 32 London boroughs and the City of London Corporation. They are responsible for local services not overseen by the GLA, such as local planning, schools, social services, local roads and refuse collection.
London is the home of the Government of the United Kingdom which is located around the Houses of Parliament in Westminster. Many government departments are located close to Parliament, particularly along Whitehall, including the Prime Minister's residence at 10 Downing Street. The British Parliament is often referred to as the "Mother of Parliaments" (although this sobriquet was first applied to England itself by John Bright) because it has been the model for most other parliamentary systems, and its Acts have created many other parliaments. There are 74 Members of Parliament (MPs) from London, who correspond to local parliamentary constituencies in the national Parliament by . Of these 74 MPs, currently 44 are from the Labour Party, 21 are Conservatives, 8 are Liberal Democrats and one is from the RESPECT party.
West and central London seen from SPOT satellite
London can be geographically defined in a number of ways, although the situation was once even more ambiguous than it is now and open to periodic legal debate. At London's core is the small, ancient City of London which is commonly known as 'the City' or 'the Square Mile'. London's metropolitan area grew considerably during the Victorian era and again during the Interwar period, but expansion halted in the 1940s because of World War II and Green Belt legislation, and the area has been largely static since. The London region of England, also commonly known as Greater London, is the area administered by the Greater London Authority. The urban sprawl of the conurbation â or Greater London Urban Area â covers a roughly similar area, with a slightly larger population. Beyond this is the vast London commuter belt.
Map of Central LondonForty percent of Greater London is covered by the London postal district, within which 'LONDON' forms part of the postal address. The London telephone area code covers a larger area, similar in size to Greater London, although some outer districts are omitted and some places just outside are included. The area within the orbital M25 motorway is sometimes used to define the "London area" and the Greater London boundary has been aligned to it in places. Greater London is split for some purposes into Inner London and Outer London. Informally, the city is split into North, South, East, West and often also Central London.
The Metropolitan Police District, city-wide local government area and London transport area have varied over time, but broadly coincide with the Greater London boundary. The Romans may have marked the centre of Londinium with the London Stone, still visible on Cannon Street. The coordinates of the nominal centre of London (traditionally considered to be the original Eleanor Cross at Charing Cross, near the junction of Trafalgar Square and Whitehall) are approximately . Trafalgar Square has also become a point for celebrations and protests.
Within London, both the City of London and the City of Westminster have City status and both the City of London and the remainder of Greater London are the ceremonial counties. The current area of Greater London was historically part of the counties of Middlesex, Kent, Surrey, Essex and Hertfordshire. Unlike most capital cities, London's status as the capital of the UK has never been granted or confirmed officially â by statute or in written form. Its position as the capital has formed through constitutional convention, making its position as de facto capital a part of the UK's unwritten constitution. The capital of England was moved to London from Winchester as the Palace of Westminster developed in the 12th and 13th centuries to become the permanent location of the royal court, and thus the political capital of the nation. According to the Collins English Dictionary definition (1994) Collins English Dictionary. Collins Education plc. of 'the seat of government,' London is not the capital of England, as England does not have its own government. However according to the Oxford English Reference dictionary definition Oxford English Reference Dictionary. Oxford English. of 'the most important town...' and many other authorities, "HC 501 0304.PDF" (PDF). Parliament Publications. Retrieved on 2008-06-06. 'England' (1994) Collins English Dictionary. Collins Education plc. London is the capital of England.
Greater London covers an area of . Its primary geographical feature is the Thames, a navigable river which crosses the city from the south-west to the east. The Thames Valley is a floodplain surrounded by gently rolling hills including Parliament Hill, Addington Hills, and Primrose Hill. The Thames was once a much broader, shallower river with extensive marshlands; at high tide, its shores reached five times their present width. Since the Victorian era it has been extensively embanked, and many of its London tributaries now flow underground. The Thames is a tidal river, and London is vulnerable to flooding. The threat has increased over time due to a slow but continuous rise in high water level by the slow 'tilting' of Britain (up in the north and down in the south) caused by post-glacial rebound. In 1974, a decade of work began on the construction of the Thames Barrier across the Thames at Woolwich to deal with this threat. While the barrier is expected to function as designed until roughly 2030, concepts for its future enlargement or redesign are already being discussed.
London has a temperate marine climate, like much of the British Isles, so the city rarely sees extremely high or low temperatures. Summers are warm with average high temperatures of and lows of , however, temperatures could exceed on many days.
Winters in London are chilly, but rarely below freezing with daytime temperatures around 2 - 8 °C (36 - 46 °F), while spring has mild days and cool evenings.
London has regular but generally light precipitation throughout the year, with average precipitation of every year.
Snow is relatively uncommon, particularly because heat from the urban area can make London up to 5 °C (9 °F) hotter than the surrounding areas in winter. Snowfall, however, is usually, but not always, seen up to a few times a year. London is in USDA Hardiness zone 9, and AHS Heat Zone 2.
In the second half of the 19th century and the first half of the 20th, London was noted for its dense fogs and smogs. Following the deadly Great Smog of 1952, the Clean Air Act 1956 was passed, leading to the decline of such severe pollution in the capital.
London's vast urban area is often described using a set of district names (e.g. Bloomsbury, Knightsbridge, Mayfair, Whitechapel, Fitzrovia). These are either informal designations, or reflect the names of superseded villages, parishes and city wards. Such names have remained in use through tradition, each referring to a local area with its own distinctive character, but often with no modern official boundaries. However, since 1965 Greater London has been divided into 32 London boroughs in addition to the ancient City of London.
The City of London is one of the world's three largest financial centres (alongside New York and Tokyo) with a dominant role in several international financial markets, including cross-border bank lending, international bond issuance and trading, foreign-exchange trading, over-the-counter derivatives, fund management and foreign equities trading. It also has the world's largest insurance market, the leading exchange for dealing in non-precious metals, the largest spot gold and gold lending markets, the largest ship broking market, and more foreign banks and investment houses than any other centre. The City has its own governance and boundaries, giving it a status as the only completely autonomous local authority in London. London's new financial and commercial hub is the Docklands area to the east of the City, dominated by the Canary Wharf complex. Other businesses locate in the City of Westminster, the home of the UK's national government and the well-known Westminster Abbey.
The West End is London's main entertainment and shopping district, with locations such as Oxford Street, Leicester Square, Covent Garden and Piccadilly Circus acting as tourist magnets. The West London area is known for fashionable and expensive residential areas such as Notting Hill, Knightsbridge and Chelsea â where properties can sell for tens of millions of pounds. The average price for all properties in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea is £894,000 with similar average outlay in most of Central London.
The eastern region of London contains the East End and East London. The East End is the area closest to the original Port of London, known for its high immigrant population, as well as for being one of the poorest areas in London. The surrounding East London area saw much of London's early industrial development; now, brownfield sites throughout the area are being redeveloped as part of the Thames Gateway including the London Riverside and Lower Lea Valley, which is being developed into the Olympic Park for the 2012 Olympics.
With increasing industrialisation, London's population grew rapidly throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries, and it was the most populous city in the world until overtaken by New York in 1925. Its population peaked at 8,615,245 in 1939 immediately before the outbreak of World War 2. There were an estimated 7,512,400 official residents in Greater London as of mid-2006. However, London's continuous urban area extends beyond the borders of Greater London and was home to 8,278,251 people in 2001, while its wider metropolitan area has a population of between 12 and 14 million depending on the definition used. According to Eurostat, London is the most populous city and metropolitan area of the European Union and the second most populous in Europe (or third if Istanbul is included).
The region covers an area of . The population density is , more than ten times that of any other British region. In terms of population, London is the 25th largest city and the 17th largest metropolitan region in the world. It is also ranked 4th in the world in number of billionaires (United States Dollars) residing in the city. London ranks as one of the most expensive cities in the world, alongside Tokyo and Moscow.
According to 2008 estimates, 51% of these seven million and seven hundred thousand people people are classed as the indigenous White British, White Irish (2.5%) and "Other White" 10%, the majority of whom are other Europeans. 15% of people are of South Asian descent, including Indian (mainly Punjabi, Hindi, Tamil and Gujarati), Pakistani, Bangladeshi (Bengali) and "Other Asian" (mostly Sri Lankan (Tamil) and other Southern Asian ethnicities). 13% of people are Black (around 7% are Black African, 5% as Black Caribbean, 1% as "Other Black"). 5.5% are of mixed race; 1.5% are Chinese; and 1.5% of people belong to another ethnic group. 30% of inhabitants were born outside the European Union. The Irish born, from both the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland, number approximately 250,000 and are the largest group born outside of Britain.
In January 2005, a survey of London's ethnic and religious diversity claimed that there were more than 300 languages spoken and more than 50 non-indigenous communities which have a population of more than 10,000 in London. Figures from the Office for National Statistics show that, as of 2006, London's foreign-born population is 2,288,000 (31%), up from 1,630,000 in 1997. The 2001 census showed that 27.1% of Greater London's population were born outside the UK, and a slightly higher proportion were classed as non-white.
The table to the right shows the 'Country of Birth' of London residents in 2001, the date of the last UK Census. (Top 21). Note that a portion of the German-born population are likely to be British nationals born to parents serving in the British armed forces in Germany.
Westminster Abbey is one of London's oldest and most important buildings and a World Heritage Site.
The majority of Londoners - 58.2% - identify themselves as Christians. This is followed by those of no religion (15.8%), Muslims (8.5%), Hindus (4.1%), Jews (2.1%), Sikhs (1.5%), Buddhists (0.8%) and other (0.5%), though 8.7% of people did not answer this question in the 2001 Census.
London has traditionally been dominated by Christianity, and has a large number of churches, particularly in the City of London. The well-known St Paul's Cathedral in the City and Southwark Cathedral south of the river are Anglican administrative centres, while the Archbishop of Canterbury, principal bishop of the Church of England and worldwide Anglican Communion, has his main residence at Lambeth Palace in the London Borough of Lambeth.
Important national and royal ceremonies are shared between St Paul's and Westminster Abbey. The Abbey is not to be confused with nearby Westminster Cathedral, which is the largest Roman Catholic cathedral in England and Wales. Religious practice is lower in London than any other part of the UK or Western Europe and is around seven times lower than American averages. Despite the prevalence of Anglican churches, observance is very low within the Anglican denomination, although church attendance, particularly at evangelical Anglican churches in London, has started to increase.
The Swaminarayan Hindu Temple in Neasden
London is also home to sizeable Muslim, Hindu, Sikh, and Jewish communities. Many Muslims live in Tower Hamlets and Newham; the most important Muslim edifice is London Central Mosque on the edge of Regent's Park. London's large Hindu community is found in the north-western boroughs of Harrow and Brent, the latter of which is home to one of Europe's largest Hindu temples, Neasden Temple. Sikh communities are located in East and West London, which is also home to the largest Sikh temple in the world, outside India.
The majority of British Jews live in London, with significant Jewish communities in Stamford Hill, Stanmore, Golders Green, Hendon, and Edgware in North London. Stanmore and Canons Park Synagogue has the largest membership of any single Orthodox synagogue in the whole of Europe, overtaking Ilford synagogue (also in London) in 1998. The community set up the London Jewish Forum in 2007 in response to the growing significance of devolved London Government.
The City of London is the world's largest financial centre . It is home to the London Stock Exchange and Lloyds of London.
London is a major centre for international business and commerce and is one of three "command centres" for the world economy (along with New York City and Tokyo). According to 2005 estimates by the PricewaterhouseCoopers accounting firm, London has the 6th largest city economy in the world after Tokyo, New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Paris. London generates approximately 20% of the UK's GDP (or $446 billion in 2005); while the economy of the London metropolitan area â the second largest in Europe â generates approximately 30% of the UK's GDP (or an estimated $669 billion in 2005).
London's success as a service industry and business centre can be attributed to factors such as English being the native and dominant language of business, close relationship with the U.S. and various countries in Asia. Other factors include English law being the most important and most used contract law in international business and the multi-cultural infrastructure. Government policies such as low taxes, particularly for foreigners (non-UK domiciled residents do not get taxed on their foreign earnings), a business friendly environment, good transport infrastructure and a deregulated economy with little intervention by the government have all contributed to London's economy becoming more service based. Over 85% (3.2 million) of the employed population of Greater London works in service industries. Another half a million employees resident in Greater London work in manufacturing and construction, almost equally divided between both.
The three tallest skyscrapers as of 2008 in Canary Wharf as viewed from Cabot Square. It is home to such companies as HSBC and Clifford Chance.
London's largest industry remains finance, and its financial exports make it a large contributor to the UK's balance of payments. Over 300,000 people are employed in financial services in London. London has over 480 overseas banks, more than any other city in the world. Due to New York's tightening of market regulations, London stock exchanges had approximately 20% more initial public offerings in 2006.
London is home to banks, brokers, insurers and legal and accounting firms. A second, smaller financial district is developing at Canary Wharf to the east of the city which includes the global headquarters of HSBC, Reuters, Barclays and the Magic Circle, which includes Clifford Chance, the largest law firm in the world. London handled 31% of global currency transactions â an average daily turnover of US$753 billion â with more US dollars traded in London than New York, and more euros traded than in every other city in Europe combined.
More than half of the UK's top 100 listed companies (the FTSE 100) and over 100 of Europe's 500 largest companies are headquartered in central London. Over 70% of the FTSE 100 are located within London's metropolitan area, and 75% of Fortune 500 companies have offices in London. Along with professional services, media companies are concentrated in London (see Media in London) and the media distribution industry is London's second most competitive sector (after central banking, the most competitive sector). The BBC is a key employer, while other broadcasters also have headquarters around the city. Many national newspapers are edited in London, having traditionally been associated with Fleet Street in the city; they are now primarily based around Canary Wharf.
Due to its prominant global role, London is getting hit harder than any other financial centre in the subprime crisis. The City of London estimates that 70,000 jobs in finance will be cut within barely a year.
Several foreign banks have started to move off employees from London to their national financial centres, notably Dresdner Kleinwort, BNP Paribas and Santander.
Tourism is one of London's prime industries and employs the equivalent of 350,000 full-time workers in London in 2003, while annual expenditure by tourists is around £15 billion. " ", Visit London. Retrieved on 3 June 2006. A study carried out by Euromonitor in October 2007 places London at first place out of 150 of the world's most popular cities, attracting 15.6 million international tourists in 2006. This puts London far ahead of 2nd place Bangkok (10.35 million) and 3rd place Paris (just 9.7 million). London attracts 27 million overnight-stay visitors every year. " ", Visit London. Retrieved on 3 June 2006. The Port of London is currently the third-largest in the United Kingdom, handling 50 million tonnes of cargo each year.
London is too diverse to be characterised by any particular architectural style, having accumulated its buildings over a long period of time and drawn on a wide range of influences. It is, however, mainly brick built, most commonly the yellow London stock brick or a warm orange-red variety, often decorated with carvings and white plaster mouldings. Many grand houses and public buildings (such as the National Gallery) are constructed from Portland stone. Some areas of the city, particularly those just west of the centre, are characterised by white stucco or whitewashed buildings. Few structures pre-date the Great Fire of 1666, except for a few trace Roman remains, the Tower of London and a few scattered Tudor survivors in the City. The disused (but soon to be rejuvenated) 1939 Battersea Power Station by the river in the south-west is a local landmark, while some railway termini are excellent examples of Victorian architecture, most notably St Pancras and Paddington (at least internally).
The O 2 , one of the largest dome structures in the world.
The density of London varies, with high employment density in the central area, high residential densities in inner London and lower densities in the suburbs. In the dense areas, most of the concentration is achieved with medium- and high-rise buildings. London's skyscrapers such as the notable "Gherkin", Tower 42, the Broadgate Tower and One Canada Square are usually found in the two financial districts, the City of London and Canary Wharf. Other notable modern buildings include City Hall in Southwark with its distinctive oval shape, the British Library in Somers Town/Kings Cross, What was formerly the Millennium Dome, located by the Thames to the east of Canary Wharf, is now used as an entertainment venue known as The O 2 .
The development of tall buildings has been encouraged in the London Plan, which will lead to the erection of many new skyscrapers over the next decade, particularly in the City of London and Canary Wharf. The 72-storey, "Shard London Bridge" by London Bridge station, the Bishopsgate Tower and many other skyscrapers over are either proposed or approved and could transform the city's skyline. As of July 2008, there are 426 high-rise buildings (between 23 m to 150 m/75 ft to 491 ft) under construction, approved for construction, and proposed for construction in London.
A great many monuments pay homage to people and events in the city. The Monument in the City of London provides views of the surrounding area while commemorating the Great Fire of London, which originated nearby. Marble Arch and Wellington Arch, at the north and south ends of Park Lane respectively, have royal connections, as do the Albert Memorial and Royal Albert Hall in Kensington. Nelson's Column is a nationally recognised monument in Trafalgar Square, one of the focal points of the centre.
The largest parks in the central area of London are the Royal Parks of Hyde Park and its neighbour Kensington Gardens at the western edge of central London and Regent's Park on the northern edge. This park contains London Zoo, the world's oldest scientific zoo, and is located near the tourist attraction of Madame Tussauds Wax Museum. Closer to central London are the smaller Royal Parks of Green Park and St. James's Park. Hyde Park in particular is popular for sports and sometimes hosts open-air concerts.
A number of large parks lie outside the city centre, including the remaining Royal Parks of Greenwich Park to the south-east and Bushy Park and Richmond Park to the south-west, as well as Victoria Park, East London to the east. Primrose Hill to the north of Regent's Park is a popular spot to view the city skyline. Some more informal, semi-natural open spaces also exist, including the Hampstead Heath of North London. This incorporates Kenwood House, the former stately home and a popular location in the summer months where classical musical concerts are held by the lake, attracting thousands of people every weekend to enjoy the music, scenery and fireworks.
Traditionally the London accent has been given the famous Cockney label, and was similar to many accents of the South East of England, developing a unique form of slang known as Cockney Rhyming Slang. The accent of a 21st century Londoner varies widely; what is becoming more and more common amongst the under 30s however is some fusion of Cockney, Received Pronunciation, and a whole array of 'ethnic' accents, in particular Caribbean, which form an accent labelled Multicultural London English (MLE), with a large amount of slang in use as well.
Piccadilly Circus at night
The Trooping the Colour held in 2006 to mark the Queen's 80th birthday.
Within the City of Westminster, the entertainment district of the West End has its focus around Leicester Square, where London and world film premieres are held, and Piccadilly Circus, with its giant electronic advertisements. London's theatre district is here, as are many cinemas, bars, clubs and restaurants, including the city's Chinatown district, and just to the east is Covent Garden, an area housing speciality shops. The United Kingdom's Royal Ballet,English National Ballet, Royal Opera and English National Opera are based in London and perform at the Royal Opera House, The London Coliseum, Sadler's Wells Theatre and the Royal Albert Hall as well as touring the country. Islington's long Upper Street, extending Northwards from The Angel, has more bars and restaurants than any other street in the UK. Europe's busiest shopping area is Oxford Street, a shopping street nearly long â which makes it the longest shopping street in the world â and home to many shops and department stores including Selfridges. Knightsbridge â home to the Harrods department store â lies just to the southwest. London is home to designers Vivienne Westwood, Galliano, Stella McCartney, Manolo Blahnik, and Jimmy Choo among others; its renowned art and fashion schools make it an international centre of fashion alongside Paris, Milan and New York.
London offers a great variety of cuisine as a result of its ethnically diverse population. Gastronomic centres include the Bangladeshi restaurants of Brick Lane and the Chinese food restaurants of Chinatown.
There are a variety of regular annual events in the city. The beginning of the year is celebrated with the relatively new New Year's Day Parade, while traditional parades include November's Lord Mayor's Show, a centuries-old event celebrating the annual appointment of a new Lord Mayor of the City of London with a procession along the streets of the City, and June's Trooping the Colour, a formal military pageant performed by regiments of the Commonwealth and British armies to celebrate the Queen's Official Birthday.
Charles Dickens (1812â1870), whose works formed a pervasive image of Victorian London.
London has been the setting for many works of literature. Two writers closely associated with the city are the diarist Samuel Pepys, noted for his eyewitness account of the Great Fire, and Charles Dickens, whose representation of a foggy, snowy, grimy London of street sweepers and pickpockets has been a major influence on people's vision of early Victorian London. The earlier (1722) A Journal of the Plague Year by Daniel Defoe is a fictionalisation of the events of the 1665 Great Plague. William Shakespeare spent a large part of his life living and working in London; his contemporary Ben Jonson was also based in London, and some of his work â most notably his play The Alchemist â was set in the city. Later important depictions of London from the 19th and early 20th centuries are the afore-mentioned Dickens novels, and Arthur Conan Doyle's illustrious Sherlock Holmes stories. A modern writer pervasively influenced by the city is Peter Ackroyd, in works such as London: The Biography, The Lambs of London and Hawksmoor.
London has played a significant role in the film industry, and has major studios at Pinewood, Ealing, Shepperton, Elstree and Leavesden, as well as an important special effects and post-production community centred in Soho in central London. Working Title Films has its headquarters in London. The city also hosts a number of performing arts schools, including The Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA), the Central School of Speech and Drama (alumni: Judi Dench and Laurence Olivier) and the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art (alumni: Jim Broadbent). The London Film Festival is held each year in October.
London is home to many museums, galleries, and other institutions which are major tourist attractions as well as playing a research role. The Natural History Museum (biology and geology), Science Museum and Victoria and Albert Museum (fashion and design) are clustered in South Kensington's "museum quarter", while the British Museum houses historic artefacts from around the world. The British Library at St Pancras is the UK's national library, housing 150 million items. The city also houses extensive art collections, primarily in the National Gallery, Tate Britain and Tate Modern.
The Royal Albert Hall hosts a wide range of concerts and musical events.
London is one of the major classical and popular music capitals of the world and is home to major music corporations, such as EMI and Decca Records, as well as countless bands, musicians and industry professionals. London is home to many orchestras and concert halls such as the Barbican Arts Centre (principal base of the London Symphony Orchestra), Cadogan Hall (Royal Philharmonic Orchestra) and the Royal Albert Hall (BBC Promenade Concerts). London's two main opera houses are the Royal Opera House and the Coliseum Theatre.
Several conservatoires are located within the city: Royal Academy of Music, Royal College of Music, Guildhall School of Music and Drama, and Trinity College of Music.
London has numerous renowned venues for rock and pop concerts, including large arenas such as Earls Court, Wembley Arena and the O2 Arena, as well as numerous mid-size venues, such as Brixton Academy, Hammersmith Apollo and The London Astoria. London also hosts many music festivals, including the 02 Wireless Festival and Latitude Festival.
London is home to the first and original Hard Rock Cafe and the illustrious Abbey Road Studios where The Beatles created many of their hits. Musicians such as Bob Marley, Jimi Hendrix and Freddie Mercury have lived in London. A large number of musical artists originate from or are most strongly associated with London, including David Bowie, Ian Dury, The Kinks, Adam Faith, The Rolling Stones, The Who, Madness, The Jam, Blur, Iron Maiden, Phil Collins, Rod Stewart, Elvis Costello, Dusty Springfield, The Yardbirds and The Small Faces.
London was instrumental in the development of punk music, with figures such as the Sex Pistols, The Clash, and Vivienne Westwood all based in the city.
More recent artists to emerge from the London music scene include The Libertines, one of the most influential British rock acts of the 2000s, Bloc Party, Amy Winehouse, Lily Allen, The Kooks, Razorlight, Laura Marling, Dizzee Rascal, Natasha Bedingfield and Leona Lewis.
London is also a centre for Urban music. In particular the genres UK Garage, Drum and Bass and Grime evolved in the city from the foreign genres of hiphop and reggae, alongside local rave music. Black music station BBC 1Xtra was set up to support the rise of homegrown urban music both in London and the rest of the UK.
Wembley Stadium is home to English football and is the most expensive stadium in the world.
The Wimbledon Championships, a tennis Grand Slam tournament.
London has hosted the Summer Olympics twice, in 1908 and 1948. In July 2005 London was chosen to host the Games in 2012, which will make it the first city in the world to host the Summer Olympics three times. London was also the host of the British Empire Games in 1934.
London's most popular sport (for both participants and spectators) is football. London has thirteen League football clubs, including five in the Premier League: Arsenal, Chelsea, Fulham, Tottenham Hotspur and West Ham United. London also has four rugby union teams in the Guinness Premiership (London Irish, Saracens, Wasps and Harlequins), although only the Harlequins play in London (all the other three now play outside Greater London, although Saracens still play within the M25). There are two professional rugby league clubs in London - Harlequins Rugby League who play in the Super League at the Stoop and the National League 2 side the London Skolars (based in Haringey).
Since 1924, the original Wembley Stadium was the home of the English national football team, and served as the venue for the FA Cup final as well as rugby league's Challenge Cup final. The new Wembley Stadium serves exactly the same purposes and has a capacity of 90,000. Twickenham Stadium in west London is the national rugby union stadium, and has a capacity of 84,000 now that the new south stand has been completed.
Cricket in London centres on its two Test cricket grounds at Lord's (home of Middlesex C.C.C) in St John's Wood, and The Oval (home of Surrey C.C.C) in Kennington. One of London's best-known annual sports competitions is the Wimbledon Tennis Championships, held at the All England Club in the south-western suburb of Wimbledon. Other key events are the annual mass-participation London Marathon which sees some 35,000 runners attempt a course around the city, and the Oxford vs. Cambridge Boat Race on the River Thames between Putney and Mortlake.
Transport is one of the four areas of policy administered by the Mayor of London, however the mayor's financial control is limited and he does not control the heavy rail network, although in November 2007 he assumed responsibility for the North London Railway as well as several other lines, to form London Overground. The public transport network, administered by Transport for London (TfL), is one of the most extensive in the world, but faces congestion and reliability issues, which a large investment programme is attempting to address, including £7 billion (â¬10 billion) of improvements planned for the Olympics. London has been commended as the city with the best public transport. Cycling is an increasingly popular way to get around London. The London Cycling Campaign lobbies for better provision.
The London Underground is the oldest, longest, and most expansive metro system in the world, dating from 1863.
The centrepiece of the public transport network is the London Underground â commonly referred to as The Tube â which has eleven interconnecting lines. It is the oldest, longest, and most expansive metro system in the world, dating from 1863. The system was home to the world's first underground electric line, the City & South London Railway, which began service in 1890. Over three million journeys a day are made on the Underground network, nearly 1 billion journeys each year. The Underground serves the central area and most suburbs to the north of the Thames, while those to the south are served by an extensive suburban rail surface network.
The Docklands Light Railway is a second metro system using smaller and lighter trains, which opened in 1987, serving East London and Greenwich on both sides of the Thames. Commuter and intercity railways generally do not cross the city, instead running into fourteen terminal stations scattered around its historic centre; the exception is the Thameslink route operated by First Capital Connect, with terminus stations at Bedford, Brighton and Moorgate. Since the early 1990s, increasing pressures on the commuter rail and Underground networks have led to increasing demands â particularly from businesses and the City of London Corporation â for Crossrail: a £10 billion east â west heavy rail connection under central London, which was given the green light in early October 2007.
High-speed Eurostar trains link St Pancras International with Lille and Paris in France, and Brussels in Belgium. Journey times to Paris and Brussels of 2h 15 and 1h 51 respectively make London closer to continental Europe than the rest of Britain by virtue of the newly completed High Speed 1 rail link to the Channel Tunnel. From 2009 this line will also allow for high speed domestic travel from Kent into London. The redevelopment of St. Pancras was key to London's Olympic bid, as the station also serves two international airports through Thameslink, and will also provide direct rail links to the Olympic site at Stratford using British Rail Class 395 trains running under the Olympic Javelin name; these will be based on Japanese Shinkansen high-speed trains.
The modern Enviro400 double-decker bus
London's bus network is one of the largest in the world, running 24 hours a day, with 8,000 buses, 700 bus routes, and over 6 million passenger journeys made every weekday. In 2003, the network's ridership was estimated at over 1.5 billion passenger trips per annum, more than the Underground. Around £850 m is taken in revenue each year.
London has the largest wheelchair accessible network in the world and, from the 3rd quarter of 2007, became more accessible to hearing and visually impaired passengers as audio-visual announcements were introduced. The distinctive red double-decker buses are internationally recognised, and are a trademark of London transport along with black cabs and the Tube.
Terminal 5 at Heathrow Airport, which is the world's busiest airport by international passenger traffic.
London is a major international air transport hub with the largest city airspace in the world. Eight airports use the words London Airport in their name, but most traffic passes through one of five major airports. London Heathrow Airport is the busiest airport in the world for international traffic, and is the major hub of the nation's flag carrier, British Airways. In March 2008 its fifth terminal was opened, and plans are already being considered for a sixth terminal. Similar traffic, with the addition of some low-cost short-haul flights, is also handled at London Gatwick Airport. London Stansted Airport and London Luton Airport cater mostly for low-cost short-haul flights. London City Airport, the smallest and most central airport, is focused on business travellers, with a mixture of full service short-haul scheduled flights and considerable business jet traffic.
Although the majority of journeys involving central London are made by public transport, travel in outer London is car-dominated. The inner ring road (around the city centre), the North and South Circular roads (in the suburbs), and the outer orbital motorway (the M25, outside the built-up area) encircle the city and are intersected by a number of busy radial routes â but very few motorways penetrate into inner London. The M25 is the longest ring-road motorway in the world at long. A plan for a comprehensive network of motorways throughout the city (the Ringways Plan) was prepared in the 1960s but was mostly cancelled in the early 1970s. In 2003, a congestion charge was introduced to reduce traffic volumes in the city centre. With a few exceptions, motorists are required to pay £8 per day to drive within a defined zone encompassing much of congested central London. Motorists who are residents of the defined zone can buy a vastly reduced season pass which is renewed monthly and is cheaper than a corresponding bus fare.
Royal Holloway, as a part of the University of London, a federation of London higher education institutions
Home to a range of universities, colleges and schools, London has a student population of about 378,000 and is a centre of research and development. Most primary and secondary schools in London follow the same system as the rest of England â comprehensive schooling.
With 125,000 students, the University of London is the largest contact teaching university in the United Kingdom and in Europe. It comprises 20 colleges as well as several smaller institutes each with a high degree of autonomy. Constituent colleges have their own admissions procedures, and are effectively universities in their own right, although most degrees are awarded by the University of London rather than the individual colleges. Its constituents include multi-disciplinary colleges such as UCL, King's, Goldsmiths, Queen Mary and more specialised institutions such as the London School of Economics, SOAS, the Royal Academy of Music, the Courtauld Institute of Art and the Institute of Education.
Imperial College London and University College London have been ranked among the top ten universities in the world by The Times Higher Education Supplement: in 2008 Imperial was ranked the 6th best and UCL the 7th best university in the world.
In addition, the London School of Economics is the worldâs leading social science institution for teaching and research, plus has the most international student body of any university in the world today.
A number of colleges are dedicated to the fine arts, including the Royal College of Music, Royal College of Art, and Guildhall School of Music and Drama.
Senate House, the headquarters of the federal University of London
London's other universities, such as Brunel University, City University, London Metropolitan University, Middlesex University, University of East London, University of the Arts London, University of Westminster, Kingston University and London South Bank University are not part of the University of London but are still leaders in their field and popular choices among students both nationally and internationally. Some were polytechnics until these were granted university status in 1992, and others which were founded much earlier. Imperial College London left the federal University of London in 2007. Since the merger of University of North London and London Guildhall University in 2003, London Metropolitan University is the largest unitary university in the capital, with over 34,000 students from 155 countries. About London Met London Metropolitan University, August 2008 London is also known globally for its business education, with the London Business School (ranked 1st in Europe â Business Week) and Cass Business School (Europe's largest finance school) both being top world-rated business schools. In addition there are three international universities: Schiller International University, Richmond University and Regent's College.
There are 46 other places on six continents named after London. Jack Malvern. Richmond, in Surrey, is the most widely copied British place name worldwide, timesonline 2008-12-29. The original byline for the article in The Times of the same day was "The 55 corners of foreign fields that will be for ever ... Richmond" (page 9). Cites The Times Universal Atlas of the World. As well as London's twinning, the Boroughs of London have twinnings with parts of other cities across the world. Shown below is the list of cities that the Greater London Authority is twinned with.
* New York City,
* Moscow,
* Berlin,
The following cities have a friendship agreement with London:
* Sofia,
* Delhi,
* Mumbai,
* Beijing,
* Istanbul,
* Paris,
* Tehran,
* Tokyo,
* Bogotá,
* Podgorica,
* Algiers,
* Global city
* Geography of England
* Large Cities Climate Leadership Group
* Largest European cities and metropolitan areas
* London Assembly
* Megacity
*
*
*
*
* Mayor of London, London Assembly and the Greater London Authority â Official city government site
* Transport for London (TfL) â city transport authority
* BBC London
* Office for National Statistics: Focus on London 2007 â compendium of official statistics about London
* Museum of London Group Portal - Home
* VisitLondon.com â Official London site
* Map of Early Modern London â Historical Map and Encyclopaedia of Shakespeare's London (Scholarly)
* London Bridges â A view of London Bridges over the River Thames
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London | Over how many languages are spoken in London? | Over 300 languages are spoken in london | data/set3/a1 | London
London ( ; ) is the capital of both England and the United Kingdom, and the largest urban area in the European Union. {{cite web|url= title=Largest EU City An important settlement for two millennia, London's history goes back to its founding by the Romans. Since its foundation, London has been part of many movements and phenomena throughout history, including the English Renaissance, the Industrial Revolution, and the Gothic Revival. The city's core, the ancient City of London, still retains its limited medieval boundaries; but since at least the 19th century, the name "London" has also referred to the whole metropolis that has developed around it. Today the bulk of this conurbation forms the London region of England and the Greater London administrative area, with its own elected mayor and assembly.
London is one of the the world's most important business, financial and cultural centres and its influence in politics, education, entertainment, media, fashion and the arts contribute to its status as a major global city. Global Cities: GaWC Inventory of World Cities 1999 Global cities#GaWC Inventory of World Cities (1999 Edition); Global Cities: GaWC Inventory of World Cities 2004 Global cities#GaWC Leading World Cities (2004 Edition) Central London is the headquarters of more than half of the UK's top 100 listed companies (the FTSE 100) and over 100 of Europe's 500 largest companies. The city is a major tourist destination both for domestic and overseas visitors, with annual expenditure by tourists of around £15 billion. London hosted the 1908 and 1948 Summer Olympic Games and will host the 2012 Summer Olympic Games.
Greater London contains four World Heritage Sites: the Tower of London; the historic settlement of Greenwich; the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew; and the site comprising the Palace of Westminster, Westminster Abbey and St. Margaret's Church.
London's population draws from a wide range of peoples, cultures, and religions, and over 300 languages are spoken within the city. As of 2006, it had an official population of 7,512,400 within the boundaries of Greater London and is the most populous municipality in the European Union. As of 2001, the Greater London Urban Area had a population of 8,278,251 and the metropolitan area is estimated to have a total population of between 12 and 14 million , the largest metropolitan area in the EU. The public transport network, administered by Transport for London, is one of the most extensive in the world, and Heathrow Airport is the busiest airport in the world by international passenger traffic and the air space is the busiest of any city in the world. International Passenger Traffic, Airports Council International
The etymology of London remains a mystery. The earliest etymological explanation can be attributed to Geoffrey of Monmouth in Historia Regum Britanniae. The name is described as originating from King Lud, who had allegedly taken over the city and named it Kaerlud. This was slurred into Kaerludein and finally London. Many other theories have been advanced over the centuries, most of them deriving the name from Welsh or British, and occasionally from Anglo-Saxon or even Hebrew.
Map of London in 1300, showing the medieval boundaries of the City of London
Although there is evidence of scattered Brythonic settlements in the area, the first major settlement was founded by the Romans in AD 43 as Londinium, following the Roman conquest of Britain. This Londinium lasted for just seventeen years. Around 61, the Iceni tribe led by Queen Boudica stormed this first London, burning it to the ground. The next, heavily planned incarnation of the city prospered and superseded Colchester as the capital of the Roman province of Britannia in 100. At its height in the 2nd century, Roman London had a population of around 60,000.
By the 600s, the Anglo-Saxons had created a new settlement called Lundenwic approximately upstream from the old Roman city,
around what is now Covent Garden. It is likely that there was a harbour at the mouth of the River Fleet for fishing and trading, and this trading grew until the city was overcome by the Vikings and forced to relocate the city back to the location of the Roman Londinium to use its walls for protection. Viking attacks continued to increase around the rest of South East England, until 886 when Alfred the Great recaptured London and made peace with the Danish leader, Guthrum. The original Saxon city of Lundenwic became Ealdwic ("old city"), a name surviving to the present day as Aldwych, which is in the modern City of Westminster.
In a retaliatory attack, Ethelred's army achieved victory by pulling down London Bridge with the Danish garrison on top, and English control was re-established. Canute took control of the English throne in 1017, controlling the city and country until 1042, when his death resulted in a reversion to Saxon control under his pious stepson Edward the Confessor, who re-founded Westminster Abbey and the adjacent Palace of Westminster. By this time, London had become the largest and most prosperous city in England, although the official seat of government was still at Winchester.
Following a victory at the Battle of Hastings, William the Conqueror, the then Duke of Normandy, was crowned King of England in the newly finished Westminster Abbey on Christmas Day 1066. William granted the citizens of London special privileges, while building what is now known as the Tower of London, in the south-east corner of the city, to keep them under control. .
The Great Exhibition
In 1097, William II began the building of Westminster Hall, close by the abbey of the same name. The hall became the basis of a new Palace of Westminster, the prime royal residence throughout the Middle Ages. Westminster became the seat of the royal court and government (persisting until the present day), while its distinct neighbour, the City of London, was a centre of trade and commerce and flourished under its own unique administration, the Corporation of London. London grew in wealth and population during the Middle Ages. In 1100 its population was around 18,000; by 1300 it had grown to nearly 100,000. King Edward I issued an edict in 1290, expelling all Jews from England. Before the edict, there was an increasing population of Jews, whereas after this time, the population of Jews began to drop considerably. Disaster struck during the Black Death in the mid-14th century, when London lost nearly a third of its population. Apart from the invasion of London during the Peasants' Revolt in 1381, London remained relatively untouched by the various civil wars during the Middle Ages, such as the first and second Barons' Wars and the Wars of the Roses.
After the successful defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588, political stability in England allowed London to grow further. In 1603, James VI of Scotland came to the throne of England, essentially uniting the two countries. His enactment of harsh anti-Catholic laws made him unpopular, and an assassination attempt was made on 5 November 1605âthe well-known Gunpowder Plot.
The Great Fire of London destroyed many parts of the city in 1666
Plague caused extensive problems for London in the early 17th century, culminating in the Great Plague in 1665â1666. This was the last major outbreak in England, possibly thanks to the disastrous fire of 1666. The Great Fire of London broke out in the original City and quickly swept through London's wooden buildings, destroying large swathes of the city. A first hand narrative of both plague and fire was provided by Sir Samuel Pepys. Rebuilding took over ten years, largely under direction of a Commission appointed by King Charles II and chaired by Sir Christopher Wren.
Following London's growth in the 18th century, it became the world's largest city from about 1831 to 1925. Rising traffic congestion on city centre roads led to the creation of the world's first metro system â the London Underground â in 1863, driving further expansion and urbanisation. London's local government system struggled to cope with the rapid growth, especially in providing the city with adequate infrastructure. Between 1855 and 1889, the Metropolitan Board of Works oversaw infrastructure expansion. It was then replaced by the County of London, overseen by the London County Council, London's first elected city-wide administration.
A London street hit during the Blitz of World War II
The Blitz and other bombing by the German Luftwaffe during World War II killed over 30,000 Londoners and destroyed large tracts of housing and other buildings across London. In 1965 London's political boundaries were expanded to take into account the growth of the urban area outside the County of London's borders. The expanded area was called Greater London and was administered by the Greater London Council. An eco revival from the 1980s onwards re-established London's position as a pre-eminent international centre. However, as the seat of government and the most important city in the UK, it has been subjected to bouts of terrorism. Provisional Irish Republican Army bombers sought to pressure the government into negotiations over Northern Ireland, frequently disrupting city activities with bomb threats â some of which were carried out â until their 1997 cease-fire. More recently, a series of coordinated bomb attacks were carried out by Islamic extremist suicide bombers on the public transport network on 7 July 2005âjust 24 hours after London was awarded the 2012 Summer Olympics.
City Hall at night, home of the Greater London Authority
The administration of London is formed of two tiers â a city-wide, strategic tier and a local tier. City-wide administration is coordinated by the Greater London Authority (GLA), while local administration is carried out by 33 smaller authorities. The GLA consists of two elected parts; the Mayor of London, who has executive powers, and the London Assembly, who scrutinise the Mayor's decisions and can accept or reject his budget proposals each year. The GLA was set up in 2000 to replace the similar Greater London Council (GLC) which had been abolished in 1986. The headquarters of the GLA and the Mayor of London is at City Hall; the Mayor is Boris Johnson. The 33 local authorities are the councils of the 32 London boroughs and the City of London Corporation. They are responsible for local services not overseen by the GLA, such as local planning, schools, social services, local roads and refuse collection.
London is the home of the Government of the United Kingdom which is located around the Houses of Parliament in Westminster. Many government departments are located close to Parliament, particularly along Whitehall, including the Prime Minister's residence at 10 Downing Street. The British Parliament is often referred to as the "Mother of Parliaments" (although this sobriquet was first applied to England itself by John Bright) because it has been the model for most other parliamentary systems, and its Acts have created many other parliaments. There are 74 Members of Parliament (MPs) from London, who correspond to local parliamentary constituencies in the national Parliament by . Of these 74 MPs, currently 44 are from the Labour Party, 21 are Conservatives, 8 are Liberal Democrats and one is from the RESPECT party.
West and central London seen from SPOT satellite
London can be geographically defined in a number of ways, although the situation was once even more ambiguous than it is now and open to periodic legal debate. At London's core is the small, ancient City of London which is commonly known as 'the City' or 'the Square Mile'. London's metropolitan area grew considerably during the Victorian era and again during the Interwar period, but expansion halted in the 1940s because of World War II and Green Belt legislation, and the area has been largely static since. The London region of England, also commonly known as Greater London, is the area administered by the Greater London Authority. The urban sprawl of the conurbation â or Greater London Urban Area â covers a roughly similar area, with a slightly larger population. Beyond this is the vast London commuter belt.
Map of Central LondonForty percent of Greater London is covered by the London postal district, within which 'LONDON' forms part of the postal address. The London telephone area code covers a larger area, similar in size to Greater London, although some outer districts are omitted and some places just outside are included. The area within the orbital M25 motorway is sometimes used to define the "London area" and the Greater London boundary has been aligned to it in places. Greater London is split for some purposes into Inner London and Outer London. Informally, the city is split into North, South, East, West and often also Central London.
The Metropolitan Police District, city-wide local government area and London transport area have varied over time, but broadly coincide with the Greater London boundary. The Romans may have marked the centre of Londinium with the London Stone, still visible on Cannon Street. The coordinates of the nominal centre of London (traditionally considered to be the original Eleanor Cross at Charing Cross, near the junction of Trafalgar Square and Whitehall) are approximately . Trafalgar Square has also become a point for celebrations and protests.
Within London, both the City of London and the City of Westminster have City status and both the City of London and the remainder of Greater London are the ceremonial counties. The current area of Greater London was historically part of the counties of Middlesex, Kent, Surrey, Essex and Hertfordshire. Unlike most capital cities, London's status as the capital of the UK has never been granted or confirmed officially â by statute or in written form. Its position as the capital has formed through constitutional convention, making its position as de facto capital a part of the UK's unwritten constitution. The capital of England was moved to London from Winchester as the Palace of Westminster developed in the 12th and 13th centuries to become the permanent location of the royal court, and thus the political capital of the nation. According to the Collins English Dictionary definition (1994) Collins English Dictionary. Collins Education plc. of 'the seat of government,' London is not the capital of England, as England does not have its own government. However according to the Oxford English Reference dictionary definition Oxford English Reference Dictionary. Oxford English. of 'the most important town...' and many other authorities, "HC 501 0304.PDF" (PDF). Parliament Publications. Retrieved on 2008-06-06. 'England' (1994) Collins English Dictionary. Collins Education plc. London is the capital of England.
Greater London covers an area of . Its primary geographical feature is the Thames, a navigable river which crosses the city from the south-west to the east. The Thames Valley is a floodplain surrounded by gently rolling hills including Parliament Hill, Addington Hills, and Primrose Hill. The Thames was once a much broader, shallower river with extensive marshlands; at high tide, its shores reached five times their present width. Since the Victorian era it has been extensively embanked, and many of its London tributaries now flow underground. The Thames is a tidal river, and London is vulnerable to flooding. The threat has increased over time due to a slow but continuous rise in high water level by the slow 'tilting' of Britain (up in the north and down in the south) caused by post-glacial rebound. In 1974, a decade of work began on the construction of the Thames Barrier across the Thames at Woolwich to deal with this threat. While the barrier is expected to function as designed until roughly 2030, concepts for its future enlargement or redesign are already being discussed.
London has a temperate marine climate, like much of the British Isles, so the city rarely sees extremely high or low temperatures. Summers are warm with average high temperatures of and lows of , however, temperatures could exceed on many days.
Winters in London are chilly, but rarely below freezing with daytime temperatures around 2 - 8 °C (36 - 46 °F), while spring has mild days and cool evenings.
London has regular but generally light precipitation throughout the year, with average precipitation of every year.
Snow is relatively uncommon, particularly because heat from the urban area can make London up to 5 °C (9 °F) hotter than the surrounding areas in winter. Snowfall, however, is usually, but not always, seen up to a few times a year. London is in USDA Hardiness zone 9, and AHS Heat Zone 2.
In the second half of the 19th century and the first half of the 20th, London was noted for its dense fogs and smogs. Following the deadly Great Smog of 1952, the Clean Air Act 1956 was passed, leading to the decline of such severe pollution in the capital.
London's vast urban area is often described using a set of district names (e.g. Bloomsbury, Knightsbridge, Mayfair, Whitechapel, Fitzrovia). These are either informal designations, or reflect the names of superseded villages, parishes and city wards. Such names have remained in use through tradition, each referring to a local area with its own distinctive character, but often with no modern official boundaries. However, since 1965 Greater London has been divided into 32 London boroughs in addition to the ancient City of London.
The City of London is one of the world's three largest financial centres (alongside New York and Tokyo) with a dominant role in several international financial markets, including cross-border bank lending, international bond issuance and trading, foreign-exchange trading, over-the-counter derivatives, fund management and foreign equities trading. It also has the world's largest insurance market, the leading exchange for dealing in non-precious metals, the largest spot gold and gold lending markets, the largest ship broking market, and more foreign banks and investment houses than any other centre. The City has its own governance and boundaries, giving it a status as the only completely autonomous local authority in London. London's new financial and commercial hub is the Docklands area to the east of the City, dominated by the Canary Wharf complex. Other businesses locate in the City of Westminster, the home of the UK's national government and the well-known Westminster Abbey.
The West End is London's main entertainment and shopping district, with locations such as Oxford Street, Leicester Square, Covent Garden and Piccadilly Circus acting as tourist magnets. The West London area is known for fashionable and expensive residential areas such as Notting Hill, Knightsbridge and Chelsea â where properties can sell for tens of millions of pounds. The average price for all properties in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea is £894,000 with similar average outlay in most of Central London.
The eastern region of London contains the East End and East London. The East End is the area closest to the original Port of London, known for its high immigrant population, as well as for being one of the poorest areas in London. The surrounding East London area saw much of London's early industrial development; now, brownfield sites throughout the area are being redeveloped as part of the Thames Gateway including the London Riverside and Lower Lea Valley, which is being developed into the Olympic Park for the 2012 Olympics.
With increasing industrialisation, London's population grew rapidly throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries, and it was the most populous city in the world until overtaken by New York in 1925. Its population peaked at 8,615,245 in 1939 immediately before the outbreak of World War 2. There were an estimated 7,512,400 official residents in Greater London as of mid-2006. However, London's continuous urban area extends beyond the borders of Greater London and was home to 8,278,251 people in 2001, while its wider metropolitan area has a population of between 12 and 14 million depending on the definition used. According to Eurostat, London is the most populous city and metropolitan area of the European Union and the second most populous in Europe (or third if Istanbul is included).
The region covers an area of . The population density is , more than ten times that of any other British region. In terms of population, London is the 25th largest city and the 17th largest metropolitan region in the world. It is also ranked 4th in the world in number of billionaires (United States Dollars) residing in the city. London ranks as one of the most expensive cities in the world, alongside Tokyo and Moscow.
According to 2008 estimates, 51% of these seven million and seven hundred thousand people people are classed as the indigenous White British, White Irish (2.5%) and "Other White" 10%, the majority of whom are other Europeans. 15% of people are of South Asian descent, including Indian (mainly Punjabi, Hindi, Tamil and Gujarati), Pakistani, Bangladeshi (Bengali) and "Other Asian" (mostly Sri Lankan (Tamil) and other Southern Asian ethnicities). 13% of people are Black (around 7% are Black African, 5% as Black Caribbean, 1% as "Other Black"). 5.5% are of mixed race; 1.5% are Chinese; and 1.5% of people belong to another ethnic group. 30% of inhabitants were born outside the European Union. The Irish born, from both the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland, number approximately 250,000 and are the largest group born outside of Britain.
In January 2005, a survey of London's ethnic and religious diversity claimed that there were more than 300 languages spoken and more than 50 non-indigenous communities which have a population of more than 10,000 in London. Figures from the Office for National Statistics show that, as of 2006, London's foreign-born population is 2,288,000 (31%), up from 1,630,000 in 1997. The 2001 census showed that 27.1% of Greater London's population were born outside the UK, and a slightly higher proportion were classed as non-white.
The table to the right shows the 'Country of Birth' of London residents in 2001, the date of the last UK Census. (Top 21). Note that a portion of the German-born population are likely to be British nationals born to parents serving in the British armed forces in Germany.
Westminster Abbey is one of London's oldest and most important buildings and a World Heritage Site.
The majority of Londoners - 58.2% - identify themselves as Christians. This is followed by those of no religion (15.8%), Muslims (8.5%), Hindus (4.1%), Jews (2.1%), Sikhs (1.5%), Buddhists (0.8%) and other (0.5%), though 8.7% of people did not answer this question in the 2001 Census.
London has traditionally been dominated by Christianity, and has a large number of churches, particularly in the City of London. The well-known St Paul's Cathedral in the City and Southwark Cathedral south of the river are Anglican administrative centres, while the Archbishop of Canterbury, principal bishop of the Church of England and worldwide Anglican Communion, has his main residence at Lambeth Palace in the London Borough of Lambeth.
Important national and royal ceremonies are shared between St Paul's and Westminster Abbey. The Abbey is not to be confused with nearby Westminster Cathedral, which is the largest Roman Catholic cathedral in England and Wales. Religious practice is lower in London than any other part of the UK or Western Europe and is around seven times lower than American averages. Despite the prevalence of Anglican churches, observance is very low within the Anglican denomination, although church attendance, particularly at evangelical Anglican churches in London, has started to increase.
The Swaminarayan Hindu Temple in Neasden
London is also home to sizeable Muslim, Hindu, Sikh, and Jewish communities. Many Muslims live in Tower Hamlets and Newham; the most important Muslim edifice is London Central Mosque on the edge of Regent's Park. London's large Hindu community is found in the north-western boroughs of Harrow and Brent, the latter of which is home to one of Europe's largest Hindu temples, Neasden Temple. Sikh communities are located in East and West London, which is also home to the largest Sikh temple in the world, outside India.
The majority of British Jews live in London, with significant Jewish communities in Stamford Hill, Stanmore, Golders Green, Hendon, and Edgware in North London. Stanmore and Canons Park Synagogue has the largest membership of any single Orthodox synagogue in the whole of Europe, overtaking Ilford synagogue (also in London) in 1998. The community set up the London Jewish Forum in 2007 in response to the growing significance of devolved London Government.
The City of London is the world's largest financial centre . It is home to the London Stock Exchange and Lloyds of London.
London is a major centre for international business and commerce and is one of three "command centres" for the world economy (along with New York City and Tokyo). According to 2005 estimates by the PricewaterhouseCoopers accounting firm, London has the 6th largest city economy in the world after Tokyo, New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Paris. London generates approximately 20% of the UK's GDP (or $446 billion in 2005); while the economy of the London metropolitan area â the second largest in Europe â generates approximately 30% of the UK's GDP (or an estimated $669 billion in 2005).
London's success as a service industry and business centre can be attributed to factors such as English being the native and dominant language of business, close relationship with the U.S. and various countries in Asia. Other factors include English law being the most important and most used contract law in international business and the multi-cultural infrastructure. Government policies such as low taxes, particularly for foreigners (non-UK domiciled residents do not get taxed on their foreign earnings), a business friendly environment, good transport infrastructure and a deregulated economy with little intervention by the government have all contributed to London's economy becoming more service based. Over 85% (3.2 million) of the employed population of Greater London works in service industries. Another half a million employees resident in Greater London work in manufacturing and construction, almost equally divided between both.
The three tallest skyscrapers as of 2008 in Canary Wharf as viewed from Cabot Square. It is home to such companies as HSBC and Clifford Chance.
London's largest industry remains finance, and its financial exports make it a large contributor to the UK's balance of payments. Over 300,000 people are employed in financial services in London. London has over 480 overseas banks, more than any other city in the world. Due to New York's tightening of market regulations, London stock exchanges had approximately 20% more initial public offerings in 2006.
London is home to banks, brokers, insurers and legal and accounting firms. A second, smaller financial district is developing at Canary Wharf to the east of the city which includes the global headquarters of HSBC, Reuters, Barclays and the Magic Circle, which includes Clifford Chance, the largest law firm in the world. London handled 31% of global currency transactions â an average daily turnover of US$753 billion â with more US dollars traded in London than New York, and more euros traded than in every other city in Europe combined.
More than half of the UK's top 100 listed companies (the FTSE 100) and over 100 of Europe's 500 largest companies are headquartered in central London. Over 70% of the FTSE 100 are located within London's metropolitan area, and 75% of Fortune 500 companies have offices in London. Along with professional services, media companies are concentrated in London (see Media in London) and the media distribution industry is London's second most competitive sector (after central banking, the most competitive sector). The BBC is a key employer, while other broadcasters also have headquarters around the city. Many national newspapers are edited in London, having traditionally been associated with Fleet Street in the city; they are now primarily based around Canary Wharf.
Due to its prominant global role, London is getting hit harder than any other financial centre in the subprime crisis. The City of London estimates that 70,000 jobs in finance will be cut within barely a year.
Several foreign banks have started to move off employees from London to their national financial centres, notably Dresdner Kleinwort, BNP Paribas and Santander.
Tourism is one of London's prime industries and employs the equivalent of 350,000 full-time workers in London in 2003, while annual expenditure by tourists is around £15 billion. " ", Visit London. Retrieved on 3 June 2006. A study carried out by Euromonitor in October 2007 places London at first place out of 150 of the world's most popular cities, attracting 15.6 million international tourists in 2006. This puts London far ahead of 2nd place Bangkok (10.35 million) and 3rd place Paris (just 9.7 million). London attracts 27 million overnight-stay visitors every year. " ", Visit London. Retrieved on 3 June 2006. The Port of London is currently the third-largest in the United Kingdom, handling 50 million tonnes of cargo each year.
London is too diverse to be characterised by any particular architectural style, having accumulated its buildings over a long period of time and drawn on a wide range of influences. It is, however, mainly brick built, most commonly the yellow London stock brick or a warm orange-red variety, often decorated with carvings and white plaster mouldings. Many grand houses and public buildings (such as the National Gallery) are constructed from Portland stone. Some areas of the city, particularly those just west of the centre, are characterised by white stucco or whitewashed buildings. Few structures pre-date the Great Fire of 1666, except for a few trace Roman remains, the Tower of London and a few scattered Tudor survivors in the City. The disused (but soon to be rejuvenated) 1939 Battersea Power Station by the river in the south-west is a local landmark, while some railway termini are excellent examples of Victorian architecture, most notably St Pancras and Paddington (at least internally).
The O 2 , one of the largest dome structures in the world.
The density of London varies, with high employment density in the central area, high residential densities in inner London and lower densities in the suburbs. In the dense areas, most of the concentration is achieved with medium- and high-rise buildings. London's skyscrapers such as the notable "Gherkin", Tower 42, the Broadgate Tower and One Canada Square are usually found in the two financial districts, the City of London and Canary Wharf. Other notable modern buildings include City Hall in Southwark with its distinctive oval shape, the British Library in Somers Town/Kings Cross, What was formerly the Millennium Dome, located by the Thames to the east of Canary Wharf, is now used as an entertainment venue known as The O 2 .
The development of tall buildings has been encouraged in the London Plan, which will lead to the erection of many new skyscrapers over the next decade, particularly in the City of London and Canary Wharf. The 72-storey, "Shard London Bridge" by London Bridge station, the Bishopsgate Tower and many other skyscrapers over are either proposed or approved and could transform the city's skyline. As of July 2008, there are 426 high-rise buildings (between 23 m to 150 m/75 ft to 491 ft) under construction, approved for construction, and proposed for construction in London.
A great many monuments pay homage to people and events in the city. The Monument in the City of London provides views of the surrounding area while commemorating the Great Fire of London, which originated nearby. Marble Arch and Wellington Arch, at the north and south ends of Park Lane respectively, have royal connections, as do the Albert Memorial and Royal Albert Hall in Kensington. Nelson's Column is a nationally recognised monument in Trafalgar Square, one of the focal points of the centre.
The largest parks in the central area of London are the Royal Parks of Hyde Park and its neighbour Kensington Gardens at the western edge of central London and Regent's Park on the northern edge. This park contains London Zoo, the world's oldest scientific zoo, and is located near the tourist attraction of Madame Tussauds Wax Museum. Closer to central London are the smaller Royal Parks of Green Park and St. James's Park. Hyde Park in particular is popular for sports and sometimes hosts open-air concerts.
A number of large parks lie outside the city centre, including the remaining Royal Parks of Greenwich Park to the south-east and Bushy Park and Richmond Park to the south-west, as well as Victoria Park, East London to the east. Primrose Hill to the north of Regent's Park is a popular spot to view the city skyline. Some more informal, semi-natural open spaces also exist, including the Hampstead Heath of North London. This incorporates Kenwood House, the former stately home and a popular location in the summer months where classical musical concerts are held by the lake, attracting thousands of people every weekend to enjoy the music, scenery and fireworks.
Traditionally the London accent has been given the famous Cockney label, and was similar to many accents of the South East of England, developing a unique form of slang known as Cockney Rhyming Slang. The accent of a 21st century Londoner varies widely; what is becoming more and more common amongst the under 30s however is some fusion of Cockney, Received Pronunciation, and a whole array of 'ethnic' accents, in particular Caribbean, which form an accent labelled Multicultural London English (MLE), with a large amount of slang in use as well.
Piccadilly Circus at night
The Trooping the Colour held in 2006 to mark the Queen's 80th birthday.
Within the City of Westminster, the entertainment district of the West End has its focus around Leicester Square, where London and world film premieres are held, and Piccadilly Circus, with its giant electronic advertisements. London's theatre district is here, as are many cinemas, bars, clubs and restaurants, including the city's Chinatown district, and just to the east is Covent Garden, an area housing speciality shops. The United Kingdom's Royal Ballet,English National Ballet, Royal Opera and English National Opera are based in London and perform at the Royal Opera House, The London Coliseum, Sadler's Wells Theatre and the Royal Albert Hall as well as touring the country. Islington's long Upper Street, extending Northwards from The Angel, has more bars and restaurants than any other street in the UK. Europe's busiest shopping area is Oxford Street, a shopping street nearly long â which makes it the longest shopping street in the world â and home to many shops and department stores including Selfridges. Knightsbridge â home to the Harrods department store â lies just to the southwest. London is home to designers Vivienne Westwood, Galliano, Stella McCartney, Manolo Blahnik, and Jimmy Choo among others; its renowned art and fashion schools make it an international centre of fashion alongside Paris, Milan and New York.
London offers a great variety of cuisine as a result of its ethnically diverse population. Gastronomic centres include the Bangladeshi restaurants of Brick Lane and the Chinese food restaurants of Chinatown.
There are a variety of regular annual events in the city. The beginning of the year is celebrated with the relatively new New Year's Day Parade, while traditional parades include November's Lord Mayor's Show, a centuries-old event celebrating the annual appointment of a new Lord Mayor of the City of London with a procession along the streets of the City, and June's Trooping the Colour, a formal military pageant performed by regiments of the Commonwealth and British armies to celebrate the Queen's Official Birthday.
Charles Dickens (1812â1870), whose works formed a pervasive image of Victorian London.
London has been the setting for many works of literature. Two writers closely associated with the city are the diarist Samuel Pepys, noted for his eyewitness account of the Great Fire, and Charles Dickens, whose representation of a foggy, snowy, grimy London of street sweepers and pickpockets has been a major influence on people's vision of early Victorian London. The earlier (1722) A Journal of the Plague Year by Daniel Defoe is a fictionalisation of the events of the 1665 Great Plague. William Shakespeare spent a large part of his life living and working in London; his contemporary Ben Jonson was also based in London, and some of his work â most notably his play The Alchemist â was set in the city. Later important depictions of London from the 19th and early 20th centuries are the afore-mentioned Dickens novels, and Arthur Conan Doyle's illustrious Sherlock Holmes stories. A modern writer pervasively influenced by the city is Peter Ackroyd, in works such as London: The Biography, The Lambs of London and Hawksmoor.
London has played a significant role in the film industry, and has major studios at Pinewood, Ealing, Shepperton, Elstree and Leavesden, as well as an important special effects and post-production community centred in Soho in central London. Working Title Films has its headquarters in London. The city also hosts a number of performing arts schools, including The Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA), the Central School of Speech and Drama (alumni: Judi Dench and Laurence Olivier) and the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art (alumni: Jim Broadbent). The London Film Festival is held each year in October.
London is home to many museums, galleries, and other institutions which are major tourist attractions as well as playing a research role. The Natural History Museum (biology and geology), Science Museum and Victoria and Albert Museum (fashion and design) are clustered in South Kensington's "museum quarter", while the British Museum houses historic artefacts from around the world. The British Library at St Pancras is the UK's national library, housing 150 million items. The city also houses extensive art collections, primarily in the National Gallery, Tate Britain and Tate Modern.
The Royal Albert Hall hosts a wide range of concerts and musical events.
London is one of the major classical and popular music capitals of the world and is home to major music corporations, such as EMI and Decca Records, as well as countless bands, musicians and industry professionals. London is home to many orchestras and concert halls such as the Barbican Arts Centre (principal base of the London Symphony Orchestra), Cadogan Hall (Royal Philharmonic Orchestra) and the Royal Albert Hall (BBC Promenade Concerts). London's two main opera houses are the Royal Opera House and the Coliseum Theatre.
Several conservatoires are located within the city: Royal Academy of Music, Royal College of Music, Guildhall School of Music and Drama, and Trinity College of Music.
London has numerous renowned venues for rock and pop concerts, including large arenas such as Earls Court, Wembley Arena and the O2 Arena, as well as numerous mid-size venues, such as Brixton Academy, Hammersmith Apollo and The London Astoria. London also hosts many music festivals, including the 02 Wireless Festival and Latitude Festival.
London is home to the first and original Hard Rock Cafe and the illustrious Abbey Road Studios where The Beatles created many of their hits. Musicians such as Bob Marley, Jimi Hendrix and Freddie Mercury have lived in London. A large number of musical artists originate from or are most strongly associated with London, including David Bowie, Ian Dury, The Kinks, Adam Faith, The Rolling Stones, The Who, Madness, The Jam, Blur, Iron Maiden, Phil Collins, Rod Stewart, Elvis Costello, Dusty Springfield, The Yardbirds and The Small Faces.
London was instrumental in the development of punk music, with figures such as the Sex Pistols, The Clash, and Vivienne Westwood all based in the city.
More recent artists to emerge from the London music scene include The Libertines, one of the most influential British rock acts of the 2000s, Bloc Party, Amy Winehouse, Lily Allen, The Kooks, Razorlight, Laura Marling, Dizzee Rascal, Natasha Bedingfield and Leona Lewis.
London is also a centre for Urban music. In particular the genres UK Garage, Drum and Bass and Grime evolved in the city from the foreign genres of hiphop and reggae, alongside local rave music. Black music station BBC 1Xtra was set up to support the rise of homegrown urban music both in London and the rest of the UK.
Wembley Stadium is home to English football and is the most expensive stadium in the world.
The Wimbledon Championships, a tennis Grand Slam tournament.
London has hosted the Summer Olympics twice, in 1908 and 1948. In July 2005 London was chosen to host the Games in 2012, which will make it the first city in the world to host the Summer Olympics three times. London was also the host of the British Empire Games in 1934.
London's most popular sport (for both participants and spectators) is football. London has thirteen League football clubs, including five in the Premier League: Arsenal, Chelsea, Fulham, Tottenham Hotspur and West Ham United. London also has four rugby union teams in the Guinness Premiership (London Irish, Saracens, Wasps and Harlequins), although only the Harlequins play in London (all the other three now play outside Greater London, although Saracens still play within the M25). There are two professional rugby league clubs in London - Harlequins Rugby League who play in the Super League at the Stoop and the National League 2 side the London Skolars (based in Haringey).
Since 1924, the original Wembley Stadium was the home of the English national football team, and served as the venue for the FA Cup final as well as rugby league's Challenge Cup final. The new Wembley Stadium serves exactly the same purposes and has a capacity of 90,000. Twickenham Stadium in west London is the national rugby union stadium, and has a capacity of 84,000 now that the new south stand has been completed.
Cricket in London centres on its two Test cricket grounds at Lord's (home of Middlesex C.C.C) in St John's Wood, and The Oval (home of Surrey C.C.C) in Kennington. One of London's best-known annual sports competitions is the Wimbledon Tennis Championships, held at the All England Club in the south-western suburb of Wimbledon. Other key events are the annual mass-participation London Marathon which sees some 35,000 runners attempt a course around the city, and the Oxford vs. Cambridge Boat Race on the River Thames between Putney and Mortlake.
Transport is one of the four areas of policy administered by the Mayor of London, however the mayor's financial control is limited and he does not control the heavy rail network, although in November 2007 he assumed responsibility for the North London Railway as well as several other lines, to form London Overground. The public transport network, administered by Transport for London (TfL), is one of the most extensive in the world, but faces congestion and reliability issues, which a large investment programme is attempting to address, including £7 billion (â¬10 billion) of improvements planned for the Olympics. London has been commended as the city with the best public transport. Cycling is an increasingly popular way to get around London. The London Cycling Campaign lobbies for better provision.
The London Underground is the oldest, longest, and most expansive metro system in the world, dating from 1863.
The centrepiece of the public transport network is the London Underground â commonly referred to as The Tube â which has eleven interconnecting lines. It is the oldest, longest, and most expansive metro system in the world, dating from 1863. The system was home to the world's first underground electric line, the City & South London Railway, which began service in 1890. Over three million journeys a day are made on the Underground network, nearly 1 billion journeys each year. The Underground serves the central area and most suburbs to the north of the Thames, while those to the south are served by an extensive suburban rail surface network.
The Docklands Light Railway is a second metro system using smaller and lighter trains, which opened in 1987, serving East London and Greenwich on both sides of the Thames. Commuter and intercity railways generally do not cross the city, instead running into fourteen terminal stations scattered around its historic centre; the exception is the Thameslink route operated by First Capital Connect, with terminus stations at Bedford, Brighton and Moorgate. Since the early 1990s, increasing pressures on the commuter rail and Underground networks have led to increasing demands â particularly from businesses and the City of London Corporation â for Crossrail: a £10 billion east â west heavy rail connection under central London, which was given the green light in early October 2007.
High-speed Eurostar trains link St Pancras International with Lille and Paris in France, and Brussels in Belgium. Journey times to Paris and Brussels of 2h 15 and 1h 51 respectively make London closer to continental Europe than the rest of Britain by virtue of the newly completed High Speed 1 rail link to the Channel Tunnel. From 2009 this line will also allow for high speed domestic travel from Kent into London. The redevelopment of St. Pancras was key to London's Olympic bid, as the station also serves two international airports through Thameslink, and will also provide direct rail links to the Olympic site at Stratford using British Rail Class 395 trains running under the Olympic Javelin name; these will be based on Japanese Shinkansen high-speed trains.
The modern Enviro400 double-decker bus
London's bus network is one of the largest in the world, running 24 hours a day, with 8,000 buses, 700 bus routes, and over 6 million passenger journeys made every weekday. In 2003, the network's ridership was estimated at over 1.5 billion passenger trips per annum, more than the Underground. Around £850 m is taken in revenue each year.
London has the largest wheelchair accessible network in the world and, from the 3rd quarter of 2007, became more accessible to hearing and visually impaired passengers as audio-visual announcements were introduced. The distinctive red double-decker buses are internationally recognised, and are a trademark of London transport along with black cabs and the Tube.
Terminal 5 at Heathrow Airport, which is the world's busiest airport by international passenger traffic.
London is a major international air transport hub with the largest city airspace in the world. Eight airports use the words London Airport in their name, but most traffic passes through one of five major airports. London Heathrow Airport is the busiest airport in the world for international traffic, and is the major hub of the nation's flag carrier, British Airways. In March 2008 its fifth terminal was opened, and plans are already being considered for a sixth terminal. Similar traffic, with the addition of some low-cost short-haul flights, is also handled at London Gatwick Airport. London Stansted Airport and London Luton Airport cater mostly for low-cost short-haul flights. London City Airport, the smallest and most central airport, is focused on business travellers, with a mixture of full service short-haul scheduled flights and considerable business jet traffic.
Although the majority of journeys involving central London are made by public transport, travel in outer London is car-dominated. The inner ring road (around the city centre), the North and South Circular roads (in the suburbs), and the outer orbital motorway (the M25, outside the built-up area) encircle the city and are intersected by a number of busy radial routes â but very few motorways penetrate into inner London. The M25 is the longest ring-road motorway in the world at long. A plan for a comprehensive network of motorways throughout the city (the Ringways Plan) was prepared in the 1960s but was mostly cancelled in the early 1970s. In 2003, a congestion charge was introduced to reduce traffic volumes in the city centre. With a few exceptions, motorists are required to pay £8 per day to drive within a defined zone encompassing much of congested central London. Motorists who are residents of the defined zone can buy a vastly reduced season pass which is renewed monthly and is cheaper than a corresponding bus fare.
Royal Holloway, as a part of the University of London, a federation of London higher education institutions
Home to a range of universities, colleges and schools, London has a student population of about 378,000 and is a centre of research and development. Most primary and secondary schools in London follow the same system as the rest of England â comprehensive schooling.
With 125,000 students, the University of London is the largest contact teaching university in the United Kingdom and in Europe. It comprises 20 colleges as well as several smaller institutes each with a high degree of autonomy. Constituent colleges have their own admissions procedures, and are effectively universities in their own right, although most degrees are awarded by the University of London rather than the individual colleges. Its constituents include multi-disciplinary colleges such as UCL, King's, Goldsmiths, Queen Mary and more specialised institutions such as the London School of Economics, SOAS, the Royal Academy of Music, the Courtauld Institute of Art and the Institute of Education.
Imperial College London and University College London have been ranked among the top ten universities in the world by The Times Higher Education Supplement: in 2008 Imperial was ranked the 6th best and UCL the 7th best university in the world.
In addition, the London School of Economics is the worldâs leading social science institution for teaching and research, plus has the most international student body of any university in the world today.
A number of colleges are dedicated to the fine arts, including the Royal College of Music, Royal College of Art, and Guildhall School of Music and Drama.
Senate House, the headquarters of the federal University of London
London's other universities, such as Brunel University, City University, London Metropolitan University, Middlesex University, University of East London, University of the Arts London, University of Westminster, Kingston University and London South Bank University are not part of the University of London but are still leaders in their field and popular choices among students both nationally and internationally. Some were polytechnics until these were granted university status in 1992, and others which were founded much earlier. Imperial College London left the federal University of London in 2007. Since the merger of University of North London and London Guildhall University in 2003, London Metropolitan University is the largest unitary university in the capital, with over 34,000 students from 155 countries. About London Met London Metropolitan University, August 2008 London is also known globally for its business education, with the London Business School (ranked 1st in Europe â Business Week) and Cass Business School (Europe's largest finance school) both being top world-rated business schools. In addition there are three international universities: Schiller International University, Richmond University and Regent's College.
There are 46 other places on six continents named after London. Jack Malvern. Richmond, in Surrey, is the most widely copied British place name worldwide, timesonline 2008-12-29. The original byline for the article in The Times of the same day was "The 55 corners of foreign fields that will be for ever ... Richmond" (page 9). Cites The Times Universal Atlas of the World. As well as London's twinning, the Boroughs of London have twinnings with parts of other cities across the world. Shown below is the list of cities that the Greater London Authority is twinned with.
* New York City,
* Moscow,
* Berlin,
The following cities have a friendship agreement with London:
* Sofia,
* Delhi,
* Mumbai,
* Beijing,
* Istanbul,
* Paris,
* Tehran,
* Tokyo,
* Bogotá,
* Podgorica,
* Algiers,
* Global city
* Geography of England
* Large Cities Climate Leadership Group
* Largest European cities and metropolitan areas
* London Assembly
* Megacity
*
*
*
*
* Mayor of London, London Assembly and the Greater London Authority â Official city government site
* Transport for London (TfL) â city transport authority
* BBC London
* Office for National Statistics: Focus on London 2007 â compendium of official statistics about London
* Museum of London Group Portal - Home
* VisitLondon.com â Official London site
* Map of Early Modern London â Historical Map and Encyclopaedia of Shakespeare's London (Scholarly)
* London Bridges â A view of London Bridges over the River Thames
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London | Over how many languages are spoken in London? | Over 300 | data/set3/a1 | London
London ( ; ) is the capital of both England and the United Kingdom, and the largest urban area in the European Union. {{cite web|url= title=Largest EU City An important settlement for two millennia, London's history goes back to its founding by the Romans. Since its foundation, London has been part of many movements and phenomena throughout history, including the English Renaissance, the Industrial Revolution, and the Gothic Revival. The city's core, the ancient City of London, still retains its limited medieval boundaries; but since at least the 19th century, the name "London" has also referred to the whole metropolis that has developed around it. Today the bulk of this conurbation forms the London region of England and the Greater London administrative area, with its own elected mayor and assembly.
London is one of the the world's most important business, financial and cultural centres and its influence in politics, education, entertainment, media, fashion and the arts contribute to its status as a major global city. Global Cities: GaWC Inventory of World Cities 1999 Global cities#GaWC Inventory of World Cities (1999 Edition); Global Cities: GaWC Inventory of World Cities 2004 Global cities#GaWC Leading World Cities (2004 Edition) Central London is the headquarters of more than half of the UK's top 100 listed companies (the FTSE 100) and over 100 of Europe's 500 largest companies. The city is a major tourist destination both for domestic and overseas visitors, with annual expenditure by tourists of around £15 billion. London hosted the 1908 and 1948 Summer Olympic Games and will host the 2012 Summer Olympic Games.
Greater London contains four World Heritage Sites: the Tower of London; the historic settlement of Greenwich; the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew; and the site comprising the Palace of Westminster, Westminster Abbey and St. Margaret's Church.
London's population draws from a wide range of peoples, cultures, and religions, and over 300 languages are spoken within the city. As of 2006, it had an official population of 7,512,400 within the boundaries of Greater London and is the most populous municipality in the European Union. As of 2001, the Greater London Urban Area had a population of 8,278,251 and the metropolitan area is estimated to have a total population of between 12 and 14 million , the largest metropolitan area in the EU. The public transport network, administered by Transport for London, is one of the most extensive in the world, and Heathrow Airport is the busiest airport in the world by international passenger traffic and the air space is the busiest of any city in the world. International Passenger Traffic, Airports Council International
The etymology of London remains a mystery. The earliest etymological explanation can be attributed to Geoffrey of Monmouth in Historia Regum Britanniae. The name is described as originating from King Lud, who had allegedly taken over the city and named it Kaerlud. This was slurred into Kaerludein and finally London. Many other theories have been advanced over the centuries, most of them deriving the name from Welsh or British, and occasionally from Anglo-Saxon or even Hebrew.
Map of London in 1300, showing the medieval boundaries of the City of London
Although there is evidence of scattered Brythonic settlements in the area, the first major settlement was founded by the Romans in AD 43 as Londinium, following the Roman conquest of Britain. This Londinium lasted for just seventeen years. Around 61, the Iceni tribe led by Queen Boudica stormed this first London, burning it to the ground. The next, heavily planned incarnation of the city prospered and superseded Colchester as the capital of the Roman province of Britannia in 100. At its height in the 2nd century, Roman London had a population of around 60,000.
By the 600s, the Anglo-Saxons had created a new settlement called Lundenwic approximately upstream from the old Roman city,
around what is now Covent Garden. It is likely that there was a harbour at the mouth of the River Fleet for fishing and trading, and this trading grew until the city was overcome by the Vikings and forced to relocate the city back to the location of the Roman Londinium to use its walls for protection. Viking attacks continued to increase around the rest of South East England, until 886 when Alfred the Great recaptured London and made peace with the Danish leader, Guthrum. The original Saxon city of Lundenwic became Ealdwic ("old city"), a name surviving to the present day as Aldwych, which is in the modern City of Westminster.
In a retaliatory attack, Ethelred's army achieved victory by pulling down London Bridge with the Danish garrison on top, and English control was re-established. Canute took control of the English throne in 1017, controlling the city and country until 1042, when his death resulted in a reversion to Saxon control under his pious stepson Edward the Confessor, who re-founded Westminster Abbey and the adjacent Palace of Westminster. By this time, London had become the largest and most prosperous city in England, although the official seat of government was still at Winchester.
Following a victory at the Battle of Hastings, William the Conqueror, the then Duke of Normandy, was crowned King of England in the newly finished Westminster Abbey on Christmas Day 1066. William granted the citizens of London special privileges, while building what is now known as the Tower of London, in the south-east corner of the city, to keep them under control. .
The Great Exhibition
In 1097, William II began the building of Westminster Hall, close by the abbey of the same name. The hall became the basis of a new Palace of Westminster, the prime royal residence throughout the Middle Ages. Westminster became the seat of the royal court and government (persisting until the present day), while its distinct neighbour, the City of London, was a centre of trade and commerce and flourished under its own unique administration, the Corporation of London. London grew in wealth and population during the Middle Ages. In 1100 its population was around 18,000; by 1300 it had grown to nearly 100,000. King Edward I issued an edict in 1290, expelling all Jews from England. Before the edict, there was an increasing population of Jews, whereas after this time, the population of Jews began to drop considerably. Disaster struck during the Black Death in the mid-14th century, when London lost nearly a third of its population. Apart from the invasion of London during the Peasants' Revolt in 1381, London remained relatively untouched by the various civil wars during the Middle Ages, such as the first and second Barons' Wars and the Wars of the Roses.
After the successful defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588, political stability in England allowed London to grow further. In 1603, James VI of Scotland came to the throne of England, essentially uniting the two countries. His enactment of harsh anti-Catholic laws made him unpopular, and an assassination attempt was made on 5 November 1605âthe well-known Gunpowder Plot.
The Great Fire of London destroyed many parts of the city in 1666
Plague caused extensive problems for London in the early 17th century, culminating in the Great Plague in 1665â1666. This was the last major outbreak in England, possibly thanks to the disastrous fire of 1666. The Great Fire of London broke out in the original City and quickly swept through London's wooden buildings, destroying large swathes of the city. A first hand narrative of both plague and fire was provided by Sir Samuel Pepys. Rebuilding took over ten years, largely under direction of a Commission appointed by King Charles II and chaired by Sir Christopher Wren.
Following London's growth in the 18th century, it became the world's largest city from about 1831 to 1925. Rising traffic congestion on city centre roads led to the creation of the world's first metro system â the London Underground â in 1863, driving further expansion and urbanisation. London's local government system struggled to cope with the rapid growth, especially in providing the city with adequate infrastructure. Between 1855 and 1889, the Metropolitan Board of Works oversaw infrastructure expansion. It was then replaced by the County of London, overseen by the London County Council, London's first elected city-wide administration.
A London street hit during the Blitz of World War II
The Blitz and other bombing by the German Luftwaffe during World War II killed over 30,000 Londoners and destroyed large tracts of housing and other buildings across London. In 1965 London's political boundaries were expanded to take into account the growth of the urban area outside the County of London's borders. The expanded area was called Greater London and was administered by the Greater London Council. An eco revival from the 1980s onwards re-established London's position as a pre-eminent international centre. However, as the seat of government and the most important city in the UK, it has been subjected to bouts of terrorism. Provisional Irish Republican Army bombers sought to pressure the government into negotiations over Northern Ireland, frequently disrupting city activities with bomb threats â some of which were carried out â until their 1997 cease-fire. More recently, a series of coordinated bomb attacks were carried out by Islamic extremist suicide bombers on the public transport network on 7 July 2005âjust 24 hours after London was awarded the 2012 Summer Olympics.
City Hall at night, home of the Greater London Authority
The administration of London is formed of two tiers â a city-wide, strategic tier and a local tier. City-wide administration is coordinated by the Greater London Authority (GLA), while local administration is carried out by 33 smaller authorities. The GLA consists of two elected parts; the Mayor of London, who has executive powers, and the London Assembly, who scrutinise the Mayor's decisions and can accept or reject his budget proposals each year. The GLA was set up in 2000 to replace the similar Greater London Council (GLC) which had been abolished in 1986. The headquarters of the GLA and the Mayor of London is at City Hall; the Mayor is Boris Johnson. The 33 local authorities are the councils of the 32 London boroughs and the City of London Corporation. They are responsible for local services not overseen by the GLA, such as local planning, schools, social services, local roads and refuse collection.
London is the home of the Government of the United Kingdom which is located around the Houses of Parliament in Westminster. Many government departments are located close to Parliament, particularly along Whitehall, including the Prime Minister's residence at 10 Downing Street. The British Parliament is often referred to as the "Mother of Parliaments" (although this sobriquet was first applied to England itself by John Bright) because it has been the model for most other parliamentary systems, and its Acts have created many other parliaments. There are 74 Members of Parliament (MPs) from London, who correspond to local parliamentary constituencies in the national Parliament by . Of these 74 MPs, currently 44 are from the Labour Party, 21 are Conservatives, 8 are Liberal Democrats and one is from the RESPECT party.
West and central London seen from SPOT satellite
London can be geographically defined in a number of ways, although the situation was once even more ambiguous than it is now and open to periodic legal debate. At London's core is the small, ancient City of London which is commonly known as 'the City' or 'the Square Mile'. London's metropolitan area grew considerably during the Victorian era and again during the Interwar period, but expansion halted in the 1940s because of World War II and Green Belt legislation, and the area has been largely static since. The London region of England, also commonly known as Greater London, is the area administered by the Greater London Authority. The urban sprawl of the conurbation â or Greater London Urban Area â covers a roughly similar area, with a slightly larger population. Beyond this is the vast London commuter belt.
Map of Central LondonForty percent of Greater London is covered by the London postal district, within which 'LONDON' forms part of the postal address. The London telephone area code covers a larger area, similar in size to Greater London, although some outer districts are omitted and some places just outside are included. The area within the orbital M25 motorway is sometimes used to define the "London area" and the Greater London boundary has been aligned to it in places. Greater London is split for some purposes into Inner London and Outer London. Informally, the city is split into North, South, East, West and often also Central London.
The Metropolitan Police District, city-wide local government area and London transport area have varied over time, but broadly coincide with the Greater London boundary. The Romans may have marked the centre of Londinium with the London Stone, still visible on Cannon Street. The coordinates of the nominal centre of London (traditionally considered to be the original Eleanor Cross at Charing Cross, near the junction of Trafalgar Square and Whitehall) are approximately . Trafalgar Square has also become a point for celebrations and protests.
Within London, both the City of London and the City of Westminster have City status and both the City of London and the remainder of Greater London are the ceremonial counties. The current area of Greater London was historically part of the counties of Middlesex, Kent, Surrey, Essex and Hertfordshire. Unlike most capital cities, London's status as the capital of the UK has never been granted or confirmed officially â by statute or in written form. Its position as the capital has formed through constitutional convention, making its position as de facto capital a part of the UK's unwritten constitution. The capital of England was moved to London from Winchester as the Palace of Westminster developed in the 12th and 13th centuries to become the permanent location of the royal court, and thus the political capital of the nation. According to the Collins English Dictionary definition (1994) Collins English Dictionary. Collins Education plc. of 'the seat of government,' London is not the capital of England, as England does not have its own government. However according to the Oxford English Reference dictionary definition Oxford English Reference Dictionary. Oxford English. of 'the most important town...' and many other authorities, "HC 501 0304.PDF" (PDF). Parliament Publications. Retrieved on 2008-06-06. 'England' (1994) Collins English Dictionary. Collins Education plc. London is the capital of England.
Greater London covers an area of . Its primary geographical feature is the Thames, a navigable river which crosses the city from the south-west to the east. The Thames Valley is a floodplain surrounded by gently rolling hills including Parliament Hill, Addington Hills, and Primrose Hill. The Thames was once a much broader, shallower river with extensive marshlands; at high tide, its shores reached five times their present width. Since the Victorian era it has been extensively embanked, and many of its London tributaries now flow underground. The Thames is a tidal river, and London is vulnerable to flooding. The threat has increased over time due to a slow but continuous rise in high water level by the slow 'tilting' of Britain (up in the north and down in the south) caused by post-glacial rebound. In 1974, a decade of work began on the construction of the Thames Barrier across the Thames at Woolwich to deal with this threat. While the barrier is expected to function as designed until roughly 2030, concepts for its future enlargement or redesign are already being discussed.
London has a temperate marine climate, like much of the British Isles, so the city rarely sees extremely high or low temperatures. Summers are warm with average high temperatures of and lows of , however, temperatures could exceed on many days.
Winters in London are chilly, but rarely below freezing with daytime temperatures around 2 - 8 °C (36 - 46 °F), while spring has mild days and cool evenings.
London has regular but generally light precipitation throughout the year, with average precipitation of every year.
Snow is relatively uncommon, particularly because heat from the urban area can make London up to 5 °C (9 °F) hotter than the surrounding areas in winter. Snowfall, however, is usually, but not always, seen up to a few times a year. London is in USDA Hardiness zone 9, and AHS Heat Zone 2.
In the second half of the 19th century and the first half of the 20th, London was noted for its dense fogs and smogs. Following the deadly Great Smog of 1952, the Clean Air Act 1956 was passed, leading to the decline of such severe pollution in the capital.
London's vast urban area is often described using a set of district names (e.g. Bloomsbury, Knightsbridge, Mayfair, Whitechapel, Fitzrovia). These are either informal designations, or reflect the names of superseded villages, parishes and city wards. Such names have remained in use through tradition, each referring to a local area with its own distinctive character, but often with no modern official boundaries. However, since 1965 Greater London has been divided into 32 London boroughs in addition to the ancient City of London.
The City of London is one of the world's three largest financial centres (alongside New York and Tokyo) with a dominant role in several international financial markets, including cross-border bank lending, international bond issuance and trading, foreign-exchange trading, over-the-counter derivatives, fund management and foreign equities trading. It also has the world's largest insurance market, the leading exchange for dealing in non-precious metals, the largest spot gold and gold lending markets, the largest ship broking market, and more foreign banks and investment houses than any other centre. The City has its own governance and boundaries, giving it a status as the only completely autonomous local authority in London. London's new financial and commercial hub is the Docklands area to the east of the City, dominated by the Canary Wharf complex. Other businesses locate in the City of Westminster, the home of the UK's national government and the well-known Westminster Abbey.
The West End is London's main entertainment and shopping district, with locations such as Oxford Street, Leicester Square, Covent Garden and Piccadilly Circus acting as tourist magnets. The West London area is known for fashionable and expensive residential areas such as Notting Hill, Knightsbridge and Chelsea â where properties can sell for tens of millions of pounds. The average price for all properties in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea is £894,000 with similar average outlay in most of Central London.
The eastern region of London contains the East End and East London. The East End is the area closest to the original Port of London, known for its high immigrant population, as well as for being one of the poorest areas in London. The surrounding East London area saw much of London's early industrial development; now, brownfield sites throughout the area are being redeveloped as part of the Thames Gateway including the London Riverside and Lower Lea Valley, which is being developed into the Olympic Park for the 2012 Olympics.
With increasing industrialisation, London's population grew rapidly throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries, and it was the most populous city in the world until overtaken by New York in 1925. Its population peaked at 8,615,245 in 1939 immediately before the outbreak of World War 2. There were an estimated 7,512,400 official residents in Greater London as of mid-2006. However, London's continuous urban area extends beyond the borders of Greater London and was home to 8,278,251 people in 2001, while its wider metropolitan area has a population of between 12 and 14 million depending on the definition used. According to Eurostat, London is the most populous city and metropolitan area of the European Union and the second most populous in Europe (or third if Istanbul is included).
The region covers an area of . The population density is , more than ten times that of any other British region. In terms of population, London is the 25th largest city and the 17th largest metropolitan region in the world. It is also ranked 4th in the world in number of billionaires (United States Dollars) residing in the city. London ranks as one of the most expensive cities in the world, alongside Tokyo and Moscow.
According to 2008 estimates, 51% of these seven million and seven hundred thousand people people are classed as the indigenous White British, White Irish (2.5%) and "Other White" 10%, the majority of whom are other Europeans. 15% of people are of South Asian descent, including Indian (mainly Punjabi, Hindi, Tamil and Gujarati), Pakistani, Bangladeshi (Bengali) and "Other Asian" (mostly Sri Lankan (Tamil) and other Southern Asian ethnicities). 13% of people are Black (around 7% are Black African, 5% as Black Caribbean, 1% as "Other Black"). 5.5% are of mixed race; 1.5% are Chinese; and 1.5% of people belong to another ethnic group. 30% of inhabitants were born outside the European Union. The Irish born, from both the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland, number approximately 250,000 and are the largest group born outside of Britain.
In January 2005, a survey of London's ethnic and religious diversity claimed that there were more than 300 languages spoken and more than 50 non-indigenous communities which have a population of more than 10,000 in London. Figures from the Office for National Statistics show that, as of 2006, London's foreign-born population is 2,288,000 (31%), up from 1,630,000 in 1997. The 2001 census showed that 27.1% of Greater London's population were born outside the UK, and a slightly higher proportion were classed as non-white.
The table to the right shows the 'Country of Birth' of London residents in 2001, the date of the last UK Census. (Top 21). Note that a portion of the German-born population are likely to be British nationals born to parents serving in the British armed forces in Germany.
Westminster Abbey is one of London's oldest and most important buildings and a World Heritage Site.
The majority of Londoners - 58.2% - identify themselves as Christians. This is followed by those of no religion (15.8%), Muslims (8.5%), Hindus (4.1%), Jews (2.1%), Sikhs (1.5%), Buddhists (0.8%) and other (0.5%), though 8.7% of people did not answer this question in the 2001 Census.
London has traditionally been dominated by Christianity, and has a large number of churches, particularly in the City of London. The well-known St Paul's Cathedral in the City and Southwark Cathedral south of the river are Anglican administrative centres, while the Archbishop of Canterbury, principal bishop of the Church of England and worldwide Anglican Communion, has his main residence at Lambeth Palace in the London Borough of Lambeth.
Important national and royal ceremonies are shared between St Paul's and Westminster Abbey. The Abbey is not to be confused with nearby Westminster Cathedral, which is the largest Roman Catholic cathedral in England and Wales. Religious practice is lower in London than any other part of the UK or Western Europe and is around seven times lower than American averages. Despite the prevalence of Anglican churches, observance is very low within the Anglican denomination, although church attendance, particularly at evangelical Anglican churches in London, has started to increase.
The Swaminarayan Hindu Temple in Neasden
London is also home to sizeable Muslim, Hindu, Sikh, and Jewish communities. Many Muslims live in Tower Hamlets and Newham; the most important Muslim edifice is London Central Mosque on the edge of Regent's Park. London's large Hindu community is found in the north-western boroughs of Harrow and Brent, the latter of which is home to one of Europe's largest Hindu temples, Neasden Temple. Sikh communities are located in East and West London, which is also home to the largest Sikh temple in the world, outside India.
The majority of British Jews live in London, with significant Jewish communities in Stamford Hill, Stanmore, Golders Green, Hendon, and Edgware in North London. Stanmore and Canons Park Synagogue has the largest membership of any single Orthodox synagogue in the whole of Europe, overtaking Ilford synagogue (also in London) in 1998. The community set up the London Jewish Forum in 2007 in response to the growing significance of devolved London Government.
The City of London is the world's largest financial centre . It is home to the London Stock Exchange and Lloyds of London.
London is a major centre for international business and commerce and is one of three "command centres" for the world economy (along with New York City and Tokyo). According to 2005 estimates by the PricewaterhouseCoopers accounting firm, London has the 6th largest city economy in the world after Tokyo, New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Paris. London generates approximately 20% of the UK's GDP (or $446 billion in 2005); while the economy of the London metropolitan area â the second largest in Europe â generates approximately 30% of the UK's GDP (or an estimated $669 billion in 2005).
London's success as a service industry and business centre can be attributed to factors such as English being the native and dominant language of business, close relationship with the U.S. and various countries in Asia. Other factors include English law being the most important and most used contract law in international business and the multi-cultural infrastructure. Government policies such as low taxes, particularly for foreigners (non-UK domiciled residents do not get taxed on their foreign earnings), a business friendly environment, good transport infrastructure and a deregulated economy with little intervention by the government have all contributed to London's economy becoming more service based. Over 85% (3.2 million) of the employed population of Greater London works in service industries. Another half a million employees resident in Greater London work in manufacturing and construction, almost equally divided between both.
The three tallest skyscrapers as of 2008 in Canary Wharf as viewed from Cabot Square. It is home to such companies as HSBC and Clifford Chance.
London's largest industry remains finance, and its financial exports make it a large contributor to the UK's balance of payments. Over 300,000 people are employed in financial services in London. London has over 480 overseas banks, more than any other city in the world. Due to New York's tightening of market regulations, London stock exchanges had approximately 20% more initial public offerings in 2006.
London is home to banks, brokers, insurers and legal and accounting firms. A second, smaller financial district is developing at Canary Wharf to the east of the city which includes the global headquarters of HSBC, Reuters, Barclays and the Magic Circle, which includes Clifford Chance, the largest law firm in the world. London handled 31% of global currency transactions â an average daily turnover of US$753 billion â with more US dollars traded in London than New York, and more euros traded than in every other city in Europe combined.
More than half of the UK's top 100 listed companies (the FTSE 100) and over 100 of Europe's 500 largest companies are headquartered in central London. Over 70% of the FTSE 100 are located within London's metropolitan area, and 75% of Fortune 500 companies have offices in London. Along with professional services, media companies are concentrated in London (see Media in London) and the media distribution industry is London's second most competitive sector (after central banking, the most competitive sector). The BBC is a key employer, while other broadcasters also have headquarters around the city. Many national newspapers are edited in London, having traditionally been associated with Fleet Street in the city; they are now primarily based around Canary Wharf.
Due to its prominant global role, London is getting hit harder than any other financial centre in the subprime crisis. The City of London estimates that 70,000 jobs in finance will be cut within barely a year.
Several foreign banks have started to move off employees from London to their national financial centres, notably Dresdner Kleinwort, BNP Paribas and Santander.
Tourism is one of London's prime industries and employs the equivalent of 350,000 full-time workers in London in 2003, while annual expenditure by tourists is around £15 billion. " ", Visit London. Retrieved on 3 June 2006. A study carried out by Euromonitor in October 2007 places London at first place out of 150 of the world's most popular cities, attracting 15.6 million international tourists in 2006. This puts London far ahead of 2nd place Bangkok (10.35 million) and 3rd place Paris (just 9.7 million). London attracts 27 million overnight-stay visitors every year. " ", Visit London. Retrieved on 3 June 2006. The Port of London is currently the third-largest in the United Kingdom, handling 50 million tonnes of cargo each year.
London is too diverse to be characterised by any particular architectural style, having accumulated its buildings over a long period of time and drawn on a wide range of influences. It is, however, mainly brick built, most commonly the yellow London stock brick or a warm orange-red variety, often decorated with carvings and white plaster mouldings. Many grand houses and public buildings (such as the National Gallery) are constructed from Portland stone. Some areas of the city, particularly those just west of the centre, are characterised by white stucco or whitewashed buildings. Few structures pre-date the Great Fire of 1666, except for a few trace Roman remains, the Tower of London and a few scattered Tudor survivors in the City. The disused (but soon to be rejuvenated) 1939 Battersea Power Station by the river in the south-west is a local landmark, while some railway termini are excellent examples of Victorian architecture, most notably St Pancras and Paddington (at least internally).
The O 2 , one of the largest dome structures in the world.
The density of London varies, with high employment density in the central area, high residential densities in inner London and lower densities in the suburbs. In the dense areas, most of the concentration is achieved with medium- and high-rise buildings. London's skyscrapers such as the notable "Gherkin", Tower 42, the Broadgate Tower and One Canada Square are usually found in the two financial districts, the City of London and Canary Wharf. Other notable modern buildings include City Hall in Southwark with its distinctive oval shape, the British Library in Somers Town/Kings Cross, What was formerly the Millennium Dome, located by the Thames to the east of Canary Wharf, is now used as an entertainment venue known as The O 2 .
The development of tall buildings has been encouraged in the London Plan, which will lead to the erection of many new skyscrapers over the next decade, particularly in the City of London and Canary Wharf. The 72-storey, "Shard London Bridge" by London Bridge station, the Bishopsgate Tower and many other skyscrapers over are either proposed or approved and could transform the city's skyline. As of July 2008, there are 426 high-rise buildings (between 23 m to 150 m/75 ft to 491 ft) under construction, approved for construction, and proposed for construction in London.
A great many monuments pay homage to people and events in the city. The Monument in the City of London provides views of the surrounding area while commemorating the Great Fire of London, which originated nearby. Marble Arch and Wellington Arch, at the north and south ends of Park Lane respectively, have royal connections, as do the Albert Memorial and Royal Albert Hall in Kensington. Nelson's Column is a nationally recognised monument in Trafalgar Square, one of the focal points of the centre.
The largest parks in the central area of London are the Royal Parks of Hyde Park and its neighbour Kensington Gardens at the western edge of central London and Regent's Park on the northern edge. This park contains London Zoo, the world's oldest scientific zoo, and is located near the tourist attraction of Madame Tussauds Wax Museum. Closer to central London are the smaller Royal Parks of Green Park and St. James's Park. Hyde Park in particular is popular for sports and sometimes hosts open-air concerts.
A number of large parks lie outside the city centre, including the remaining Royal Parks of Greenwich Park to the south-east and Bushy Park and Richmond Park to the south-west, as well as Victoria Park, East London to the east. Primrose Hill to the north of Regent's Park is a popular spot to view the city skyline. Some more informal, semi-natural open spaces also exist, including the Hampstead Heath of North London. This incorporates Kenwood House, the former stately home and a popular location in the summer months where classical musical concerts are held by the lake, attracting thousands of people every weekend to enjoy the music, scenery and fireworks.
Traditionally the London accent has been given the famous Cockney label, and was similar to many accents of the South East of England, developing a unique form of slang known as Cockney Rhyming Slang. The accent of a 21st century Londoner varies widely; what is becoming more and more common amongst the under 30s however is some fusion of Cockney, Received Pronunciation, and a whole array of 'ethnic' accents, in particular Caribbean, which form an accent labelled Multicultural London English (MLE), with a large amount of slang in use as well.
Piccadilly Circus at night
The Trooping the Colour held in 2006 to mark the Queen's 80th birthday.
Within the City of Westminster, the entertainment district of the West End has its focus around Leicester Square, where London and world film premieres are held, and Piccadilly Circus, with its giant electronic advertisements. London's theatre district is here, as are many cinemas, bars, clubs and restaurants, including the city's Chinatown district, and just to the east is Covent Garden, an area housing speciality shops. The United Kingdom's Royal Ballet,English National Ballet, Royal Opera and English National Opera are based in London and perform at the Royal Opera House, The London Coliseum, Sadler's Wells Theatre and the Royal Albert Hall as well as touring the country. Islington's long Upper Street, extending Northwards from The Angel, has more bars and restaurants than any other street in the UK. Europe's busiest shopping area is Oxford Street, a shopping street nearly long â which makes it the longest shopping street in the world â and home to many shops and department stores including Selfridges. Knightsbridge â home to the Harrods department store â lies just to the southwest. London is home to designers Vivienne Westwood, Galliano, Stella McCartney, Manolo Blahnik, and Jimmy Choo among others; its renowned art and fashion schools make it an international centre of fashion alongside Paris, Milan and New York.
London offers a great variety of cuisine as a result of its ethnically diverse population. Gastronomic centres include the Bangladeshi restaurants of Brick Lane and the Chinese food restaurants of Chinatown.
There are a variety of regular annual events in the city. The beginning of the year is celebrated with the relatively new New Year's Day Parade, while traditional parades include November's Lord Mayor's Show, a centuries-old event celebrating the annual appointment of a new Lord Mayor of the City of London with a procession along the streets of the City, and June's Trooping the Colour, a formal military pageant performed by regiments of the Commonwealth and British armies to celebrate the Queen's Official Birthday.
Charles Dickens (1812â1870), whose works formed a pervasive image of Victorian London.
London has been the setting for many works of literature. Two writers closely associated with the city are the diarist Samuel Pepys, noted for his eyewitness account of the Great Fire, and Charles Dickens, whose representation of a foggy, snowy, grimy London of street sweepers and pickpockets has been a major influence on people's vision of early Victorian London. The earlier (1722) A Journal of the Plague Year by Daniel Defoe is a fictionalisation of the events of the 1665 Great Plague. William Shakespeare spent a large part of his life living and working in London; his contemporary Ben Jonson was also based in London, and some of his work â most notably his play The Alchemist â was set in the city. Later important depictions of London from the 19th and early 20th centuries are the afore-mentioned Dickens novels, and Arthur Conan Doyle's illustrious Sherlock Holmes stories. A modern writer pervasively influenced by the city is Peter Ackroyd, in works such as London: The Biography, The Lambs of London and Hawksmoor.
London has played a significant role in the film industry, and has major studios at Pinewood, Ealing, Shepperton, Elstree and Leavesden, as well as an important special effects and post-production community centred in Soho in central London. Working Title Films has its headquarters in London. The city also hosts a number of performing arts schools, including The Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA), the Central School of Speech and Drama (alumni: Judi Dench and Laurence Olivier) and the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art (alumni: Jim Broadbent). The London Film Festival is held each year in October.
London is home to many museums, galleries, and other institutions which are major tourist attractions as well as playing a research role. The Natural History Museum (biology and geology), Science Museum and Victoria and Albert Museum (fashion and design) are clustered in South Kensington's "museum quarter", while the British Museum houses historic artefacts from around the world. The British Library at St Pancras is the UK's national library, housing 150 million items. The city also houses extensive art collections, primarily in the National Gallery, Tate Britain and Tate Modern.
The Royal Albert Hall hosts a wide range of concerts and musical events.
London is one of the major classical and popular music capitals of the world and is home to major music corporations, such as EMI and Decca Records, as well as countless bands, musicians and industry professionals. London is home to many orchestras and concert halls such as the Barbican Arts Centre (principal base of the London Symphony Orchestra), Cadogan Hall (Royal Philharmonic Orchestra) and the Royal Albert Hall (BBC Promenade Concerts). London's two main opera houses are the Royal Opera House and the Coliseum Theatre.
Several conservatoires are located within the city: Royal Academy of Music, Royal College of Music, Guildhall School of Music and Drama, and Trinity College of Music.
London has numerous renowned venues for rock and pop concerts, including large arenas such as Earls Court, Wembley Arena and the O2 Arena, as well as numerous mid-size venues, such as Brixton Academy, Hammersmith Apollo and The London Astoria. London also hosts many music festivals, including the 02 Wireless Festival and Latitude Festival.
London is home to the first and original Hard Rock Cafe and the illustrious Abbey Road Studios where The Beatles created many of their hits. Musicians such as Bob Marley, Jimi Hendrix and Freddie Mercury have lived in London. A large number of musical artists originate from or are most strongly associated with London, including David Bowie, Ian Dury, The Kinks, Adam Faith, The Rolling Stones, The Who, Madness, The Jam, Blur, Iron Maiden, Phil Collins, Rod Stewart, Elvis Costello, Dusty Springfield, The Yardbirds and The Small Faces.
London was instrumental in the development of punk music, with figures such as the Sex Pistols, The Clash, and Vivienne Westwood all based in the city.
More recent artists to emerge from the London music scene include The Libertines, one of the most influential British rock acts of the 2000s, Bloc Party, Amy Winehouse, Lily Allen, The Kooks, Razorlight, Laura Marling, Dizzee Rascal, Natasha Bedingfield and Leona Lewis.
London is also a centre for Urban music. In particular the genres UK Garage, Drum and Bass and Grime evolved in the city from the foreign genres of hiphop and reggae, alongside local rave music. Black music station BBC 1Xtra was set up to support the rise of homegrown urban music both in London and the rest of the UK.
Wembley Stadium is home to English football and is the most expensive stadium in the world.
The Wimbledon Championships, a tennis Grand Slam tournament.
London has hosted the Summer Olympics twice, in 1908 and 1948. In July 2005 London was chosen to host the Games in 2012, which will make it the first city in the world to host the Summer Olympics three times. London was also the host of the British Empire Games in 1934.
London's most popular sport (for both participants and spectators) is football. London has thirteen League football clubs, including five in the Premier League: Arsenal, Chelsea, Fulham, Tottenham Hotspur and West Ham United. London also has four rugby union teams in the Guinness Premiership (London Irish, Saracens, Wasps and Harlequins), although only the Harlequins play in London (all the other three now play outside Greater London, although Saracens still play within the M25). There are two professional rugby league clubs in London - Harlequins Rugby League who play in the Super League at the Stoop and the National League 2 side the London Skolars (based in Haringey).
Since 1924, the original Wembley Stadium was the home of the English national football team, and served as the venue for the FA Cup final as well as rugby league's Challenge Cup final. The new Wembley Stadium serves exactly the same purposes and has a capacity of 90,000. Twickenham Stadium in west London is the national rugby union stadium, and has a capacity of 84,000 now that the new south stand has been completed.
Cricket in London centres on its two Test cricket grounds at Lord's (home of Middlesex C.C.C) in St John's Wood, and The Oval (home of Surrey C.C.C) in Kennington. One of London's best-known annual sports competitions is the Wimbledon Tennis Championships, held at the All England Club in the south-western suburb of Wimbledon. Other key events are the annual mass-participation London Marathon which sees some 35,000 runners attempt a course around the city, and the Oxford vs. Cambridge Boat Race on the River Thames between Putney and Mortlake.
Transport is one of the four areas of policy administered by the Mayor of London, however the mayor's financial control is limited and he does not control the heavy rail network, although in November 2007 he assumed responsibility for the North London Railway as well as several other lines, to form London Overground. The public transport network, administered by Transport for London (TfL), is one of the most extensive in the world, but faces congestion and reliability issues, which a large investment programme is attempting to address, including £7 billion (â¬10 billion) of improvements planned for the Olympics. London has been commended as the city with the best public transport. Cycling is an increasingly popular way to get around London. The London Cycling Campaign lobbies for better provision.
The London Underground is the oldest, longest, and most expansive metro system in the world, dating from 1863.
The centrepiece of the public transport network is the London Underground â commonly referred to as The Tube â which has eleven interconnecting lines. It is the oldest, longest, and most expansive metro system in the world, dating from 1863. The system was home to the world's first underground electric line, the City & South London Railway, which began service in 1890. Over three million journeys a day are made on the Underground network, nearly 1 billion journeys each year. The Underground serves the central area and most suburbs to the north of the Thames, while those to the south are served by an extensive suburban rail surface network.
The Docklands Light Railway is a second metro system using smaller and lighter trains, which opened in 1987, serving East London and Greenwich on both sides of the Thames. Commuter and intercity railways generally do not cross the city, instead running into fourteen terminal stations scattered around its historic centre; the exception is the Thameslink route operated by First Capital Connect, with terminus stations at Bedford, Brighton and Moorgate. Since the early 1990s, increasing pressures on the commuter rail and Underground networks have led to increasing demands â particularly from businesses and the City of London Corporation â for Crossrail: a £10 billion east â west heavy rail connection under central London, which was given the green light in early October 2007.
High-speed Eurostar trains link St Pancras International with Lille and Paris in France, and Brussels in Belgium. Journey times to Paris and Brussels of 2h 15 and 1h 51 respectively make London closer to continental Europe than the rest of Britain by virtue of the newly completed High Speed 1 rail link to the Channel Tunnel. From 2009 this line will also allow for high speed domestic travel from Kent into London. The redevelopment of St. Pancras was key to London's Olympic bid, as the station also serves two international airports through Thameslink, and will also provide direct rail links to the Olympic site at Stratford using British Rail Class 395 trains running under the Olympic Javelin name; these will be based on Japanese Shinkansen high-speed trains.
The modern Enviro400 double-decker bus
London's bus network is one of the largest in the world, running 24 hours a day, with 8,000 buses, 700 bus routes, and over 6 million passenger journeys made every weekday. In 2003, the network's ridership was estimated at over 1.5 billion passenger trips per annum, more than the Underground. Around £850 m is taken in revenue each year.
London has the largest wheelchair accessible network in the world and, from the 3rd quarter of 2007, became more accessible to hearing and visually impaired passengers as audio-visual announcements were introduced. The distinctive red double-decker buses are internationally recognised, and are a trademark of London transport along with black cabs and the Tube.
Terminal 5 at Heathrow Airport, which is the world's busiest airport by international passenger traffic.
London is a major international air transport hub with the largest city airspace in the world. Eight airports use the words London Airport in their name, but most traffic passes through one of five major airports. London Heathrow Airport is the busiest airport in the world for international traffic, and is the major hub of the nation's flag carrier, British Airways. In March 2008 its fifth terminal was opened, and plans are already being considered for a sixth terminal. Similar traffic, with the addition of some low-cost short-haul flights, is also handled at London Gatwick Airport. London Stansted Airport and London Luton Airport cater mostly for low-cost short-haul flights. London City Airport, the smallest and most central airport, is focused on business travellers, with a mixture of full service short-haul scheduled flights and considerable business jet traffic.
Although the majority of journeys involving central London are made by public transport, travel in outer London is car-dominated. The inner ring road (around the city centre), the North and South Circular roads (in the suburbs), and the outer orbital motorway (the M25, outside the built-up area) encircle the city and are intersected by a number of busy radial routes â but very few motorways penetrate into inner London. The M25 is the longest ring-road motorway in the world at long. A plan for a comprehensive network of motorways throughout the city (the Ringways Plan) was prepared in the 1960s but was mostly cancelled in the early 1970s. In 2003, a congestion charge was introduced to reduce traffic volumes in the city centre. With a few exceptions, motorists are required to pay £8 per day to drive within a defined zone encompassing much of congested central London. Motorists who are residents of the defined zone can buy a vastly reduced season pass which is renewed monthly and is cheaper than a corresponding bus fare.
Royal Holloway, as a part of the University of London, a federation of London higher education institutions
Home to a range of universities, colleges and schools, London has a student population of about 378,000 and is a centre of research and development. Most primary and secondary schools in London follow the same system as the rest of England â comprehensive schooling.
With 125,000 students, the University of London is the largest contact teaching university in the United Kingdom and in Europe. It comprises 20 colleges as well as several smaller institutes each with a high degree of autonomy. Constituent colleges have their own admissions procedures, and are effectively universities in their own right, although most degrees are awarded by the University of London rather than the individual colleges. Its constituents include multi-disciplinary colleges such as UCL, King's, Goldsmiths, Queen Mary and more specialised institutions such as the London School of Economics, SOAS, the Royal Academy of Music, the Courtauld Institute of Art and the Institute of Education.
Imperial College London and University College London have been ranked among the top ten universities in the world by The Times Higher Education Supplement: in 2008 Imperial was ranked the 6th best and UCL the 7th best university in the world.
In addition, the London School of Economics is the worldâs leading social science institution for teaching and research, plus has the most international student body of any university in the world today.
A number of colleges are dedicated to the fine arts, including the Royal College of Music, Royal College of Art, and Guildhall School of Music and Drama.
Senate House, the headquarters of the federal University of London
London's other universities, such as Brunel University, City University, London Metropolitan University, Middlesex University, University of East London, University of the Arts London, University of Westminster, Kingston University and London South Bank University are not part of the University of London but are still leaders in their field and popular choices among students both nationally and internationally. Some were polytechnics until these were granted university status in 1992, and others which were founded much earlier. Imperial College London left the federal University of London in 2007. Since the merger of University of North London and London Guildhall University in 2003, London Metropolitan University is the largest unitary university in the capital, with over 34,000 students from 155 countries. About London Met London Metropolitan University, August 2008 London is also known globally for its business education, with the London Business School (ranked 1st in Europe â Business Week) and Cass Business School (Europe's largest finance school) both being top world-rated business schools. In addition there are three international universities: Schiller International University, Richmond University and Regent's College.
There are 46 other places on six continents named after London. Jack Malvern. Richmond, in Surrey, is the most widely copied British place name worldwide, timesonline 2008-12-29. The original byline for the article in The Times of the same day was "The 55 corners of foreign fields that will be for ever ... Richmond" (page 9). Cites The Times Universal Atlas of the World. As well as London's twinning, the Boroughs of London have twinnings with parts of other cities across the world. Shown below is the list of cities that the Greater London Authority is twinned with.
* New York City,
* Moscow,
* Berlin,
The following cities have a friendship agreement with London:
* Sofia,
* Delhi,
* Mumbai,
* Beijing,
* Istanbul,
* Paris,
* Tehran,
* Tokyo,
* Bogotá,
* Podgorica,
* Algiers,
* Global city
* Geography of England
* Large Cities Climate Leadership Group
* Largest European cities and metropolitan areas
* London Assembly
* Megacity
*
*
*
*
* Mayor of London, London Assembly and the Greater London Authority â Official city government site
* Transport for London (TfL) â city transport authority
* BBC London
* Office for National Statistics: Focus on London 2007 â compendium of official statistics about London
* Museum of London Group Portal - Home
* VisitLondon.com â Official London site
* Map of Early Modern London â Historical Map and Encyclopaedia of Shakespeare's London (Scholarly)
* London Bridges â A view of London Bridges over the River Thames
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London | What had the Anglo-Saxons created by the 600s? | By the 600s, the Anglo-Saxons had created a new settlement called Lundenwic. | data/set3/a1 | London
London ( ; ) is the capital of both England and the United Kingdom, and the largest urban area in the European Union. {{cite web|url= title=Largest EU City An important settlement for two millennia, London's history goes back to its founding by the Romans. Since its foundation, London has been part of many movements and phenomena throughout history, including the English Renaissance, the Industrial Revolution, and the Gothic Revival. The city's core, the ancient City of London, still retains its limited medieval boundaries; but since at least the 19th century, the name "London" has also referred to the whole metropolis that has developed around it. Today the bulk of this conurbation forms the London region of England and the Greater London administrative area, with its own elected mayor and assembly.
London is one of the the world's most important business, financial and cultural centres and its influence in politics, education, entertainment, media, fashion and the arts contribute to its status as a major global city. Global Cities: GaWC Inventory of World Cities 1999 Global cities#GaWC Inventory of World Cities (1999 Edition); Global Cities: GaWC Inventory of World Cities 2004 Global cities#GaWC Leading World Cities (2004 Edition) Central London is the headquarters of more than half of the UK's top 100 listed companies (the FTSE 100) and over 100 of Europe's 500 largest companies. The city is a major tourist destination both for domestic and overseas visitors, with annual expenditure by tourists of around £15 billion. London hosted the 1908 and 1948 Summer Olympic Games and will host the 2012 Summer Olympic Games.
Greater London contains four World Heritage Sites: the Tower of London; the historic settlement of Greenwich; the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew; and the site comprising the Palace of Westminster, Westminster Abbey and St. Margaret's Church.
London's population draws from a wide range of peoples, cultures, and religions, and over 300 languages are spoken within the city. As of 2006, it had an official population of 7,512,400 within the boundaries of Greater London and is the most populous municipality in the European Union. As of 2001, the Greater London Urban Area had a population of 8,278,251 and the metropolitan area is estimated to have a total population of between 12 and 14 million , the largest metropolitan area in the EU. The public transport network, administered by Transport for London, is one of the most extensive in the world, and Heathrow Airport is the busiest airport in the world by international passenger traffic and the air space is the busiest of any city in the world. International Passenger Traffic, Airports Council International
The etymology of London remains a mystery. The earliest etymological explanation can be attributed to Geoffrey of Monmouth in Historia Regum Britanniae. The name is described as originating from King Lud, who had allegedly taken over the city and named it Kaerlud. This was slurred into Kaerludein and finally London. Many other theories have been advanced over the centuries, most of them deriving the name from Welsh or British, and occasionally from Anglo-Saxon or even Hebrew.
Map of London in 1300, showing the medieval boundaries of the City of London
Although there is evidence of scattered Brythonic settlements in the area, the first major settlement was founded by the Romans in AD 43 as Londinium, following the Roman conquest of Britain. This Londinium lasted for just seventeen years. Around 61, the Iceni tribe led by Queen Boudica stormed this first London, burning it to the ground. The next, heavily planned incarnation of the city prospered and superseded Colchester as the capital of the Roman province of Britannia in 100. At its height in the 2nd century, Roman London had a population of around 60,000.
By the 600s, the Anglo-Saxons had created a new settlement called Lundenwic approximately upstream from the old Roman city,
around what is now Covent Garden. It is likely that there was a harbour at the mouth of the River Fleet for fishing and trading, and this trading grew until the city was overcome by the Vikings and forced to relocate the city back to the location of the Roman Londinium to use its walls for protection. Viking attacks continued to increase around the rest of South East England, until 886 when Alfred the Great recaptured London and made peace with the Danish leader, Guthrum. The original Saxon city of Lundenwic became Ealdwic ("old city"), a name surviving to the present day as Aldwych, which is in the modern City of Westminster.
In a retaliatory attack, Ethelred's army achieved victory by pulling down London Bridge with the Danish garrison on top, and English control was re-established. Canute took control of the English throne in 1017, controlling the city and country until 1042, when his death resulted in a reversion to Saxon control under his pious stepson Edward the Confessor, who re-founded Westminster Abbey and the adjacent Palace of Westminster. By this time, London had become the largest and most prosperous city in England, although the official seat of government was still at Winchester.
Following a victory at the Battle of Hastings, William the Conqueror, the then Duke of Normandy, was crowned King of England in the newly finished Westminster Abbey on Christmas Day 1066. William granted the citizens of London special privileges, while building what is now known as the Tower of London, in the south-east corner of the city, to keep them under control. .
The Great Exhibition
In 1097, William II began the building of Westminster Hall, close by the abbey of the same name. The hall became the basis of a new Palace of Westminster, the prime royal residence throughout the Middle Ages. Westminster became the seat of the royal court and government (persisting until the present day), while its distinct neighbour, the City of London, was a centre of trade and commerce and flourished under its own unique administration, the Corporation of London. London grew in wealth and population during the Middle Ages. In 1100 its population was around 18,000; by 1300 it had grown to nearly 100,000. King Edward I issued an edict in 1290, expelling all Jews from England. Before the edict, there was an increasing population of Jews, whereas after this time, the population of Jews began to drop considerably. Disaster struck during the Black Death in the mid-14th century, when London lost nearly a third of its population. Apart from the invasion of London during the Peasants' Revolt in 1381, London remained relatively untouched by the various civil wars during the Middle Ages, such as the first and second Barons' Wars and the Wars of the Roses.
After the successful defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588, political stability in England allowed London to grow further. In 1603, James VI of Scotland came to the throne of England, essentially uniting the two countries. His enactment of harsh anti-Catholic laws made him unpopular, and an assassination attempt was made on 5 November 1605âthe well-known Gunpowder Plot.
The Great Fire of London destroyed many parts of the city in 1666
Plague caused extensive problems for London in the early 17th century, culminating in the Great Plague in 1665â1666. This was the last major outbreak in England, possibly thanks to the disastrous fire of 1666. The Great Fire of London broke out in the original City and quickly swept through London's wooden buildings, destroying large swathes of the city. A first hand narrative of both plague and fire was provided by Sir Samuel Pepys. Rebuilding took over ten years, largely under direction of a Commission appointed by King Charles II and chaired by Sir Christopher Wren.
Following London's growth in the 18th century, it became the world's largest city from about 1831 to 1925. Rising traffic congestion on city centre roads led to the creation of the world's first metro system â the London Underground â in 1863, driving further expansion and urbanisation. London's local government system struggled to cope with the rapid growth, especially in providing the city with adequate infrastructure. Between 1855 and 1889, the Metropolitan Board of Works oversaw infrastructure expansion. It was then replaced by the County of London, overseen by the London County Council, London's first elected city-wide administration.
A London street hit during the Blitz of World War II
The Blitz and other bombing by the German Luftwaffe during World War II killed over 30,000 Londoners and destroyed large tracts of housing and other buildings across London. In 1965 London's political boundaries were expanded to take into account the growth of the urban area outside the County of London's borders. The expanded area was called Greater London and was administered by the Greater London Council. An eco revival from the 1980s onwards re-established London's position as a pre-eminent international centre. However, as the seat of government and the most important city in the UK, it has been subjected to bouts of terrorism. Provisional Irish Republican Army bombers sought to pressure the government into negotiations over Northern Ireland, frequently disrupting city activities with bomb threats â some of which were carried out â until their 1997 cease-fire. More recently, a series of coordinated bomb attacks were carried out by Islamic extremist suicide bombers on the public transport network on 7 July 2005âjust 24 hours after London was awarded the 2012 Summer Olympics.
City Hall at night, home of the Greater London Authority
The administration of London is formed of two tiers â a city-wide, strategic tier and a local tier. City-wide administration is coordinated by the Greater London Authority (GLA), while local administration is carried out by 33 smaller authorities. The GLA consists of two elected parts; the Mayor of London, who has executive powers, and the London Assembly, who scrutinise the Mayor's decisions and can accept or reject his budget proposals each year. The GLA was set up in 2000 to replace the similar Greater London Council (GLC) which had been abolished in 1986. The headquarters of the GLA and the Mayor of London is at City Hall; the Mayor is Boris Johnson. The 33 local authorities are the councils of the 32 London boroughs and the City of London Corporation. They are responsible for local services not overseen by the GLA, such as local planning, schools, social services, local roads and refuse collection.
London is the home of the Government of the United Kingdom which is located around the Houses of Parliament in Westminster. Many government departments are located close to Parliament, particularly along Whitehall, including the Prime Minister's residence at 10 Downing Street. The British Parliament is often referred to as the "Mother of Parliaments" (although this sobriquet was first applied to England itself by John Bright) because it has been the model for most other parliamentary systems, and its Acts have created many other parliaments. There are 74 Members of Parliament (MPs) from London, who correspond to local parliamentary constituencies in the national Parliament by . Of these 74 MPs, currently 44 are from the Labour Party, 21 are Conservatives, 8 are Liberal Democrats and one is from the RESPECT party.
West and central London seen from SPOT satellite
London can be geographically defined in a number of ways, although the situation was once even more ambiguous than it is now and open to periodic legal debate. At London's core is the small, ancient City of London which is commonly known as 'the City' or 'the Square Mile'. London's metropolitan area grew considerably during the Victorian era and again during the Interwar period, but expansion halted in the 1940s because of World War II and Green Belt legislation, and the area has been largely static since. The London region of England, also commonly known as Greater London, is the area administered by the Greater London Authority. The urban sprawl of the conurbation â or Greater London Urban Area â covers a roughly similar area, with a slightly larger population. Beyond this is the vast London commuter belt.
Map of Central LondonForty percent of Greater London is covered by the London postal district, within which 'LONDON' forms part of the postal address. The London telephone area code covers a larger area, similar in size to Greater London, although some outer districts are omitted and some places just outside are included. The area within the orbital M25 motorway is sometimes used to define the "London area" and the Greater London boundary has been aligned to it in places. Greater London is split for some purposes into Inner London and Outer London. Informally, the city is split into North, South, East, West and often also Central London.
The Metropolitan Police District, city-wide local government area and London transport area have varied over time, but broadly coincide with the Greater London boundary. The Romans may have marked the centre of Londinium with the London Stone, still visible on Cannon Street. The coordinates of the nominal centre of London (traditionally considered to be the original Eleanor Cross at Charing Cross, near the junction of Trafalgar Square and Whitehall) are approximately . Trafalgar Square has also become a point for celebrations and protests.
Within London, both the City of London and the City of Westminster have City status and both the City of London and the remainder of Greater London are the ceremonial counties. The current area of Greater London was historically part of the counties of Middlesex, Kent, Surrey, Essex and Hertfordshire. Unlike most capital cities, London's status as the capital of the UK has never been granted or confirmed officially â by statute or in written form. Its position as the capital has formed through constitutional convention, making its position as de facto capital a part of the UK's unwritten constitution. The capital of England was moved to London from Winchester as the Palace of Westminster developed in the 12th and 13th centuries to become the permanent location of the royal court, and thus the political capital of the nation. According to the Collins English Dictionary definition (1994) Collins English Dictionary. Collins Education plc. of 'the seat of government,' London is not the capital of England, as England does not have its own government. However according to the Oxford English Reference dictionary definition Oxford English Reference Dictionary. Oxford English. of 'the most important town...' and many other authorities, "HC 501 0304.PDF" (PDF). Parliament Publications. Retrieved on 2008-06-06. 'England' (1994) Collins English Dictionary. Collins Education plc. London is the capital of England.
Greater London covers an area of . Its primary geographical feature is the Thames, a navigable river which crosses the city from the south-west to the east. The Thames Valley is a floodplain surrounded by gently rolling hills including Parliament Hill, Addington Hills, and Primrose Hill. The Thames was once a much broader, shallower river with extensive marshlands; at high tide, its shores reached five times their present width. Since the Victorian era it has been extensively embanked, and many of its London tributaries now flow underground. The Thames is a tidal river, and London is vulnerable to flooding. The threat has increased over time due to a slow but continuous rise in high water level by the slow 'tilting' of Britain (up in the north and down in the south) caused by post-glacial rebound. In 1974, a decade of work began on the construction of the Thames Barrier across the Thames at Woolwich to deal with this threat. While the barrier is expected to function as designed until roughly 2030, concepts for its future enlargement or redesign are already being discussed.
London has a temperate marine climate, like much of the British Isles, so the city rarely sees extremely high or low temperatures. Summers are warm with average high temperatures of and lows of , however, temperatures could exceed on many days.
Winters in London are chilly, but rarely below freezing with daytime temperatures around 2 - 8 °C (36 - 46 °F), while spring has mild days and cool evenings.
London has regular but generally light precipitation throughout the year, with average precipitation of every year.
Snow is relatively uncommon, particularly because heat from the urban area can make London up to 5 °C (9 °F) hotter than the surrounding areas in winter. Snowfall, however, is usually, but not always, seen up to a few times a year. London is in USDA Hardiness zone 9, and AHS Heat Zone 2.
In the second half of the 19th century and the first half of the 20th, London was noted for its dense fogs and smogs. Following the deadly Great Smog of 1952, the Clean Air Act 1956 was passed, leading to the decline of such severe pollution in the capital.
London's vast urban area is often described using a set of district names (e.g. Bloomsbury, Knightsbridge, Mayfair, Whitechapel, Fitzrovia). These are either informal designations, or reflect the names of superseded villages, parishes and city wards. Such names have remained in use through tradition, each referring to a local area with its own distinctive character, but often with no modern official boundaries. However, since 1965 Greater London has been divided into 32 London boroughs in addition to the ancient City of London.
The City of London is one of the world's three largest financial centres (alongside New York and Tokyo) with a dominant role in several international financial markets, including cross-border bank lending, international bond issuance and trading, foreign-exchange trading, over-the-counter derivatives, fund management and foreign equities trading. It also has the world's largest insurance market, the leading exchange for dealing in non-precious metals, the largest spot gold and gold lending markets, the largest ship broking market, and more foreign banks and investment houses than any other centre. The City has its own governance and boundaries, giving it a status as the only completely autonomous local authority in London. London's new financial and commercial hub is the Docklands area to the east of the City, dominated by the Canary Wharf complex. Other businesses locate in the City of Westminster, the home of the UK's national government and the well-known Westminster Abbey.
The West End is London's main entertainment and shopping district, with locations such as Oxford Street, Leicester Square, Covent Garden and Piccadilly Circus acting as tourist magnets. The West London area is known for fashionable and expensive residential areas such as Notting Hill, Knightsbridge and Chelsea â where properties can sell for tens of millions of pounds. The average price for all properties in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea is £894,000 with similar average outlay in most of Central London.
The eastern region of London contains the East End and East London. The East End is the area closest to the original Port of London, known for its high immigrant population, as well as for being one of the poorest areas in London. The surrounding East London area saw much of London's early industrial development; now, brownfield sites throughout the area are being redeveloped as part of the Thames Gateway including the London Riverside and Lower Lea Valley, which is being developed into the Olympic Park for the 2012 Olympics.
With increasing industrialisation, London's population grew rapidly throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries, and it was the most populous city in the world until overtaken by New York in 1925. Its population peaked at 8,615,245 in 1939 immediately before the outbreak of World War 2. There were an estimated 7,512,400 official residents in Greater London as of mid-2006. However, London's continuous urban area extends beyond the borders of Greater London and was home to 8,278,251 people in 2001, while its wider metropolitan area has a population of between 12 and 14 million depending on the definition used. According to Eurostat, London is the most populous city and metropolitan area of the European Union and the second most populous in Europe (or third if Istanbul is included).
The region covers an area of . The population density is , more than ten times that of any other British region. In terms of population, London is the 25th largest city and the 17th largest metropolitan region in the world. It is also ranked 4th in the world in number of billionaires (United States Dollars) residing in the city. London ranks as one of the most expensive cities in the world, alongside Tokyo and Moscow.
According to 2008 estimates, 51% of these seven million and seven hundred thousand people people are classed as the indigenous White British, White Irish (2.5%) and "Other White" 10%, the majority of whom are other Europeans. 15% of people are of South Asian descent, including Indian (mainly Punjabi, Hindi, Tamil and Gujarati), Pakistani, Bangladeshi (Bengali) and "Other Asian" (mostly Sri Lankan (Tamil) and other Southern Asian ethnicities). 13% of people are Black (around 7% are Black African, 5% as Black Caribbean, 1% as "Other Black"). 5.5% are of mixed race; 1.5% are Chinese; and 1.5% of people belong to another ethnic group. 30% of inhabitants were born outside the European Union. The Irish born, from both the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland, number approximately 250,000 and are the largest group born outside of Britain.
In January 2005, a survey of London's ethnic and religious diversity claimed that there were more than 300 languages spoken and more than 50 non-indigenous communities which have a population of more than 10,000 in London. Figures from the Office for National Statistics show that, as of 2006, London's foreign-born population is 2,288,000 (31%), up from 1,630,000 in 1997. The 2001 census showed that 27.1% of Greater London's population were born outside the UK, and a slightly higher proportion were classed as non-white.
The table to the right shows the 'Country of Birth' of London residents in 2001, the date of the last UK Census. (Top 21). Note that a portion of the German-born population are likely to be British nationals born to parents serving in the British armed forces in Germany.
Westminster Abbey is one of London's oldest and most important buildings and a World Heritage Site.
The majority of Londoners - 58.2% - identify themselves as Christians. This is followed by those of no religion (15.8%), Muslims (8.5%), Hindus (4.1%), Jews (2.1%), Sikhs (1.5%), Buddhists (0.8%) and other (0.5%), though 8.7% of people did not answer this question in the 2001 Census.
London has traditionally been dominated by Christianity, and has a large number of churches, particularly in the City of London. The well-known St Paul's Cathedral in the City and Southwark Cathedral south of the river are Anglican administrative centres, while the Archbishop of Canterbury, principal bishop of the Church of England and worldwide Anglican Communion, has his main residence at Lambeth Palace in the London Borough of Lambeth.
Important national and royal ceremonies are shared between St Paul's and Westminster Abbey. The Abbey is not to be confused with nearby Westminster Cathedral, which is the largest Roman Catholic cathedral in England and Wales. Religious practice is lower in London than any other part of the UK or Western Europe and is around seven times lower than American averages. Despite the prevalence of Anglican churches, observance is very low within the Anglican denomination, although church attendance, particularly at evangelical Anglican churches in London, has started to increase.
The Swaminarayan Hindu Temple in Neasden
London is also home to sizeable Muslim, Hindu, Sikh, and Jewish communities. Many Muslims live in Tower Hamlets and Newham; the most important Muslim edifice is London Central Mosque on the edge of Regent's Park. London's large Hindu community is found in the north-western boroughs of Harrow and Brent, the latter of which is home to one of Europe's largest Hindu temples, Neasden Temple. Sikh communities are located in East and West London, which is also home to the largest Sikh temple in the world, outside India.
The majority of British Jews live in London, with significant Jewish communities in Stamford Hill, Stanmore, Golders Green, Hendon, and Edgware in North London. Stanmore and Canons Park Synagogue has the largest membership of any single Orthodox synagogue in the whole of Europe, overtaking Ilford synagogue (also in London) in 1998. The community set up the London Jewish Forum in 2007 in response to the growing significance of devolved London Government.
The City of London is the world's largest financial centre . It is home to the London Stock Exchange and Lloyds of London.
London is a major centre for international business and commerce and is one of three "command centres" for the world economy (along with New York City and Tokyo). According to 2005 estimates by the PricewaterhouseCoopers accounting firm, London has the 6th largest city economy in the world after Tokyo, New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Paris. London generates approximately 20% of the UK's GDP (or $446 billion in 2005); while the economy of the London metropolitan area â the second largest in Europe â generates approximately 30% of the UK's GDP (or an estimated $669 billion in 2005).
London's success as a service industry and business centre can be attributed to factors such as English being the native and dominant language of business, close relationship with the U.S. and various countries in Asia. Other factors include English law being the most important and most used contract law in international business and the multi-cultural infrastructure. Government policies such as low taxes, particularly for foreigners (non-UK domiciled residents do not get taxed on their foreign earnings), a business friendly environment, good transport infrastructure and a deregulated economy with little intervention by the government have all contributed to London's economy becoming more service based. Over 85% (3.2 million) of the employed population of Greater London works in service industries. Another half a million employees resident in Greater London work in manufacturing and construction, almost equally divided between both.
The three tallest skyscrapers as of 2008 in Canary Wharf as viewed from Cabot Square. It is home to such companies as HSBC and Clifford Chance.
London's largest industry remains finance, and its financial exports make it a large contributor to the UK's balance of payments. Over 300,000 people are employed in financial services in London. London has over 480 overseas banks, more than any other city in the world. Due to New York's tightening of market regulations, London stock exchanges had approximately 20% more initial public offerings in 2006.
London is home to banks, brokers, insurers and legal and accounting firms. A second, smaller financial district is developing at Canary Wharf to the east of the city which includes the global headquarters of HSBC, Reuters, Barclays and the Magic Circle, which includes Clifford Chance, the largest law firm in the world. London handled 31% of global currency transactions â an average daily turnover of US$753 billion â with more US dollars traded in London than New York, and more euros traded than in every other city in Europe combined.
More than half of the UK's top 100 listed companies (the FTSE 100) and over 100 of Europe's 500 largest companies are headquartered in central London. Over 70% of the FTSE 100 are located within London's metropolitan area, and 75% of Fortune 500 companies have offices in London. Along with professional services, media companies are concentrated in London (see Media in London) and the media distribution industry is London's second most competitive sector (after central banking, the most competitive sector). The BBC is a key employer, while other broadcasters also have headquarters around the city. Many national newspapers are edited in London, having traditionally been associated with Fleet Street in the city; they are now primarily based around Canary Wharf.
Due to its prominant global role, London is getting hit harder than any other financial centre in the subprime crisis. The City of London estimates that 70,000 jobs in finance will be cut within barely a year.
Several foreign banks have started to move off employees from London to their national financial centres, notably Dresdner Kleinwort, BNP Paribas and Santander.
Tourism is one of London's prime industries and employs the equivalent of 350,000 full-time workers in London in 2003, while annual expenditure by tourists is around £15 billion. " ", Visit London. Retrieved on 3 June 2006. A study carried out by Euromonitor in October 2007 places London at first place out of 150 of the world's most popular cities, attracting 15.6 million international tourists in 2006. This puts London far ahead of 2nd place Bangkok (10.35 million) and 3rd place Paris (just 9.7 million). London attracts 27 million overnight-stay visitors every year. " ", Visit London. Retrieved on 3 June 2006. The Port of London is currently the third-largest in the United Kingdom, handling 50 million tonnes of cargo each year.
London is too diverse to be characterised by any particular architectural style, having accumulated its buildings over a long period of time and drawn on a wide range of influences. It is, however, mainly brick built, most commonly the yellow London stock brick or a warm orange-red variety, often decorated with carvings and white plaster mouldings. Many grand houses and public buildings (such as the National Gallery) are constructed from Portland stone. Some areas of the city, particularly those just west of the centre, are characterised by white stucco or whitewashed buildings. Few structures pre-date the Great Fire of 1666, except for a few trace Roman remains, the Tower of London and a few scattered Tudor survivors in the City. The disused (but soon to be rejuvenated) 1939 Battersea Power Station by the river in the south-west is a local landmark, while some railway termini are excellent examples of Victorian architecture, most notably St Pancras and Paddington (at least internally).
The O 2 , one of the largest dome structures in the world.
The density of London varies, with high employment density in the central area, high residential densities in inner London and lower densities in the suburbs. In the dense areas, most of the concentration is achieved with medium- and high-rise buildings. London's skyscrapers such as the notable "Gherkin", Tower 42, the Broadgate Tower and One Canada Square are usually found in the two financial districts, the City of London and Canary Wharf. Other notable modern buildings include City Hall in Southwark with its distinctive oval shape, the British Library in Somers Town/Kings Cross, What was formerly the Millennium Dome, located by the Thames to the east of Canary Wharf, is now used as an entertainment venue known as The O 2 .
The development of tall buildings has been encouraged in the London Plan, which will lead to the erection of many new skyscrapers over the next decade, particularly in the City of London and Canary Wharf. The 72-storey, "Shard London Bridge" by London Bridge station, the Bishopsgate Tower and many other skyscrapers over are either proposed or approved and could transform the city's skyline. As of July 2008, there are 426 high-rise buildings (between 23 m to 150 m/75 ft to 491 ft) under construction, approved for construction, and proposed for construction in London.
A great many monuments pay homage to people and events in the city. The Monument in the City of London provides views of the surrounding area while commemorating the Great Fire of London, which originated nearby. Marble Arch and Wellington Arch, at the north and south ends of Park Lane respectively, have royal connections, as do the Albert Memorial and Royal Albert Hall in Kensington. Nelson's Column is a nationally recognised monument in Trafalgar Square, one of the focal points of the centre.
The largest parks in the central area of London are the Royal Parks of Hyde Park and its neighbour Kensington Gardens at the western edge of central London and Regent's Park on the northern edge. This park contains London Zoo, the world's oldest scientific zoo, and is located near the tourist attraction of Madame Tussauds Wax Museum. Closer to central London are the smaller Royal Parks of Green Park and St. James's Park. Hyde Park in particular is popular for sports and sometimes hosts open-air concerts.
A number of large parks lie outside the city centre, including the remaining Royal Parks of Greenwich Park to the south-east and Bushy Park and Richmond Park to the south-west, as well as Victoria Park, East London to the east. Primrose Hill to the north of Regent's Park is a popular spot to view the city skyline. Some more informal, semi-natural open spaces also exist, including the Hampstead Heath of North London. This incorporates Kenwood House, the former stately home and a popular location in the summer months where classical musical concerts are held by the lake, attracting thousands of people every weekend to enjoy the music, scenery and fireworks.
Traditionally the London accent has been given the famous Cockney label, and was similar to many accents of the South East of England, developing a unique form of slang known as Cockney Rhyming Slang. The accent of a 21st century Londoner varies widely; what is becoming more and more common amongst the under 30s however is some fusion of Cockney, Received Pronunciation, and a whole array of 'ethnic' accents, in particular Caribbean, which form an accent labelled Multicultural London English (MLE), with a large amount of slang in use as well.
Piccadilly Circus at night
The Trooping the Colour held in 2006 to mark the Queen's 80th birthday.
Within the City of Westminster, the entertainment district of the West End has its focus around Leicester Square, where London and world film premieres are held, and Piccadilly Circus, with its giant electronic advertisements. London's theatre district is here, as are many cinemas, bars, clubs and restaurants, including the city's Chinatown district, and just to the east is Covent Garden, an area housing speciality shops. The United Kingdom's Royal Ballet,English National Ballet, Royal Opera and English National Opera are based in London and perform at the Royal Opera House, The London Coliseum, Sadler's Wells Theatre and the Royal Albert Hall as well as touring the country. Islington's long Upper Street, extending Northwards from The Angel, has more bars and restaurants than any other street in the UK. Europe's busiest shopping area is Oxford Street, a shopping street nearly long â which makes it the longest shopping street in the world â and home to many shops and department stores including Selfridges. Knightsbridge â home to the Harrods department store â lies just to the southwest. London is home to designers Vivienne Westwood, Galliano, Stella McCartney, Manolo Blahnik, and Jimmy Choo among others; its renowned art and fashion schools make it an international centre of fashion alongside Paris, Milan and New York.
London offers a great variety of cuisine as a result of its ethnically diverse population. Gastronomic centres include the Bangladeshi restaurants of Brick Lane and the Chinese food restaurants of Chinatown.
There are a variety of regular annual events in the city. The beginning of the year is celebrated with the relatively new New Year's Day Parade, while traditional parades include November's Lord Mayor's Show, a centuries-old event celebrating the annual appointment of a new Lord Mayor of the City of London with a procession along the streets of the City, and June's Trooping the Colour, a formal military pageant performed by regiments of the Commonwealth and British armies to celebrate the Queen's Official Birthday.
Charles Dickens (1812â1870), whose works formed a pervasive image of Victorian London.
London has been the setting for many works of literature. Two writers closely associated with the city are the diarist Samuel Pepys, noted for his eyewitness account of the Great Fire, and Charles Dickens, whose representation of a foggy, snowy, grimy London of street sweepers and pickpockets has been a major influence on people's vision of early Victorian London. The earlier (1722) A Journal of the Plague Year by Daniel Defoe is a fictionalisation of the events of the 1665 Great Plague. William Shakespeare spent a large part of his life living and working in London; his contemporary Ben Jonson was also based in London, and some of his work â most notably his play The Alchemist â was set in the city. Later important depictions of London from the 19th and early 20th centuries are the afore-mentioned Dickens novels, and Arthur Conan Doyle's illustrious Sherlock Holmes stories. A modern writer pervasively influenced by the city is Peter Ackroyd, in works such as London: The Biography, The Lambs of London and Hawksmoor.
London has played a significant role in the film industry, and has major studios at Pinewood, Ealing, Shepperton, Elstree and Leavesden, as well as an important special effects and post-production community centred in Soho in central London. Working Title Films has its headquarters in London. The city also hosts a number of performing arts schools, including The Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA), the Central School of Speech and Drama (alumni: Judi Dench and Laurence Olivier) and the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art (alumni: Jim Broadbent). The London Film Festival is held each year in October.
London is home to many museums, galleries, and other institutions which are major tourist attractions as well as playing a research role. The Natural History Museum (biology and geology), Science Museum and Victoria and Albert Museum (fashion and design) are clustered in South Kensington's "museum quarter", while the British Museum houses historic artefacts from around the world. The British Library at St Pancras is the UK's national library, housing 150 million items. The city also houses extensive art collections, primarily in the National Gallery, Tate Britain and Tate Modern.
The Royal Albert Hall hosts a wide range of concerts and musical events.
London is one of the major classical and popular music capitals of the world and is home to major music corporations, such as EMI and Decca Records, as well as countless bands, musicians and industry professionals. London is home to many orchestras and concert halls such as the Barbican Arts Centre (principal base of the London Symphony Orchestra), Cadogan Hall (Royal Philharmonic Orchestra) and the Royal Albert Hall (BBC Promenade Concerts). London's two main opera houses are the Royal Opera House and the Coliseum Theatre.
Several conservatoires are located within the city: Royal Academy of Music, Royal College of Music, Guildhall School of Music and Drama, and Trinity College of Music.
London has numerous renowned venues for rock and pop concerts, including large arenas such as Earls Court, Wembley Arena and the O2 Arena, as well as numerous mid-size venues, such as Brixton Academy, Hammersmith Apollo and The London Astoria. London also hosts many music festivals, including the 02 Wireless Festival and Latitude Festival.
London is home to the first and original Hard Rock Cafe and the illustrious Abbey Road Studios where The Beatles created many of their hits. Musicians such as Bob Marley, Jimi Hendrix and Freddie Mercury have lived in London. A large number of musical artists originate from or are most strongly associated with London, including David Bowie, Ian Dury, The Kinks, Adam Faith, The Rolling Stones, The Who, Madness, The Jam, Blur, Iron Maiden, Phil Collins, Rod Stewart, Elvis Costello, Dusty Springfield, The Yardbirds and The Small Faces.
London was instrumental in the development of punk music, with figures such as the Sex Pistols, The Clash, and Vivienne Westwood all based in the city.
More recent artists to emerge from the London music scene include The Libertines, one of the most influential British rock acts of the 2000s, Bloc Party, Amy Winehouse, Lily Allen, The Kooks, Razorlight, Laura Marling, Dizzee Rascal, Natasha Bedingfield and Leona Lewis.
London is also a centre for Urban music. In particular the genres UK Garage, Drum and Bass and Grime evolved in the city from the foreign genres of hiphop and reggae, alongside local rave music. Black music station BBC 1Xtra was set up to support the rise of homegrown urban music both in London and the rest of the UK.
Wembley Stadium is home to English football and is the most expensive stadium in the world.
The Wimbledon Championships, a tennis Grand Slam tournament.
London has hosted the Summer Olympics twice, in 1908 and 1948. In July 2005 London was chosen to host the Games in 2012, which will make it the first city in the world to host the Summer Olympics three times. London was also the host of the British Empire Games in 1934.
London's most popular sport (for both participants and spectators) is football. London has thirteen League football clubs, including five in the Premier League: Arsenal, Chelsea, Fulham, Tottenham Hotspur and West Ham United. London also has four rugby union teams in the Guinness Premiership (London Irish, Saracens, Wasps and Harlequins), although only the Harlequins play in London (all the other three now play outside Greater London, although Saracens still play within the M25). There are two professional rugby league clubs in London - Harlequins Rugby League who play in the Super League at the Stoop and the National League 2 side the London Skolars (based in Haringey).
Since 1924, the original Wembley Stadium was the home of the English national football team, and served as the venue for the FA Cup final as well as rugby league's Challenge Cup final. The new Wembley Stadium serves exactly the same purposes and has a capacity of 90,000. Twickenham Stadium in west London is the national rugby union stadium, and has a capacity of 84,000 now that the new south stand has been completed.
Cricket in London centres on its two Test cricket grounds at Lord's (home of Middlesex C.C.C) in St John's Wood, and The Oval (home of Surrey C.C.C) in Kennington. One of London's best-known annual sports competitions is the Wimbledon Tennis Championships, held at the All England Club in the south-western suburb of Wimbledon. Other key events are the annual mass-participation London Marathon which sees some 35,000 runners attempt a course around the city, and the Oxford vs. Cambridge Boat Race on the River Thames between Putney and Mortlake.
Transport is one of the four areas of policy administered by the Mayor of London, however the mayor's financial control is limited and he does not control the heavy rail network, although in November 2007 he assumed responsibility for the North London Railway as well as several other lines, to form London Overground. The public transport network, administered by Transport for London (TfL), is one of the most extensive in the world, but faces congestion and reliability issues, which a large investment programme is attempting to address, including £7 billion (â¬10 billion) of improvements planned for the Olympics. London has been commended as the city with the best public transport. Cycling is an increasingly popular way to get around London. The London Cycling Campaign lobbies for better provision.
The London Underground is the oldest, longest, and most expansive metro system in the world, dating from 1863.
The centrepiece of the public transport network is the London Underground â commonly referred to as The Tube â which has eleven interconnecting lines. It is the oldest, longest, and most expansive metro system in the world, dating from 1863. The system was home to the world's first underground electric line, the City & South London Railway, which began service in 1890. Over three million journeys a day are made on the Underground network, nearly 1 billion journeys each year. The Underground serves the central area and most suburbs to the north of the Thames, while those to the south are served by an extensive suburban rail surface network.
The Docklands Light Railway is a second metro system using smaller and lighter trains, which opened in 1987, serving East London and Greenwich on both sides of the Thames. Commuter and intercity railways generally do not cross the city, instead running into fourteen terminal stations scattered around its historic centre; the exception is the Thameslink route operated by First Capital Connect, with terminus stations at Bedford, Brighton and Moorgate. Since the early 1990s, increasing pressures on the commuter rail and Underground networks have led to increasing demands â particularly from businesses and the City of London Corporation â for Crossrail: a £10 billion east â west heavy rail connection under central London, which was given the green light in early October 2007.
High-speed Eurostar trains link St Pancras International with Lille and Paris in France, and Brussels in Belgium. Journey times to Paris and Brussels of 2h 15 and 1h 51 respectively make London closer to continental Europe than the rest of Britain by virtue of the newly completed High Speed 1 rail link to the Channel Tunnel. From 2009 this line will also allow for high speed domestic travel from Kent into London. The redevelopment of St. Pancras was key to London's Olympic bid, as the station also serves two international airports through Thameslink, and will also provide direct rail links to the Olympic site at Stratford using British Rail Class 395 trains running under the Olympic Javelin name; these will be based on Japanese Shinkansen high-speed trains.
The modern Enviro400 double-decker bus
London's bus network is one of the largest in the world, running 24 hours a day, with 8,000 buses, 700 bus routes, and over 6 million passenger journeys made every weekday. In 2003, the network's ridership was estimated at over 1.5 billion passenger trips per annum, more than the Underground. Around £850 m is taken in revenue each year.
London has the largest wheelchair accessible network in the world and, from the 3rd quarter of 2007, became more accessible to hearing and visually impaired passengers as audio-visual announcements were introduced. The distinctive red double-decker buses are internationally recognised, and are a trademark of London transport along with black cabs and the Tube.
Terminal 5 at Heathrow Airport, which is the world's busiest airport by international passenger traffic.
London is a major international air transport hub with the largest city airspace in the world. Eight airports use the words London Airport in their name, but most traffic passes through one of five major airports. London Heathrow Airport is the busiest airport in the world for international traffic, and is the major hub of the nation's flag carrier, British Airways. In March 2008 its fifth terminal was opened, and plans are already being considered for a sixth terminal. Similar traffic, with the addition of some low-cost short-haul flights, is also handled at London Gatwick Airport. London Stansted Airport and London Luton Airport cater mostly for low-cost short-haul flights. London City Airport, the smallest and most central airport, is focused on business travellers, with a mixture of full service short-haul scheduled flights and considerable business jet traffic.
Although the majority of journeys involving central London are made by public transport, travel in outer London is car-dominated. The inner ring road (around the city centre), the North and South Circular roads (in the suburbs), and the outer orbital motorway (the M25, outside the built-up area) encircle the city and are intersected by a number of busy radial routes â but very few motorways penetrate into inner London. The M25 is the longest ring-road motorway in the world at long. A plan for a comprehensive network of motorways throughout the city (the Ringways Plan) was prepared in the 1960s but was mostly cancelled in the early 1970s. In 2003, a congestion charge was introduced to reduce traffic volumes in the city centre. With a few exceptions, motorists are required to pay £8 per day to drive within a defined zone encompassing much of congested central London. Motorists who are residents of the defined zone can buy a vastly reduced season pass which is renewed monthly and is cheaper than a corresponding bus fare.
Royal Holloway, as a part of the University of London, a federation of London higher education institutions
Home to a range of universities, colleges and schools, London has a student population of about 378,000 and is a centre of research and development. Most primary and secondary schools in London follow the same system as the rest of England â comprehensive schooling.
With 125,000 students, the University of London is the largest contact teaching university in the United Kingdom and in Europe. It comprises 20 colleges as well as several smaller institutes each with a high degree of autonomy. Constituent colleges have their own admissions procedures, and are effectively universities in their own right, although most degrees are awarded by the University of London rather than the individual colleges. Its constituents include multi-disciplinary colleges such as UCL, King's, Goldsmiths, Queen Mary and more specialised institutions such as the London School of Economics, SOAS, the Royal Academy of Music, the Courtauld Institute of Art and the Institute of Education.
Imperial College London and University College London have been ranked among the top ten universities in the world by The Times Higher Education Supplement: in 2008 Imperial was ranked the 6th best and UCL the 7th best university in the world.
In addition, the London School of Economics is the worldâs leading social science institution for teaching and research, plus has the most international student body of any university in the world today.
A number of colleges are dedicated to the fine arts, including the Royal College of Music, Royal College of Art, and Guildhall School of Music and Drama.
Senate House, the headquarters of the federal University of London
London's other universities, such as Brunel University, City University, London Metropolitan University, Middlesex University, University of East London, University of the Arts London, University of Westminster, Kingston University and London South Bank University are not part of the University of London but are still leaders in their field and popular choices among students both nationally and internationally. Some were polytechnics until these were granted university status in 1992, and others which were founded much earlier. Imperial College London left the federal University of London in 2007. Since the merger of University of North London and London Guildhall University in 2003, London Metropolitan University is the largest unitary university in the capital, with over 34,000 students from 155 countries. About London Met London Metropolitan University, August 2008 London is also known globally for its business education, with the London Business School (ranked 1st in Europe â Business Week) and Cass Business School (Europe's largest finance school) both being top world-rated business schools. In addition there are three international universities: Schiller International University, Richmond University and Regent's College.
There are 46 other places on six continents named after London. Jack Malvern. Richmond, in Surrey, is the most widely copied British place name worldwide, timesonline 2008-12-29. The original byline for the article in The Times of the same day was "The 55 corners of foreign fields that will be for ever ... Richmond" (page 9). Cites The Times Universal Atlas of the World. As well as London's twinning, the Boroughs of London have twinnings with parts of other cities across the world. Shown below is the list of cities that the Greater London Authority is twinned with.
* New York City,
* Moscow,
* Berlin,
The following cities have a friendship agreement with London:
* Sofia,
* Delhi,
* Mumbai,
* Beijing,
* Istanbul,
* Paris,
* Tehran,
* Tokyo,
* Bogotá,
* Podgorica,
* Algiers,
* Global city
* Geography of England
* Large Cities Climate Leadership Group
* Largest European cities and metropolitan areas
* London Assembly
* Megacity
*
*
*
*
* Mayor of London, London Assembly and the Greater London Authority â Official city government site
* Transport for London (TfL) â city transport authority
* BBC London
* Office for National Statistics: Focus on London 2007 â compendium of official statistics about London
* Museum of London Group Portal - Home
* VisitLondon.com â Official London site
* Map of Early Modern London â Historical Map and Encyclopaedia of Shakespeare's London (Scholarly)
* London Bridges â A view of London Bridges over the River Thames
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London | What had the Anglo-Saxons created by the 600s? | a new settlement called Lundenwic | data/set3/a1 | London
London ( ; ) is the capital of both England and the United Kingdom, and the largest urban area in the European Union. {{cite web|url= title=Largest EU City An important settlement for two millennia, London's history goes back to its founding by the Romans. Since its foundation, London has been part of many movements and phenomena throughout history, including the English Renaissance, the Industrial Revolution, and the Gothic Revival. The city's core, the ancient City of London, still retains its limited medieval boundaries; but since at least the 19th century, the name "London" has also referred to the whole metropolis that has developed around it. Today the bulk of this conurbation forms the London region of England and the Greater London administrative area, with its own elected mayor and assembly.
London is one of the the world's most important business, financial and cultural centres and its influence in politics, education, entertainment, media, fashion and the arts contribute to its status as a major global city. Global Cities: GaWC Inventory of World Cities 1999 Global cities#GaWC Inventory of World Cities (1999 Edition); Global Cities: GaWC Inventory of World Cities 2004 Global cities#GaWC Leading World Cities (2004 Edition) Central London is the headquarters of more than half of the UK's top 100 listed companies (the FTSE 100) and over 100 of Europe's 500 largest companies. The city is a major tourist destination both for domestic and overseas visitors, with annual expenditure by tourists of around £15 billion. London hosted the 1908 and 1948 Summer Olympic Games and will host the 2012 Summer Olympic Games.
Greater London contains four World Heritage Sites: the Tower of London; the historic settlement of Greenwich; the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew; and the site comprising the Palace of Westminster, Westminster Abbey and St. Margaret's Church.
London's population draws from a wide range of peoples, cultures, and religions, and over 300 languages are spoken within the city. As of 2006, it had an official population of 7,512,400 within the boundaries of Greater London and is the most populous municipality in the European Union. As of 2001, the Greater London Urban Area had a population of 8,278,251 and the metropolitan area is estimated to have a total population of between 12 and 14 million , the largest metropolitan area in the EU. The public transport network, administered by Transport for London, is one of the most extensive in the world, and Heathrow Airport is the busiest airport in the world by international passenger traffic and the air space is the busiest of any city in the world. International Passenger Traffic, Airports Council International
The etymology of London remains a mystery. The earliest etymological explanation can be attributed to Geoffrey of Monmouth in Historia Regum Britanniae. The name is described as originating from King Lud, who had allegedly taken over the city and named it Kaerlud. This was slurred into Kaerludein and finally London. Many other theories have been advanced over the centuries, most of them deriving the name from Welsh or British, and occasionally from Anglo-Saxon or even Hebrew.
Map of London in 1300, showing the medieval boundaries of the City of London
Although there is evidence of scattered Brythonic settlements in the area, the first major settlement was founded by the Romans in AD 43 as Londinium, following the Roman conquest of Britain. This Londinium lasted for just seventeen years. Around 61, the Iceni tribe led by Queen Boudica stormed this first London, burning it to the ground. The next, heavily planned incarnation of the city prospered and superseded Colchester as the capital of the Roman province of Britannia in 100. At its height in the 2nd century, Roman London had a population of around 60,000.
By the 600s, the Anglo-Saxons had created a new settlement called Lundenwic approximately upstream from the old Roman city,
around what is now Covent Garden. It is likely that there was a harbour at the mouth of the River Fleet for fishing and trading, and this trading grew until the city was overcome by the Vikings and forced to relocate the city back to the location of the Roman Londinium to use its walls for protection. Viking attacks continued to increase around the rest of South East England, until 886 when Alfred the Great recaptured London and made peace with the Danish leader, Guthrum. The original Saxon city of Lundenwic became Ealdwic ("old city"), a name surviving to the present day as Aldwych, which is in the modern City of Westminster.
In a retaliatory attack, Ethelred's army achieved victory by pulling down London Bridge with the Danish garrison on top, and English control was re-established. Canute took control of the English throne in 1017, controlling the city and country until 1042, when his death resulted in a reversion to Saxon control under his pious stepson Edward the Confessor, who re-founded Westminster Abbey and the adjacent Palace of Westminster. By this time, London had become the largest and most prosperous city in England, although the official seat of government was still at Winchester.
Following a victory at the Battle of Hastings, William the Conqueror, the then Duke of Normandy, was crowned King of England in the newly finished Westminster Abbey on Christmas Day 1066. William granted the citizens of London special privileges, while building what is now known as the Tower of London, in the south-east corner of the city, to keep them under control. .
The Great Exhibition
In 1097, William II began the building of Westminster Hall, close by the abbey of the same name. The hall became the basis of a new Palace of Westminster, the prime royal residence throughout the Middle Ages. Westminster became the seat of the royal court and government (persisting until the present day), while its distinct neighbour, the City of London, was a centre of trade and commerce and flourished under its own unique administration, the Corporation of London. London grew in wealth and population during the Middle Ages. In 1100 its population was around 18,000; by 1300 it had grown to nearly 100,000. King Edward I issued an edict in 1290, expelling all Jews from England. Before the edict, there was an increasing population of Jews, whereas after this time, the population of Jews began to drop considerably. Disaster struck during the Black Death in the mid-14th century, when London lost nearly a third of its population. Apart from the invasion of London during the Peasants' Revolt in 1381, London remained relatively untouched by the various civil wars during the Middle Ages, such as the first and second Barons' Wars and the Wars of the Roses.
After the successful defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588, political stability in England allowed London to grow further. In 1603, James VI of Scotland came to the throne of England, essentially uniting the two countries. His enactment of harsh anti-Catholic laws made him unpopular, and an assassination attempt was made on 5 November 1605âthe well-known Gunpowder Plot.
The Great Fire of London destroyed many parts of the city in 1666
Plague caused extensive problems for London in the early 17th century, culminating in the Great Plague in 1665â1666. This was the last major outbreak in England, possibly thanks to the disastrous fire of 1666. The Great Fire of London broke out in the original City and quickly swept through London's wooden buildings, destroying large swathes of the city. A first hand narrative of both plague and fire was provided by Sir Samuel Pepys. Rebuilding took over ten years, largely under direction of a Commission appointed by King Charles II and chaired by Sir Christopher Wren.
Following London's growth in the 18th century, it became the world's largest city from about 1831 to 1925. Rising traffic congestion on city centre roads led to the creation of the world's first metro system â the London Underground â in 1863, driving further expansion and urbanisation. London's local government system struggled to cope with the rapid growth, especially in providing the city with adequate infrastructure. Between 1855 and 1889, the Metropolitan Board of Works oversaw infrastructure expansion. It was then replaced by the County of London, overseen by the London County Council, London's first elected city-wide administration.
A London street hit during the Blitz of World War II
The Blitz and other bombing by the German Luftwaffe during World War II killed over 30,000 Londoners and destroyed large tracts of housing and other buildings across London. In 1965 London's political boundaries were expanded to take into account the growth of the urban area outside the County of London's borders. The expanded area was called Greater London and was administered by the Greater London Council. An eco revival from the 1980s onwards re-established London's position as a pre-eminent international centre. However, as the seat of government and the most important city in the UK, it has been subjected to bouts of terrorism. Provisional Irish Republican Army bombers sought to pressure the government into negotiations over Northern Ireland, frequently disrupting city activities with bomb threats â some of which were carried out â until their 1997 cease-fire. More recently, a series of coordinated bomb attacks were carried out by Islamic extremist suicide bombers on the public transport network on 7 July 2005âjust 24 hours after London was awarded the 2012 Summer Olympics.
City Hall at night, home of the Greater London Authority
The administration of London is formed of two tiers â a city-wide, strategic tier and a local tier. City-wide administration is coordinated by the Greater London Authority (GLA), while local administration is carried out by 33 smaller authorities. The GLA consists of two elected parts; the Mayor of London, who has executive powers, and the London Assembly, who scrutinise the Mayor's decisions and can accept or reject his budget proposals each year. The GLA was set up in 2000 to replace the similar Greater London Council (GLC) which had been abolished in 1986. The headquarters of the GLA and the Mayor of London is at City Hall; the Mayor is Boris Johnson. The 33 local authorities are the councils of the 32 London boroughs and the City of London Corporation. They are responsible for local services not overseen by the GLA, such as local planning, schools, social services, local roads and refuse collection.
London is the home of the Government of the United Kingdom which is located around the Houses of Parliament in Westminster. Many government departments are located close to Parliament, particularly along Whitehall, including the Prime Minister's residence at 10 Downing Street. The British Parliament is often referred to as the "Mother of Parliaments" (although this sobriquet was first applied to England itself by John Bright) because it has been the model for most other parliamentary systems, and its Acts have created many other parliaments. There are 74 Members of Parliament (MPs) from London, who correspond to local parliamentary constituencies in the national Parliament by . Of these 74 MPs, currently 44 are from the Labour Party, 21 are Conservatives, 8 are Liberal Democrats and one is from the RESPECT party.
West and central London seen from SPOT satellite
London can be geographically defined in a number of ways, although the situation was once even more ambiguous than it is now and open to periodic legal debate. At London's core is the small, ancient City of London which is commonly known as 'the City' or 'the Square Mile'. London's metropolitan area grew considerably during the Victorian era and again during the Interwar period, but expansion halted in the 1940s because of World War II and Green Belt legislation, and the area has been largely static since. The London region of England, also commonly known as Greater London, is the area administered by the Greater London Authority. The urban sprawl of the conurbation â or Greater London Urban Area â covers a roughly similar area, with a slightly larger population. Beyond this is the vast London commuter belt.
Map of Central LondonForty percent of Greater London is covered by the London postal district, within which 'LONDON' forms part of the postal address. The London telephone area code covers a larger area, similar in size to Greater London, although some outer districts are omitted and some places just outside are included. The area within the orbital M25 motorway is sometimes used to define the "London area" and the Greater London boundary has been aligned to it in places. Greater London is split for some purposes into Inner London and Outer London. Informally, the city is split into North, South, East, West and often also Central London.
The Metropolitan Police District, city-wide local government area and London transport area have varied over time, but broadly coincide with the Greater London boundary. The Romans may have marked the centre of Londinium with the London Stone, still visible on Cannon Street. The coordinates of the nominal centre of London (traditionally considered to be the original Eleanor Cross at Charing Cross, near the junction of Trafalgar Square and Whitehall) are approximately . Trafalgar Square has also become a point for celebrations and protests.
Within London, both the City of London and the City of Westminster have City status and both the City of London and the remainder of Greater London are the ceremonial counties. The current area of Greater London was historically part of the counties of Middlesex, Kent, Surrey, Essex and Hertfordshire. Unlike most capital cities, London's status as the capital of the UK has never been granted or confirmed officially â by statute or in written form. Its position as the capital has formed through constitutional convention, making its position as de facto capital a part of the UK's unwritten constitution. The capital of England was moved to London from Winchester as the Palace of Westminster developed in the 12th and 13th centuries to become the permanent location of the royal court, and thus the political capital of the nation. According to the Collins English Dictionary definition (1994) Collins English Dictionary. Collins Education plc. of 'the seat of government,' London is not the capital of England, as England does not have its own government. However according to the Oxford English Reference dictionary definition Oxford English Reference Dictionary. Oxford English. of 'the most important town...' and many other authorities, "HC 501 0304.PDF" (PDF). Parliament Publications. Retrieved on 2008-06-06. 'England' (1994) Collins English Dictionary. Collins Education plc. London is the capital of England.
Greater London covers an area of . Its primary geographical feature is the Thames, a navigable river which crosses the city from the south-west to the east. The Thames Valley is a floodplain surrounded by gently rolling hills including Parliament Hill, Addington Hills, and Primrose Hill. The Thames was once a much broader, shallower river with extensive marshlands; at high tide, its shores reached five times their present width. Since the Victorian era it has been extensively embanked, and many of its London tributaries now flow underground. The Thames is a tidal river, and London is vulnerable to flooding. The threat has increased over time due to a slow but continuous rise in high water level by the slow 'tilting' of Britain (up in the north and down in the south) caused by post-glacial rebound. In 1974, a decade of work began on the construction of the Thames Barrier across the Thames at Woolwich to deal with this threat. While the barrier is expected to function as designed until roughly 2030, concepts for its future enlargement or redesign are already being discussed.
London has a temperate marine climate, like much of the British Isles, so the city rarely sees extremely high or low temperatures. Summers are warm with average high temperatures of and lows of , however, temperatures could exceed on many days.
Winters in London are chilly, but rarely below freezing with daytime temperatures around 2 - 8 °C (36 - 46 °F), while spring has mild days and cool evenings.
London has regular but generally light precipitation throughout the year, with average precipitation of every year.
Snow is relatively uncommon, particularly because heat from the urban area can make London up to 5 °C (9 °F) hotter than the surrounding areas in winter. Snowfall, however, is usually, but not always, seen up to a few times a year. London is in USDA Hardiness zone 9, and AHS Heat Zone 2.
In the second half of the 19th century and the first half of the 20th, London was noted for its dense fogs and smogs. Following the deadly Great Smog of 1952, the Clean Air Act 1956 was passed, leading to the decline of such severe pollution in the capital.
London's vast urban area is often described using a set of district names (e.g. Bloomsbury, Knightsbridge, Mayfair, Whitechapel, Fitzrovia). These are either informal designations, or reflect the names of superseded villages, parishes and city wards. Such names have remained in use through tradition, each referring to a local area with its own distinctive character, but often with no modern official boundaries. However, since 1965 Greater London has been divided into 32 London boroughs in addition to the ancient City of London.
The City of London is one of the world's three largest financial centres (alongside New York and Tokyo) with a dominant role in several international financial markets, including cross-border bank lending, international bond issuance and trading, foreign-exchange trading, over-the-counter derivatives, fund management and foreign equities trading. It also has the world's largest insurance market, the leading exchange for dealing in non-precious metals, the largest spot gold and gold lending markets, the largest ship broking market, and more foreign banks and investment houses than any other centre. The City has its own governance and boundaries, giving it a status as the only completely autonomous local authority in London. London's new financial and commercial hub is the Docklands area to the east of the City, dominated by the Canary Wharf complex. Other businesses locate in the City of Westminster, the home of the UK's national government and the well-known Westminster Abbey.
The West End is London's main entertainment and shopping district, with locations such as Oxford Street, Leicester Square, Covent Garden and Piccadilly Circus acting as tourist magnets. The West London area is known for fashionable and expensive residential areas such as Notting Hill, Knightsbridge and Chelsea â where properties can sell for tens of millions of pounds. The average price for all properties in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea is £894,000 with similar average outlay in most of Central London.
The eastern region of London contains the East End and East London. The East End is the area closest to the original Port of London, known for its high immigrant population, as well as for being one of the poorest areas in London. The surrounding East London area saw much of London's early industrial development; now, brownfield sites throughout the area are being redeveloped as part of the Thames Gateway including the London Riverside and Lower Lea Valley, which is being developed into the Olympic Park for the 2012 Olympics.
With increasing industrialisation, London's population grew rapidly throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries, and it was the most populous city in the world until overtaken by New York in 1925. Its population peaked at 8,615,245 in 1939 immediately before the outbreak of World War 2. There were an estimated 7,512,400 official residents in Greater London as of mid-2006. However, London's continuous urban area extends beyond the borders of Greater London and was home to 8,278,251 people in 2001, while its wider metropolitan area has a population of between 12 and 14 million depending on the definition used. According to Eurostat, London is the most populous city and metropolitan area of the European Union and the second most populous in Europe (or third if Istanbul is included).
The region covers an area of . The population density is , more than ten times that of any other British region. In terms of population, London is the 25th largest city and the 17th largest metropolitan region in the world. It is also ranked 4th in the world in number of billionaires (United States Dollars) residing in the city. London ranks as one of the most expensive cities in the world, alongside Tokyo and Moscow.
According to 2008 estimates, 51% of these seven million and seven hundred thousand people people are classed as the indigenous White British, White Irish (2.5%) and "Other White" 10%, the majority of whom are other Europeans. 15% of people are of South Asian descent, including Indian (mainly Punjabi, Hindi, Tamil and Gujarati), Pakistani, Bangladeshi (Bengali) and "Other Asian" (mostly Sri Lankan (Tamil) and other Southern Asian ethnicities). 13% of people are Black (around 7% are Black African, 5% as Black Caribbean, 1% as "Other Black"). 5.5% are of mixed race; 1.5% are Chinese; and 1.5% of people belong to another ethnic group. 30% of inhabitants were born outside the European Union. The Irish born, from both the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland, number approximately 250,000 and are the largest group born outside of Britain.
In January 2005, a survey of London's ethnic and religious diversity claimed that there were more than 300 languages spoken and more than 50 non-indigenous communities which have a population of more than 10,000 in London. Figures from the Office for National Statistics show that, as of 2006, London's foreign-born population is 2,288,000 (31%), up from 1,630,000 in 1997. The 2001 census showed that 27.1% of Greater London's population were born outside the UK, and a slightly higher proportion were classed as non-white.
The table to the right shows the 'Country of Birth' of London residents in 2001, the date of the last UK Census. (Top 21). Note that a portion of the German-born population are likely to be British nationals born to parents serving in the British armed forces in Germany.
Westminster Abbey is one of London's oldest and most important buildings and a World Heritage Site.
The majority of Londoners - 58.2% - identify themselves as Christians. This is followed by those of no religion (15.8%), Muslims (8.5%), Hindus (4.1%), Jews (2.1%), Sikhs (1.5%), Buddhists (0.8%) and other (0.5%), though 8.7% of people did not answer this question in the 2001 Census.
London has traditionally been dominated by Christianity, and has a large number of churches, particularly in the City of London. The well-known St Paul's Cathedral in the City and Southwark Cathedral south of the river are Anglican administrative centres, while the Archbishop of Canterbury, principal bishop of the Church of England and worldwide Anglican Communion, has his main residence at Lambeth Palace in the London Borough of Lambeth.
Important national and royal ceremonies are shared between St Paul's and Westminster Abbey. The Abbey is not to be confused with nearby Westminster Cathedral, which is the largest Roman Catholic cathedral in England and Wales. Religious practice is lower in London than any other part of the UK or Western Europe and is around seven times lower than American averages. Despite the prevalence of Anglican churches, observance is very low within the Anglican denomination, although church attendance, particularly at evangelical Anglican churches in London, has started to increase.
The Swaminarayan Hindu Temple in Neasden
London is also home to sizeable Muslim, Hindu, Sikh, and Jewish communities. Many Muslims live in Tower Hamlets and Newham; the most important Muslim edifice is London Central Mosque on the edge of Regent's Park. London's large Hindu community is found in the north-western boroughs of Harrow and Brent, the latter of which is home to one of Europe's largest Hindu temples, Neasden Temple. Sikh communities are located in East and West London, which is also home to the largest Sikh temple in the world, outside India.
The majority of British Jews live in London, with significant Jewish communities in Stamford Hill, Stanmore, Golders Green, Hendon, and Edgware in North London. Stanmore and Canons Park Synagogue has the largest membership of any single Orthodox synagogue in the whole of Europe, overtaking Ilford synagogue (also in London) in 1998. The community set up the London Jewish Forum in 2007 in response to the growing significance of devolved London Government.
The City of London is the world's largest financial centre . It is home to the London Stock Exchange and Lloyds of London.
London is a major centre for international business and commerce and is one of three "command centres" for the world economy (along with New York City and Tokyo). According to 2005 estimates by the PricewaterhouseCoopers accounting firm, London has the 6th largest city economy in the world after Tokyo, New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Paris. London generates approximately 20% of the UK's GDP (or $446 billion in 2005); while the economy of the London metropolitan area â the second largest in Europe â generates approximately 30% of the UK's GDP (or an estimated $669 billion in 2005).
London's success as a service industry and business centre can be attributed to factors such as English being the native and dominant language of business, close relationship with the U.S. and various countries in Asia. Other factors include English law being the most important and most used contract law in international business and the multi-cultural infrastructure. Government policies such as low taxes, particularly for foreigners (non-UK domiciled residents do not get taxed on their foreign earnings), a business friendly environment, good transport infrastructure and a deregulated economy with little intervention by the government have all contributed to London's economy becoming more service based. Over 85% (3.2 million) of the employed population of Greater London works in service industries. Another half a million employees resident in Greater London work in manufacturing and construction, almost equally divided between both.
The three tallest skyscrapers as of 2008 in Canary Wharf as viewed from Cabot Square. It is home to such companies as HSBC and Clifford Chance.
London's largest industry remains finance, and its financial exports make it a large contributor to the UK's balance of payments. Over 300,000 people are employed in financial services in London. London has over 480 overseas banks, more than any other city in the world. Due to New York's tightening of market regulations, London stock exchanges had approximately 20% more initial public offerings in 2006.
London is home to banks, brokers, insurers and legal and accounting firms. A second, smaller financial district is developing at Canary Wharf to the east of the city which includes the global headquarters of HSBC, Reuters, Barclays and the Magic Circle, which includes Clifford Chance, the largest law firm in the world. London handled 31% of global currency transactions â an average daily turnover of US$753 billion â with more US dollars traded in London than New York, and more euros traded than in every other city in Europe combined.
More than half of the UK's top 100 listed companies (the FTSE 100) and over 100 of Europe's 500 largest companies are headquartered in central London. Over 70% of the FTSE 100 are located within London's metropolitan area, and 75% of Fortune 500 companies have offices in London. Along with professional services, media companies are concentrated in London (see Media in London) and the media distribution industry is London's second most competitive sector (after central banking, the most competitive sector). The BBC is a key employer, while other broadcasters also have headquarters around the city. Many national newspapers are edited in London, having traditionally been associated with Fleet Street in the city; they are now primarily based around Canary Wharf.
Due to its prominant global role, London is getting hit harder than any other financial centre in the subprime crisis. The City of London estimates that 70,000 jobs in finance will be cut within barely a year.
Several foreign banks have started to move off employees from London to their national financial centres, notably Dresdner Kleinwort, BNP Paribas and Santander.
Tourism is one of London's prime industries and employs the equivalent of 350,000 full-time workers in London in 2003, while annual expenditure by tourists is around £15 billion. " ", Visit London. Retrieved on 3 June 2006. A study carried out by Euromonitor in October 2007 places London at first place out of 150 of the world's most popular cities, attracting 15.6 million international tourists in 2006. This puts London far ahead of 2nd place Bangkok (10.35 million) and 3rd place Paris (just 9.7 million). London attracts 27 million overnight-stay visitors every year. " ", Visit London. Retrieved on 3 June 2006. The Port of London is currently the third-largest in the United Kingdom, handling 50 million tonnes of cargo each year.
London is too diverse to be characterised by any particular architectural style, having accumulated its buildings over a long period of time and drawn on a wide range of influences. It is, however, mainly brick built, most commonly the yellow London stock brick or a warm orange-red variety, often decorated with carvings and white plaster mouldings. Many grand houses and public buildings (such as the National Gallery) are constructed from Portland stone. Some areas of the city, particularly those just west of the centre, are characterised by white stucco or whitewashed buildings. Few structures pre-date the Great Fire of 1666, except for a few trace Roman remains, the Tower of London and a few scattered Tudor survivors in the City. The disused (but soon to be rejuvenated) 1939 Battersea Power Station by the river in the south-west is a local landmark, while some railway termini are excellent examples of Victorian architecture, most notably St Pancras and Paddington (at least internally).
The O 2 , one of the largest dome structures in the world.
The density of London varies, with high employment density in the central area, high residential densities in inner London and lower densities in the suburbs. In the dense areas, most of the concentration is achieved with medium- and high-rise buildings. London's skyscrapers such as the notable "Gherkin", Tower 42, the Broadgate Tower and One Canada Square are usually found in the two financial districts, the City of London and Canary Wharf. Other notable modern buildings include City Hall in Southwark with its distinctive oval shape, the British Library in Somers Town/Kings Cross, What was formerly the Millennium Dome, located by the Thames to the east of Canary Wharf, is now used as an entertainment venue known as The O 2 .
The development of tall buildings has been encouraged in the London Plan, which will lead to the erection of many new skyscrapers over the next decade, particularly in the City of London and Canary Wharf. The 72-storey, "Shard London Bridge" by London Bridge station, the Bishopsgate Tower and many other skyscrapers over are either proposed or approved and could transform the city's skyline. As of July 2008, there are 426 high-rise buildings (between 23 m to 150 m/75 ft to 491 ft) under construction, approved for construction, and proposed for construction in London.
A great many monuments pay homage to people and events in the city. The Monument in the City of London provides views of the surrounding area while commemorating the Great Fire of London, which originated nearby. Marble Arch and Wellington Arch, at the north and south ends of Park Lane respectively, have royal connections, as do the Albert Memorial and Royal Albert Hall in Kensington. Nelson's Column is a nationally recognised monument in Trafalgar Square, one of the focal points of the centre.
The largest parks in the central area of London are the Royal Parks of Hyde Park and its neighbour Kensington Gardens at the western edge of central London and Regent's Park on the northern edge. This park contains London Zoo, the world's oldest scientific zoo, and is located near the tourist attraction of Madame Tussauds Wax Museum. Closer to central London are the smaller Royal Parks of Green Park and St. James's Park. Hyde Park in particular is popular for sports and sometimes hosts open-air concerts.
A number of large parks lie outside the city centre, including the remaining Royal Parks of Greenwich Park to the south-east and Bushy Park and Richmond Park to the south-west, as well as Victoria Park, East London to the east. Primrose Hill to the north of Regent's Park is a popular spot to view the city skyline. Some more informal, semi-natural open spaces also exist, including the Hampstead Heath of North London. This incorporates Kenwood House, the former stately home and a popular location in the summer months where classical musical concerts are held by the lake, attracting thousands of people every weekend to enjoy the music, scenery and fireworks.
Traditionally the London accent has been given the famous Cockney label, and was similar to many accents of the South East of England, developing a unique form of slang known as Cockney Rhyming Slang. The accent of a 21st century Londoner varies widely; what is becoming more and more common amongst the under 30s however is some fusion of Cockney, Received Pronunciation, and a whole array of 'ethnic' accents, in particular Caribbean, which form an accent labelled Multicultural London English (MLE), with a large amount of slang in use as well.
Piccadilly Circus at night
The Trooping the Colour held in 2006 to mark the Queen's 80th birthday.
Within the City of Westminster, the entertainment district of the West End has its focus around Leicester Square, where London and world film premieres are held, and Piccadilly Circus, with its giant electronic advertisements. London's theatre district is here, as are many cinemas, bars, clubs and restaurants, including the city's Chinatown district, and just to the east is Covent Garden, an area housing speciality shops. The United Kingdom's Royal Ballet,English National Ballet, Royal Opera and English National Opera are based in London and perform at the Royal Opera House, The London Coliseum, Sadler's Wells Theatre and the Royal Albert Hall as well as touring the country. Islington's long Upper Street, extending Northwards from The Angel, has more bars and restaurants than any other street in the UK. Europe's busiest shopping area is Oxford Street, a shopping street nearly long â which makes it the longest shopping street in the world â and home to many shops and department stores including Selfridges. Knightsbridge â home to the Harrods department store â lies just to the southwest. London is home to designers Vivienne Westwood, Galliano, Stella McCartney, Manolo Blahnik, and Jimmy Choo among others; its renowned art and fashion schools make it an international centre of fashion alongside Paris, Milan and New York.
London offers a great variety of cuisine as a result of its ethnically diverse population. Gastronomic centres include the Bangladeshi restaurants of Brick Lane and the Chinese food restaurants of Chinatown.
There are a variety of regular annual events in the city. The beginning of the year is celebrated with the relatively new New Year's Day Parade, while traditional parades include November's Lord Mayor's Show, a centuries-old event celebrating the annual appointment of a new Lord Mayor of the City of London with a procession along the streets of the City, and June's Trooping the Colour, a formal military pageant performed by regiments of the Commonwealth and British armies to celebrate the Queen's Official Birthday.
Charles Dickens (1812â1870), whose works formed a pervasive image of Victorian London.
London has been the setting for many works of literature. Two writers closely associated with the city are the diarist Samuel Pepys, noted for his eyewitness account of the Great Fire, and Charles Dickens, whose representation of a foggy, snowy, grimy London of street sweepers and pickpockets has been a major influence on people's vision of early Victorian London. The earlier (1722) A Journal of the Plague Year by Daniel Defoe is a fictionalisation of the events of the 1665 Great Plague. William Shakespeare spent a large part of his life living and working in London; his contemporary Ben Jonson was also based in London, and some of his work â most notably his play The Alchemist â was set in the city. Later important depictions of London from the 19th and early 20th centuries are the afore-mentioned Dickens novels, and Arthur Conan Doyle's illustrious Sherlock Holmes stories. A modern writer pervasively influenced by the city is Peter Ackroyd, in works such as London: The Biography, The Lambs of London and Hawksmoor.
London has played a significant role in the film industry, and has major studios at Pinewood, Ealing, Shepperton, Elstree and Leavesden, as well as an important special effects and post-production community centred in Soho in central London. Working Title Films has its headquarters in London. The city also hosts a number of performing arts schools, including The Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA), the Central School of Speech and Drama (alumni: Judi Dench and Laurence Olivier) and the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art (alumni: Jim Broadbent). The London Film Festival is held each year in October.
London is home to many museums, galleries, and other institutions which are major tourist attractions as well as playing a research role. The Natural History Museum (biology and geology), Science Museum and Victoria and Albert Museum (fashion and design) are clustered in South Kensington's "museum quarter", while the British Museum houses historic artefacts from around the world. The British Library at St Pancras is the UK's national library, housing 150 million items. The city also houses extensive art collections, primarily in the National Gallery, Tate Britain and Tate Modern.
The Royal Albert Hall hosts a wide range of concerts and musical events.
London is one of the major classical and popular music capitals of the world and is home to major music corporations, such as EMI and Decca Records, as well as countless bands, musicians and industry professionals. London is home to many orchestras and concert halls such as the Barbican Arts Centre (principal base of the London Symphony Orchestra), Cadogan Hall (Royal Philharmonic Orchestra) and the Royal Albert Hall (BBC Promenade Concerts). London's two main opera houses are the Royal Opera House and the Coliseum Theatre.
Several conservatoires are located within the city: Royal Academy of Music, Royal College of Music, Guildhall School of Music and Drama, and Trinity College of Music.
London has numerous renowned venues for rock and pop concerts, including large arenas such as Earls Court, Wembley Arena and the O2 Arena, as well as numerous mid-size venues, such as Brixton Academy, Hammersmith Apollo and The London Astoria. London also hosts many music festivals, including the 02 Wireless Festival and Latitude Festival.
London is home to the first and original Hard Rock Cafe and the illustrious Abbey Road Studios where The Beatles created many of their hits. Musicians such as Bob Marley, Jimi Hendrix and Freddie Mercury have lived in London. A large number of musical artists originate from or are most strongly associated with London, including David Bowie, Ian Dury, The Kinks, Adam Faith, The Rolling Stones, The Who, Madness, The Jam, Blur, Iron Maiden, Phil Collins, Rod Stewart, Elvis Costello, Dusty Springfield, The Yardbirds and The Small Faces.
London was instrumental in the development of punk music, with figures such as the Sex Pistols, The Clash, and Vivienne Westwood all based in the city.
More recent artists to emerge from the London music scene include The Libertines, one of the most influential British rock acts of the 2000s, Bloc Party, Amy Winehouse, Lily Allen, The Kooks, Razorlight, Laura Marling, Dizzee Rascal, Natasha Bedingfield and Leona Lewis.
London is also a centre for Urban music. In particular the genres UK Garage, Drum and Bass and Grime evolved in the city from the foreign genres of hiphop and reggae, alongside local rave music. Black music station BBC 1Xtra was set up to support the rise of homegrown urban music both in London and the rest of the UK.
Wembley Stadium is home to English football and is the most expensive stadium in the world.
The Wimbledon Championships, a tennis Grand Slam tournament.
London has hosted the Summer Olympics twice, in 1908 and 1948. In July 2005 London was chosen to host the Games in 2012, which will make it the first city in the world to host the Summer Olympics three times. London was also the host of the British Empire Games in 1934.
London's most popular sport (for both participants and spectators) is football. London has thirteen League football clubs, including five in the Premier League: Arsenal, Chelsea, Fulham, Tottenham Hotspur and West Ham United. London also has four rugby union teams in the Guinness Premiership (London Irish, Saracens, Wasps and Harlequins), although only the Harlequins play in London (all the other three now play outside Greater London, although Saracens still play within the M25). There are two professional rugby league clubs in London - Harlequins Rugby League who play in the Super League at the Stoop and the National League 2 side the London Skolars (based in Haringey).
Since 1924, the original Wembley Stadium was the home of the English national football team, and served as the venue for the FA Cup final as well as rugby league's Challenge Cup final. The new Wembley Stadium serves exactly the same purposes and has a capacity of 90,000. Twickenham Stadium in west London is the national rugby union stadium, and has a capacity of 84,000 now that the new south stand has been completed.
Cricket in London centres on its two Test cricket grounds at Lord's (home of Middlesex C.C.C) in St John's Wood, and The Oval (home of Surrey C.C.C) in Kennington. One of London's best-known annual sports competitions is the Wimbledon Tennis Championships, held at the All England Club in the south-western suburb of Wimbledon. Other key events are the annual mass-participation London Marathon which sees some 35,000 runners attempt a course around the city, and the Oxford vs. Cambridge Boat Race on the River Thames between Putney and Mortlake.
Transport is one of the four areas of policy administered by the Mayor of London, however the mayor's financial control is limited and he does not control the heavy rail network, although in November 2007 he assumed responsibility for the North London Railway as well as several other lines, to form London Overground. The public transport network, administered by Transport for London (TfL), is one of the most extensive in the world, but faces congestion and reliability issues, which a large investment programme is attempting to address, including £7 billion (â¬10 billion) of improvements planned for the Olympics. London has been commended as the city with the best public transport. Cycling is an increasingly popular way to get around London. The London Cycling Campaign lobbies for better provision.
The London Underground is the oldest, longest, and most expansive metro system in the world, dating from 1863.
The centrepiece of the public transport network is the London Underground â commonly referred to as The Tube â which has eleven interconnecting lines. It is the oldest, longest, and most expansive metro system in the world, dating from 1863. The system was home to the world's first underground electric line, the City & South London Railway, which began service in 1890. Over three million journeys a day are made on the Underground network, nearly 1 billion journeys each year. The Underground serves the central area and most suburbs to the north of the Thames, while those to the south are served by an extensive suburban rail surface network.
The Docklands Light Railway is a second metro system using smaller and lighter trains, which opened in 1987, serving East London and Greenwich on both sides of the Thames. Commuter and intercity railways generally do not cross the city, instead running into fourteen terminal stations scattered around its historic centre; the exception is the Thameslink route operated by First Capital Connect, with terminus stations at Bedford, Brighton and Moorgate. Since the early 1990s, increasing pressures on the commuter rail and Underground networks have led to increasing demands â particularly from businesses and the City of London Corporation â for Crossrail: a £10 billion east â west heavy rail connection under central London, which was given the green light in early October 2007.
High-speed Eurostar trains link St Pancras International with Lille and Paris in France, and Brussels in Belgium. Journey times to Paris and Brussels of 2h 15 and 1h 51 respectively make London closer to continental Europe than the rest of Britain by virtue of the newly completed High Speed 1 rail link to the Channel Tunnel. From 2009 this line will also allow for high speed domestic travel from Kent into London. The redevelopment of St. Pancras was key to London's Olympic bid, as the station also serves two international airports through Thameslink, and will also provide direct rail links to the Olympic site at Stratford using British Rail Class 395 trains running under the Olympic Javelin name; these will be based on Japanese Shinkansen high-speed trains.
The modern Enviro400 double-decker bus
London's bus network is one of the largest in the world, running 24 hours a day, with 8,000 buses, 700 bus routes, and over 6 million passenger journeys made every weekday. In 2003, the network's ridership was estimated at over 1.5 billion passenger trips per annum, more than the Underground. Around £850 m is taken in revenue each year.
London has the largest wheelchair accessible network in the world and, from the 3rd quarter of 2007, became more accessible to hearing and visually impaired passengers as audio-visual announcements were introduced. The distinctive red double-decker buses are internationally recognised, and are a trademark of London transport along with black cabs and the Tube.
Terminal 5 at Heathrow Airport, which is the world's busiest airport by international passenger traffic.
London is a major international air transport hub with the largest city airspace in the world. Eight airports use the words London Airport in their name, but most traffic passes through one of five major airports. London Heathrow Airport is the busiest airport in the world for international traffic, and is the major hub of the nation's flag carrier, British Airways. In March 2008 its fifth terminal was opened, and plans are already being considered for a sixth terminal. Similar traffic, with the addition of some low-cost short-haul flights, is also handled at London Gatwick Airport. London Stansted Airport and London Luton Airport cater mostly for low-cost short-haul flights. London City Airport, the smallest and most central airport, is focused on business travellers, with a mixture of full service short-haul scheduled flights and considerable business jet traffic.
Although the majority of journeys involving central London are made by public transport, travel in outer London is car-dominated. The inner ring road (around the city centre), the North and South Circular roads (in the suburbs), and the outer orbital motorway (the M25, outside the built-up area) encircle the city and are intersected by a number of busy radial routes â but very few motorways penetrate into inner London. The M25 is the longest ring-road motorway in the world at long. A plan for a comprehensive network of motorways throughout the city (the Ringways Plan) was prepared in the 1960s but was mostly cancelled in the early 1970s. In 2003, a congestion charge was introduced to reduce traffic volumes in the city centre. With a few exceptions, motorists are required to pay £8 per day to drive within a defined zone encompassing much of congested central London. Motorists who are residents of the defined zone can buy a vastly reduced season pass which is renewed monthly and is cheaper than a corresponding bus fare.
Royal Holloway, as a part of the University of London, a federation of London higher education institutions
Home to a range of universities, colleges and schools, London has a student population of about 378,000 and is a centre of research and development. Most primary and secondary schools in London follow the same system as the rest of England â comprehensive schooling.
With 125,000 students, the University of London is the largest contact teaching university in the United Kingdom and in Europe. It comprises 20 colleges as well as several smaller institutes each with a high degree of autonomy. Constituent colleges have their own admissions procedures, and are effectively universities in their own right, although most degrees are awarded by the University of London rather than the individual colleges. Its constituents include multi-disciplinary colleges such as UCL, King's, Goldsmiths, Queen Mary and more specialised institutions such as the London School of Economics, SOAS, the Royal Academy of Music, the Courtauld Institute of Art and the Institute of Education.
Imperial College London and University College London have been ranked among the top ten universities in the world by The Times Higher Education Supplement: in 2008 Imperial was ranked the 6th best and UCL the 7th best university in the world.
In addition, the London School of Economics is the worldâs leading social science institution for teaching and research, plus has the most international student body of any university in the world today.
A number of colleges are dedicated to the fine arts, including the Royal College of Music, Royal College of Art, and Guildhall School of Music and Drama.
Senate House, the headquarters of the federal University of London
London's other universities, such as Brunel University, City University, London Metropolitan University, Middlesex University, University of East London, University of the Arts London, University of Westminster, Kingston University and London South Bank University are not part of the University of London but are still leaders in their field and popular choices among students both nationally and internationally. Some were polytechnics until these were granted university status in 1992, and others which were founded much earlier. Imperial College London left the federal University of London in 2007. Since the merger of University of North London and London Guildhall University in 2003, London Metropolitan University is the largest unitary university in the capital, with over 34,000 students from 155 countries. About London Met London Metropolitan University, August 2008 London is also known globally for its business education, with the London Business School (ranked 1st in Europe â Business Week) and Cass Business School (Europe's largest finance school) both being top world-rated business schools. In addition there are three international universities: Schiller International University, Richmond University and Regent's College.
There are 46 other places on six continents named after London. Jack Malvern. Richmond, in Surrey, is the most widely copied British place name worldwide, timesonline 2008-12-29. The original byline for the article in The Times of the same day was "The 55 corners of foreign fields that will be for ever ... Richmond" (page 9). Cites The Times Universal Atlas of the World. As well as London's twinning, the Boroughs of London have twinnings with parts of other cities across the world. Shown below is the list of cities that the Greater London Authority is twinned with.
* New York City,
* Moscow,
* Berlin,
The following cities have a friendship agreement with London:
* Sofia,
* Delhi,
* Mumbai,
* Beijing,
* Istanbul,
* Paris,
* Tehran,
* Tokyo,
* Bogotá,
* Podgorica,
* Algiers,
* Global city
* Geography of England
* Large Cities Climate Leadership Group
* Largest European cities and metropolitan areas
* London Assembly
* Megacity
*
*
*
*
* Mayor of London, London Assembly and the Greater London Authority â Official city government site
* Transport for London (TfL) â city transport authority
* BBC London
* Office for National Statistics: Focus on London 2007 â compendium of official statistics about London
* Museum of London Group Portal - Home
* VisitLondon.com â Official London site
* Map of Early Modern London â Historical Map and Encyclopaedia of Shakespeare's London (Scholarly)
* London Bridges â A view of London Bridges over the River Thames
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London | What city in the UK has been subjected to bouts of terrorism? | London has been subjected to bouts of terrorism. | data/set3/a1 | London
London ( ; ) is the capital of both England and the United Kingdom, and the largest urban area in the European Union. {{cite web|url= title=Largest EU City An important settlement for two millennia, London's history goes back to its founding by the Romans. Since its foundation, London has been part of many movements and phenomena throughout history, including the English Renaissance, the Industrial Revolution, and the Gothic Revival. The city's core, the ancient City of London, still retains its limited medieval boundaries; but since at least the 19th century, the name "London" has also referred to the whole metropolis that has developed around it. Today the bulk of this conurbation forms the London region of England and the Greater London administrative area, with its own elected mayor and assembly.
London is one of the the world's most important business, financial and cultural centres and its influence in politics, education, entertainment, media, fashion and the arts contribute to its status as a major global city. Global Cities: GaWC Inventory of World Cities 1999 Global cities#GaWC Inventory of World Cities (1999 Edition); Global Cities: GaWC Inventory of World Cities 2004 Global cities#GaWC Leading World Cities (2004 Edition) Central London is the headquarters of more than half of the UK's top 100 listed companies (the FTSE 100) and over 100 of Europe's 500 largest companies. The city is a major tourist destination both for domestic and overseas visitors, with annual expenditure by tourists of around £15 billion. London hosted the 1908 and 1948 Summer Olympic Games and will host the 2012 Summer Olympic Games.
Greater London contains four World Heritage Sites: the Tower of London; the historic settlement of Greenwich; the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew; and the site comprising the Palace of Westminster, Westminster Abbey and St. Margaret's Church.
London's population draws from a wide range of peoples, cultures, and religions, and over 300 languages are spoken within the city. As of 2006, it had an official population of 7,512,400 within the boundaries of Greater London and is the most populous municipality in the European Union. As of 2001, the Greater London Urban Area had a population of 8,278,251 and the metropolitan area is estimated to have a total population of between 12 and 14 million , the largest metropolitan area in the EU. The public transport network, administered by Transport for London, is one of the most extensive in the world, and Heathrow Airport is the busiest airport in the world by international passenger traffic and the air space is the busiest of any city in the world. International Passenger Traffic, Airports Council International
The etymology of London remains a mystery. The earliest etymological explanation can be attributed to Geoffrey of Monmouth in Historia Regum Britanniae. The name is described as originating from King Lud, who had allegedly taken over the city and named it Kaerlud. This was slurred into Kaerludein and finally London. Many other theories have been advanced over the centuries, most of them deriving the name from Welsh or British, and occasionally from Anglo-Saxon or even Hebrew.
Map of London in 1300, showing the medieval boundaries of the City of London
Although there is evidence of scattered Brythonic settlements in the area, the first major settlement was founded by the Romans in AD 43 as Londinium, following the Roman conquest of Britain. This Londinium lasted for just seventeen years. Around 61, the Iceni tribe led by Queen Boudica stormed this first London, burning it to the ground. The next, heavily planned incarnation of the city prospered and superseded Colchester as the capital of the Roman province of Britannia in 100. At its height in the 2nd century, Roman London had a population of around 60,000.
By the 600s, the Anglo-Saxons had created a new settlement called Lundenwic approximately upstream from the old Roman city,
around what is now Covent Garden. It is likely that there was a harbour at the mouth of the River Fleet for fishing and trading, and this trading grew until the city was overcome by the Vikings and forced to relocate the city back to the location of the Roman Londinium to use its walls for protection. Viking attacks continued to increase around the rest of South East England, until 886 when Alfred the Great recaptured London and made peace with the Danish leader, Guthrum. The original Saxon city of Lundenwic became Ealdwic ("old city"), a name surviving to the present day as Aldwych, which is in the modern City of Westminster.
In a retaliatory attack, Ethelred's army achieved victory by pulling down London Bridge with the Danish garrison on top, and English control was re-established. Canute took control of the English throne in 1017, controlling the city and country until 1042, when his death resulted in a reversion to Saxon control under his pious stepson Edward the Confessor, who re-founded Westminster Abbey and the adjacent Palace of Westminster. By this time, London had become the largest and most prosperous city in England, although the official seat of government was still at Winchester.
Following a victory at the Battle of Hastings, William the Conqueror, the then Duke of Normandy, was crowned King of England in the newly finished Westminster Abbey on Christmas Day 1066. William granted the citizens of London special privileges, while building what is now known as the Tower of London, in the south-east corner of the city, to keep them under control. .
The Great Exhibition
In 1097, William II began the building of Westminster Hall, close by the abbey of the same name. The hall became the basis of a new Palace of Westminster, the prime royal residence throughout the Middle Ages. Westminster became the seat of the royal court and government (persisting until the present day), while its distinct neighbour, the City of London, was a centre of trade and commerce and flourished under its own unique administration, the Corporation of London. London grew in wealth and population during the Middle Ages. In 1100 its population was around 18,000; by 1300 it had grown to nearly 100,000. King Edward I issued an edict in 1290, expelling all Jews from England. Before the edict, there was an increasing population of Jews, whereas after this time, the population of Jews began to drop considerably. Disaster struck during the Black Death in the mid-14th century, when London lost nearly a third of its population. Apart from the invasion of London during the Peasants' Revolt in 1381, London remained relatively untouched by the various civil wars during the Middle Ages, such as the first and second Barons' Wars and the Wars of the Roses.
After the successful defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588, political stability in England allowed London to grow further. In 1603, James VI of Scotland came to the throne of England, essentially uniting the two countries. His enactment of harsh anti-Catholic laws made him unpopular, and an assassination attempt was made on 5 November 1605âthe well-known Gunpowder Plot.
The Great Fire of London destroyed many parts of the city in 1666
Plague caused extensive problems for London in the early 17th century, culminating in the Great Plague in 1665â1666. This was the last major outbreak in England, possibly thanks to the disastrous fire of 1666. The Great Fire of London broke out in the original City and quickly swept through London's wooden buildings, destroying large swathes of the city. A first hand narrative of both plague and fire was provided by Sir Samuel Pepys. Rebuilding took over ten years, largely under direction of a Commission appointed by King Charles II and chaired by Sir Christopher Wren.
Following London's growth in the 18th century, it became the world's largest city from about 1831 to 1925. Rising traffic congestion on city centre roads led to the creation of the world's first metro system â the London Underground â in 1863, driving further expansion and urbanisation. London's local government system struggled to cope with the rapid growth, especially in providing the city with adequate infrastructure. Between 1855 and 1889, the Metropolitan Board of Works oversaw infrastructure expansion. It was then replaced by the County of London, overseen by the London County Council, London's first elected city-wide administration.
A London street hit during the Blitz of World War II
The Blitz and other bombing by the German Luftwaffe during World War II killed over 30,000 Londoners and destroyed large tracts of housing and other buildings across London. In 1965 London's political boundaries were expanded to take into account the growth of the urban area outside the County of London's borders. The expanded area was called Greater London and was administered by the Greater London Council. An eco revival from the 1980s onwards re-established London's position as a pre-eminent international centre. However, as the seat of government and the most important city in the UK, it has been subjected to bouts of terrorism. Provisional Irish Republican Army bombers sought to pressure the government into negotiations over Northern Ireland, frequently disrupting city activities with bomb threats â some of which were carried out â until their 1997 cease-fire. More recently, a series of coordinated bomb attacks were carried out by Islamic extremist suicide bombers on the public transport network on 7 July 2005âjust 24 hours after London was awarded the 2012 Summer Olympics.
City Hall at night, home of the Greater London Authority
The administration of London is formed of two tiers â a city-wide, strategic tier and a local tier. City-wide administration is coordinated by the Greater London Authority (GLA), while local administration is carried out by 33 smaller authorities. The GLA consists of two elected parts; the Mayor of London, who has executive powers, and the London Assembly, who scrutinise the Mayor's decisions and can accept or reject his budget proposals each year. The GLA was set up in 2000 to replace the similar Greater London Council (GLC) which had been abolished in 1986. The headquarters of the GLA and the Mayor of London is at City Hall; the Mayor is Boris Johnson. The 33 local authorities are the councils of the 32 London boroughs and the City of London Corporation. They are responsible for local services not overseen by the GLA, such as local planning, schools, social services, local roads and refuse collection.
London is the home of the Government of the United Kingdom which is located around the Houses of Parliament in Westminster. Many government departments are located close to Parliament, particularly along Whitehall, including the Prime Minister's residence at 10 Downing Street. The British Parliament is often referred to as the "Mother of Parliaments" (although this sobriquet was first applied to England itself by John Bright) because it has been the model for most other parliamentary systems, and its Acts have created many other parliaments. There are 74 Members of Parliament (MPs) from London, who correspond to local parliamentary constituencies in the national Parliament by . Of these 74 MPs, currently 44 are from the Labour Party, 21 are Conservatives, 8 are Liberal Democrats and one is from the RESPECT party.
West and central London seen from SPOT satellite
London can be geographically defined in a number of ways, although the situation was once even more ambiguous than it is now and open to periodic legal debate. At London's core is the small, ancient City of London which is commonly known as 'the City' or 'the Square Mile'. London's metropolitan area grew considerably during the Victorian era and again during the Interwar period, but expansion halted in the 1940s because of World War II and Green Belt legislation, and the area has been largely static since. The London region of England, also commonly known as Greater London, is the area administered by the Greater London Authority. The urban sprawl of the conurbation â or Greater London Urban Area â covers a roughly similar area, with a slightly larger population. Beyond this is the vast London commuter belt.
Map of Central LondonForty percent of Greater London is covered by the London postal district, within which 'LONDON' forms part of the postal address. The London telephone area code covers a larger area, similar in size to Greater London, although some outer districts are omitted and some places just outside are included. The area within the orbital M25 motorway is sometimes used to define the "London area" and the Greater London boundary has been aligned to it in places. Greater London is split for some purposes into Inner London and Outer London. Informally, the city is split into North, South, East, West and often also Central London.
The Metropolitan Police District, city-wide local government area and London transport area have varied over time, but broadly coincide with the Greater London boundary. The Romans may have marked the centre of Londinium with the London Stone, still visible on Cannon Street. The coordinates of the nominal centre of London (traditionally considered to be the original Eleanor Cross at Charing Cross, near the junction of Trafalgar Square and Whitehall) are approximately . Trafalgar Square has also become a point for celebrations and protests.
Within London, both the City of London and the City of Westminster have City status and both the City of London and the remainder of Greater London are the ceremonial counties. The current area of Greater London was historically part of the counties of Middlesex, Kent, Surrey, Essex and Hertfordshire. Unlike most capital cities, London's status as the capital of the UK has never been granted or confirmed officially â by statute or in written form. Its position as the capital has formed through constitutional convention, making its position as de facto capital a part of the UK's unwritten constitution. The capital of England was moved to London from Winchester as the Palace of Westminster developed in the 12th and 13th centuries to become the permanent location of the royal court, and thus the political capital of the nation. According to the Collins English Dictionary definition (1994) Collins English Dictionary. Collins Education plc. of 'the seat of government,' London is not the capital of England, as England does not have its own government. However according to the Oxford English Reference dictionary definition Oxford English Reference Dictionary. Oxford English. of 'the most important town...' and many other authorities, "HC 501 0304.PDF" (PDF). Parliament Publications. Retrieved on 2008-06-06. 'England' (1994) Collins English Dictionary. Collins Education plc. London is the capital of England.
Greater London covers an area of . Its primary geographical feature is the Thames, a navigable river which crosses the city from the south-west to the east. The Thames Valley is a floodplain surrounded by gently rolling hills including Parliament Hill, Addington Hills, and Primrose Hill. The Thames was once a much broader, shallower river with extensive marshlands; at high tide, its shores reached five times their present width. Since the Victorian era it has been extensively embanked, and many of its London tributaries now flow underground. The Thames is a tidal river, and London is vulnerable to flooding. The threat has increased over time due to a slow but continuous rise in high water level by the slow 'tilting' of Britain (up in the north and down in the south) caused by post-glacial rebound. In 1974, a decade of work began on the construction of the Thames Barrier across the Thames at Woolwich to deal with this threat. While the barrier is expected to function as designed until roughly 2030, concepts for its future enlargement or redesign are already being discussed.
London has a temperate marine climate, like much of the British Isles, so the city rarely sees extremely high or low temperatures. Summers are warm with average high temperatures of and lows of , however, temperatures could exceed on many days.
Winters in London are chilly, but rarely below freezing with daytime temperatures around 2 - 8 °C (36 - 46 °F), while spring has mild days and cool evenings.
London has regular but generally light precipitation throughout the year, with average precipitation of every year.
Snow is relatively uncommon, particularly because heat from the urban area can make London up to 5 °C (9 °F) hotter than the surrounding areas in winter. Snowfall, however, is usually, but not always, seen up to a few times a year. London is in USDA Hardiness zone 9, and AHS Heat Zone 2.
In the second half of the 19th century and the first half of the 20th, London was noted for its dense fogs and smogs. Following the deadly Great Smog of 1952, the Clean Air Act 1956 was passed, leading to the decline of such severe pollution in the capital.
London's vast urban area is often described using a set of district names (e.g. Bloomsbury, Knightsbridge, Mayfair, Whitechapel, Fitzrovia). These are either informal designations, or reflect the names of superseded villages, parishes and city wards. Such names have remained in use through tradition, each referring to a local area with its own distinctive character, but often with no modern official boundaries. However, since 1965 Greater London has been divided into 32 London boroughs in addition to the ancient City of London.
The City of London is one of the world's three largest financial centres (alongside New York and Tokyo) with a dominant role in several international financial markets, including cross-border bank lending, international bond issuance and trading, foreign-exchange trading, over-the-counter derivatives, fund management and foreign equities trading. It also has the world's largest insurance market, the leading exchange for dealing in non-precious metals, the largest spot gold and gold lending markets, the largest ship broking market, and more foreign banks and investment houses than any other centre. The City has its own governance and boundaries, giving it a status as the only completely autonomous local authority in London. London's new financial and commercial hub is the Docklands area to the east of the City, dominated by the Canary Wharf complex. Other businesses locate in the City of Westminster, the home of the UK's national government and the well-known Westminster Abbey.
The West End is London's main entertainment and shopping district, with locations such as Oxford Street, Leicester Square, Covent Garden and Piccadilly Circus acting as tourist magnets. The West London area is known for fashionable and expensive residential areas such as Notting Hill, Knightsbridge and Chelsea â where properties can sell for tens of millions of pounds. The average price for all properties in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea is £894,000 with similar average outlay in most of Central London.
The eastern region of London contains the East End and East London. The East End is the area closest to the original Port of London, known for its high immigrant population, as well as for being one of the poorest areas in London. The surrounding East London area saw much of London's early industrial development; now, brownfield sites throughout the area are being redeveloped as part of the Thames Gateway including the London Riverside and Lower Lea Valley, which is being developed into the Olympic Park for the 2012 Olympics.
With increasing industrialisation, London's population grew rapidly throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries, and it was the most populous city in the world until overtaken by New York in 1925. Its population peaked at 8,615,245 in 1939 immediately before the outbreak of World War 2. There were an estimated 7,512,400 official residents in Greater London as of mid-2006. However, London's continuous urban area extends beyond the borders of Greater London and was home to 8,278,251 people in 2001, while its wider metropolitan area has a population of between 12 and 14 million depending on the definition used. According to Eurostat, London is the most populous city and metropolitan area of the European Union and the second most populous in Europe (or third if Istanbul is included).
The region covers an area of . The population density is , more than ten times that of any other British region. In terms of population, London is the 25th largest city and the 17th largest metropolitan region in the world. It is also ranked 4th in the world in number of billionaires (United States Dollars) residing in the city. London ranks as one of the most expensive cities in the world, alongside Tokyo and Moscow.
According to 2008 estimates, 51% of these seven million and seven hundred thousand people people are classed as the indigenous White British, White Irish (2.5%) and "Other White" 10%, the majority of whom are other Europeans. 15% of people are of South Asian descent, including Indian (mainly Punjabi, Hindi, Tamil and Gujarati), Pakistani, Bangladeshi (Bengali) and "Other Asian" (mostly Sri Lankan (Tamil) and other Southern Asian ethnicities). 13% of people are Black (around 7% are Black African, 5% as Black Caribbean, 1% as "Other Black"). 5.5% are of mixed race; 1.5% are Chinese; and 1.5% of people belong to another ethnic group. 30% of inhabitants were born outside the European Union. The Irish born, from both the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland, number approximately 250,000 and are the largest group born outside of Britain.
In January 2005, a survey of London's ethnic and religious diversity claimed that there were more than 300 languages spoken and more than 50 non-indigenous communities which have a population of more than 10,000 in London. Figures from the Office for National Statistics show that, as of 2006, London's foreign-born population is 2,288,000 (31%), up from 1,630,000 in 1997. The 2001 census showed that 27.1% of Greater London's population were born outside the UK, and a slightly higher proportion were classed as non-white.
The table to the right shows the 'Country of Birth' of London residents in 2001, the date of the last UK Census. (Top 21). Note that a portion of the German-born population are likely to be British nationals born to parents serving in the British armed forces in Germany.
Westminster Abbey is one of London's oldest and most important buildings and a World Heritage Site.
The majority of Londoners - 58.2% - identify themselves as Christians. This is followed by those of no religion (15.8%), Muslims (8.5%), Hindus (4.1%), Jews (2.1%), Sikhs (1.5%), Buddhists (0.8%) and other (0.5%), though 8.7% of people did not answer this question in the 2001 Census.
London has traditionally been dominated by Christianity, and has a large number of churches, particularly in the City of London. The well-known St Paul's Cathedral in the City and Southwark Cathedral south of the river are Anglican administrative centres, while the Archbishop of Canterbury, principal bishop of the Church of England and worldwide Anglican Communion, has his main residence at Lambeth Palace in the London Borough of Lambeth.
Important national and royal ceremonies are shared between St Paul's and Westminster Abbey. The Abbey is not to be confused with nearby Westminster Cathedral, which is the largest Roman Catholic cathedral in England and Wales. Religious practice is lower in London than any other part of the UK or Western Europe and is around seven times lower than American averages. Despite the prevalence of Anglican churches, observance is very low within the Anglican denomination, although church attendance, particularly at evangelical Anglican churches in London, has started to increase.
The Swaminarayan Hindu Temple in Neasden
London is also home to sizeable Muslim, Hindu, Sikh, and Jewish communities. Many Muslims live in Tower Hamlets and Newham; the most important Muslim edifice is London Central Mosque on the edge of Regent's Park. London's large Hindu community is found in the north-western boroughs of Harrow and Brent, the latter of which is home to one of Europe's largest Hindu temples, Neasden Temple. Sikh communities are located in East and West London, which is also home to the largest Sikh temple in the world, outside India.
The majority of British Jews live in London, with significant Jewish communities in Stamford Hill, Stanmore, Golders Green, Hendon, and Edgware in North London. Stanmore and Canons Park Synagogue has the largest membership of any single Orthodox synagogue in the whole of Europe, overtaking Ilford synagogue (also in London) in 1998. The community set up the London Jewish Forum in 2007 in response to the growing significance of devolved London Government.
The City of London is the world's largest financial centre . It is home to the London Stock Exchange and Lloyds of London.
London is a major centre for international business and commerce and is one of three "command centres" for the world economy (along with New York City and Tokyo). According to 2005 estimates by the PricewaterhouseCoopers accounting firm, London has the 6th largest city economy in the world after Tokyo, New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Paris. London generates approximately 20% of the UK's GDP (or $446 billion in 2005); while the economy of the London metropolitan area â the second largest in Europe â generates approximately 30% of the UK's GDP (or an estimated $669 billion in 2005).
London's success as a service industry and business centre can be attributed to factors such as English being the native and dominant language of business, close relationship with the U.S. and various countries in Asia. Other factors include English law being the most important and most used contract law in international business and the multi-cultural infrastructure. Government policies such as low taxes, particularly for foreigners (non-UK domiciled residents do not get taxed on their foreign earnings), a business friendly environment, good transport infrastructure and a deregulated economy with little intervention by the government have all contributed to London's economy becoming more service based. Over 85% (3.2 million) of the employed population of Greater London works in service industries. Another half a million employees resident in Greater London work in manufacturing and construction, almost equally divided between both.
The three tallest skyscrapers as of 2008 in Canary Wharf as viewed from Cabot Square. It is home to such companies as HSBC and Clifford Chance.
London's largest industry remains finance, and its financial exports make it a large contributor to the UK's balance of payments. Over 300,000 people are employed in financial services in London. London has over 480 overseas banks, more than any other city in the world. Due to New York's tightening of market regulations, London stock exchanges had approximately 20% more initial public offerings in 2006.
London is home to banks, brokers, insurers and legal and accounting firms. A second, smaller financial district is developing at Canary Wharf to the east of the city which includes the global headquarters of HSBC, Reuters, Barclays and the Magic Circle, which includes Clifford Chance, the largest law firm in the world. London handled 31% of global currency transactions â an average daily turnover of US$753 billion â with more US dollars traded in London than New York, and more euros traded than in every other city in Europe combined.
More than half of the UK's top 100 listed companies (the FTSE 100) and over 100 of Europe's 500 largest companies are headquartered in central London. Over 70% of the FTSE 100 are located within London's metropolitan area, and 75% of Fortune 500 companies have offices in London. Along with professional services, media companies are concentrated in London (see Media in London) and the media distribution industry is London's second most competitive sector (after central banking, the most competitive sector). The BBC is a key employer, while other broadcasters also have headquarters around the city. Many national newspapers are edited in London, having traditionally been associated with Fleet Street in the city; they are now primarily based around Canary Wharf.
Due to its prominant global role, London is getting hit harder than any other financial centre in the subprime crisis. The City of London estimates that 70,000 jobs in finance will be cut within barely a year.
Several foreign banks have started to move off employees from London to their national financial centres, notably Dresdner Kleinwort, BNP Paribas and Santander.
Tourism is one of London's prime industries and employs the equivalent of 350,000 full-time workers in London in 2003, while annual expenditure by tourists is around £15 billion. " ", Visit London. Retrieved on 3 June 2006. A study carried out by Euromonitor in October 2007 places London at first place out of 150 of the world's most popular cities, attracting 15.6 million international tourists in 2006. This puts London far ahead of 2nd place Bangkok (10.35 million) and 3rd place Paris (just 9.7 million). London attracts 27 million overnight-stay visitors every year. " ", Visit London. Retrieved on 3 June 2006. The Port of London is currently the third-largest in the United Kingdom, handling 50 million tonnes of cargo each year.
London is too diverse to be characterised by any particular architectural style, having accumulated its buildings over a long period of time and drawn on a wide range of influences. It is, however, mainly brick built, most commonly the yellow London stock brick or a warm orange-red variety, often decorated with carvings and white plaster mouldings. Many grand houses and public buildings (such as the National Gallery) are constructed from Portland stone. Some areas of the city, particularly those just west of the centre, are characterised by white stucco or whitewashed buildings. Few structures pre-date the Great Fire of 1666, except for a few trace Roman remains, the Tower of London and a few scattered Tudor survivors in the City. The disused (but soon to be rejuvenated) 1939 Battersea Power Station by the river in the south-west is a local landmark, while some railway termini are excellent examples of Victorian architecture, most notably St Pancras and Paddington (at least internally).
The O 2 , one of the largest dome structures in the world.
The density of London varies, with high employment density in the central area, high residential densities in inner London and lower densities in the suburbs. In the dense areas, most of the concentration is achieved with medium- and high-rise buildings. London's skyscrapers such as the notable "Gherkin", Tower 42, the Broadgate Tower and One Canada Square are usually found in the two financial districts, the City of London and Canary Wharf. Other notable modern buildings include City Hall in Southwark with its distinctive oval shape, the British Library in Somers Town/Kings Cross, What was formerly the Millennium Dome, located by the Thames to the east of Canary Wharf, is now used as an entertainment venue known as The O 2 .
The development of tall buildings has been encouraged in the London Plan, which will lead to the erection of many new skyscrapers over the next decade, particularly in the City of London and Canary Wharf. The 72-storey, "Shard London Bridge" by London Bridge station, the Bishopsgate Tower and many other skyscrapers over are either proposed or approved and could transform the city's skyline. As of July 2008, there are 426 high-rise buildings (between 23 m to 150 m/75 ft to 491 ft) under construction, approved for construction, and proposed for construction in London.
A great many monuments pay homage to people and events in the city. The Monument in the City of London provides views of the surrounding area while commemorating the Great Fire of London, which originated nearby. Marble Arch and Wellington Arch, at the north and south ends of Park Lane respectively, have royal connections, as do the Albert Memorial and Royal Albert Hall in Kensington. Nelson's Column is a nationally recognised monument in Trafalgar Square, one of the focal points of the centre.
The largest parks in the central area of London are the Royal Parks of Hyde Park and its neighbour Kensington Gardens at the western edge of central London and Regent's Park on the northern edge. This park contains London Zoo, the world's oldest scientific zoo, and is located near the tourist attraction of Madame Tussauds Wax Museum. Closer to central London are the smaller Royal Parks of Green Park and St. James's Park. Hyde Park in particular is popular for sports and sometimes hosts open-air concerts.
A number of large parks lie outside the city centre, including the remaining Royal Parks of Greenwich Park to the south-east and Bushy Park and Richmond Park to the south-west, as well as Victoria Park, East London to the east. Primrose Hill to the north of Regent's Park is a popular spot to view the city skyline. Some more informal, semi-natural open spaces also exist, including the Hampstead Heath of North London. This incorporates Kenwood House, the former stately home and a popular location in the summer months where classical musical concerts are held by the lake, attracting thousands of people every weekend to enjoy the music, scenery and fireworks.
Traditionally the London accent has been given the famous Cockney label, and was similar to many accents of the South East of England, developing a unique form of slang known as Cockney Rhyming Slang. The accent of a 21st century Londoner varies widely; what is becoming more and more common amongst the under 30s however is some fusion of Cockney, Received Pronunciation, and a whole array of 'ethnic' accents, in particular Caribbean, which form an accent labelled Multicultural London English (MLE), with a large amount of slang in use as well.
Piccadilly Circus at night
The Trooping the Colour held in 2006 to mark the Queen's 80th birthday.
Within the City of Westminster, the entertainment district of the West End has its focus around Leicester Square, where London and world film premieres are held, and Piccadilly Circus, with its giant electronic advertisements. London's theatre district is here, as are many cinemas, bars, clubs and restaurants, including the city's Chinatown district, and just to the east is Covent Garden, an area housing speciality shops. The United Kingdom's Royal Ballet,English National Ballet, Royal Opera and English National Opera are based in London and perform at the Royal Opera House, The London Coliseum, Sadler's Wells Theatre and the Royal Albert Hall as well as touring the country. Islington's long Upper Street, extending Northwards from The Angel, has more bars and restaurants than any other street in the UK. Europe's busiest shopping area is Oxford Street, a shopping street nearly long â which makes it the longest shopping street in the world â and home to many shops and department stores including Selfridges. Knightsbridge â home to the Harrods department store â lies just to the southwest. London is home to designers Vivienne Westwood, Galliano, Stella McCartney, Manolo Blahnik, and Jimmy Choo among others; its renowned art and fashion schools make it an international centre of fashion alongside Paris, Milan and New York.
London offers a great variety of cuisine as a result of its ethnically diverse population. Gastronomic centres include the Bangladeshi restaurants of Brick Lane and the Chinese food restaurants of Chinatown.
There are a variety of regular annual events in the city. The beginning of the year is celebrated with the relatively new New Year's Day Parade, while traditional parades include November's Lord Mayor's Show, a centuries-old event celebrating the annual appointment of a new Lord Mayor of the City of London with a procession along the streets of the City, and June's Trooping the Colour, a formal military pageant performed by regiments of the Commonwealth and British armies to celebrate the Queen's Official Birthday.
Charles Dickens (1812â1870), whose works formed a pervasive image of Victorian London.
London has been the setting for many works of literature. Two writers closely associated with the city are the diarist Samuel Pepys, noted for his eyewitness account of the Great Fire, and Charles Dickens, whose representation of a foggy, snowy, grimy London of street sweepers and pickpockets has been a major influence on people's vision of early Victorian London. The earlier (1722) A Journal of the Plague Year by Daniel Defoe is a fictionalisation of the events of the 1665 Great Plague. William Shakespeare spent a large part of his life living and working in London; his contemporary Ben Jonson was also based in London, and some of his work â most notably his play The Alchemist â was set in the city. Later important depictions of London from the 19th and early 20th centuries are the afore-mentioned Dickens novels, and Arthur Conan Doyle's illustrious Sherlock Holmes stories. A modern writer pervasively influenced by the city is Peter Ackroyd, in works such as London: The Biography, The Lambs of London and Hawksmoor.
London has played a significant role in the film industry, and has major studios at Pinewood, Ealing, Shepperton, Elstree and Leavesden, as well as an important special effects and post-production community centred in Soho in central London. Working Title Films has its headquarters in London. The city also hosts a number of performing arts schools, including The Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA), the Central School of Speech and Drama (alumni: Judi Dench and Laurence Olivier) and the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art (alumni: Jim Broadbent). The London Film Festival is held each year in October.
London is home to many museums, galleries, and other institutions which are major tourist attractions as well as playing a research role. The Natural History Museum (biology and geology), Science Museum and Victoria and Albert Museum (fashion and design) are clustered in South Kensington's "museum quarter", while the British Museum houses historic artefacts from around the world. The British Library at St Pancras is the UK's national library, housing 150 million items. The city also houses extensive art collections, primarily in the National Gallery, Tate Britain and Tate Modern.
The Royal Albert Hall hosts a wide range of concerts and musical events.
London is one of the major classical and popular music capitals of the world and is home to major music corporations, such as EMI and Decca Records, as well as countless bands, musicians and industry professionals. London is home to many orchestras and concert halls such as the Barbican Arts Centre (principal base of the London Symphony Orchestra), Cadogan Hall (Royal Philharmonic Orchestra) and the Royal Albert Hall (BBC Promenade Concerts). London's two main opera houses are the Royal Opera House and the Coliseum Theatre.
Several conservatoires are located within the city: Royal Academy of Music, Royal College of Music, Guildhall School of Music and Drama, and Trinity College of Music.
London has numerous renowned venues for rock and pop concerts, including large arenas such as Earls Court, Wembley Arena and the O2 Arena, as well as numerous mid-size venues, such as Brixton Academy, Hammersmith Apollo and The London Astoria. London also hosts many music festivals, including the 02 Wireless Festival and Latitude Festival.
London is home to the first and original Hard Rock Cafe and the illustrious Abbey Road Studios where The Beatles created many of their hits. Musicians such as Bob Marley, Jimi Hendrix and Freddie Mercury have lived in London. A large number of musical artists originate from or are most strongly associated with London, including David Bowie, Ian Dury, The Kinks, Adam Faith, The Rolling Stones, The Who, Madness, The Jam, Blur, Iron Maiden, Phil Collins, Rod Stewart, Elvis Costello, Dusty Springfield, The Yardbirds and The Small Faces.
London was instrumental in the development of punk music, with figures such as the Sex Pistols, The Clash, and Vivienne Westwood all based in the city.
More recent artists to emerge from the London music scene include The Libertines, one of the most influential British rock acts of the 2000s, Bloc Party, Amy Winehouse, Lily Allen, The Kooks, Razorlight, Laura Marling, Dizzee Rascal, Natasha Bedingfield and Leona Lewis.
London is also a centre for Urban music. In particular the genres UK Garage, Drum and Bass and Grime evolved in the city from the foreign genres of hiphop and reggae, alongside local rave music. Black music station BBC 1Xtra was set up to support the rise of homegrown urban music both in London and the rest of the UK.
Wembley Stadium is home to English football and is the most expensive stadium in the world.
The Wimbledon Championships, a tennis Grand Slam tournament.
London has hosted the Summer Olympics twice, in 1908 and 1948. In July 2005 London was chosen to host the Games in 2012, which will make it the first city in the world to host the Summer Olympics three times. London was also the host of the British Empire Games in 1934.
London's most popular sport (for both participants and spectators) is football. London has thirteen League football clubs, including five in the Premier League: Arsenal, Chelsea, Fulham, Tottenham Hotspur and West Ham United. London also has four rugby union teams in the Guinness Premiership (London Irish, Saracens, Wasps and Harlequins), although only the Harlequins play in London (all the other three now play outside Greater London, although Saracens still play within the M25). There are two professional rugby league clubs in London - Harlequins Rugby League who play in the Super League at the Stoop and the National League 2 side the London Skolars (based in Haringey).
Since 1924, the original Wembley Stadium was the home of the English national football team, and served as the venue for the FA Cup final as well as rugby league's Challenge Cup final. The new Wembley Stadium serves exactly the same purposes and has a capacity of 90,000. Twickenham Stadium in west London is the national rugby union stadium, and has a capacity of 84,000 now that the new south stand has been completed.
Cricket in London centres on its two Test cricket grounds at Lord's (home of Middlesex C.C.C) in St John's Wood, and The Oval (home of Surrey C.C.C) in Kennington. One of London's best-known annual sports competitions is the Wimbledon Tennis Championships, held at the All England Club in the south-western suburb of Wimbledon. Other key events are the annual mass-participation London Marathon which sees some 35,000 runners attempt a course around the city, and the Oxford vs. Cambridge Boat Race on the River Thames between Putney and Mortlake.
Transport is one of the four areas of policy administered by the Mayor of London, however the mayor's financial control is limited and he does not control the heavy rail network, although in November 2007 he assumed responsibility for the North London Railway as well as several other lines, to form London Overground. The public transport network, administered by Transport for London (TfL), is one of the most extensive in the world, but faces congestion and reliability issues, which a large investment programme is attempting to address, including £7 billion (â¬10 billion) of improvements planned for the Olympics. London has been commended as the city with the best public transport. Cycling is an increasingly popular way to get around London. The London Cycling Campaign lobbies for better provision.
The London Underground is the oldest, longest, and most expansive metro system in the world, dating from 1863.
The centrepiece of the public transport network is the London Underground â commonly referred to as The Tube â which has eleven interconnecting lines. It is the oldest, longest, and most expansive metro system in the world, dating from 1863. The system was home to the world's first underground electric line, the City & South London Railway, which began service in 1890. Over three million journeys a day are made on the Underground network, nearly 1 billion journeys each year. The Underground serves the central area and most suburbs to the north of the Thames, while those to the south are served by an extensive suburban rail surface network.
The Docklands Light Railway is a second metro system using smaller and lighter trains, which opened in 1987, serving East London and Greenwich on both sides of the Thames. Commuter and intercity railways generally do not cross the city, instead running into fourteen terminal stations scattered around its historic centre; the exception is the Thameslink route operated by First Capital Connect, with terminus stations at Bedford, Brighton and Moorgate. Since the early 1990s, increasing pressures on the commuter rail and Underground networks have led to increasing demands â particularly from businesses and the City of London Corporation â for Crossrail: a £10 billion east â west heavy rail connection under central London, which was given the green light in early October 2007.
High-speed Eurostar trains link St Pancras International with Lille and Paris in France, and Brussels in Belgium. Journey times to Paris and Brussels of 2h 15 and 1h 51 respectively make London closer to continental Europe than the rest of Britain by virtue of the newly completed High Speed 1 rail link to the Channel Tunnel. From 2009 this line will also allow for high speed domestic travel from Kent into London. The redevelopment of St. Pancras was key to London's Olympic bid, as the station also serves two international airports through Thameslink, and will also provide direct rail links to the Olympic site at Stratford using British Rail Class 395 trains running under the Olympic Javelin name; these will be based on Japanese Shinkansen high-speed trains.
The modern Enviro400 double-decker bus
London's bus network is one of the largest in the world, running 24 hours a day, with 8,000 buses, 700 bus routes, and over 6 million passenger journeys made every weekday. In 2003, the network's ridership was estimated at over 1.5 billion passenger trips per annum, more than the Underground. Around £850 m is taken in revenue each year.
London has the largest wheelchair accessible network in the world and, from the 3rd quarter of 2007, became more accessible to hearing and visually impaired passengers as audio-visual announcements were introduced. The distinctive red double-decker buses are internationally recognised, and are a trademark of London transport along with black cabs and the Tube.
Terminal 5 at Heathrow Airport, which is the world's busiest airport by international passenger traffic.
London is a major international air transport hub with the largest city airspace in the world. Eight airports use the words London Airport in their name, but most traffic passes through one of five major airports. London Heathrow Airport is the busiest airport in the world for international traffic, and is the major hub of the nation's flag carrier, British Airways. In March 2008 its fifth terminal was opened, and plans are already being considered for a sixth terminal. Similar traffic, with the addition of some low-cost short-haul flights, is also handled at London Gatwick Airport. London Stansted Airport and London Luton Airport cater mostly for low-cost short-haul flights. London City Airport, the smallest and most central airport, is focused on business travellers, with a mixture of full service short-haul scheduled flights and considerable business jet traffic.
Although the majority of journeys involving central London are made by public transport, travel in outer London is car-dominated. The inner ring road (around the city centre), the North and South Circular roads (in the suburbs), and the outer orbital motorway (the M25, outside the built-up area) encircle the city and are intersected by a number of busy radial routes â but very few motorways penetrate into inner London. The M25 is the longest ring-road motorway in the world at long. A plan for a comprehensive network of motorways throughout the city (the Ringways Plan) was prepared in the 1960s but was mostly cancelled in the early 1970s. In 2003, a congestion charge was introduced to reduce traffic volumes in the city centre. With a few exceptions, motorists are required to pay £8 per day to drive within a defined zone encompassing much of congested central London. Motorists who are residents of the defined zone can buy a vastly reduced season pass which is renewed monthly and is cheaper than a corresponding bus fare.
Royal Holloway, as a part of the University of London, a federation of London higher education institutions
Home to a range of universities, colleges and schools, London has a student population of about 378,000 and is a centre of research and development. Most primary and secondary schools in London follow the same system as the rest of England â comprehensive schooling.
With 125,000 students, the University of London is the largest contact teaching university in the United Kingdom and in Europe. It comprises 20 colleges as well as several smaller institutes each with a high degree of autonomy. Constituent colleges have their own admissions procedures, and are effectively universities in their own right, although most degrees are awarded by the University of London rather than the individual colleges. Its constituents include multi-disciplinary colleges such as UCL, King's, Goldsmiths, Queen Mary and more specialised institutions such as the London School of Economics, SOAS, the Royal Academy of Music, the Courtauld Institute of Art and the Institute of Education.
Imperial College London and University College London have been ranked among the top ten universities in the world by The Times Higher Education Supplement: in 2008 Imperial was ranked the 6th best and UCL the 7th best university in the world.
In addition, the London School of Economics is the worldâs leading social science institution for teaching and research, plus has the most international student body of any university in the world today.
A number of colleges are dedicated to the fine arts, including the Royal College of Music, Royal College of Art, and Guildhall School of Music and Drama.
Senate House, the headquarters of the federal University of London
London's other universities, such as Brunel University, City University, London Metropolitan University, Middlesex University, University of East London, University of the Arts London, University of Westminster, Kingston University and London South Bank University are not part of the University of London but are still leaders in their field and popular choices among students both nationally and internationally. Some were polytechnics until these were granted university status in 1992, and others which were founded much earlier. Imperial College London left the federal University of London in 2007. Since the merger of University of North London and London Guildhall University in 2003, London Metropolitan University is the largest unitary university in the capital, with over 34,000 students from 155 countries. About London Met London Metropolitan University, August 2008 London is also known globally for its business education, with the London Business School (ranked 1st in Europe â Business Week) and Cass Business School (Europe's largest finance school) both being top world-rated business schools. In addition there are three international universities: Schiller International University, Richmond University and Regent's College.
There are 46 other places on six continents named after London. Jack Malvern. Richmond, in Surrey, is the most widely copied British place name worldwide, timesonline 2008-12-29. The original byline for the article in The Times of the same day was "The 55 corners of foreign fields that will be for ever ... Richmond" (page 9). Cites The Times Universal Atlas of the World. As well as London's twinning, the Boroughs of London have twinnings with parts of other cities across the world. Shown below is the list of cities that the Greater London Authority is twinned with.
* New York City,
* Moscow,
* Berlin,
The following cities have a friendship agreement with London:
* Sofia,
* Delhi,
* Mumbai,
* Beijing,
* Istanbul,
* Paris,
* Tehran,
* Tokyo,
* Bogotá,
* Podgorica,
* Algiers,
* Global city
* Geography of England
* Large Cities Climate Leadership Group
* Largest European cities and metropolitan areas
* London Assembly
* Megacity
*
*
*
*
* Mayor of London, London Assembly and the Greater London Authority â Official city government site
* Transport for London (TfL) â city transport authority
* BBC London
* Office for National Statistics: Focus on London 2007 â compendium of official statistics about London
* Museum of London Group Portal - Home
* VisitLondon.com â Official London site
* Map of Early Modern London â Historical Map and Encyclopaedia of Shakespeare's London (Scholarly)
* London Bridges â A view of London Bridges over the River Thames
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London | What city in the UK has been subjected to bouts of terrorism? | London | data/set3/a1 | London
London ( ; ) is the capital of both England and the United Kingdom, and the largest urban area in the European Union. {{cite web|url= title=Largest EU City An important settlement for two millennia, London's history goes back to its founding by the Romans. Since its foundation, London has been part of many movements and phenomena throughout history, including the English Renaissance, the Industrial Revolution, and the Gothic Revival. The city's core, the ancient City of London, still retains its limited medieval boundaries; but since at least the 19th century, the name "London" has also referred to the whole metropolis that has developed around it. Today the bulk of this conurbation forms the London region of England and the Greater London administrative area, with its own elected mayor and assembly.
London is one of the the world's most important business, financial and cultural centres and its influence in politics, education, entertainment, media, fashion and the arts contribute to its status as a major global city. Global Cities: GaWC Inventory of World Cities 1999 Global cities#GaWC Inventory of World Cities (1999 Edition); Global Cities: GaWC Inventory of World Cities 2004 Global cities#GaWC Leading World Cities (2004 Edition) Central London is the headquarters of more than half of the UK's top 100 listed companies (the FTSE 100) and over 100 of Europe's 500 largest companies. The city is a major tourist destination both for domestic and overseas visitors, with annual expenditure by tourists of around £15 billion. London hosted the 1908 and 1948 Summer Olympic Games and will host the 2012 Summer Olympic Games.
Greater London contains four World Heritage Sites: the Tower of London; the historic settlement of Greenwich; the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew; and the site comprising the Palace of Westminster, Westminster Abbey and St. Margaret's Church.
London's population draws from a wide range of peoples, cultures, and religions, and over 300 languages are spoken within the city. As of 2006, it had an official population of 7,512,400 within the boundaries of Greater London and is the most populous municipality in the European Union. As of 2001, the Greater London Urban Area had a population of 8,278,251 and the metropolitan area is estimated to have a total population of between 12 and 14 million , the largest metropolitan area in the EU. The public transport network, administered by Transport for London, is one of the most extensive in the world, and Heathrow Airport is the busiest airport in the world by international passenger traffic and the air space is the busiest of any city in the world. International Passenger Traffic, Airports Council International
The etymology of London remains a mystery. The earliest etymological explanation can be attributed to Geoffrey of Monmouth in Historia Regum Britanniae. The name is described as originating from King Lud, who had allegedly taken over the city and named it Kaerlud. This was slurred into Kaerludein and finally London. Many other theories have been advanced over the centuries, most of them deriving the name from Welsh or British, and occasionally from Anglo-Saxon or even Hebrew.
Map of London in 1300, showing the medieval boundaries of the City of London
Although there is evidence of scattered Brythonic settlements in the area, the first major settlement was founded by the Romans in AD 43 as Londinium, following the Roman conquest of Britain. This Londinium lasted for just seventeen years. Around 61, the Iceni tribe led by Queen Boudica stormed this first London, burning it to the ground. The next, heavily planned incarnation of the city prospered and superseded Colchester as the capital of the Roman province of Britannia in 100. At its height in the 2nd century, Roman London had a population of around 60,000.
By the 600s, the Anglo-Saxons had created a new settlement called Lundenwic approximately upstream from the old Roman city,
around what is now Covent Garden. It is likely that there was a harbour at the mouth of the River Fleet for fishing and trading, and this trading grew until the city was overcome by the Vikings and forced to relocate the city back to the location of the Roman Londinium to use its walls for protection. Viking attacks continued to increase around the rest of South East England, until 886 when Alfred the Great recaptured London and made peace with the Danish leader, Guthrum. The original Saxon city of Lundenwic became Ealdwic ("old city"), a name surviving to the present day as Aldwych, which is in the modern City of Westminster.
In a retaliatory attack, Ethelred's army achieved victory by pulling down London Bridge with the Danish garrison on top, and English control was re-established. Canute took control of the English throne in 1017, controlling the city and country until 1042, when his death resulted in a reversion to Saxon control under his pious stepson Edward the Confessor, who re-founded Westminster Abbey and the adjacent Palace of Westminster. By this time, London had become the largest and most prosperous city in England, although the official seat of government was still at Winchester.
Following a victory at the Battle of Hastings, William the Conqueror, the then Duke of Normandy, was crowned King of England in the newly finished Westminster Abbey on Christmas Day 1066. William granted the citizens of London special privileges, while building what is now known as the Tower of London, in the south-east corner of the city, to keep them under control. .
The Great Exhibition
In 1097, William II began the building of Westminster Hall, close by the abbey of the same name. The hall became the basis of a new Palace of Westminster, the prime royal residence throughout the Middle Ages. Westminster became the seat of the royal court and government (persisting until the present day), while its distinct neighbour, the City of London, was a centre of trade and commerce and flourished under its own unique administration, the Corporation of London. London grew in wealth and population during the Middle Ages. In 1100 its population was around 18,000; by 1300 it had grown to nearly 100,000. King Edward I issued an edict in 1290, expelling all Jews from England. Before the edict, there was an increasing population of Jews, whereas after this time, the population of Jews began to drop considerably. Disaster struck during the Black Death in the mid-14th century, when London lost nearly a third of its population. Apart from the invasion of London during the Peasants' Revolt in 1381, London remained relatively untouched by the various civil wars during the Middle Ages, such as the first and second Barons' Wars and the Wars of the Roses.
After the successful defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588, political stability in England allowed London to grow further. In 1603, James VI of Scotland came to the throne of England, essentially uniting the two countries. His enactment of harsh anti-Catholic laws made him unpopular, and an assassination attempt was made on 5 November 1605âthe well-known Gunpowder Plot.
The Great Fire of London destroyed many parts of the city in 1666
Plague caused extensive problems for London in the early 17th century, culminating in the Great Plague in 1665â1666. This was the last major outbreak in England, possibly thanks to the disastrous fire of 1666. The Great Fire of London broke out in the original City and quickly swept through London's wooden buildings, destroying large swathes of the city. A first hand narrative of both plague and fire was provided by Sir Samuel Pepys. Rebuilding took over ten years, largely under direction of a Commission appointed by King Charles II and chaired by Sir Christopher Wren.
Following London's growth in the 18th century, it became the world's largest city from about 1831 to 1925. Rising traffic congestion on city centre roads led to the creation of the world's first metro system â the London Underground â in 1863, driving further expansion and urbanisation. London's local government system struggled to cope with the rapid growth, especially in providing the city with adequate infrastructure. Between 1855 and 1889, the Metropolitan Board of Works oversaw infrastructure expansion. It was then replaced by the County of London, overseen by the London County Council, London's first elected city-wide administration.
A London street hit during the Blitz of World War II
The Blitz and other bombing by the German Luftwaffe during World War II killed over 30,000 Londoners and destroyed large tracts of housing and other buildings across London. In 1965 London's political boundaries were expanded to take into account the growth of the urban area outside the County of London's borders. The expanded area was called Greater London and was administered by the Greater London Council. An eco revival from the 1980s onwards re-established London's position as a pre-eminent international centre. However, as the seat of government and the most important city in the UK, it has been subjected to bouts of terrorism. Provisional Irish Republican Army bombers sought to pressure the government into negotiations over Northern Ireland, frequently disrupting city activities with bomb threats â some of which were carried out â until their 1997 cease-fire. More recently, a series of coordinated bomb attacks were carried out by Islamic extremist suicide bombers on the public transport network on 7 July 2005âjust 24 hours after London was awarded the 2012 Summer Olympics.
City Hall at night, home of the Greater London Authority
The administration of London is formed of two tiers â a city-wide, strategic tier and a local tier. City-wide administration is coordinated by the Greater London Authority (GLA), while local administration is carried out by 33 smaller authorities. The GLA consists of two elected parts; the Mayor of London, who has executive powers, and the London Assembly, who scrutinise the Mayor's decisions and can accept or reject his budget proposals each year. The GLA was set up in 2000 to replace the similar Greater London Council (GLC) which had been abolished in 1986. The headquarters of the GLA and the Mayor of London is at City Hall; the Mayor is Boris Johnson. The 33 local authorities are the councils of the 32 London boroughs and the City of London Corporation. They are responsible for local services not overseen by the GLA, such as local planning, schools, social services, local roads and refuse collection.
London is the home of the Government of the United Kingdom which is located around the Houses of Parliament in Westminster. Many government departments are located close to Parliament, particularly along Whitehall, including the Prime Minister's residence at 10 Downing Street. The British Parliament is often referred to as the "Mother of Parliaments" (although this sobriquet was first applied to England itself by John Bright) because it has been the model for most other parliamentary systems, and its Acts have created many other parliaments. There are 74 Members of Parliament (MPs) from London, who correspond to local parliamentary constituencies in the national Parliament by . Of these 74 MPs, currently 44 are from the Labour Party, 21 are Conservatives, 8 are Liberal Democrats and one is from the RESPECT party.
West and central London seen from SPOT satellite
London can be geographically defined in a number of ways, although the situation was once even more ambiguous than it is now and open to periodic legal debate. At London's core is the small, ancient City of London which is commonly known as 'the City' or 'the Square Mile'. London's metropolitan area grew considerably during the Victorian era and again during the Interwar period, but expansion halted in the 1940s because of World War II and Green Belt legislation, and the area has been largely static since. The London region of England, also commonly known as Greater London, is the area administered by the Greater London Authority. The urban sprawl of the conurbation â or Greater London Urban Area â covers a roughly similar area, with a slightly larger population. Beyond this is the vast London commuter belt.
Map of Central LondonForty percent of Greater London is covered by the London postal district, within which 'LONDON' forms part of the postal address. The London telephone area code covers a larger area, similar in size to Greater London, although some outer districts are omitted and some places just outside are included. The area within the orbital M25 motorway is sometimes used to define the "London area" and the Greater London boundary has been aligned to it in places. Greater London is split for some purposes into Inner London and Outer London. Informally, the city is split into North, South, East, West and often also Central London.
The Metropolitan Police District, city-wide local government area and London transport area have varied over time, but broadly coincide with the Greater London boundary. The Romans may have marked the centre of Londinium with the London Stone, still visible on Cannon Street. The coordinates of the nominal centre of London (traditionally considered to be the original Eleanor Cross at Charing Cross, near the junction of Trafalgar Square and Whitehall) are approximately . Trafalgar Square has also become a point for celebrations and protests.
Within London, both the City of London and the City of Westminster have City status and both the City of London and the remainder of Greater London are the ceremonial counties. The current area of Greater London was historically part of the counties of Middlesex, Kent, Surrey, Essex and Hertfordshire. Unlike most capital cities, London's status as the capital of the UK has never been granted or confirmed officially â by statute or in written form. Its position as the capital has formed through constitutional convention, making its position as de facto capital a part of the UK's unwritten constitution. The capital of England was moved to London from Winchester as the Palace of Westminster developed in the 12th and 13th centuries to become the permanent location of the royal court, and thus the political capital of the nation. According to the Collins English Dictionary definition (1994) Collins English Dictionary. Collins Education plc. of 'the seat of government,' London is not the capital of England, as England does not have its own government. However according to the Oxford English Reference dictionary definition Oxford English Reference Dictionary. Oxford English. of 'the most important town...' and many other authorities, "HC 501 0304.PDF" (PDF). Parliament Publications. Retrieved on 2008-06-06. 'England' (1994) Collins English Dictionary. Collins Education plc. London is the capital of England.
Greater London covers an area of . Its primary geographical feature is the Thames, a navigable river which crosses the city from the south-west to the east. The Thames Valley is a floodplain surrounded by gently rolling hills including Parliament Hill, Addington Hills, and Primrose Hill. The Thames was once a much broader, shallower river with extensive marshlands; at high tide, its shores reached five times their present width. Since the Victorian era it has been extensively embanked, and many of its London tributaries now flow underground. The Thames is a tidal river, and London is vulnerable to flooding. The threat has increased over time due to a slow but continuous rise in high water level by the slow 'tilting' of Britain (up in the north and down in the south) caused by post-glacial rebound. In 1974, a decade of work began on the construction of the Thames Barrier across the Thames at Woolwich to deal with this threat. While the barrier is expected to function as designed until roughly 2030, concepts for its future enlargement or redesign are already being discussed.
London has a temperate marine climate, like much of the British Isles, so the city rarely sees extremely high or low temperatures. Summers are warm with average high temperatures of and lows of , however, temperatures could exceed on many days.
Winters in London are chilly, but rarely below freezing with daytime temperatures around 2 - 8 °C (36 - 46 °F), while spring has mild days and cool evenings.
London has regular but generally light precipitation throughout the year, with average precipitation of every year.
Snow is relatively uncommon, particularly because heat from the urban area can make London up to 5 °C (9 °F) hotter than the surrounding areas in winter. Snowfall, however, is usually, but not always, seen up to a few times a year. London is in USDA Hardiness zone 9, and AHS Heat Zone 2.
In the second half of the 19th century and the first half of the 20th, London was noted for its dense fogs and smogs. Following the deadly Great Smog of 1952, the Clean Air Act 1956 was passed, leading to the decline of such severe pollution in the capital.
London's vast urban area is often described using a set of district names (e.g. Bloomsbury, Knightsbridge, Mayfair, Whitechapel, Fitzrovia). These are either informal designations, or reflect the names of superseded villages, parishes and city wards. Such names have remained in use through tradition, each referring to a local area with its own distinctive character, but often with no modern official boundaries. However, since 1965 Greater London has been divided into 32 London boroughs in addition to the ancient City of London.
The City of London is one of the world's three largest financial centres (alongside New York and Tokyo) with a dominant role in several international financial markets, including cross-border bank lending, international bond issuance and trading, foreign-exchange trading, over-the-counter derivatives, fund management and foreign equities trading. It also has the world's largest insurance market, the leading exchange for dealing in non-precious metals, the largest spot gold and gold lending markets, the largest ship broking market, and more foreign banks and investment houses than any other centre. The City has its own governance and boundaries, giving it a status as the only completely autonomous local authority in London. London's new financial and commercial hub is the Docklands area to the east of the City, dominated by the Canary Wharf complex. Other businesses locate in the City of Westminster, the home of the UK's national government and the well-known Westminster Abbey.
The West End is London's main entertainment and shopping district, with locations such as Oxford Street, Leicester Square, Covent Garden and Piccadilly Circus acting as tourist magnets. The West London area is known for fashionable and expensive residential areas such as Notting Hill, Knightsbridge and Chelsea â where properties can sell for tens of millions of pounds. The average price for all properties in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea is £894,000 with similar average outlay in most of Central London.
The eastern region of London contains the East End and East London. The East End is the area closest to the original Port of London, known for its high immigrant population, as well as for being one of the poorest areas in London. The surrounding East London area saw much of London's early industrial development; now, brownfield sites throughout the area are being redeveloped as part of the Thames Gateway including the London Riverside and Lower Lea Valley, which is being developed into the Olympic Park for the 2012 Olympics.
With increasing industrialisation, London's population grew rapidly throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries, and it was the most populous city in the world until overtaken by New York in 1925. Its population peaked at 8,615,245 in 1939 immediately before the outbreak of World War 2. There were an estimated 7,512,400 official residents in Greater London as of mid-2006. However, London's continuous urban area extends beyond the borders of Greater London and was home to 8,278,251 people in 2001, while its wider metropolitan area has a population of between 12 and 14 million depending on the definition used. According to Eurostat, London is the most populous city and metropolitan area of the European Union and the second most populous in Europe (or third if Istanbul is included).
The region covers an area of . The population density is , more than ten times that of any other British region. In terms of population, London is the 25th largest city and the 17th largest metropolitan region in the world. It is also ranked 4th in the world in number of billionaires (United States Dollars) residing in the city. London ranks as one of the most expensive cities in the world, alongside Tokyo and Moscow.
According to 2008 estimates, 51% of these seven million and seven hundred thousand people people are classed as the indigenous White British, White Irish (2.5%) and "Other White" 10%, the majority of whom are other Europeans. 15% of people are of South Asian descent, including Indian (mainly Punjabi, Hindi, Tamil and Gujarati), Pakistani, Bangladeshi (Bengali) and "Other Asian" (mostly Sri Lankan (Tamil) and other Southern Asian ethnicities). 13% of people are Black (around 7% are Black African, 5% as Black Caribbean, 1% as "Other Black"). 5.5% are of mixed race; 1.5% are Chinese; and 1.5% of people belong to another ethnic group. 30% of inhabitants were born outside the European Union. The Irish born, from both the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland, number approximately 250,000 and are the largest group born outside of Britain.
In January 2005, a survey of London's ethnic and religious diversity claimed that there were more than 300 languages spoken and more than 50 non-indigenous communities which have a population of more than 10,000 in London. Figures from the Office for National Statistics show that, as of 2006, London's foreign-born population is 2,288,000 (31%), up from 1,630,000 in 1997. The 2001 census showed that 27.1% of Greater London's population were born outside the UK, and a slightly higher proportion were classed as non-white.
The table to the right shows the 'Country of Birth' of London residents in 2001, the date of the last UK Census. (Top 21). Note that a portion of the German-born population are likely to be British nationals born to parents serving in the British armed forces in Germany.
Westminster Abbey is one of London's oldest and most important buildings and a World Heritage Site.
The majority of Londoners - 58.2% - identify themselves as Christians. This is followed by those of no religion (15.8%), Muslims (8.5%), Hindus (4.1%), Jews (2.1%), Sikhs (1.5%), Buddhists (0.8%) and other (0.5%), though 8.7% of people did not answer this question in the 2001 Census.
London has traditionally been dominated by Christianity, and has a large number of churches, particularly in the City of London. The well-known St Paul's Cathedral in the City and Southwark Cathedral south of the river are Anglican administrative centres, while the Archbishop of Canterbury, principal bishop of the Church of England and worldwide Anglican Communion, has his main residence at Lambeth Palace in the London Borough of Lambeth.
Important national and royal ceremonies are shared between St Paul's and Westminster Abbey. The Abbey is not to be confused with nearby Westminster Cathedral, which is the largest Roman Catholic cathedral in England and Wales. Religious practice is lower in London than any other part of the UK or Western Europe and is around seven times lower than American averages. Despite the prevalence of Anglican churches, observance is very low within the Anglican denomination, although church attendance, particularly at evangelical Anglican churches in London, has started to increase.
The Swaminarayan Hindu Temple in Neasden
London is also home to sizeable Muslim, Hindu, Sikh, and Jewish communities. Many Muslims live in Tower Hamlets and Newham; the most important Muslim edifice is London Central Mosque on the edge of Regent's Park. London's large Hindu community is found in the north-western boroughs of Harrow and Brent, the latter of which is home to one of Europe's largest Hindu temples, Neasden Temple. Sikh communities are located in East and West London, which is also home to the largest Sikh temple in the world, outside India.
The majority of British Jews live in London, with significant Jewish communities in Stamford Hill, Stanmore, Golders Green, Hendon, and Edgware in North London. Stanmore and Canons Park Synagogue has the largest membership of any single Orthodox synagogue in the whole of Europe, overtaking Ilford synagogue (also in London) in 1998. The community set up the London Jewish Forum in 2007 in response to the growing significance of devolved London Government.
The City of London is the world's largest financial centre . It is home to the London Stock Exchange and Lloyds of London.
London is a major centre for international business and commerce and is one of three "command centres" for the world economy (along with New York City and Tokyo). According to 2005 estimates by the PricewaterhouseCoopers accounting firm, London has the 6th largest city economy in the world after Tokyo, New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Paris. London generates approximately 20% of the UK's GDP (or $446 billion in 2005); while the economy of the London metropolitan area â the second largest in Europe â generates approximately 30% of the UK's GDP (or an estimated $669 billion in 2005).
London's success as a service industry and business centre can be attributed to factors such as English being the native and dominant language of business, close relationship with the U.S. and various countries in Asia. Other factors include English law being the most important and most used contract law in international business and the multi-cultural infrastructure. Government policies such as low taxes, particularly for foreigners (non-UK domiciled residents do not get taxed on their foreign earnings), a business friendly environment, good transport infrastructure and a deregulated economy with little intervention by the government have all contributed to London's economy becoming more service based. Over 85% (3.2 million) of the employed population of Greater London works in service industries. Another half a million employees resident in Greater London work in manufacturing and construction, almost equally divided between both.
The three tallest skyscrapers as of 2008 in Canary Wharf as viewed from Cabot Square. It is home to such companies as HSBC and Clifford Chance.
London's largest industry remains finance, and its financial exports make it a large contributor to the UK's balance of payments. Over 300,000 people are employed in financial services in London. London has over 480 overseas banks, more than any other city in the world. Due to New York's tightening of market regulations, London stock exchanges had approximately 20% more initial public offerings in 2006.
London is home to banks, brokers, insurers and legal and accounting firms. A second, smaller financial district is developing at Canary Wharf to the east of the city which includes the global headquarters of HSBC, Reuters, Barclays and the Magic Circle, which includes Clifford Chance, the largest law firm in the world. London handled 31% of global currency transactions â an average daily turnover of US$753 billion â with more US dollars traded in London than New York, and more euros traded than in every other city in Europe combined.
More than half of the UK's top 100 listed companies (the FTSE 100) and over 100 of Europe's 500 largest companies are headquartered in central London. Over 70% of the FTSE 100 are located within London's metropolitan area, and 75% of Fortune 500 companies have offices in London. Along with professional services, media companies are concentrated in London (see Media in London) and the media distribution industry is London's second most competitive sector (after central banking, the most competitive sector). The BBC is a key employer, while other broadcasters also have headquarters around the city. Many national newspapers are edited in London, having traditionally been associated with Fleet Street in the city; they are now primarily based around Canary Wharf.
Due to its prominant global role, London is getting hit harder than any other financial centre in the subprime crisis. The City of London estimates that 70,000 jobs in finance will be cut within barely a year.
Several foreign banks have started to move off employees from London to their national financial centres, notably Dresdner Kleinwort, BNP Paribas and Santander.
Tourism is one of London's prime industries and employs the equivalent of 350,000 full-time workers in London in 2003, while annual expenditure by tourists is around £15 billion. " ", Visit London. Retrieved on 3 June 2006. A study carried out by Euromonitor in October 2007 places London at first place out of 150 of the world's most popular cities, attracting 15.6 million international tourists in 2006. This puts London far ahead of 2nd place Bangkok (10.35 million) and 3rd place Paris (just 9.7 million). London attracts 27 million overnight-stay visitors every year. " ", Visit London. Retrieved on 3 June 2006. The Port of London is currently the third-largest in the United Kingdom, handling 50 million tonnes of cargo each year.
London is too diverse to be characterised by any particular architectural style, having accumulated its buildings over a long period of time and drawn on a wide range of influences. It is, however, mainly brick built, most commonly the yellow London stock brick or a warm orange-red variety, often decorated with carvings and white plaster mouldings. Many grand houses and public buildings (such as the National Gallery) are constructed from Portland stone. Some areas of the city, particularly those just west of the centre, are characterised by white stucco or whitewashed buildings. Few structures pre-date the Great Fire of 1666, except for a few trace Roman remains, the Tower of London and a few scattered Tudor survivors in the City. The disused (but soon to be rejuvenated) 1939 Battersea Power Station by the river in the south-west is a local landmark, while some railway termini are excellent examples of Victorian architecture, most notably St Pancras and Paddington (at least internally).
The O 2 , one of the largest dome structures in the world.
The density of London varies, with high employment density in the central area, high residential densities in inner London and lower densities in the suburbs. In the dense areas, most of the concentration is achieved with medium- and high-rise buildings. London's skyscrapers such as the notable "Gherkin", Tower 42, the Broadgate Tower and One Canada Square are usually found in the two financial districts, the City of London and Canary Wharf. Other notable modern buildings include City Hall in Southwark with its distinctive oval shape, the British Library in Somers Town/Kings Cross, What was formerly the Millennium Dome, located by the Thames to the east of Canary Wharf, is now used as an entertainment venue known as The O 2 .
The development of tall buildings has been encouraged in the London Plan, which will lead to the erection of many new skyscrapers over the next decade, particularly in the City of London and Canary Wharf. The 72-storey, "Shard London Bridge" by London Bridge station, the Bishopsgate Tower and many other skyscrapers over are either proposed or approved and could transform the city's skyline. As of July 2008, there are 426 high-rise buildings (between 23 m to 150 m/75 ft to 491 ft) under construction, approved for construction, and proposed for construction in London.
A great many monuments pay homage to people and events in the city. The Monument in the City of London provides views of the surrounding area while commemorating the Great Fire of London, which originated nearby. Marble Arch and Wellington Arch, at the north and south ends of Park Lane respectively, have royal connections, as do the Albert Memorial and Royal Albert Hall in Kensington. Nelson's Column is a nationally recognised monument in Trafalgar Square, one of the focal points of the centre.
The largest parks in the central area of London are the Royal Parks of Hyde Park and its neighbour Kensington Gardens at the western edge of central London and Regent's Park on the northern edge. This park contains London Zoo, the world's oldest scientific zoo, and is located near the tourist attraction of Madame Tussauds Wax Museum. Closer to central London are the smaller Royal Parks of Green Park and St. James's Park. Hyde Park in particular is popular for sports and sometimes hosts open-air concerts.
A number of large parks lie outside the city centre, including the remaining Royal Parks of Greenwich Park to the south-east and Bushy Park and Richmond Park to the south-west, as well as Victoria Park, East London to the east. Primrose Hill to the north of Regent's Park is a popular spot to view the city skyline. Some more informal, semi-natural open spaces also exist, including the Hampstead Heath of North London. This incorporates Kenwood House, the former stately home and a popular location in the summer months where classical musical concerts are held by the lake, attracting thousands of people every weekend to enjoy the music, scenery and fireworks.
Traditionally the London accent has been given the famous Cockney label, and was similar to many accents of the South East of England, developing a unique form of slang known as Cockney Rhyming Slang. The accent of a 21st century Londoner varies widely; what is becoming more and more common amongst the under 30s however is some fusion of Cockney, Received Pronunciation, and a whole array of 'ethnic' accents, in particular Caribbean, which form an accent labelled Multicultural London English (MLE), with a large amount of slang in use as well.
Piccadilly Circus at night
The Trooping the Colour held in 2006 to mark the Queen's 80th birthday.
Within the City of Westminster, the entertainment district of the West End has its focus around Leicester Square, where London and world film premieres are held, and Piccadilly Circus, with its giant electronic advertisements. London's theatre district is here, as are many cinemas, bars, clubs and restaurants, including the city's Chinatown district, and just to the east is Covent Garden, an area housing speciality shops. The United Kingdom's Royal Ballet,English National Ballet, Royal Opera and English National Opera are based in London and perform at the Royal Opera House, The London Coliseum, Sadler's Wells Theatre and the Royal Albert Hall as well as touring the country. Islington's long Upper Street, extending Northwards from The Angel, has more bars and restaurants than any other street in the UK. Europe's busiest shopping area is Oxford Street, a shopping street nearly long â which makes it the longest shopping street in the world â and home to many shops and department stores including Selfridges. Knightsbridge â home to the Harrods department store â lies just to the southwest. London is home to designers Vivienne Westwood, Galliano, Stella McCartney, Manolo Blahnik, and Jimmy Choo among others; its renowned art and fashion schools make it an international centre of fashion alongside Paris, Milan and New York.
London offers a great variety of cuisine as a result of its ethnically diverse population. Gastronomic centres include the Bangladeshi restaurants of Brick Lane and the Chinese food restaurants of Chinatown.
There are a variety of regular annual events in the city. The beginning of the year is celebrated with the relatively new New Year's Day Parade, while traditional parades include November's Lord Mayor's Show, a centuries-old event celebrating the annual appointment of a new Lord Mayor of the City of London with a procession along the streets of the City, and June's Trooping the Colour, a formal military pageant performed by regiments of the Commonwealth and British armies to celebrate the Queen's Official Birthday.
Charles Dickens (1812â1870), whose works formed a pervasive image of Victorian London.
London has been the setting for many works of literature. Two writers closely associated with the city are the diarist Samuel Pepys, noted for his eyewitness account of the Great Fire, and Charles Dickens, whose representation of a foggy, snowy, grimy London of street sweepers and pickpockets has been a major influence on people's vision of early Victorian London. The earlier (1722) A Journal of the Plague Year by Daniel Defoe is a fictionalisation of the events of the 1665 Great Plague. William Shakespeare spent a large part of his life living and working in London; his contemporary Ben Jonson was also based in London, and some of his work â most notably his play The Alchemist â was set in the city. Later important depictions of London from the 19th and early 20th centuries are the afore-mentioned Dickens novels, and Arthur Conan Doyle's illustrious Sherlock Holmes stories. A modern writer pervasively influenced by the city is Peter Ackroyd, in works such as London: The Biography, The Lambs of London and Hawksmoor.
London has played a significant role in the film industry, and has major studios at Pinewood, Ealing, Shepperton, Elstree and Leavesden, as well as an important special effects and post-production community centred in Soho in central London. Working Title Films has its headquarters in London. The city also hosts a number of performing arts schools, including The Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA), the Central School of Speech and Drama (alumni: Judi Dench and Laurence Olivier) and the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art (alumni: Jim Broadbent). The London Film Festival is held each year in October.
London is home to many museums, galleries, and other institutions which are major tourist attractions as well as playing a research role. The Natural History Museum (biology and geology), Science Museum and Victoria and Albert Museum (fashion and design) are clustered in South Kensington's "museum quarter", while the British Museum houses historic artefacts from around the world. The British Library at St Pancras is the UK's national library, housing 150 million items. The city also houses extensive art collections, primarily in the National Gallery, Tate Britain and Tate Modern.
The Royal Albert Hall hosts a wide range of concerts and musical events.
London is one of the major classical and popular music capitals of the world and is home to major music corporations, such as EMI and Decca Records, as well as countless bands, musicians and industry professionals. London is home to many orchestras and concert halls such as the Barbican Arts Centre (principal base of the London Symphony Orchestra), Cadogan Hall (Royal Philharmonic Orchestra) and the Royal Albert Hall (BBC Promenade Concerts). London's two main opera houses are the Royal Opera House and the Coliseum Theatre.
Several conservatoires are located within the city: Royal Academy of Music, Royal College of Music, Guildhall School of Music and Drama, and Trinity College of Music.
London has numerous renowned venues for rock and pop concerts, including large arenas such as Earls Court, Wembley Arena and the O2 Arena, as well as numerous mid-size venues, such as Brixton Academy, Hammersmith Apollo and The London Astoria. London also hosts many music festivals, including the 02 Wireless Festival and Latitude Festival.
London is home to the first and original Hard Rock Cafe and the illustrious Abbey Road Studios where The Beatles created many of their hits. Musicians such as Bob Marley, Jimi Hendrix and Freddie Mercury have lived in London. A large number of musical artists originate from or are most strongly associated with London, including David Bowie, Ian Dury, The Kinks, Adam Faith, The Rolling Stones, The Who, Madness, The Jam, Blur, Iron Maiden, Phil Collins, Rod Stewart, Elvis Costello, Dusty Springfield, The Yardbirds and The Small Faces.
London was instrumental in the development of punk music, with figures such as the Sex Pistols, The Clash, and Vivienne Westwood all based in the city.
More recent artists to emerge from the London music scene include The Libertines, one of the most influential British rock acts of the 2000s, Bloc Party, Amy Winehouse, Lily Allen, The Kooks, Razorlight, Laura Marling, Dizzee Rascal, Natasha Bedingfield and Leona Lewis.
London is also a centre for Urban music. In particular the genres UK Garage, Drum and Bass and Grime evolved in the city from the foreign genres of hiphop and reggae, alongside local rave music. Black music station BBC 1Xtra was set up to support the rise of homegrown urban music both in London and the rest of the UK.
Wembley Stadium is home to English football and is the most expensive stadium in the world.
The Wimbledon Championships, a tennis Grand Slam tournament.
London has hosted the Summer Olympics twice, in 1908 and 1948. In July 2005 London was chosen to host the Games in 2012, which will make it the first city in the world to host the Summer Olympics three times. London was also the host of the British Empire Games in 1934.
London's most popular sport (for both participants and spectators) is football. London has thirteen League football clubs, including five in the Premier League: Arsenal, Chelsea, Fulham, Tottenham Hotspur and West Ham United. London also has four rugby union teams in the Guinness Premiership (London Irish, Saracens, Wasps and Harlequins), although only the Harlequins play in London (all the other three now play outside Greater London, although Saracens still play within the M25). There are two professional rugby league clubs in London - Harlequins Rugby League who play in the Super League at the Stoop and the National League 2 side the London Skolars (based in Haringey).
Since 1924, the original Wembley Stadium was the home of the English national football team, and served as the venue for the FA Cup final as well as rugby league's Challenge Cup final. The new Wembley Stadium serves exactly the same purposes and has a capacity of 90,000. Twickenham Stadium in west London is the national rugby union stadium, and has a capacity of 84,000 now that the new south stand has been completed.
Cricket in London centres on its two Test cricket grounds at Lord's (home of Middlesex C.C.C) in St John's Wood, and The Oval (home of Surrey C.C.C) in Kennington. One of London's best-known annual sports competitions is the Wimbledon Tennis Championships, held at the All England Club in the south-western suburb of Wimbledon. Other key events are the annual mass-participation London Marathon which sees some 35,000 runners attempt a course around the city, and the Oxford vs. Cambridge Boat Race on the River Thames between Putney and Mortlake.
Transport is one of the four areas of policy administered by the Mayor of London, however the mayor's financial control is limited and he does not control the heavy rail network, although in November 2007 he assumed responsibility for the North London Railway as well as several other lines, to form London Overground. The public transport network, administered by Transport for London (TfL), is one of the most extensive in the world, but faces congestion and reliability issues, which a large investment programme is attempting to address, including £7 billion (â¬10 billion) of improvements planned for the Olympics. London has been commended as the city with the best public transport. Cycling is an increasingly popular way to get around London. The London Cycling Campaign lobbies for better provision.
The London Underground is the oldest, longest, and most expansive metro system in the world, dating from 1863.
The centrepiece of the public transport network is the London Underground â commonly referred to as The Tube â which has eleven interconnecting lines. It is the oldest, longest, and most expansive metro system in the world, dating from 1863. The system was home to the world's first underground electric line, the City & South London Railway, which began service in 1890. Over three million journeys a day are made on the Underground network, nearly 1 billion journeys each year. The Underground serves the central area and most suburbs to the north of the Thames, while those to the south are served by an extensive suburban rail surface network.
The Docklands Light Railway is a second metro system using smaller and lighter trains, which opened in 1987, serving East London and Greenwich on both sides of the Thames. Commuter and intercity railways generally do not cross the city, instead running into fourteen terminal stations scattered around its historic centre; the exception is the Thameslink route operated by First Capital Connect, with terminus stations at Bedford, Brighton and Moorgate. Since the early 1990s, increasing pressures on the commuter rail and Underground networks have led to increasing demands â particularly from businesses and the City of London Corporation â for Crossrail: a £10 billion east â west heavy rail connection under central London, which was given the green light in early October 2007.
High-speed Eurostar trains link St Pancras International with Lille and Paris in France, and Brussels in Belgium. Journey times to Paris and Brussels of 2h 15 and 1h 51 respectively make London closer to continental Europe than the rest of Britain by virtue of the newly completed High Speed 1 rail link to the Channel Tunnel. From 2009 this line will also allow for high speed domestic travel from Kent into London. The redevelopment of St. Pancras was key to London's Olympic bid, as the station also serves two international airports through Thameslink, and will also provide direct rail links to the Olympic site at Stratford using British Rail Class 395 trains running under the Olympic Javelin name; these will be based on Japanese Shinkansen high-speed trains.
The modern Enviro400 double-decker bus
London's bus network is one of the largest in the world, running 24 hours a day, with 8,000 buses, 700 bus routes, and over 6 million passenger journeys made every weekday. In 2003, the network's ridership was estimated at over 1.5 billion passenger trips per annum, more than the Underground. Around £850 m is taken in revenue each year.
London has the largest wheelchair accessible network in the world and, from the 3rd quarter of 2007, became more accessible to hearing and visually impaired passengers as audio-visual announcements were introduced. The distinctive red double-decker buses are internationally recognised, and are a trademark of London transport along with black cabs and the Tube.
Terminal 5 at Heathrow Airport, which is the world's busiest airport by international passenger traffic.
London is a major international air transport hub with the largest city airspace in the world. Eight airports use the words London Airport in their name, but most traffic passes through one of five major airports. London Heathrow Airport is the busiest airport in the world for international traffic, and is the major hub of the nation's flag carrier, British Airways. In March 2008 its fifth terminal was opened, and plans are already being considered for a sixth terminal. Similar traffic, with the addition of some low-cost short-haul flights, is also handled at London Gatwick Airport. London Stansted Airport and London Luton Airport cater mostly for low-cost short-haul flights. London City Airport, the smallest and most central airport, is focused on business travellers, with a mixture of full service short-haul scheduled flights and considerable business jet traffic.
Although the majority of journeys involving central London are made by public transport, travel in outer London is car-dominated. The inner ring road (around the city centre), the North and South Circular roads (in the suburbs), and the outer orbital motorway (the M25, outside the built-up area) encircle the city and are intersected by a number of busy radial routes â but very few motorways penetrate into inner London. The M25 is the longest ring-road motorway in the world at long. A plan for a comprehensive network of motorways throughout the city (the Ringways Plan) was prepared in the 1960s but was mostly cancelled in the early 1970s. In 2003, a congestion charge was introduced to reduce traffic volumes in the city centre. With a few exceptions, motorists are required to pay £8 per day to drive within a defined zone encompassing much of congested central London. Motorists who are residents of the defined zone can buy a vastly reduced season pass which is renewed monthly and is cheaper than a corresponding bus fare.
Royal Holloway, as a part of the University of London, a federation of London higher education institutions
Home to a range of universities, colleges and schools, London has a student population of about 378,000 and is a centre of research and development. Most primary and secondary schools in London follow the same system as the rest of England â comprehensive schooling.
With 125,000 students, the University of London is the largest contact teaching university in the United Kingdom and in Europe. It comprises 20 colleges as well as several smaller institutes each with a high degree of autonomy. Constituent colleges have their own admissions procedures, and are effectively universities in their own right, although most degrees are awarded by the University of London rather than the individual colleges. Its constituents include multi-disciplinary colleges such as UCL, King's, Goldsmiths, Queen Mary and more specialised institutions such as the London School of Economics, SOAS, the Royal Academy of Music, the Courtauld Institute of Art and the Institute of Education.
Imperial College London and University College London have been ranked among the top ten universities in the world by The Times Higher Education Supplement: in 2008 Imperial was ranked the 6th best and UCL the 7th best university in the world.
In addition, the London School of Economics is the worldâs leading social science institution for teaching and research, plus has the most international student body of any university in the world today.
A number of colleges are dedicated to the fine arts, including the Royal College of Music, Royal College of Art, and Guildhall School of Music and Drama.
Senate House, the headquarters of the federal University of London
London's other universities, such as Brunel University, City University, London Metropolitan University, Middlesex University, University of East London, University of the Arts London, University of Westminster, Kingston University and London South Bank University are not part of the University of London but are still leaders in their field and popular choices among students both nationally and internationally. Some were polytechnics until these were granted university status in 1992, and others which were founded much earlier. Imperial College London left the federal University of London in 2007. Since the merger of University of North London and London Guildhall University in 2003, London Metropolitan University is the largest unitary university in the capital, with over 34,000 students from 155 countries. About London Met London Metropolitan University, August 2008 London is also known globally for its business education, with the London Business School (ranked 1st in Europe â Business Week) and Cass Business School (Europe's largest finance school) both being top world-rated business schools. In addition there are three international universities: Schiller International University, Richmond University and Regent's College.
There are 46 other places on six continents named after London. Jack Malvern. Richmond, in Surrey, is the most widely copied British place name worldwide, timesonline 2008-12-29. The original byline for the article in The Times of the same day was "The 55 corners of foreign fields that will be for ever ... Richmond" (page 9). Cites The Times Universal Atlas of the World. As well as London's twinning, the Boroughs of London have twinnings with parts of other cities across the world. Shown below is the list of cities that the Greater London Authority is twinned with.
* New York City,
* Moscow,
* Berlin,
The following cities have a friendship agreement with London:
* Sofia,
* Delhi,
* Mumbai,
* Beijing,
* Istanbul,
* Paris,
* Tehran,
* Tokyo,
* Bogotá,
* Podgorica,
* Algiers,
* Global city
* Geography of England
* Large Cities Climate Leadership Group
* Largest European cities and metropolitan areas
* London Assembly
* Megacity
*
*
*
*
* Mayor of London, London Assembly and the Greater London Authority â Official city government site
* Transport for London (TfL) â city transport authority
* BBC London
* Office for National Statistics: Focus on London 2007 â compendium of official statistics about London
* Museum of London Group Portal - Home
* VisitLondon.com â Official London site
* Map of Early Modern London â Historical Map and Encyclopaedia of Shakespeare's London (Scholarly)
* London Bridges â A view of London Bridges over the River Thames
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London | What countries did James VI of Scotland unite? | James VI of Scotland united Scotland and England. | data/set3/a1 | London
London ( ; ) is the capital of both England and the United Kingdom, and the largest urban area in the European Union. {{cite web|url= title=Largest EU City An important settlement for two millennia, London's history goes back to its founding by the Romans. Since its foundation, London has been part of many movements and phenomena throughout history, including the English Renaissance, the Industrial Revolution, and the Gothic Revival. The city's core, the ancient City of London, still retains its limited medieval boundaries; but since at least the 19th century, the name "London" has also referred to the whole metropolis that has developed around it. Today the bulk of this conurbation forms the London region of England and the Greater London administrative area, with its own elected mayor and assembly.
London is one of the the world's most important business, financial and cultural centres and its influence in politics, education, entertainment, media, fashion and the arts contribute to its status as a major global city. Global Cities: GaWC Inventory of World Cities 1999 Global cities#GaWC Inventory of World Cities (1999 Edition); Global Cities: GaWC Inventory of World Cities 2004 Global cities#GaWC Leading World Cities (2004 Edition) Central London is the headquarters of more than half of the UK's top 100 listed companies (the FTSE 100) and over 100 of Europe's 500 largest companies. The city is a major tourist destination both for domestic and overseas visitors, with annual expenditure by tourists of around £15 billion. London hosted the 1908 and 1948 Summer Olympic Games and will host the 2012 Summer Olympic Games.
Greater London contains four World Heritage Sites: the Tower of London; the historic settlement of Greenwich; the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew; and the site comprising the Palace of Westminster, Westminster Abbey and St. Margaret's Church.
London's population draws from a wide range of peoples, cultures, and religions, and over 300 languages are spoken within the city. As of 2006, it had an official population of 7,512,400 within the boundaries of Greater London and is the most populous municipality in the European Union. As of 2001, the Greater London Urban Area had a population of 8,278,251 and the metropolitan area is estimated to have a total population of between 12 and 14 million , the largest metropolitan area in the EU. The public transport network, administered by Transport for London, is one of the most extensive in the world, and Heathrow Airport is the busiest airport in the world by international passenger traffic and the air space is the busiest of any city in the world. International Passenger Traffic, Airports Council International
The etymology of London remains a mystery. The earliest etymological explanation can be attributed to Geoffrey of Monmouth in Historia Regum Britanniae. The name is described as originating from King Lud, who had allegedly taken over the city and named it Kaerlud. This was slurred into Kaerludein and finally London. Many other theories have been advanced over the centuries, most of them deriving the name from Welsh or British, and occasionally from Anglo-Saxon or even Hebrew.
Map of London in 1300, showing the medieval boundaries of the City of London
Although there is evidence of scattered Brythonic settlements in the area, the first major settlement was founded by the Romans in AD 43 as Londinium, following the Roman conquest of Britain. This Londinium lasted for just seventeen years. Around 61, the Iceni tribe led by Queen Boudica stormed this first London, burning it to the ground. The next, heavily planned incarnation of the city prospered and superseded Colchester as the capital of the Roman province of Britannia in 100. At its height in the 2nd century, Roman London had a population of around 60,000.
By the 600s, the Anglo-Saxons had created a new settlement called Lundenwic approximately upstream from the old Roman city,
around what is now Covent Garden. It is likely that there was a harbour at the mouth of the River Fleet for fishing and trading, and this trading grew until the city was overcome by the Vikings and forced to relocate the city back to the location of the Roman Londinium to use its walls for protection. Viking attacks continued to increase around the rest of South East England, until 886 when Alfred the Great recaptured London and made peace with the Danish leader, Guthrum. The original Saxon city of Lundenwic became Ealdwic ("old city"), a name surviving to the present day as Aldwych, which is in the modern City of Westminster.
In a retaliatory attack, Ethelred's army achieved victory by pulling down London Bridge with the Danish garrison on top, and English control was re-established. Canute took control of the English throne in 1017, controlling the city and country until 1042, when his death resulted in a reversion to Saxon control under his pious stepson Edward the Confessor, who re-founded Westminster Abbey and the adjacent Palace of Westminster. By this time, London had become the largest and most prosperous city in England, although the official seat of government was still at Winchester.
Following a victory at the Battle of Hastings, William the Conqueror, the then Duke of Normandy, was crowned King of England in the newly finished Westminster Abbey on Christmas Day 1066. William granted the citizens of London special privileges, while building what is now known as the Tower of London, in the south-east corner of the city, to keep them under control. .
The Great Exhibition
In 1097, William II began the building of Westminster Hall, close by the abbey of the same name. The hall became the basis of a new Palace of Westminster, the prime royal residence throughout the Middle Ages. Westminster became the seat of the royal court and government (persisting until the present day), while its distinct neighbour, the City of London, was a centre of trade and commerce and flourished under its own unique administration, the Corporation of London. London grew in wealth and population during the Middle Ages. In 1100 its population was around 18,000; by 1300 it had grown to nearly 100,000. King Edward I issued an edict in 1290, expelling all Jews from England. Before the edict, there was an increasing population of Jews, whereas after this time, the population of Jews began to drop considerably. Disaster struck during the Black Death in the mid-14th century, when London lost nearly a third of its population. Apart from the invasion of London during the Peasants' Revolt in 1381, London remained relatively untouched by the various civil wars during the Middle Ages, such as the first and second Barons' Wars and the Wars of the Roses.
After the successful defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588, political stability in England allowed London to grow further. In 1603, James VI of Scotland came to the throne of England, essentially uniting the two countries. His enactment of harsh anti-Catholic laws made him unpopular, and an assassination attempt was made on 5 November 1605âthe well-known Gunpowder Plot.
The Great Fire of London destroyed many parts of the city in 1666
Plague caused extensive problems for London in the early 17th century, culminating in the Great Plague in 1665â1666. This was the last major outbreak in England, possibly thanks to the disastrous fire of 1666. The Great Fire of London broke out in the original City and quickly swept through London's wooden buildings, destroying large swathes of the city. A first hand narrative of both plague and fire was provided by Sir Samuel Pepys. Rebuilding took over ten years, largely under direction of a Commission appointed by King Charles II and chaired by Sir Christopher Wren.
Following London's growth in the 18th century, it became the world's largest city from about 1831 to 1925. Rising traffic congestion on city centre roads led to the creation of the world's first metro system â the London Underground â in 1863, driving further expansion and urbanisation. London's local government system struggled to cope with the rapid growth, especially in providing the city with adequate infrastructure. Between 1855 and 1889, the Metropolitan Board of Works oversaw infrastructure expansion. It was then replaced by the County of London, overseen by the London County Council, London's first elected city-wide administration.
A London street hit during the Blitz of World War II
The Blitz and other bombing by the German Luftwaffe during World War II killed over 30,000 Londoners and destroyed large tracts of housing and other buildings across London. In 1965 London's political boundaries were expanded to take into account the growth of the urban area outside the County of London's borders. The expanded area was called Greater London and was administered by the Greater London Council. An eco revival from the 1980s onwards re-established London's position as a pre-eminent international centre. However, as the seat of government and the most important city in the UK, it has been subjected to bouts of terrorism. Provisional Irish Republican Army bombers sought to pressure the government into negotiations over Northern Ireland, frequently disrupting city activities with bomb threats â some of which were carried out â until their 1997 cease-fire. More recently, a series of coordinated bomb attacks were carried out by Islamic extremist suicide bombers on the public transport network on 7 July 2005âjust 24 hours after London was awarded the 2012 Summer Olympics.
City Hall at night, home of the Greater London Authority
The administration of London is formed of two tiers â a city-wide, strategic tier and a local tier. City-wide administration is coordinated by the Greater London Authority (GLA), while local administration is carried out by 33 smaller authorities. The GLA consists of two elected parts; the Mayor of London, who has executive powers, and the London Assembly, who scrutinise the Mayor's decisions and can accept or reject his budget proposals each year. The GLA was set up in 2000 to replace the similar Greater London Council (GLC) which had been abolished in 1986. The headquarters of the GLA and the Mayor of London is at City Hall; the Mayor is Boris Johnson. The 33 local authorities are the councils of the 32 London boroughs and the City of London Corporation. They are responsible for local services not overseen by the GLA, such as local planning, schools, social services, local roads and refuse collection.
London is the home of the Government of the United Kingdom which is located around the Houses of Parliament in Westminster. Many government departments are located close to Parliament, particularly along Whitehall, including the Prime Minister's residence at 10 Downing Street. The British Parliament is often referred to as the "Mother of Parliaments" (although this sobriquet was first applied to England itself by John Bright) because it has been the model for most other parliamentary systems, and its Acts have created many other parliaments. There are 74 Members of Parliament (MPs) from London, who correspond to local parliamentary constituencies in the national Parliament by . Of these 74 MPs, currently 44 are from the Labour Party, 21 are Conservatives, 8 are Liberal Democrats and one is from the RESPECT party.
West and central London seen from SPOT satellite
London can be geographically defined in a number of ways, although the situation was once even more ambiguous than it is now and open to periodic legal debate. At London's core is the small, ancient City of London which is commonly known as 'the City' or 'the Square Mile'. London's metropolitan area grew considerably during the Victorian era and again during the Interwar period, but expansion halted in the 1940s because of World War II and Green Belt legislation, and the area has been largely static since. The London region of England, also commonly known as Greater London, is the area administered by the Greater London Authority. The urban sprawl of the conurbation â or Greater London Urban Area â covers a roughly similar area, with a slightly larger population. Beyond this is the vast London commuter belt.
Map of Central LondonForty percent of Greater London is covered by the London postal district, within which 'LONDON' forms part of the postal address. The London telephone area code covers a larger area, similar in size to Greater London, although some outer districts are omitted and some places just outside are included. The area within the orbital M25 motorway is sometimes used to define the "London area" and the Greater London boundary has been aligned to it in places. Greater London is split for some purposes into Inner London and Outer London. Informally, the city is split into North, South, East, West and often also Central London.
The Metropolitan Police District, city-wide local government area and London transport area have varied over time, but broadly coincide with the Greater London boundary. The Romans may have marked the centre of Londinium with the London Stone, still visible on Cannon Street. The coordinates of the nominal centre of London (traditionally considered to be the original Eleanor Cross at Charing Cross, near the junction of Trafalgar Square and Whitehall) are approximately . Trafalgar Square has also become a point for celebrations and protests.
Within London, both the City of London and the City of Westminster have City status and both the City of London and the remainder of Greater London are the ceremonial counties. The current area of Greater London was historically part of the counties of Middlesex, Kent, Surrey, Essex and Hertfordshire. Unlike most capital cities, London's status as the capital of the UK has never been granted or confirmed officially â by statute or in written form. Its position as the capital has formed through constitutional convention, making its position as de facto capital a part of the UK's unwritten constitution. The capital of England was moved to London from Winchester as the Palace of Westminster developed in the 12th and 13th centuries to become the permanent location of the royal court, and thus the political capital of the nation. According to the Collins English Dictionary definition (1994) Collins English Dictionary. Collins Education plc. of 'the seat of government,' London is not the capital of England, as England does not have its own government. However according to the Oxford English Reference dictionary definition Oxford English Reference Dictionary. Oxford English. of 'the most important town...' and many other authorities, "HC 501 0304.PDF" (PDF). Parliament Publications. Retrieved on 2008-06-06. 'England' (1994) Collins English Dictionary. Collins Education plc. London is the capital of England.
Greater London covers an area of . Its primary geographical feature is the Thames, a navigable river which crosses the city from the south-west to the east. The Thames Valley is a floodplain surrounded by gently rolling hills including Parliament Hill, Addington Hills, and Primrose Hill. The Thames was once a much broader, shallower river with extensive marshlands; at high tide, its shores reached five times their present width. Since the Victorian era it has been extensively embanked, and many of its London tributaries now flow underground. The Thames is a tidal river, and London is vulnerable to flooding. The threat has increased over time due to a slow but continuous rise in high water level by the slow 'tilting' of Britain (up in the north and down in the south) caused by post-glacial rebound. In 1974, a decade of work began on the construction of the Thames Barrier across the Thames at Woolwich to deal with this threat. While the barrier is expected to function as designed until roughly 2030, concepts for its future enlargement or redesign are already being discussed.
London has a temperate marine climate, like much of the British Isles, so the city rarely sees extremely high or low temperatures. Summers are warm with average high temperatures of and lows of , however, temperatures could exceed on many days.
Winters in London are chilly, but rarely below freezing with daytime temperatures around 2 - 8 °C (36 - 46 °F), while spring has mild days and cool evenings.
London has regular but generally light precipitation throughout the year, with average precipitation of every year.
Snow is relatively uncommon, particularly because heat from the urban area can make London up to 5 °C (9 °F) hotter than the surrounding areas in winter. Snowfall, however, is usually, but not always, seen up to a few times a year. London is in USDA Hardiness zone 9, and AHS Heat Zone 2.
In the second half of the 19th century and the first half of the 20th, London was noted for its dense fogs and smogs. Following the deadly Great Smog of 1952, the Clean Air Act 1956 was passed, leading to the decline of such severe pollution in the capital.
London's vast urban area is often described using a set of district names (e.g. Bloomsbury, Knightsbridge, Mayfair, Whitechapel, Fitzrovia). These are either informal designations, or reflect the names of superseded villages, parishes and city wards. Such names have remained in use through tradition, each referring to a local area with its own distinctive character, but often with no modern official boundaries. However, since 1965 Greater London has been divided into 32 London boroughs in addition to the ancient City of London.
The City of London is one of the world's three largest financial centres (alongside New York and Tokyo) with a dominant role in several international financial markets, including cross-border bank lending, international bond issuance and trading, foreign-exchange trading, over-the-counter derivatives, fund management and foreign equities trading. It also has the world's largest insurance market, the leading exchange for dealing in non-precious metals, the largest spot gold and gold lending markets, the largest ship broking market, and more foreign banks and investment houses than any other centre. The City has its own governance and boundaries, giving it a status as the only completely autonomous local authority in London. London's new financial and commercial hub is the Docklands area to the east of the City, dominated by the Canary Wharf complex. Other businesses locate in the City of Westminster, the home of the UK's national government and the well-known Westminster Abbey.
The West End is London's main entertainment and shopping district, with locations such as Oxford Street, Leicester Square, Covent Garden and Piccadilly Circus acting as tourist magnets. The West London area is known for fashionable and expensive residential areas such as Notting Hill, Knightsbridge and Chelsea â where properties can sell for tens of millions of pounds. The average price for all properties in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea is £894,000 with similar average outlay in most of Central London.
The eastern region of London contains the East End and East London. The East End is the area closest to the original Port of London, known for its high immigrant population, as well as for being one of the poorest areas in London. The surrounding East London area saw much of London's early industrial development; now, brownfield sites throughout the area are being redeveloped as part of the Thames Gateway including the London Riverside and Lower Lea Valley, which is being developed into the Olympic Park for the 2012 Olympics.
With increasing industrialisation, London's population grew rapidly throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries, and it was the most populous city in the world until overtaken by New York in 1925. Its population peaked at 8,615,245 in 1939 immediately before the outbreak of World War 2. There were an estimated 7,512,400 official residents in Greater London as of mid-2006. However, London's continuous urban area extends beyond the borders of Greater London and was home to 8,278,251 people in 2001, while its wider metropolitan area has a population of between 12 and 14 million depending on the definition used. According to Eurostat, London is the most populous city and metropolitan area of the European Union and the second most populous in Europe (or third if Istanbul is included).
The region covers an area of . The population density is , more than ten times that of any other British region. In terms of population, London is the 25th largest city and the 17th largest metropolitan region in the world. It is also ranked 4th in the world in number of billionaires (United States Dollars) residing in the city. London ranks as one of the most expensive cities in the world, alongside Tokyo and Moscow.
According to 2008 estimates, 51% of these seven million and seven hundred thousand people people are classed as the indigenous White British, White Irish (2.5%) and "Other White" 10%, the majority of whom are other Europeans. 15% of people are of South Asian descent, including Indian (mainly Punjabi, Hindi, Tamil and Gujarati), Pakistani, Bangladeshi (Bengali) and "Other Asian" (mostly Sri Lankan (Tamil) and other Southern Asian ethnicities). 13% of people are Black (around 7% are Black African, 5% as Black Caribbean, 1% as "Other Black"). 5.5% are of mixed race; 1.5% are Chinese; and 1.5% of people belong to another ethnic group. 30% of inhabitants were born outside the European Union. The Irish born, from both the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland, number approximately 250,000 and are the largest group born outside of Britain.
In January 2005, a survey of London's ethnic and religious diversity claimed that there were more than 300 languages spoken and more than 50 non-indigenous communities which have a population of more than 10,000 in London. Figures from the Office for National Statistics show that, as of 2006, London's foreign-born population is 2,288,000 (31%), up from 1,630,000 in 1997. The 2001 census showed that 27.1% of Greater London's population were born outside the UK, and a slightly higher proportion were classed as non-white.
The table to the right shows the 'Country of Birth' of London residents in 2001, the date of the last UK Census. (Top 21). Note that a portion of the German-born population are likely to be British nationals born to parents serving in the British armed forces in Germany.
Westminster Abbey is one of London's oldest and most important buildings and a World Heritage Site.
The majority of Londoners - 58.2% - identify themselves as Christians. This is followed by those of no religion (15.8%), Muslims (8.5%), Hindus (4.1%), Jews (2.1%), Sikhs (1.5%), Buddhists (0.8%) and other (0.5%), though 8.7% of people did not answer this question in the 2001 Census.
London has traditionally been dominated by Christianity, and has a large number of churches, particularly in the City of London. The well-known St Paul's Cathedral in the City and Southwark Cathedral south of the river are Anglican administrative centres, while the Archbishop of Canterbury, principal bishop of the Church of England and worldwide Anglican Communion, has his main residence at Lambeth Palace in the London Borough of Lambeth.
Important national and royal ceremonies are shared between St Paul's and Westminster Abbey. The Abbey is not to be confused with nearby Westminster Cathedral, which is the largest Roman Catholic cathedral in England and Wales. Religious practice is lower in London than any other part of the UK or Western Europe and is around seven times lower than American averages. Despite the prevalence of Anglican churches, observance is very low within the Anglican denomination, although church attendance, particularly at evangelical Anglican churches in London, has started to increase.
The Swaminarayan Hindu Temple in Neasden
London is also home to sizeable Muslim, Hindu, Sikh, and Jewish communities. Many Muslims live in Tower Hamlets and Newham; the most important Muslim edifice is London Central Mosque on the edge of Regent's Park. London's large Hindu community is found in the north-western boroughs of Harrow and Brent, the latter of which is home to one of Europe's largest Hindu temples, Neasden Temple. Sikh communities are located in East and West London, which is also home to the largest Sikh temple in the world, outside India.
The majority of British Jews live in London, with significant Jewish communities in Stamford Hill, Stanmore, Golders Green, Hendon, and Edgware in North London. Stanmore and Canons Park Synagogue has the largest membership of any single Orthodox synagogue in the whole of Europe, overtaking Ilford synagogue (also in London) in 1998. The community set up the London Jewish Forum in 2007 in response to the growing significance of devolved London Government.
The City of London is the world's largest financial centre . It is home to the London Stock Exchange and Lloyds of London.
London is a major centre for international business and commerce and is one of three "command centres" for the world economy (along with New York City and Tokyo). According to 2005 estimates by the PricewaterhouseCoopers accounting firm, London has the 6th largest city economy in the world after Tokyo, New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Paris. London generates approximately 20% of the UK's GDP (or $446 billion in 2005); while the economy of the London metropolitan area â the second largest in Europe â generates approximately 30% of the UK's GDP (or an estimated $669 billion in 2005).
London's success as a service industry and business centre can be attributed to factors such as English being the native and dominant language of business, close relationship with the U.S. and various countries in Asia. Other factors include English law being the most important and most used contract law in international business and the multi-cultural infrastructure. Government policies such as low taxes, particularly for foreigners (non-UK domiciled residents do not get taxed on their foreign earnings), a business friendly environment, good transport infrastructure and a deregulated economy with little intervention by the government have all contributed to London's economy becoming more service based. Over 85% (3.2 million) of the employed population of Greater London works in service industries. Another half a million employees resident in Greater London work in manufacturing and construction, almost equally divided between both.
The three tallest skyscrapers as of 2008 in Canary Wharf as viewed from Cabot Square. It is home to such companies as HSBC and Clifford Chance.
London's largest industry remains finance, and its financial exports make it a large contributor to the UK's balance of payments. Over 300,000 people are employed in financial services in London. London has over 480 overseas banks, more than any other city in the world. Due to New York's tightening of market regulations, London stock exchanges had approximately 20% more initial public offerings in 2006.
London is home to banks, brokers, insurers and legal and accounting firms. A second, smaller financial district is developing at Canary Wharf to the east of the city which includes the global headquarters of HSBC, Reuters, Barclays and the Magic Circle, which includes Clifford Chance, the largest law firm in the world. London handled 31% of global currency transactions â an average daily turnover of US$753 billion â with more US dollars traded in London than New York, and more euros traded than in every other city in Europe combined.
More than half of the UK's top 100 listed companies (the FTSE 100) and over 100 of Europe's 500 largest companies are headquartered in central London. Over 70% of the FTSE 100 are located within London's metropolitan area, and 75% of Fortune 500 companies have offices in London. Along with professional services, media companies are concentrated in London (see Media in London) and the media distribution industry is London's second most competitive sector (after central banking, the most competitive sector). The BBC is a key employer, while other broadcasters also have headquarters around the city. Many national newspapers are edited in London, having traditionally been associated with Fleet Street in the city; they are now primarily based around Canary Wharf.
Due to its prominant global role, London is getting hit harder than any other financial centre in the subprime crisis. The City of London estimates that 70,000 jobs in finance will be cut within barely a year.
Several foreign banks have started to move off employees from London to their national financial centres, notably Dresdner Kleinwort, BNP Paribas and Santander.
Tourism is one of London's prime industries and employs the equivalent of 350,000 full-time workers in London in 2003, while annual expenditure by tourists is around £15 billion. " ", Visit London. Retrieved on 3 June 2006. A study carried out by Euromonitor in October 2007 places London at first place out of 150 of the world's most popular cities, attracting 15.6 million international tourists in 2006. This puts London far ahead of 2nd place Bangkok (10.35 million) and 3rd place Paris (just 9.7 million). London attracts 27 million overnight-stay visitors every year. " ", Visit London. Retrieved on 3 June 2006. The Port of London is currently the third-largest in the United Kingdom, handling 50 million tonnes of cargo each year.
London is too diverse to be characterised by any particular architectural style, having accumulated its buildings over a long period of time and drawn on a wide range of influences. It is, however, mainly brick built, most commonly the yellow London stock brick or a warm orange-red variety, often decorated with carvings and white plaster mouldings. Many grand houses and public buildings (such as the National Gallery) are constructed from Portland stone. Some areas of the city, particularly those just west of the centre, are characterised by white stucco or whitewashed buildings. Few structures pre-date the Great Fire of 1666, except for a few trace Roman remains, the Tower of London and a few scattered Tudor survivors in the City. The disused (but soon to be rejuvenated) 1939 Battersea Power Station by the river in the south-west is a local landmark, while some railway termini are excellent examples of Victorian architecture, most notably St Pancras and Paddington (at least internally).
The O 2 , one of the largest dome structures in the world.
The density of London varies, with high employment density in the central area, high residential densities in inner London and lower densities in the suburbs. In the dense areas, most of the concentration is achieved with medium- and high-rise buildings. London's skyscrapers such as the notable "Gherkin", Tower 42, the Broadgate Tower and One Canada Square are usually found in the two financial districts, the City of London and Canary Wharf. Other notable modern buildings include City Hall in Southwark with its distinctive oval shape, the British Library in Somers Town/Kings Cross, What was formerly the Millennium Dome, located by the Thames to the east of Canary Wharf, is now used as an entertainment venue known as The O 2 .
The development of tall buildings has been encouraged in the London Plan, which will lead to the erection of many new skyscrapers over the next decade, particularly in the City of London and Canary Wharf. The 72-storey, "Shard London Bridge" by London Bridge station, the Bishopsgate Tower and many other skyscrapers over are either proposed or approved and could transform the city's skyline. As of July 2008, there are 426 high-rise buildings (between 23 m to 150 m/75 ft to 491 ft) under construction, approved for construction, and proposed for construction in London.
A great many monuments pay homage to people and events in the city. The Monument in the City of London provides views of the surrounding area while commemorating the Great Fire of London, which originated nearby. Marble Arch and Wellington Arch, at the north and south ends of Park Lane respectively, have royal connections, as do the Albert Memorial and Royal Albert Hall in Kensington. Nelson's Column is a nationally recognised monument in Trafalgar Square, one of the focal points of the centre.
The largest parks in the central area of London are the Royal Parks of Hyde Park and its neighbour Kensington Gardens at the western edge of central London and Regent's Park on the northern edge. This park contains London Zoo, the world's oldest scientific zoo, and is located near the tourist attraction of Madame Tussauds Wax Museum. Closer to central London are the smaller Royal Parks of Green Park and St. James's Park. Hyde Park in particular is popular for sports and sometimes hosts open-air concerts.
A number of large parks lie outside the city centre, including the remaining Royal Parks of Greenwich Park to the south-east and Bushy Park and Richmond Park to the south-west, as well as Victoria Park, East London to the east. Primrose Hill to the north of Regent's Park is a popular spot to view the city skyline. Some more informal, semi-natural open spaces also exist, including the Hampstead Heath of North London. This incorporates Kenwood House, the former stately home and a popular location in the summer months where classical musical concerts are held by the lake, attracting thousands of people every weekend to enjoy the music, scenery and fireworks.
Traditionally the London accent has been given the famous Cockney label, and was similar to many accents of the South East of England, developing a unique form of slang known as Cockney Rhyming Slang. The accent of a 21st century Londoner varies widely; what is becoming more and more common amongst the under 30s however is some fusion of Cockney, Received Pronunciation, and a whole array of 'ethnic' accents, in particular Caribbean, which form an accent labelled Multicultural London English (MLE), with a large amount of slang in use as well.
Piccadilly Circus at night
The Trooping the Colour held in 2006 to mark the Queen's 80th birthday.
Within the City of Westminster, the entertainment district of the West End has its focus around Leicester Square, where London and world film premieres are held, and Piccadilly Circus, with its giant electronic advertisements. London's theatre district is here, as are many cinemas, bars, clubs and restaurants, including the city's Chinatown district, and just to the east is Covent Garden, an area housing speciality shops. The United Kingdom's Royal Ballet,English National Ballet, Royal Opera and English National Opera are based in London and perform at the Royal Opera House, The London Coliseum, Sadler's Wells Theatre and the Royal Albert Hall as well as touring the country. Islington's long Upper Street, extending Northwards from The Angel, has more bars and restaurants than any other street in the UK. Europe's busiest shopping area is Oxford Street, a shopping street nearly long â which makes it the longest shopping street in the world â and home to many shops and department stores including Selfridges. Knightsbridge â home to the Harrods department store â lies just to the southwest. London is home to designers Vivienne Westwood, Galliano, Stella McCartney, Manolo Blahnik, and Jimmy Choo among others; its renowned art and fashion schools make it an international centre of fashion alongside Paris, Milan and New York.
London offers a great variety of cuisine as a result of its ethnically diverse population. Gastronomic centres include the Bangladeshi restaurants of Brick Lane and the Chinese food restaurants of Chinatown.
There are a variety of regular annual events in the city. The beginning of the year is celebrated with the relatively new New Year's Day Parade, while traditional parades include November's Lord Mayor's Show, a centuries-old event celebrating the annual appointment of a new Lord Mayor of the City of London with a procession along the streets of the City, and June's Trooping the Colour, a formal military pageant performed by regiments of the Commonwealth and British armies to celebrate the Queen's Official Birthday.
Charles Dickens (1812â1870), whose works formed a pervasive image of Victorian London.
London has been the setting for many works of literature. Two writers closely associated with the city are the diarist Samuel Pepys, noted for his eyewitness account of the Great Fire, and Charles Dickens, whose representation of a foggy, snowy, grimy London of street sweepers and pickpockets has been a major influence on people's vision of early Victorian London. The earlier (1722) A Journal of the Plague Year by Daniel Defoe is a fictionalisation of the events of the 1665 Great Plague. William Shakespeare spent a large part of his life living and working in London; his contemporary Ben Jonson was also based in London, and some of his work â most notably his play The Alchemist â was set in the city. Later important depictions of London from the 19th and early 20th centuries are the afore-mentioned Dickens novels, and Arthur Conan Doyle's illustrious Sherlock Holmes stories. A modern writer pervasively influenced by the city is Peter Ackroyd, in works such as London: The Biography, The Lambs of London and Hawksmoor.
London has played a significant role in the film industry, and has major studios at Pinewood, Ealing, Shepperton, Elstree and Leavesden, as well as an important special effects and post-production community centred in Soho in central London. Working Title Films has its headquarters in London. The city also hosts a number of performing arts schools, including The Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA), the Central School of Speech and Drama (alumni: Judi Dench and Laurence Olivier) and the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art (alumni: Jim Broadbent). The London Film Festival is held each year in October.
London is home to many museums, galleries, and other institutions which are major tourist attractions as well as playing a research role. The Natural History Museum (biology and geology), Science Museum and Victoria and Albert Museum (fashion and design) are clustered in South Kensington's "museum quarter", while the British Museum houses historic artefacts from around the world. The British Library at St Pancras is the UK's national library, housing 150 million items. The city also houses extensive art collections, primarily in the National Gallery, Tate Britain and Tate Modern.
The Royal Albert Hall hosts a wide range of concerts and musical events.
London is one of the major classical and popular music capitals of the world and is home to major music corporations, such as EMI and Decca Records, as well as countless bands, musicians and industry professionals. London is home to many orchestras and concert halls such as the Barbican Arts Centre (principal base of the London Symphony Orchestra), Cadogan Hall (Royal Philharmonic Orchestra) and the Royal Albert Hall (BBC Promenade Concerts). London's two main opera houses are the Royal Opera House and the Coliseum Theatre.
Several conservatoires are located within the city: Royal Academy of Music, Royal College of Music, Guildhall School of Music and Drama, and Trinity College of Music.
London has numerous renowned venues for rock and pop concerts, including large arenas such as Earls Court, Wembley Arena and the O2 Arena, as well as numerous mid-size venues, such as Brixton Academy, Hammersmith Apollo and The London Astoria. London also hosts many music festivals, including the 02 Wireless Festival and Latitude Festival.
London is home to the first and original Hard Rock Cafe and the illustrious Abbey Road Studios where The Beatles created many of their hits. Musicians such as Bob Marley, Jimi Hendrix and Freddie Mercury have lived in London. A large number of musical artists originate from or are most strongly associated with London, including David Bowie, Ian Dury, The Kinks, Adam Faith, The Rolling Stones, The Who, Madness, The Jam, Blur, Iron Maiden, Phil Collins, Rod Stewart, Elvis Costello, Dusty Springfield, The Yardbirds and The Small Faces.
London was instrumental in the development of punk music, with figures such as the Sex Pistols, The Clash, and Vivienne Westwood all based in the city.
More recent artists to emerge from the London music scene include The Libertines, one of the most influential British rock acts of the 2000s, Bloc Party, Amy Winehouse, Lily Allen, The Kooks, Razorlight, Laura Marling, Dizzee Rascal, Natasha Bedingfield and Leona Lewis.
London is also a centre for Urban music. In particular the genres UK Garage, Drum and Bass and Grime evolved in the city from the foreign genres of hiphop and reggae, alongside local rave music. Black music station BBC 1Xtra was set up to support the rise of homegrown urban music both in London and the rest of the UK.
Wembley Stadium is home to English football and is the most expensive stadium in the world.
The Wimbledon Championships, a tennis Grand Slam tournament.
London has hosted the Summer Olympics twice, in 1908 and 1948. In July 2005 London was chosen to host the Games in 2012, which will make it the first city in the world to host the Summer Olympics three times. London was also the host of the British Empire Games in 1934.
London's most popular sport (for both participants and spectators) is football. London has thirteen League football clubs, including five in the Premier League: Arsenal, Chelsea, Fulham, Tottenham Hotspur and West Ham United. London also has four rugby union teams in the Guinness Premiership (London Irish, Saracens, Wasps and Harlequins), although only the Harlequins play in London (all the other three now play outside Greater London, although Saracens still play within the M25). There are two professional rugby league clubs in London - Harlequins Rugby League who play in the Super League at the Stoop and the National League 2 side the London Skolars (based in Haringey).
Since 1924, the original Wembley Stadium was the home of the English national football team, and served as the venue for the FA Cup final as well as rugby league's Challenge Cup final. The new Wembley Stadium serves exactly the same purposes and has a capacity of 90,000. Twickenham Stadium in west London is the national rugby union stadium, and has a capacity of 84,000 now that the new south stand has been completed.
Cricket in London centres on its two Test cricket grounds at Lord's (home of Middlesex C.C.C) in St John's Wood, and The Oval (home of Surrey C.C.C) in Kennington. One of London's best-known annual sports competitions is the Wimbledon Tennis Championships, held at the All England Club in the south-western suburb of Wimbledon. Other key events are the annual mass-participation London Marathon which sees some 35,000 runners attempt a course around the city, and the Oxford vs. Cambridge Boat Race on the River Thames between Putney and Mortlake.
Transport is one of the four areas of policy administered by the Mayor of London, however the mayor's financial control is limited and he does not control the heavy rail network, although in November 2007 he assumed responsibility for the North London Railway as well as several other lines, to form London Overground. The public transport network, administered by Transport for London (TfL), is one of the most extensive in the world, but faces congestion and reliability issues, which a large investment programme is attempting to address, including £7 billion (â¬10 billion) of improvements planned for the Olympics. London has been commended as the city with the best public transport. Cycling is an increasingly popular way to get around London. The London Cycling Campaign lobbies for better provision.
The London Underground is the oldest, longest, and most expansive metro system in the world, dating from 1863.
The centrepiece of the public transport network is the London Underground â commonly referred to as The Tube â which has eleven interconnecting lines. It is the oldest, longest, and most expansive metro system in the world, dating from 1863. The system was home to the world's first underground electric line, the City & South London Railway, which began service in 1890. Over three million journeys a day are made on the Underground network, nearly 1 billion journeys each year. The Underground serves the central area and most suburbs to the north of the Thames, while those to the south are served by an extensive suburban rail surface network.
The Docklands Light Railway is a second metro system using smaller and lighter trains, which opened in 1987, serving East London and Greenwich on both sides of the Thames. Commuter and intercity railways generally do not cross the city, instead running into fourteen terminal stations scattered around its historic centre; the exception is the Thameslink route operated by First Capital Connect, with terminus stations at Bedford, Brighton and Moorgate. Since the early 1990s, increasing pressures on the commuter rail and Underground networks have led to increasing demands â particularly from businesses and the City of London Corporation â for Crossrail: a £10 billion east â west heavy rail connection under central London, which was given the green light in early October 2007.
High-speed Eurostar trains link St Pancras International with Lille and Paris in France, and Brussels in Belgium. Journey times to Paris and Brussels of 2h 15 and 1h 51 respectively make London closer to continental Europe than the rest of Britain by virtue of the newly completed High Speed 1 rail link to the Channel Tunnel. From 2009 this line will also allow for high speed domestic travel from Kent into London. The redevelopment of St. Pancras was key to London's Olympic bid, as the station also serves two international airports through Thameslink, and will also provide direct rail links to the Olympic site at Stratford using British Rail Class 395 trains running under the Olympic Javelin name; these will be based on Japanese Shinkansen high-speed trains.
The modern Enviro400 double-decker bus
London's bus network is one of the largest in the world, running 24 hours a day, with 8,000 buses, 700 bus routes, and over 6 million passenger journeys made every weekday. In 2003, the network's ridership was estimated at over 1.5 billion passenger trips per annum, more than the Underground. Around £850 m is taken in revenue each year.
London has the largest wheelchair accessible network in the world and, from the 3rd quarter of 2007, became more accessible to hearing and visually impaired passengers as audio-visual announcements were introduced. The distinctive red double-decker buses are internationally recognised, and are a trademark of London transport along with black cabs and the Tube.
Terminal 5 at Heathrow Airport, which is the world's busiest airport by international passenger traffic.
London is a major international air transport hub with the largest city airspace in the world. Eight airports use the words London Airport in their name, but most traffic passes through one of five major airports. London Heathrow Airport is the busiest airport in the world for international traffic, and is the major hub of the nation's flag carrier, British Airways. In March 2008 its fifth terminal was opened, and plans are already being considered for a sixth terminal. Similar traffic, with the addition of some low-cost short-haul flights, is also handled at London Gatwick Airport. London Stansted Airport and London Luton Airport cater mostly for low-cost short-haul flights. London City Airport, the smallest and most central airport, is focused on business travellers, with a mixture of full service short-haul scheduled flights and considerable business jet traffic.
Although the majority of journeys involving central London are made by public transport, travel in outer London is car-dominated. The inner ring road (around the city centre), the North and South Circular roads (in the suburbs), and the outer orbital motorway (the M25, outside the built-up area) encircle the city and are intersected by a number of busy radial routes â but very few motorways penetrate into inner London. The M25 is the longest ring-road motorway in the world at long. A plan for a comprehensive network of motorways throughout the city (the Ringways Plan) was prepared in the 1960s but was mostly cancelled in the early 1970s. In 2003, a congestion charge was introduced to reduce traffic volumes in the city centre. With a few exceptions, motorists are required to pay £8 per day to drive within a defined zone encompassing much of congested central London. Motorists who are residents of the defined zone can buy a vastly reduced season pass which is renewed monthly and is cheaper than a corresponding bus fare.
Royal Holloway, as a part of the University of London, a federation of London higher education institutions
Home to a range of universities, colleges and schools, London has a student population of about 378,000 and is a centre of research and development. Most primary and secondary schools in London follow the same system as the rest of England â comprehensive schooling.
With 125,000 students, the University of London is the largest contact teaching university in the United Kingdom and in Europe. It comprises 20 colleges as well as several smaller institutes each with a high degree of autonomy. Constituent colleges have their own admissions procedures, and are effectively universities in their own right, although most degrees are awarded by the University of London rather than the individual colleges. Its constituents include multi-disciplinary colleges such as UCL, King's, Goldsmiths, Queen Mary and more specialised institutions such as the London School of Economics, SOAS, the Royal Academy of Music, the Courtauld Institute of Art and the Institute of Education.
Imperial College London and University College London have been ranked among the top ten universities in the world by The Times Higher Education Supplement: in 2008 Imperial was ranked the 6th best and UCL the 7th best university in the world.
In addition, the London School of Economics is the worldâs leading social science institution for teaching and research, plus has the most international student body of any university in the world today.
A number of colleges are dedicated to the fine arts, including the Royal College of Music, Royal College of Art, and Guildhall School of Music and Drama.
Senate House, the headquarters of the federal University of London
London's other universities, such as Brunel University, City University, London Metropolitan University, Middlesex University, University of East London, University of the Arts London, University of Westminster, Kingston University and London South Bank University are not part of the University of London but are still leaders in their field and popular choices among students both nationally and internationally. Some were polytechnics until these were granted university status in 1992, and others which were founded much earlier. Imperial College London left the federal University of London in 2007. Since the merger of University of North London and London Guildhall University in 2003, London Metropolitan University is the largest unitary university in the capital, with over 34,000 students from 155 countries. About London Met London Metropolitan University, August 2008 London is also known globally for its business education, with the London Business School (ranked 1st in Europe â Business Week) and Cass Business School (Europe's largest finance school) both being top world-rated business schools. In addition there are three international universities: Schiller International University, Richmond University and Regent's College.
There are 46 other places on six continents named after London. Jack Malvern. Richmond, in Surrey, is the most widely copied British place name worldwide, timesonline 2008-12-29. The original byline for the article in The Times of the same day was "The 55 corners of foreign fields that will be for ever ... Richmond" (page 9). Cites The Times Universal Atlas of the World. As well as London's twinning, the Boroughs of London have twinnings with parts of other cities across the world. Shown below is the list of cities that the Greater London Authority is twinned with.
* New York City,
* Moscow,
* Berlin,
The following cities have a friendship agreement with London:
* Sofia,
* Delhi,
* Mumbai,
* Beijing,
* Istanbul,
* Paris,
* Tehran,
* Tokyo,
* Bogotá,
* Podgorica,
* Algiers,
* Global city
* Geography of England
* Large Cities Climate Leadership Group
* Largest European cities and metropolitan areas
* London Assembly
* Megacity
*
*
*
*
* Mayor of London, London Assembly and the Greater London Authority â Official city government site
* Transport for London (TfL) â city transport authority
* BBC London
* Office for National Statistics: Focus on London 2007 â compendium of official statistics about London
* Museum of London Group Portal - Home
* VisitLondon.com â Official London site
* Map of Early Modern London â Historical Map and Encyclopaedia of Shakespeare's London (Scholarly)
* London Bridges â A view of London Bridges over the River Thames
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London | What countries did James VI of Scotland unite? | England and Scotland | data/set3/a1 | London
London ( ; ) is the capital of both England and the United Kingdom, and the largest urban area in the European Union. {{cite web|url= title=Largest EU City An important settlement for two millennia, London's history goes back to its founding by the Romans. Since its foundation, London has been part of many movements and phenomena throughout history, including the English Renaissance, the Industrial Revolution, and the Gothic Revival. The city's core, the ancient City of London, still retains its limited medieval boundaries; but since at least the 19th century, the name "London" has also referred to the whole metropolis that has developed around it. Today the bulk of this conurbation forms the London region of England and the Greater London administrative area, with its own elected mayor and assembly.
London is one of the the world's most important business, financial and cultural centres and its influence in politics, education, entertainment, media, fashion and the arts contribute to its status as a major global city. Global Cities: GaWC Inventory of World Cities 1999 Global cities#GaWC Inventory of World Cities (1999 Edition); Global Cities: GaWC Inventory of World Cities 2004 Global cities#GaWC Leading World Cities (2004 Edition) Central London is the headquarters of more than half of the UK's top 100 listed companies (the FTSE 100) and over 100 of Europe's 500 largest companies. The city is a major tourist destination both for domestic and overseas visitors, with annual expenditure by tourists of around £15 billion. London hosted the 1908 and 1948 Summer Olympic Games and will host the 2012 Summer Olympic Games.
Greater London contains four World Heritage Sites: the Tower of London; the historic settlement of Greenwich; the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew; and the site comprising the Palace of Westminster, Westminster Abbey and St. Margaret's Church.
London's population draws from a wide range of peoples, cultures, and religions, and over 300 languages are spoken within the city. As of 2006, it had an official population of 7,512,400 within the boundaries of Greater London and is the most populous municipality in the European Union. As of 2001, the Greater London Urban Area had a population of 8,278,251 and the metropolitan area is estimated to have a total population of between 12 and 14 million , the largest metropolitan area in the EU. The public transport network, administered by Transport for London, is one of the most extensive in the world, and Heathrow Airport is the busiest airport in the world by international passenger traffic and the air space is the busiest of any city in the world. International Passenger Traffic, Airports Council International
The etymology of London remains a mystery. The earliest etymological explanation can be attributed to Geoffrey of Monmouth in Historia Regum Britanniae. The name is described as originating from King Lud, who had allegedly taken over the city and named it Kaerlud. This was slurred into Kaerludein and finally London. Many other theories have been advanced over the centuries, most of them deriving the name from Welsh or British, and occasionally from Anglo-Saxon or even Hebrew.
Map of London in 1300, showing the medieval boundaries of the City of London
Although there is evidence of scattered Brythonic settlements in the area, the first major settlement was founded by the Romans in AD 43 as Londinium, following the Roman conquest of Britain. This Londinium lasted for just seventeen years. Around 61, the Iceni tribe led by Queen Boudica stormed this first London, burning it to the ground. The next, heavily planned incarnation of the city prospered and superseded Colchester as the capital of the Roman province of Britannia in 100. At its height in the 2nd century, Roman London had a population of around 60,000.
By the 600s, the Anglo-Saxons had created a new settlement called Lundenwic approximately upstream from the old Roman city,
around what is now Covent Garden. It is likely that there was a harbour at the mouth of the River Fleet for fishing and trading, and this trading grew until the city was overcome by the Vikings and forced to relocate the city back to the location of the Roman Londinium to use its walls for protection. Viking attacks continued to increase around the rest of South East England, until 886 when Alfred the Great recaptured London and made peace with the Danish leader, Guthrum. The original Saxon city of Lundenwic became Ealdwic ("old city"), a name surviving to the present day as Aldwych, which is in the modern City of Westminster.
In a retaliatory attack, Ethelred's army achieved victory by pulling down London Bridge with the Danish garrison on top, and English control was re-established. Canute took control of the English throne in 1017, controlling the city and country until 1042, when his death resulted in a reversion to Saxon control under his pious stepson Edward the Confessor, who re-founded Westminster Abbey and the adjacent Palace of Westminster. By this time, London had become the largest and most prosperous city in England, although the official seat of government was still at Winchester.
Following a victory at the Battle of Hastings, William the Conqueror, the then Duke of Normandy, was crowned King of England in the newly finished Westminster Abbey on Christmas Day 1066. William granted the citizens of London special privileges, while building what is now known as the Tower of London, in the south-east corner of the city, to keep them under control. .
The Great Exhibition
In 1097, William II began the building of Westminster Hall, close by the abbey of the same name. The hall became the basis of a new Palace of Westminster, the prime royal residence throughout the Middle Ages. Westminster became the seat of the royal court and government (persisting until the present day), while its distinct neighbour, the City of London, was a centre of trade and commerce and flourished under its own unique administration, the Corporation of London. London grew in wealth and population during the Middle Ages. In 1100 its population was around 18,000; by 1300 it had grown to nearly 100,000. King Edward I issued an edict in 1290, expelling all Jews from England. Before the edict, there was an increasing population of Jews, whereas after this time, the population of Jews began to drop considerably. Disaster struck during the Black Death in the mid-14th century, when London lost nearly a third of its population. Apart from the invasion of London during the Peasants' Revolt in 1381, London remained relatively untouched by the various civil wars during the Middle Ages, such as the first and second Barons' Wars and the Wars of the Roses.
After the successful defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588, political stability in England allowed London to grow further. In 1603, James VI of Scotland came to the throne of England, essentially uniting the two countries. His enactment of harsh anti-Catholic laws made him unpopular, and an assassination attempt was made on 5 November 1605âthe well-known Gunpowder Plot.
The Great Fire of London destroyed many parts of the city in 1666
Plague caused extensive problems for London in the early 17th century, culminating in the Great Plague in 1665â1666. This was the last major outbreak in England, possibly thanks to the disastrous fire of 1666. The Great Fire of London broke out in the original City and quickly swept through London's wooden buildings, destroying large swathes of the city. A first hand narrative of both plague and fire was provided by Sir Samuel Pepys. Rebuilding took over ten years, largely under direction of a Commission appointed by King Charles II and chaired by Sir Christopher Wren.
Following London's growth in the 18th century, it became the world's largest city from about 1831 to 1925. Rising traffic congestion on city centre roads led to the creation of the world's first metro system â the London Underground â in 1863, driving further expansion and urbanisation. London's local government system struggled to cope with the rapid growth, especially in providing the city with adequate infrastructure. Between 1855 and 1889, the Metropolitan Board of Works oversaw infrastructure expansion. It was then replaced by the County of London, overseen by the London County Council, London's first elected city-wide administration.
A London street hit during the Blitz of World War II
The Blitz and other bombing by the German Luftwaffe during World War II killed over 30,000 Londoners and destroyed large tracts of housing and other buildings across London. In 1965 London's political boundaries were expanded to take into account the growth of the urban area outside the County of London's borders. The expanded area was called Greater London and was administered by the Greater London Council. An eco revival from the 1980s onwards re-established London's position as a pre-eminent international centre. However, as the seat of government and the most important city in the UK, it has been subjected to bouts of terrorism. Provisional Irish Republican Army bombers sought to pressure the government into negotiations over Northern Ireland, frequently disrupting city activities with bomb threats â some of which were carried out â until their 1997 cease-fire. More recently, a series of coordinated bomb attacks were carried out by Islamic extremist suicide bombers on the public transport network on 7 July 2005âjust 24 hours after London was awarded the 2012 Summer Olympics.
City Hall at night, home of the Greater London Authority
The administration of London is formed of two tiers â a city-wide, strategic tier and a local tier. City-wide administration is coordinated by the Greater London Authority (GLA), while local administration is carried out by 33 smaller authorities. The GLA consists of two elected parts; the Mayor of London, who has executive powers, and the London Assembly, who scrutinise the Mayor's decisions and can accept or reject his budget proposals each year. The GLA was set up in 2000 to replace the similar Greater London Council (GLC) which had been abolished in 1986. The headquarters of the GLA and the Mayor of London is at City Hall; the Mayor is Boris Johnson. The 33 local authorities are the councils of the 32 London boroughs and the City of London Corporation. They are responsible for local services not overseen by the GLA, such as local planning, schools, social services, local roads and refuse collection.
London is the home of the Government of the United Kingdom which is located around the Houses of Parliament in Westminster. Many government departments are located close to Parliament, particularly along Whitehall, including the Prime Minister's residence at 10 Downing Street. The British Parliament is often referred to as the "Mother of Parliaments" (although this sobriquet was first applied to England itself by John Bright) because it has been the model for most other parliamentary systems, and its Acts have created many other parliaments. There are 74 Members of Parliament (MPs) from London, who correspond to local parliamentary constituencies in the national Parliament by . Of these 74 MPs, currently 44 are from the Labour Party, 21 are Conservatives, 8 are Liberal Democrats and one is from the RESPECT party.
West and central London seen from SPOT satellite
London can be geographically defined in a number of ways, although the situation was once even more ambiguous than it is now and open to periodic legal debate. At London's core is the small, ancient City of London which is commonly known as 'the City' or 'the Square Mile'. London's metropolitan area grew considerably during the Victorian era and again during the Interwar period, but expansion halted in the 1940s because of World War II and Green Belt legislation, and the area has been largely static since. The London region of England, also commonly known as Greater London, is the area administered by the Greater London Authority. The urban sprawl of the conurbation â or Greater London Urban Area â covers a roughly similar area, with a slightly larger population. Beyond this is the vast London commuter belt.
Map of Central LondonForty percent of Greater London is covered by the London postal district, within which 'LONDON' forms part of the postal address. The London telephone area code covers a larger area, similar in size to Greater London, although some outer districts are omitted and some places just outside are included. The area within the orbital M25 motorway is sometimes used to define the "London area" and the Greater London boundary has been aligned to it in places. Greater London is split for some purposes into Inner London and Outer London. Informally, the city is split into North, South, East, West and often also Central London.
The Metropolitan Police District, city-wide local government area and London transport area have varied over time, but broadly coincide with the Greater London boundary. The Romans may have marked the centre of Londinium with the London Stone, still visible on Cannon Street. The coordinates of the nominal centre of London (traditionally considered to be the original Eleanor Cross at Charing Cross, near the junction of Trafalgar Square and Whitehall) are approximately . Trafalgar Square has also become a point for celebrations and protests.
Within London, both the City of London and the City of Westminster have City status and both the City of London and the remainder of Greater London are the ceremonial counties. The current area of Greater London was historically part of the counties of Middlesex, Kent, Surrey, Essex and Hertfordshire. Unlike most capital cities, London's status as the capital of the UK has never been granted or confirmed officially â by statute or in written form. Its position as the capital has formed through constitutional convention, making its position as de facto capital a part of the UK's unwritten constitution. The capital of England was moved to London from Winchester as the Palace of Westminster developed in the 12th and 13th centuries to become the permanent location of the royal court, and thus the political capital of the nation. According to the Collins English Dictionary definition (1994) Collins English Dictionary. Collins Education plc. of 'the seat of government,' London is not the capital of England, as England does not have its own government. However according to the Oxford English Reference dictionary definition Oxford English Reference Dictionary. Oxford English. of 'the most important town...' and many other authorities, "HC 501 0304.PDF" (PDF). Parliament Publications. Retrieved on 2008-06-06. 'England' (1994) Collins English Dictionary. Collins Education plc. London is the capital of England.
Greater London covers an area of . Its primary geographical feature is the Thames, a navigable river which crosses the city from the south-west to the east. The Thames Valley is a floodplain surrounded by gently rolling hills including Parliament Hill, Addington Hills, and Primrose Hill. The Thames was once a much broader, shallower river with extensive marshlands; at high tide, its shores reached five times their present width. Since the Victorian era it has been extensively embanked, and many of its London tributaries now flow underground. The Thames is a tidal river, and London is vulnerable to flooding. The threat has increased over time due to a slow but continuous rise in high water level by the slow 'tilting' of Britain (up in the north and down in the south) caused by post-glacial rebound. In 1974, a decade of work began on the construction of the Thames Barrier across the Thames at Woolwich to deal with this threat. While the barrier is expected to function as designed until roughly 2030, concepts for its future enlargement or redesign are already being discussed.
London has a temperate marine climate, like much of the British Isles, so the city rarely sees extremely high or low temperatures. Summers are warm with average high temperatures of and lows of , however, temperatures could exceed on many days.
Winters in London are chilly, but rarely below freezing with daytime temperatures around 2 - 8 °C (36 - 46 °F), while spring has mild days and cool evenings.
London has regular but generally light precipitation throughout the year, with average precipitation of every year.
Snow is relatively uncommon, particularly because heat from the urban area can make London up to 5 °C (9 °F) hotter than the surrounding areas in winter. Snowfall, however, is usually, but not always, seen up to a few times a year. London is in USDA Hardiness zone 9, and AHS Heat Zone 2.
In the second half of the 19th century and the first half of the 20th, London was noted for its dense fogs and smogs. Following the deadly Great Smog of 1952, the Clean Air Act 1956 was passed, leading to the decline of such severe pollution in the capital.
London's vast urban area is often described using a set of district names (e.g. Bloomsbury, Knightsbridge, Mayfair, Whitechapel, Fitzrovia). These are either informal designations, or reflect the names of superseded villages, parishes and city wards. Such names have remained in use through tradition, each referring to a local area with its own distinctive character, but often with no modern official boundaries. However, since 1965 Greater London has been divided into 32 London boroughs in addition to the ancient City of London.
The City of London is one of the world's three largest financial centres (alongside New York and Tokyo) with a dominant role in several international financial markets, including cross-border bank lending, international bond issuance and trading, foreign-exchange trading, over-the-counter derivatives, fund management and foreign equities trading. It also has the world's largest insurance market, the leading exchange for dealing in non-precious metals, the largest spot gold and gold lending markets, the largest ship broking market, and more foreign banks and investment houses than any other centre. The City has its own governance and boundaries, giving it a status as the only completely autonomous local authority in London. London's new financial and commercial hub is the Docklands area to the east of the City, dominated by the Canary Wharf complex. Other businesses locate in the City of Westminster, the home of the UK's national government and the well-known Westminster Abbey.
The West End is London's main entertainment and shopping district, with locations such as Oxford Street, Leicester Square, Covent Garden and Piccadilly Circus acting as tourist magnets. The West London area is known for fashionable and expensive residential areas such as Notting Hill, Knightsbridge and Chelsea â where properties can sell for tens of millions of pounds. The average price for all properties in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea is £894,000 with similar average outlay in most of Central London.
The eastern region of London contains the East End and East London. The East End is the area closest to the original Port of London, known for its high immigrant population, as well as for being one of the poorest areas in London. The surrounding East London area saw much of London's early industrial development; now, brownfield sites throughout the area are being redeveloped as part of the Thames Gateway including the London Riverside and Lower Lea Valley, which is being developed into the Olympic Park for the 2012 Olympics.
With increasing industrialisation, London's population grew rapidly throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries, and it was the most populous city in the world until overtaken by New York in 1925. Its population peaked at 8,615,245 in 1939 immediately before the outbreak of World War 2. There were an estimated 7,512,400 official residents in Greater London as of mid-2006. However, London's continuous urban area extends beyond the borders of Greater London and was home to 8,278,251 people in 2001, while its wider metropolitan area has a population of between 12 and 14 million depending on the definition used. According to Eurostat, London is the most populous city and metropolitan area of the European Union and the second most populous in Europe (or third if Istanbul is included).
The region covers an area of . The population density is , more than ten times that of any other British region. In terms of population, London is the 25th largest city and the 17th largest metropolitan region in the world. It is also ranked 4th in the world in number of billionaires (United States Dollars) residing in the city. London ranks as one of the most expensive cities in the world, alongside Tokyo and Moscow.
According to 2008 estimates, 51% of these seven million and seven hundred thousand people people are classed as the indigenous White British, White Irish (2.5%) and "Other White" 10%, the majority of whom are other Europeans. 15% of people are of South Asian descent, including Indian (mainly Punjabi, Hindi, Tamil and Gujarati), Pakistani, Bangladeshi (Bengali) and "Other Asian" (mostly Sri Lankan (Tamil) and other Southern Asian ethnicities). 13% of people are Black (around 7% are Black African, 5% as Black Caribbean, 1% as "Other Black"). 5.5% are of mixed race; 1.5% are Chinese; and 1.5% of people belong to another ethnic group. 30% of inhabitants were born outside the European Union. The Irish born, from both the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland, number approximately 250,000 and are the largest group born outside of Britain.
In January 2005, a survey of London's ethnic and religious diversity claimed that there were more than 300 languages spoken and more than 50 non-indigenous communities which have a population of more than 10,000 in London. Figures from the Office for National Statistics show that, as of 2006, London's foreign-born population is 2,288,000 (31%), up from 1,630,000 in 1997. The 2001 census showed that 27.1% of Greater London's population were born outside the UK, and a slightly higher proportion were classed as non-white.
The table to the right shows the 'Country of Birth' of London residents in 2001, the date of the last UK Census. (Top 21). Note that a portion of the German-born population are likely to be British nationals born to parents serving in the British armed forces in Germany.
Westminster Abbey is one of London's oldest and most important buildings and a World Heritage Site.
The majority of Londoners - 58.2% - identify themselves as Christians. This is followed by those of no religion (15.8%), Muslims (8.5%), Hindus (4.1%), Jews (2.1%), Sikhs (1.5%), Buddhists (0.8%) and other (0.5%), though 8.7% of people did not answer this question in the 2001 Census.
London has traditionally been dominated by Christianity, and has a large number of churches, particularly in the City of London. The well-known St Paul's Cathedral in the City and Southwark Cathedral south of the river are Anglican administrative centres, while the Archbishop of Canterbury, principal bishop of the Church of England and worldwide Anglican Communion, has his main residence at Lambeth Palace in the London Borough of Lambeth.
Important national and royal ceremonies are shared between St Paul's and Westminster Abbey. The Abbey is not to be confused with nearby Westminster Cathedral, which is the largest Roman Catholic cathedral in England and Wales. Religious practice is lower in London than any other part of the UK or Western Europe and is around seven times lower than American averages. Despite the prevalence of Anglican churches, observance is very low within the Anglican denomination, although church attendance, particularly at evangelical Anglican churches in London, has started to increase.
The Swaminarayan Hindu Temple in Neasden
London is also home to sizeable Muslim, Hindu, Sikh, and Jewish communities. Many Muslims live in Tower Hamlets and Newham; the most important Muslim edifice is London Central Mosque on the edge of Regent's Park. London's large Hindu community is found in the north-western boroughs of Harrow and Brent, the latter of which is home to one of Europe's largest Hindu temples, Neasden Temple. Sikh communities are located in East and West London, which is also home to the largest Sikh temple in the world, outside India.
The majority of British Jews live in London, with significant Jewish communities in Stamford Hill, Stanmore, Golders Green, Hendon, and Edgware in North London. Stanmore and Canons Park Synagogue has the largest membership of any single Orthodox synagogue in the whole of Europe, overtaking Ilford synagogue (also in London) in 1998. The community set up the London Jewish Forum in 2007 in response to the growing significance of devolved London Government.
The City of London is the world's largest financial centre . It is home to the London Stock Exchange and Lloyds of London.
London is a major centre for international business and commerce and is one of three "command centres" for the world economy (along with New York City and Tokyo). According to 2005 estimates by the PricewaterhouseCoopers accounting firm, London has the 6th largest city economy in the world after Tokyo, New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Paris. London generates approximately 20% of the UK's GDP (or $446 billion in 2005); while the economy of the London metropolitan area â the second largest in Europe â generates approximately 30% of the UK's GDP (or an estimated $669 billion in 2005).
London's success as a service industry and business centre can be attributed to factors such as English being the native and dominant language of business, close relationship with the U.S. and various countries in Asia. Other factors include English law being the most important and most used contract law in international business and the multi-cultural infrastructure. Government policies such as low taxes, particularly for foreigners (non-UK domiciled residents do not get taxed on their foreign earnings), a business friendly environment, good transport infrastructure and a deregulated economy with little intervention by the government have all contributed to London's economy becoming more service based. Over 85% (3.2 million) of the employed population of Greater London works in service industries. Another half a million employees resident in Greater London work in manufacturing and construction, almost equally divided between both.
The three tallest skyscrapers as of 2008 in Canary Wharf as viewed from Cabot Square. It is home to such companies as HSBC and Clifford Chance.
London's largest industry remains finance, and its financial exports make it a large contributor to the UK's balance of payments. Over 300,000 people are employed in financial services in London. London has over 480 overseas banks, more than any other city in the world. Due to New York's tightening of market regulations, London stock exchanges had approximately 20% more initial public offerings in 2006.
London is home to banks, brokers, insurers and legal and accounting firms. A second, smaller financial district is developing at Canary Wharf to the east of the city which includes the global headquarters of HSBC, Reuters, Barclays and the Magic Circle, which includes Clifford Chance, the largest law firm in the world. London handled 31% of global currency transactions â an average daily turnover of US$753 billion â with more US dollars traded in London than New York, and more euros traded than in every other city in Europe combined.
More than half of the UK's top 100 listed companies (the FTSE 100) and over 100 of Europe's 500 largest companies are headquartered in central London. Over 70% of the FTSE 100 are located within London's metropolitan area, and 75% of Fortune 500 companies have offices in London. Along with professional services, media companies are concentrated in London (see Media in London) and the media distribution industry is London's second most competitive sector (after central banking, the most competitive sector). The BBC is a key employer, while other broadcasters also have headquarters around the city. Many national newspapers are edited in London, having traditionally been associated with Fleet Street in the city; they are now primarily based around Canary Wharf.
Due to its prominant global role, London is getting hit harder than any other financial centre in the subprime crisis. The City of London estimates that 70,000 jobs in finance will be cut within barely a year.
Several foreign banks have started to move off employees from London to their national financial centres, notably Dresdner Kleinwort, BNP Paribas and Santander.
Tourism is one of London's prime industries and employs the equivalent of 350,000 full-time workers in London in 2003, while annual expenditure by tourists is around £15 billion. " ", Visit London. Retrieved on 3 June 2006. A study carried out by Euromonitor in October 2007 places London at first place out of 150 of the world's most popular cities, attracting 15.6 million international tourists in 2006. This puts London far ahead of 2nd place Bangkok (10.35 million) and 3rd place Paris (just 9.7 million). London attracts 27 million overnight-stay visitors every year. " ", Visit London. Retrieved on 3 June 2006. The Port of London is currently the third-largest in the United Kingdom, handling 50 million tonnes of cargo each year.
London is too diverse to be characterised by any particular architectural style, having accumulated its buildings over a long period of time and drawn on a wide range of influences. It is, however, mainly brick built, most commonly the yellow London stock brick or a warm orange-red variety, often decorated with carvings and white plaster mouldings. Many grand houses and public buildings (such as the National Gallery) are constructed from Portland stone. Some areas of the city, particularly those just west of the centre, are characterised by white stucco or whitewashed buildings. Few structures pre-date the Great Fire of 1666, except for a few trace Roman remains, the Tower of London and a few scattered Tudor survivors in the City. The disused (but soon to be rejuvenated) 1939 Battersea Power Station by the river in the south-west is a local landmark, while some railway termini are excellent examples of Victorian architecture, most notably St Pancras and Paddington (at least internally).
The O 2 , one of the largest dome structures in the world.
The density of London varies, with high employment density in the central area, high residential densities in inner London and lower densities in the suburbs. In the dense areas, most of the concentration is achieved with medium- and high-rise buildings. London's skyscrapers such as the notable "Gherkin", Tower 42, the Broadgate Tower and One Canada Square are usually found in the two financial districts, the City of London and Canary Wharf. Other notable modern buildings include City Hall in Southwark with its distinctive oval shape, the British Library in Somers Town/Kings Cross, What was formerly the Millennium Dome, located by the Thames to the east of Canary Wharf, is now used as an entertainment venue known as The O 2 .
The development of tall buildings has been encouraged in the London Plan, which will lead to the erection of many new skyscrapers over the next decade, particularly in the City of London and Canary Wharf. The 72-storey, "Shard London Bridge" by London Bridge station, the Bishopsgate Tower and many other skyscrapers over are either proposed or approved and could transform the city's skyline. As of July 2008, there are 426 high-rise buildings (between 23 m to 150 m/75 ft to 491 ft) under construction, approved for construction, and proposed for construction in London.
A great many monuments pay homage to people and events in the city. The Monument in the City of London provides views of the surrounding area while commemorating the Great Fire of London, which originated nearby. Marble Arch and Wellington Arch, at the north and south ends of Park Lane respectively, have royal connections, as do the Albert Memorial and Royal Albert Hall in Kensington. Nelson's Column is a nationally recognised monument in Trafalgar Square, one of the focal points of the centre.
The largest parks in the central area of London are the Royal Parks of Hyde Park and its neighbour Kensington Gardens at the western edge of central London and Regent's Park on the northern edge. This park contains London Zoo, the world's oldest scientific zoo, and is located near the tourist attraction of Madame Tussauds Wax Museum. Closer to central London are the smaller Royal Parks of Green Park and St. James's Park. Hyde Park in particular is popular for sports and sometimes hosts open-air concerts.
A number of large parks lie outside the city centre, including the remaining Royal Parks of Greenwich Park to the south-east and Bushy Park and Richmond Park to the south-west, as well as Victoria Park, East London to the east. Primrose Hill to the north of Regent's Park is a popular spot to view the city skyline. Some more informal, semi-natural open spaces also exist, including the Hampstead Heath of North London. This incorporates Kenwood House, the former stately home and a popular location in the summer months where classical musical concerts are held by the lake, attracting thousands of people every weekend to enjoy the music, scenery and fireworks.
Traditionally the London accent has been given the famous Cockney label, and was similar to many accents of the South East of England, developing a unique form of slang known as Cockney Rhyming Slang. The accent of a 21st century Londoner varies widely; what is becoming more and more common amongst the under 30s however is some fusion of Cockney, Received Pronunciation, and a whole array of 'ethnic' accents, in particular Caribbean, which form an accent labelled Multicultural London English (MLE), with a large amount of slang in use as well.
Piccadilly Circus at night
The Trooping the Colour held in 2006 to mark the Queen's 80th birthday.
Within the City of Westminster, the entertainment district of the West End has its focus around Leicester Square, where London and world film premieres are held, and Piccadilly Circus, with its giant electronic advertisements. London's theatre district is here, as are many cinemas, bars, clubs and restaurants, including the city's Chinatown district, and just to the east is Covent Garden, an area housing speciality shops. The United Kingdom's Royal Ballet,English National Ballet, Royal Opera and English National Opera are based in London and perform at the Royal Opera House, The London Coliseum, Sadler's Wells Theatre and the Royal Albert Hall as well as touring the country. Islington's long Upper Street, extending Northwards from The Angel, has more bars and restaurants than any other street in the UK. Europe's busiest shopping area is Oxford Street, a shopping street nearly long â which makes it the longest shopping street in the world â and home to many shops and department stores including Selfridges. Knightsbridge â home to the Harrods department store â lies just to the southwest. London is home to designers Vivienne Westwood, Galliano, Stella McCartney, Manolo Blahnik, and Jimmy Choo among others; its renowned art and fashion schools make it an international centre of fashion alongside Paris, Milan and New York.
London offers a great variety of cuisine as a result of its ethnically diverse population. Gastronomic centres include the Bangladeshi restaurants of Brick Lane and the Chinese food restaurants of Chinatown.
There are a variety of regular annual events in the city. The beginning of the year is celebrated with the relatively new New Year's Day Parade, while traditional parades include November's Lord Mayor's Show, a centuries-old event celebrating the annual appointment of a new Lord Mayor of the City of London with a procession along the streets of the City, and June's Trooping the Colour, a formal military pageant performed by regiments of the Commonwealth and British armies to celebrate the Queen's Official Birthday.
Charles Dickens (1812â1870), whose works formed a pervasive image of Victorian London.
London has been the setting for many works of literature. Two writers closely associated with the city are the diarist Samuel Pepys, noted for his eyewitness account of the Great Fire, and Charles Dickens, whose representation of a foggy, snowy, grimy London of street sweepers and pickpockets has been a major influence on people's vision of early Victorian London. The earlier (1722) A Journal of the Plague Year by Daniel Defoe is a fictionalisation of the events of the 1665 Great Plague. William Shakespeare spent a large part of his life living and working in London; his contemporary Ben Jonson was also based in London, and some of his work â most notably his play The Alchemist â was set in the city. Later important depictions of London from the 19th and early 20th centuries are the afore-mentioned Dickens novels, and Arthur Conan Doyle's illustrious Sherlock Holmes stories. A modern writer pervasively influenced by the city is Peter Ackroyd, in works such as London: The Biography, The Lambs of London and Hawksmoor.
London has played a significant role in the film industry, and has major studios at Pinewood, Ealing, Shepperton, Elstree and Leavesden, as well as an important special effects and post-production community centred in Soho in central London. Working Title Films has its headquarters in London. The city also hosts a number of performing arts schools, including The Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA), the Central School of Speech and Drama (alumni: Judi Dench and Laurence Olivier) and the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art (alumni: Jim Broadbent). The London Film Festival is held each year in October.
London is home to many museums, galleries, and other institutions which are major tourist attractions as well as playing a research role. The Natural History Museum (biology and geology), Science Museum and Victoria and Albert Museum (fashion and design) are clustered in South Kensington's "museum quarter", while the British Museum houses historic artefacts from around the world. The British Library at St Pancras is the UK's national library, housing 150 million items. The city also houses extensive art collections, primarily in the National Gallery, Tate Britain and Tate Modern.
The Royal Albert Hall hosts a wide range of concerts and musical events.
London is one of the major classical and popular music capitals of the world and is home to major music corporations, such as EMI and Decca Records, as well as countless bands, musicians and industry professionals. London is home to many orchestras and concert halls such as the Barbican Arts Centre (principal base of the London Symphony Orchestra), Cadogan Hall (Royal Philharmonic Orchestra) and the Royal Albert Hall (BBC Promenade Concerts). London's two main opera houses are the Royal Opera House and the Coliseum Theatre.
Several conservatoires are located within the city: Royal Academy of Music, Royal College of Music, Guildhall School of Music and Drama, and Trinity College of Music.
London has numerous renowned venues for rock and pop concerts, including large arenas such as Earls Court, Wembley Arena and the O2 Arena, as well as numerous mid-size venues, such as Brixton Academy, Hammersmith Apollo and The London Astoria. London also hosts many music festivals, including the 02 Wireless Festival and Latitude Festival.
London is home to the first and original Hard Rock Cafe and the illustrious Abbey Road Studios where The Beatles created many of their hits. Musicians such as Bob Marley, Jimi Hendrix and Freddie Mercury have lived in London. A large number of musical artists originate from or are most strongly associated with London, including David Bowie, Ian Dury, The Kinks, Adam Faith, The Rolling Stones, The Who, Madness, The Jam, Blur, Iron Maiden, Phil Collins, Rod Stewart, Elvis Costello, Dusty Springfield, The Yardbirds and The Small Faces.
London was instrumental in the development of punk music, with figures such as the Sex Pistols, The Clash, and Vivienne Westwood all based in the city.
More recent artists to emerge from the London music scene include The Libertines, one of the most influential British rock acts of the 2000s, Bloc Party, Amy Winehouse, Lily Allen, The Kooks, Razorlight, Laura Marling, Dizzee Rascal, Natasha Bedingfield and Leona Lewis.
London is also a centre for Urban music. In particular the genres UK Garage, Drum and Bass and Grime evolved in the city from the foreign genres of hiphop and reggae, alongside local rave music. Black music station BBC 1Xtra was set up to support the rise of homegrown urban music both in London and the rest of the UK.
Wembley Stadium is home to English football and is the most expensive stadium in the world.
The Wimbledon Championships, a tennis Grand Slam tournament.
London has hosted the Summer Olympics twice, in 1908 and 1948. In July 2005 London was chosen to host the Games in 2012, which will make it the first city in the world to host the Summer Olympics three times. London was also the host of the British Empire Games in 1934.
London's most popular sport (for both participants and spectators) is football. London has thirteen League football clubs, including five in the Premier League: Arsenal, Chelsea, Fulham, Tottenham Hotspur and West Ham United. London also has four rugby union teams in the Guinness Premiership (London Irish, Saracens, Wasps and Harlequins), although only the Harlequins play in London (all the other three now play outside Greater London, although Saracens still play within the M25). There are two professional rugby league clubs in London - Harlequins Rugby League who play in the Super League at the Stoop and the National League 2 side the London Skolars (based in Haringey).
Since 1924, the original Wembley Stadium was the home of the English national football team, and served as the venue for the FA Cup final as well as rugby league's Challenge Cup final. The new Wembley Stadium serves exactly the same purposes and has a capacity of 90,000. Twickenham Stadium in west London is the national rugby union stadium, and has a capacity of 84,000 now that the new south stand has been completed.
Cricket in London centres on its two Test cricket grounds at Lord's (home of Middlesex C.C.C) in St John's Wood, and The Oval (home of Surrey C.C.C) in Kennington. One of London's best-known annual sports competitions is the Wimbledon Tennis Championships, held at the All England Club in the south-western suburb of Wimbledon. Other key events are the annual mass-participation London Marathon which sees some 35,000 runners attempt a course around the city, and the Oxford vs. Cambridge Boat Race on the River Thames between Putney and Mortlake.
Transport is one of the four areas of policy administered by the Mayor of London, however the mayor's financial control is limited and he does not control the heavy rail network, although in November 2007 he assumed responsibility for the North London Railway as well as several other lines, to form London Overground. The public transport network, administered by Transport for London (TfL), is one of the most extensive in the world, but faces congestion and reliability issues, which a large investment programme is attempting to address, including £7 billion (â¬10 billion) of improvements planned for the Olympics. London has been commended as the city with the best public transport. Cycling is an increasingly popular way to get around London. The London Cycling Campaign lobbies for better provision.
The London Underground is the oldest, longest, and most expansive metro system in the world, dating from 1863.
The centrepiece of the public transport network is the London Underground â commonly referred to as The Tube â which has eleven interconnecting lines. It is the oldest, longest, and most expansive metro system in the world, dating from 1863. The system was home to the world's first underground electric line, the City & South London Railway, which began service in 1890. Over three million journeys a day are made on the Underground network, nearly 1 billion journeys each year. The Underground serves the central area and most suburbs to the north of the Thames, while those to the south are served by an extensive suburban rail surface network.
The Docklands Light Railway is a second metro system using smaller and lighter trains, which opened in 1987, serving East London and Greenwich on both sides of the Thames. Commuter and intercity railways generally do not cross the city, instead running into fourteen terminal stations scattered around its historic centre; the exception is the Thameslink route operated by First Capital Connect, with terminus stations at Bedford, Brighton and Moorgate. Since the early 1990s, increasing pressures on the commuter rail and Underground networks have led to increasing demands â particularly from businesses and the City of London Corporation â for Crossrail: a £10 billion east â west heavy rail connection under central London, which was given the green light in early October 2007.
High-speed Eurostar trains link St Pancras International with Lille and Paris in France, and Brussels in Belgium. Journey times to Paris and Brussels of 2h 15 and 1h 51 respectively make London closer to continental Europe than the rest of Britain by virtue of the newly completed High Speed 1 rail link to the Channel Tunnel. From 2009 this line will also allow for high speed domestic travel from Kent into London. The redevelopment of St. Pancras was key to London's Olympic bid, as the station also serves two international airports through Thameslink, and will also provide direct rail links to the Olympic site at Stratford using British Rail Class 395 trains running under the Olympic Javelin name; these will be based on Japanese Shinkansen high-speed trains.
The modern Enviro400 double-decker bus
London's bus network is one of the largest in the world, running 24 hours a day, with 8,000 buses, 700 bus routes, and over 6 million passenger journeys made every weekday. In 2003, the network's ridership was estimated at over 1.5 billion passenger trips per annum, more than the Underground. Around £850 m is taken in revenue each year.
London has the largest wheelchair accessible network in the world and, from the 3rd quarter of 2007, became more accessible to hearing and visually impaired passengers as audio-visual announcements were introduced. The distinctive red double-decker buses are internationally recognised, and are a trademark of London transport along with black cabs and the Tube.
Terminal 5 at Heathrow Airport, which is the world's busiest airport by international passenger traffic.
London is a major international air transport hub with the largest city airspace in the world. Eight airports use the words London Airport in their name, but most traffic passes through one of five major airports. London Heathrow Airport is the busiest airport in the world for international traffic, and is the major hub of the nation's flag carrier, British Airways. In March 2008 its fifth terminal was opened, and plans are already being considered for a sixth terminal. Similar traffic, with the addition of some low-cost short-haul flights, is also handled at London Gatwick Airport. London Stansted Airport and London Luton Airport cater mostly for low-cost short-haul flights. London City Airport, the smallest and most central airport, is focused on business travellers, with a mixture of full service short-haul scheduled flights and considerable business jet traffic.
Although the majority of journeys involving central London are made by public transport, travel in outer London is car-dominated. The inner ring road (around the city centre), the North and South Circular roads (in the suburbs), and the outer orbital motorway (the M25, outside the built-up area) encircle the city and are intersected by a number of busy radial routes â but very few motorways penetrate into inner London. The M25 is the longest ring-road motorway in the world at long. A plan for a comprehensive network of motorways throughout the city (the Ringways Plan) was prepared in the 1960s but was mostly cancelled in the early 1970s. In 2003, a congestion charge was introduced to reduce traffic volumes in the city centre. With a few exceptions, motorists are required to pay £8 per day to drive within a defined zone encompassing much of congested central London. Motorists who are residents of the defined zone can buy a vastly reduced season pass which is renewed monthly and is cheaper than a corresponding bus fare.
Royal Holloway, as a part of the University of London, a federation of London higher education institutions
Home to a range of universities, colleges and schools, London has a student population of about 378,000 and is a centre of research and development. Most primary and secondary schools in London follow the same system as the rest of England â comprehensive schooling.
With 125,000 students, the University of London is the largest contact teaching university in the United Kingdom and in Europe. It comprises 20 colleges as well as several smaller institutes each with a high degree of autonomy. Constituent colleges have their own admissions procedures, and are effectively universities in their own right, although most degrees are awarded by the University of London rather than the individual colleges. Its constituents include multi-disciplinary colleges such as UCL, King's, Goldsmiths, Queen Mary and more specialised institutions such as the London School of Economics, SOAS, the Royal Academy of Music, the Courtauld Institute of Art and the Institute of Education.
Imperial College London and University College London have been ranked among the top ten universities in the world by The Times Higher Education Supplement: in 2008 Imperial was ranked the 6th best and UCL the 7th best university in the world.
In addition, the London School of Economics is the worldâs leading social science institution for teaching and research, plus has the most international student body of any university in the world today.
A number of colleges are dedicated to the fine arts, including the Royal College of Music, Royal College of Art, and Guildhall School of Music and Drama.
Senate House, the headquarters of the federal University of London
London's other universities, such as Brunel University, City University, London Metropolitan University, Middlesex University, University of East London, University of the Arts London, University of Westminster, Kingston University and London South Bank University are not part of the University of London but are still leaders in their field and popular choices among students both nationally and internationally. Some were polytechnics until these were granted university status in 1992, and others which were founded much earlier. Imperial College London left the federal University of London in 2007. Since the merger of University of North London and London Guildhall University in 2003, London Metropolitan University is the largest unitary university in the capital, with over 34,000 students from 155 countries. About London Met London Metropolitan University, August 2008 London is also known globally for its business education, with the London Business School (ranked 1st in Europe â Business Week) and Cass Business School (Europe's largest finance school) both being top world-rated business schools. In addition there are three international universities: Schiller International University, Richmond University and Regent's College.
There are 46 other places on six continents named after London. Jack Malvern. Richmond, in Surrey, is the most widely copied British place name worldwide, timesonline 2008-12-29. The original byline for the article in The Times of the same day was "The 55 corners of foreign fields that will be for ever ... Richmond" (page 9). Cites The Times Universal Atlas of the World. As well as London's twinning, the Boroughs of London have twinnings with parts of other cities across the world. Shown below is the list of cities that the Greater London Authority is twinned with.
* New York City,
* Moscow,
* Berlin,
The following cities have a friendship agreement with London:
* Sofia,
* Delhi,
* Mumbai,
* Beijing,
* Istanbul,
* Paris,
* Tehran,
* Tokyo,
* Bogotá,
* Podgorica,
* Algiers,
* Global city
* Geography of England
* Large Cities Climate Leadership Group
* Largest European cities and metropolitan areas
* London Assembly
* Megacity
*
*
*
*
* Mayor of London, London Assembly and the Greater London Authority â Official city government site
* Transport for London (TfL) â city transport authority
* BBC London
* Office for National Statistics: Focus on London 2007 â compendium of official statistics about London
* Museum of London Group Portal - Home
* VisitLondon.com â Official London site
* Map of Early Modern London â Historical Map and Encyclopaedia of Shakespeare's London (Scholarly)
* London Bridges â A view of London Bridges over the River Thames
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London | How did civil wars affect England during the Middle Ages? | London remained relatively untouched | data/set3/a1 | London
London ( ; ) is the capital of both England and the United Kingdom, and the largest urban area in the European Union. {{cite web|url= title=Largest EU City An important settlement for two millennia, London's history goes back to its founding by the Romans. Since its foundation, London has been part of many movements and phenomena throughout history, including the English Renaissance, the Industrial Revolution, and the Gothic Revival. The city's core, the ancient City of London, still retains its limited medieval boundaries; but since at least the 19th century, the name "London" has also referred to the whole metropolis that has developed around it. Today the bulk of this conurbation forms the London region of England and the Greater London administrative area, with its own elected mayor and assembly.
London is one of the the world's most important business, financial and cultural centres and its influence in politics, education, entertainment, media, fashion and the arts contribute to its status as a major global city. Global Cities: GaWC Inventory of World Cities 1999 Global cities#GaWC Inventory of World Cities (1999 Edition); Global Cities: GaWC Inventory of World Cities 2004 Global cities#GaWC Leading World Cities (2004 Edition) Central London is the headquarters of more than half of the UK's top 100 listed companies (the FTSE 100) and over 100 of Europe's 500 largest companies. The city is a major tourist destination both for domestic and overseas visitors, with annual expenditure by tourists of around £15 billion. London hosted the 1908 and 1948 Summer Olympic Games and will host the 2012 Summer Olympic Games.
Greater London contains four World Heritage Sites: the Tower of London; the historic settlement of Greenwich; the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew; and the site comprising the Palace of Westminster, Westminster Abbey and St. Margaret's Church.
London's population draws from a wide range of peoples, cultures, and religions, and over 300 languages are spoken within the city. As of 2006, it had an official population of 7,512,400 within the boundaries of Greater London and is the most populous municipality in the European Union. As of 2001, the Greater London Urban Area had a population of 8,278,251 and the metropolitan area is estimated to have a total population of between 12 and 14 million , the largest metropolitan area in the EU. The public transport network, administered by Transport for London, is one of the most extensive in the world, and Heathrow Airport is the busiest airport in the world by international passenger traffic and the air space is the busiest of any city in the world. International Passenger Traffic, Airports Council International
The etymology of London remains a mystery. The earliest etymological explanation can be attributed to Geoffrey of Monmouth in Historia Regum Britanniae. The name is described as originating from King Lud, who had allegedly taken over the city and named it Kaerlud. This was slurred into Kaerludein and finally London. Many other theories have been advanced over the centuries, most of them deriving the name from Welsh or British, and occasionally from Anglo-Saxon or even Hebrew.
Map of London in 1300, showing the medieval boundaries of the City of London
Although there is evidence of scattered Brythonic settlements in the area, the first major settlement was founded by the Romans in AD 43 as Londinium, following the Roman conquest of Britain. This Londinium lasted for just seventeen years. Around 61, the Iceni tribe led by Queen Boudica stormed this first London, burning it to the ground. The next, heavily planned incarnation of the city prospered and superseded Colchester as the capital of the Roman province of Britannia in 100. At its height in the 2nd century, Roman London had a population of around 60,000.
By the 600s, the Anglo-Saxons had created a new settlement called Lundenwic approximately upstream from the old Roman city,
around what is now Covent Garden. It is likely that there was a harbour at the mouth of the River Fleet for fishing and trading, and this trading grew until the city was overcome by the Vikings and forced to relocate the city back to the location of the Roman Londinium to use its walls for protection. Viking attacks continued to increase around the rest of South East England, until 886 when Alfred the Great recaptured London and made peace with the Danish leader, Guthrum. The original Saxon city of Lundenwic became Ealdwic ("old city"), a name surviving to the present day as Aldwych, which is in the modern City of Westminster.
In a retaliatory attack, Ethelred's army achieved victory by pulling down London Bridge with the Danish garrison on top, and English control was re-established. Canute took control of the English throne in 1017, controlling the city and country until 1042, when his death resulted in a reversion to Saxon control under his pious stepson Edward the Confessor, who re-founded Westminster Abbey and the adjacent Palace of Westminster. By this time, London had become the largest and most prosperous city in England, although the official seat of government was still at Winchester.
Following a victory at the Battle of Hastings, William the Conqueror, the then Duke of Normandy, was crowned King of England in the newly finished Westminster Abbey on Christmas Day 1066. William granted the citizens of London special privileges, while building what is now known as the Tower of London, in the south-east corner of the city, to keep them under control. .
The Great Exhibition
In 1097, William II began the building of Westminster Hall, close by the abbey of the same name. The hall became the basis of a new Palace of Westminster, the prime royal residence throughout the Middle Ages. Westminster became the seat of the royal court and government (persisting until the present day), while its distinct neighbour, the City of London, was a centre of trade and commerce and flourished under its own unique administration, the Corporation of London. London grew in wealth and population during the Middle Ages. In 1100 its population was around 18,000; by 1300 it had grown to nearly 100,000. King Edward I issued an edict in 1290, expelling all Jews from England. Before the edict, there was an increasing population of Jews, whereas after this time, the population of Jews began to drop considerably. Disaster struck during the Black Death in the mid-14th century, when London lost nearly a third of its population. Apart from the invasion of London during the Peasants' Revolt in 1381, London remained relatively untouched by the various civil wars during the Middle Ages, such as the first and second Barons' Wars and the Wars of the Roses.
After the successful defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588, political stability in England allowed London to grow further. In 1603, James VI of Scotland came to the throne of England, essentially uniting the two countries. His enactment of harsh anti-Catholic laws made him unpopular, and an assassination attempt was made on 5 November 1605âthe well-known Gunpowder Plot.
The Great Fire of London destroyed many parts of the city in 1666
Plague caused extensive problems for London in the early 17th century, culminating in the Great Plague in 1665â1666. This was the last major outbreak in England, possibly thanks to the disastrous fire of 1666. The Great Fire of London broke out in the original City and quickly swept through London's wooden buildings, destroying large swathes of the city. A first hand narrative of both plague and fire was provided by Sir Samuel Pepys. Rebuilding took over ten years, largely under direction of a Commission appointed by King Charles II and chaired by Sir Christopher Wren.
Following London's growth in the 18th century, it became the world's largest city from about 1831 to 1925. Rising traffic congestion on city centre roads led to the creation of the world's first metro system â the London Underground â in 1863, driving further expansion and urbanisation. London's local government system struggled to cope with the rapid growth, especially in providing the city with adequate infrastructure. Between 1855 and 1889, the Metropolitan Board of Works oversaw infrastructure expansion. It was then replaced by the County of London, overseen by the London County Council, London's first elected city-wide administration.
A London street hit during the Blitz of World War II
The Blitz and other bombing by the German Luftwaffe during World War II killed over 30,000 Londoners and destroyed large tracts of housing and other buildings across London. In 1965 London's political boundaries were expanded to take into account the growth of the urban area outside the County of London's borders. The expanded area was called Greater London and was administered by the Greater London Council. An eco revival from the 1980s onwards re-established London's position as a pre-eminent international centre. However, as the seat of government and the most important city in the UK, it has been subjected to bouts of terrorism. Provisional Irish Republican Army bombers sought to pressure the government into negotiations over Northern Ireland, frequently disrupting city activities with bomb threats â some of which were carried out â until their 1997 cease-fire. More recently, a series of coordinated bomb attacks were carried out by Islamic extremist suicide bombers on the public transport network on 7 July 2005âjust 24 hours after London was awarded the 2012 Summer Olympics.
City Hall at night, home of the Greater London Authority
The administration of London is formed of two tiers â a city-wide, strategic tier and a local tier. City-wide administration is coordinated by the Greater London Authority (GLA), while local administration is carried out by 33 smaller authorities. The GLA consists of two elected parts; the Mayor of London, who has executive powers, and the London Assembly, who scrutinise the Mayor's decisions and can accept or reject his budget proposals each year. The GLA was set up in 2000 to replace the similar Greater London Council (GLC) which had been abolished in 1986. The headquarters of the GLA and the Mayor of London is at City Hall; the Mayor is Boris Johnson. The 33 local authorities are the councils of the 32 London boroughs and the City of London Corporation. They are responsible for local services not overseen by the GLA, such as local planning, schools, social services, local roads and refuse collection.
London is the home of the Government of the United Kingdom which is located around the Houses of Parliament in Westminster. Many government departments are located close to Parliament, particularly along Whitehall, including the Prime Minister's residence at 10 Downing Street. The British Parliament is often referred to as the "Mother of Parliaments" (although this sobriquet was first applied to England itself by John Bright) because it has been the model for most other parliamentary systems, and its Acts have created many other parliaments. There are 74 Members of Parliament (MPs) from London, who correspond to local parliamentary constituencies in the national Parliament by . Of these 74 MPs, currently 44 are from the Labour Party, 21 are Conservatives, 8 are Liberal Democrats and one is from the RESPECT party.
West and central London seen from SPOT satellite
London can be geographically defined in a number of ways, although the situation was once even more ambiguous than it is now and open to periodic legal debate. At London's core is the small, ancient City of London which is commonly known as 'the City' or 'the Square Mile'. London's metropolitan area grew considerably during the Victorian era and again during the Interwar period, but expansion halted in the 1940s because of World War II and Green Belt legislation, and the area has been largely static since. The London region of England, also commonly known as Greater London, is the area administered by the Greater London Authority. The urban sprawl of the conurbation â or Greater London Urban Area â covers a roughly similar area, with a slightly larger population. Beyond this is the vast London commuter belt.
Map of Central LondonForty percent of Greater London is covered by the London postal district, within which 'LONDON' forms part of the postal address. The London telephone area code covers a larger area, similar in size to Greater London, although some outer districts are omitted and some places just outside are included. The area within the orbital M25 motorway is sometimes used to define the "London area" and the Greater London boundary has been aligned to it in places. Greater London is split for some purposes into Inner London and Outer London. Informally, the city is split into North, South, East, West and often also Central London.
The Metropolitan Police District, city-wide local government area and London transport area have varied over time, but broadly coincide with the Greater London boundary. The Romans may have marked the centre of Londinium with the London Stone, still visible on Cannon Street. The coordinates of the nominal centre of London (traditionally considered to be the original Eleanor Cross at Charing Cross, near the junction of Trafalgar Square and Whitehall) are approximately . Trafalgar Square has also become a point for celebrations and protests.
Within London, both the City of London and the City of Westminster have City status and both the City of London and the remainder of Greater London are the ceremonial counties. The current area of Greater London was historically part of the counties of Middlesex, Kent, Surrey, Essex and Hertfordshire. Unlike most capital cities, London's status as the capital of the UK has never been granted or confirmed officially â by statute or in written form. Its position as the capital has formed through constitutional convention, making its position as de facto capital a part of the UK's unwritten constitution. The capital of England was moved to London from Winchester as the Palace of Westminster developed in the 12th and 13th centuries to become the permanent location of the royal court, and thus the political capital of the nation. According to the Collins English Dictionary definition (1994) Collins English Dictionary. Collins Education plc. of 'the seat of government,' London is not the capital of England, as England does not have its own government. However according to the Oxford English Reference dictionary definition Oxford English Reference Dictionary. Oxford English. of 'the most important town...' and many other authorities, "HC 501 0304.PDF" (PDF). Parliament Publications. Retrieved on 2008-06-06. 'England' (1994) Collins English Dictionary. Collins Education plc. London is the capital of England.
Greater London covers an area of . Its primary geographical feature is the Thames, a navigable river which crosses the city from the south-west to the east. The Thames Valley is a floodplain surrounded by gently rolling hills including Parliament Hill, Addington Hills, and Primrose Hill. The Thames was once a much broader, shallower river with extensive marshlands; at high tide, its shores reached five times their present width. Since the Victorian era it has been extensively embanked, and many of its London tributaries now flow underground. The Thames is a tidal river, and London is vulnerable to flooding. The threat has increased over time due to a slow but continuous rise in high water level by the slow 'tilting' of Britain (up in the north and down in the south) caused by post-glacial rebound. In 1974, a decade of work began on the construction of the Thames Barrier across the Thames at Woolwich to deal with this threat. While the barrier is expected to function as designed until roughly 2030, concepts for its future enlargement or redesign are already being discussed.
London has a temperate marine climate, like much of the British Isles, so the city rarely sees extremely high or low temperatures. Summers are warm with average high temperatures of and lows of , however, temperatures could exceed on many days.
Winters in London are chilly, but rarely below freezing with daytime temperatures around 2 - 8 °C (36 - 46 °F), while spring has mild days and cool evenings.
London has regular but generally light precipitation throughout the year, with average precipitation of every year.
Snow is relatively uncommon, particularly because heat from the urban area can make London up to 5 °C (9 °F) hotter than the surrounding areas in winter. Snowfall, however, is usually, but not always, seen up to a few times a year. London is in USDA Hardiness zone 9, and AHS Heat Zone 2.
In the second half of the 19th century and the first half of the 20th, London was noted for its dense fogs and smogs. Following the deadly Great Smog of 1952, the Clean Air Act 1956 was passed, leading to the decline of such severe pollution in the capital.
London's vast urban area is often described using a set of district names (e.g. Bloomsbury, Knightsbridge, Mayfair, Whitechapel, Fitzrovia). These are either informal designations, or reflect the names of superseded villages, parishes and city wards. Such names have remained in use through tradition, each referring to a local area with its own distinctive character, but often with no modern official boundaries. However, since 1965 Greater London has been divided into 32 London boroughs in addition to the ancient City of London.
The City of London is one of the world's three largest financial centres (alongside New York and Tokyo) with a dominant role in several international financial markets, including cross-border bank lending, international bond issuance and trading, foreign-exchange trading, over-the-counter derivatives, fund management and foreign equities trading. It also has the world's largest insurance market, the leading exchange for dealing in non-precious metals, the largest spot gold and gold lending markets, the largest ship broking market, and more foreign banks and investment houses than any other centre. The City has its own governance and boundaries, giving it a status as the only completely autonomous local authority in London. London's new financial and commercial hub is the Docklands area to the east of the City, dominated by the Canary Wharf complex. Other businesses locate in the City of Westminster, the home of the UK's national government and the well-known Westminster Abbey.
The West End is London's main entertainment and shopping district, with locations such as Oxford Street, Leicester Square, Covent Garden and Piccadilly Circus acting as tourist magnets. The West London area is known for fashionable and expensive residential areas such as Notting Hill, Knightsbridge and Chelsea â where properties can sell for tens of millions of pounds. The average price for all properties in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea is £894,000 with similar average outlay in most of Central London.
The eastern region of London contains the East End and East London. The East End is the area closest to the original Port of London, known for its high immigrant population, as well as for being one of the poorest areas in London. The surrounding East London area saw much of London's early industrial development; now, brownfield sites throughout the area are being redeveloped as part of the Thames Gateway including the London Riverside and Lower Lea Valley, which is being developed into the Olympic Park for the 2012 Olympics.
With increasing industrialisation, London's population grew rapidly throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries, and it was the most populous city in the world until overtaken by New York in 1925. Its population peaked at 8,615,245 in 1939 immediately before the outbreak of World War 2. There were an estimated 7,512,400 official residents in Greater London as of mid-2006. However, London's continuous urban area extends beyond the borders of Greater London and was home to 8,278,251 people in 2001, while its wider metropolitan area has a population of between 12 and 14 million depending on the definition used. According to Eurostat, London is the most populous city and metropolitan area of the European Union and the second most populous in Europe (or third if Istanbul is included).
The region covers an area of . The population density is , more than ten times that of any other British region. In terms of population, London is the 25th largest city and the 17th largest metropolitan region in the world. It is also ranked 4th in the world in number of billionaires (United States Dollars) residing in the city. London ranks as one of the most expensive cities in the world, alongside Tokyo and Moscow.
According to 2008 estimates, 51% of these seven million and seven hundred thousand people people are classed as the indigenous White British, White Irish (2.5%) and "Other White" 10%, the majority of whom are other Europeans. 15% of people are of South Asian descent, including Indian (mainly Punjabi, Hindi, Tamil and Gujarati), Pakistani, Bangladeshi (Bengali) and "Other Asian" (mostly Sri Lankan (Tamil) and other Southern Asian ethnicities). 13% of people are Black (around 7% are Black African, 5% as Black Caribbean, 1% as "Other Black"). 5.5% are of mixed race; 1.5% are Chinese; and 1.5% of people belong to another ethnic group. 30% of inhabitants were born outside the European Union. The Irish born, from both the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland, number approximately 250,000 and are the largest group born outside of Britain.
In January 2005, a survey of London's ethnic and religious diversity claimed that there were more than 300 languages spoken and more than 50 non-indigenous communities which have a population of more than 10,000 in London. Figures from the Office for National Statistics show that, as of 2006, London's foreign-born population is 2,288,000 (31%), up from 1,630,000 in 1997. The 2001 census showed that 27.1% of Greater London's population were born outside the UK, and a slightly higher proportion were classed as non-white.
The table to the right shows the 'Country of Birth' of London residents in 2001, the date of the last UK Census. (Top 21). Note that a portion of the German-born population are likely to be British nationals born to parents serving in the British armed forces in Germany.
Westminster Abbey is one of London's oldest and most important buildings and a World Heritage Site.
The majority of Londoners - 58.2% - identify themselves as Christians. This is followed by those of no religion (15.8%), Muslims (8.5%), Hindus (4.1%), Jews (2.1%), Sikhs (1.5%), Buddhists (0.8%) and other (0.5%), though 8.7% of people did not answer this question in the 2001 Census.
London has traditionally been dominated by Christianity, and has a large number of churches, particularly in the City of London. The well-known St Paul's Cathedral in the City and Southwark Cathedral south of the river are Anglican administrative centres, while the Archbishop of Canterbury, principal bishop of the Church of England and worldwide Anglican Communion, has his main residence at Lambeth Palace in the London Borough of Lambeth.
Important national and royal ceremonies are shared between St Paul's and Westminster Abbey. The Abbey is not to be confused with nearby Westminster Cathedral, which is the largest Roman Catholic cathedral in England and Wales. Religious practice is lower in London than any other part of the UK or Western Europe and is around seven times lower than American averages. Despite the prevalence of Anglican churches, observance is very low within the Anglican denomination, although church attendance, particularly at evangelical Anglican churches in London, has started to increase.
The Swaminarayan Hindu Temple in Neasden
London is also home to sizeable Muslim, Hindu, Sikh, and Jewish communities. Many Muslims live in Tower Hamlets and Newham; the most important Muslim edifice is London Central Mosque on the edge of Regent's Park. London's large Hindu community is found in the north-western boroughs of Harrow and Brent, the latter of which is home to one of Europe's largest Hindu temples, Neasden Temple. Sikh communities are located in East and West London, which is also home to the largest Sikh temple in the world, outside India.
The majority of British Jews live in London, with significant Jewish communities in Stamford Hill, Stanmore, Golders Green, Hendon, and Edgware in North London. Stanmore and Canons Park Synagogue has the largest membership of any single Orthodox synagogue in the whole of Europe, overtaking Ilford synagogue (also in London) in 1998. The community set up the London Jewish Forum in 2007 in response to the growing significance of devolved London Government.
The City of London is the world's largest financial centre . It is home to the London Stock Exchange and Lloyds of London.
London is a major centre for international business and commerce and is one of three "command centres" for the world economy (along with New York City and Tokyo). According to 2005 estimates by the PricewaterhouseCoopers accounting firm, London has the 6th largest city economy in the world after Tokyo, New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Paris. London generates approximately 20% of the UK's GDP (or $446 billion in 2005); while the economy of the London metropolitan area â the second largest in Europe â generates approximately 30% of the UK's GDP (or an estimated $669 billion in 2005).
London's success as a service industry and business centre can be attributed to factors such as English being the native and dominant language of business, close relationship with the U.S. and various countries in Asia. Other factors include English law being the most important and most used contract law in international business and the multi-cultural infrastructure. Government policies such as low taxes, particularly for foreigners (non-UK domiciled residents do not get taxed on their foreign earnings), a business friendly environment, good transport infrastructure and a deregulated economy with little intervention by the government have all contributed to London's economy becoming more service based. Over 85% (3.2 million) of the employed population of Greater London works in service industries. Another half a million employees resident in Greater London work in manufacturing and construction, almost equally divided between both.
The three tallest skyscrapers as of 2008 in Canary Wharf as viewed from Cabot Square. It is home to such companies as HSBC and Clifford Chance.
London's largest industry remains finance, and its financial exports make it a large contributor to the UK's balance of payments. Over 300,000 people are employed in financial services in London. London has over 480 overseas banks, more than any other city in the world. Due to New York's tightening of market regulations, London stock exchanges had approximately 20% more initial public offerings in 2006.
London is home to banks, brokers, insurers and legal and accounting firms. A second, smaller financial district is developing at Canary Wharf to the east of the city which includes the global headquarters of HSBC, Reuters, Barclays and the Magic Circle, which includes Clifford Chance, the largest law firm in the world. London handled 31% of global currency transactions â an average daily turnover of US$753 billion â with more US dollars traded in London than New York, and more euros traded than in every other city in Europe combined.
More than half of the UK's top 100 listed companies (the FTSE 100) and over 100 of Europe's 500 largest companies are headquartered in central London. Over 70% of the FTSE 100 are located within London's metropolitan area, and 75% of Fortune 500 companies have offices in London. Along with professional services, media companies are concentrated in London (see Media in London) and the media distribution industry is London's second most competitive sector (after central banking, the most competitive sector). The BBC is a key employer, while other broadcasters also have headquarters around the city. Many national newspapers are edited in London, having traditionally been associated with Fleet Street in the city; they are now primarily based around Canary Wharf.
Due to its prominant global role, London is getting hit harder than any other financial centre in the subprime crisis. The City of London estimates that 70,000 jobs in finance will be cut within barely a year.
Several foreign banks have started to move off employees from London to their national financial centres, notably Dresdner Kleinwort, BNP Paribas and Santander.
Tourism is one of London's prime industries and employs the equivalent of 350,000 full-time workers in London in 2003, while annual expenditure by tourists is around £15 billion. " ", Visit London. Retrieved on 3 June 2006. A study carried out by Euromonitor in October 2007 places London at first place out of 150 of the world's most popular cities, attracting 15.6 million international tourists in 2006. This puts London far ahead of 2nd place Bangkok (10.35 million) and 3rd place Paris (just 9.7 million). London attracts 27 million overnight-stay visitors every year. " ", Visit London. Retrieved on 3 June 2006. The Port of London is currently the third-largest in the United Kingdom, handling 50 million tonnes of cargo each year.
London is too diverse to be characterised by any particular architectural style, having accumulated its buildings over a long period of time and drawn on a wide range of influences. It is, however, mainly brick built, most commonly the yellow London stock brick or a warm orange-red variety, often decorated with carvings and white plaster mouldings. Many grand houses and public buildings (such as the National Gallery) are constructed from Portland stone. Some areas of the city, particularly those just west of the centre, are characterised by white stucco or whitewashed buildings. Few structures pre-date the Great Fire of 1666, except for a few trace Roman remains, the Tower of London and a few scattered Tudor survivors in the City. The disused (but soon to be rejuvenated) 1939 Battersea Power Station by the river in the south-west is a local landmark, while some railway termini are excellent examples of Victorian architecture, most notably St Pancras and Paddington (at least internally).
The O 2 , one of the largest dome structures in the world.
The density of London varies, with high employment density in the central area, high residential densities in inner London and lower densities in the suburbs. In the dense areas, most of the concentration is achieved with medium- and high-rise buildings. London's skyscrapers such as the notable "Gherkin", Tower 42, the Broadgate Tower and One Canada Square are usually found in the two financial districts, the City of London and Canary Wharf. Other notable modern buildings include City Hall in Southwark with its distinctive oval shape, the British Library in Somers Town/Kings Cross, What was formerly the Millennium Dome, located by the Thames to the east of Canary Wharf, is now used as an entertainment venue known as The O 2 .
The development of tall buildings has been encouraged in the London Plan, which will lead to the erection of many new skyscrapers over the next decade, particularly in the City of London and Canary Wharf. The 72-storey, "Shard London Bridge" by London Bridge station, the Bishopsgate Tower and many other skyscrapers over are either proposed or approved and could transform the city's skyline. As of July 2008, there are 426 high-rise buildings (between 23 m to 150 m/75 ft to 491 ft) under construction, approved for construction, and proposed for construction in London.
A great many monuments pay homage to people and events in the city. The Monument in the City of London provides views of the surrounding area while commemorating the Great Fire of London, which originated nearby. Marble Arch and Wellington Arch, at the north and south ends of Park Lane respectively, have royal connections, as do the Albert Memorial and Royal Albert Hall in Kensington. Nelson's Column is a nationally recognised monument in Trafalgar Square, one of the focal points of the centre.
The largest parks in the central area of London are the Royal Parks of Hyde Park and its neighbour Kensington Gardens at the western edge of central London and Regent's Park on the northern edge. This park contains London Zoo, the world's oldest scientific zoo, and is located near the tourist attraction of Madame Tussauds Wax Museum. Closer to central London are the smaller Royal Parks of Green Park and St. James's Park. Hyde Park in particular is popular for sports and sometimes hosts open-air concerts.
A number of large parks lie outside the city centre, including the remaining Royal Parks of Greenwich Park to the south-east and Bushy Park and Richmond Park to the south-west, as well as Victoria Park, East London to the east. Primrose Hill to the north of Regent's Park is a popular spot to view the city skyline. Some more informal, semi-natural open spaces also exist, including the Hampstead Heath of North London. This incorporates Kenwood House, the former stately home and a popular location in the summer months where classical musical concerts are held by the lake, attracting thousands of people every weekend to enjoy the music, scenery and fireworks.
Traditionally the London accent has been given the famous Cockney label, and was similar to many accents of the South East of England, developing a unique form of slang known as Cockney Rhyming Slang. The accent of a 21st century Londoner varies widely; what is becoming more and more common amongst the under 30s however is some fusion of Cockney, Received Pronunciation, and a whole array of 'ethnic' accents, in particular Caribbean, which form an accent labelled Multicultural London English (MLE), with a large amount of slang in use as well.
Piccadilly Circus at night
The Trooping the Colour held in 2006 to mark the Queen's 80th birthday.
Within the City of Westminster, the entertainment district of the West End has its focus around Leicester Square, where London and world film premieres are held, and Piccadilly Circus, with its giant electronic advertisements. London's theatre district is here, as are many cinemas, bars, clubs and restaurants, including the city's Chinatown district, and just to the east is Covent Garden, an area housing speciality shops. The United Kingdom's Royal Ballet,English National Ballet, Royal Opera and English National Opera are based in London and perform at the Royal Opera House, The London Coliseum, Sadler's Wells Theatre and the Royal Albert Hall as well as touring the country. Islington's long Upper Street, extending Northwards from The Angel, has more bars and restaurants than any other street in the UK. Europe's busiest shopping area is Oxford Street, a shopping street nearly long â which makes it the longest shopping street in the world â and home to many shops and department stores including Selfridges. Knightsbridge â home to the Harrods department store â lies just to the southwest. London is home to designers Vivienne Westwood, Galliano, Stella McCartney, Manolo Blahnik, and Jimmy Choo among others; its renowned art and fashion schools make it an international centre of fashion alongside Paris, Milan and New York.
London offers a great variety of cuisine as a result of its ethnically diverse population. Gastronomic centres include the Bangladeshi restaurants of Brick Lane and the Chinese food restaurants of Chinatown.
There are a variety of regular annual events in the city. The beginning of the year is celebrated with the relatively new New Year's Day Parade, while traditional parades include November's Lord Mayor's Show, a centuries-old event celebrating the annual appointment of a new Lord Mayor of the City of London with a procession along the streets of the City, and June's Trooping the Colour, a formal military pageant performed by regiments of the Commonwealth and British armies to celebrate the Queen's Official Birthday.
Charles Dickens (1812â1870), whose works formed a pervasive image of Victorian London.
London has been the setting for many works of literature. Two writers closely associated with the city are the diarist Samuel Pepys, noted for his eyewitness account of the Great Fire, and Charles Dickens, whose representation of a foggy, snowy, grimy London of street sweepers and pickpockets has been a major influence on people's vision of early Victorian London. The earlier (1722) A Journal of the Plague Year by Daniel Defoe is a fictionalisation of the events of the 1665 Great Plague. William Shakespeare spent a large part of his life living and working in London; his contemporary Ben Jonson was also based in London, and some of his work â most notably his play The Alchemist â was set in the city. Later important depictions of London from the 19th and early 20th centuries are the afore-mentioned Dickens novels, and Arthur Conan Doyle's illustrious Sherlock Holmes stories. A modern writer pervasively influenced by the city is Peter Ackroyd, in works such as London: The Biography, The Lambs of London and Hawksmoor.
London has played a significant role in the film industry, and has major studios at Pinewood, Ealing, Shepperton, Elstree and Leavesden, as well as an important special effects and post-production community centred in Soho in central London. Working Title Films has its headquarters in London. The city also hosts a number of performing arts schools, including The Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA), the Central School of Speech and Drama (alumni: Judi Dench and Laurence Olivier) and the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art (alumni: Jim Broadbent). The London Film Festival is held each year in October.
London is home to many museums, galleries, and other institutions which are major tourist attractions as well as playing a research role. The Natural History Museum (biology and geology), Science Museum and Victoria and Albert Museum (fashion and design) are clustered in South Kensington's "museum quarter", while the British Museum houses historic artefacts from around the world. The British Library at St Pancras is the UK's national library, housing 150 million items. The city also houses extensive art collections, primarily in the National Gallery, Tate Britain and Tate Modern.
The Royal Albert Hall hosts a wide range of concerts and musical events.
London is one of the major classical and popular music capitals of the world and is home to major music corporations, such as EMI and Decca Records, as well as countless bands, musicians and industry professionals. London is home to many orchestras and concert halls such as the Barbican Arts Centre (principal base of the London Symphony Orchestra), Cadogan Hall (Royal Philharmonic Orchestra) and the Royal Albert Hall (BBC Promenade Concerts). London's two main opera houses are the Royal Opera House and the Coliseum Theatre.
Several conservatoires are located within the city: Royal Academy of Music, Royal College of Music, Guildhall School of Music and Drama, and Trinity College of Music.
London has numerous renowned venues for rock and pop concerts, including large arenas such as Earls Court, Wembley Arena and the O2 Arena, as well as numerous mid-size venues, such as Brixton Academy, Hammersmith Apollo and The London Astoria. London also hosts many music festivals, including the 02 Wireless Festival and Latitude Festival.
London is home to the first and original Hard Rock Cafe and the illustrious Abbey Road Studios where The Beatles created many of their hits. Musicians such as Bob Marley, Jimi Hendrix and Freddie Mercury have lived in London. A large number of musical artists originate from or are most strongly associated with London, including David Bowie, Ian Dury, The Kinks, Adam Faith, The Rolling Stones, The Who, Madness, The Jam, Blur, Iron Maiden, Phil Collins, Rod Stewart, Elvis Costello, Dusty Springfield, The Yardbirds and The Small Faces.
London was instrumental in the development of punk music, with figures such as the Sex Pistols, The Clash, and Vivienne Westwood all based in the city.
More recent artists to emerge from the London music scene include The Libertines, one of the most influential British rock acts of the 2000s, Bloc Party, Amy Winehouse, Lily Allen, The Kooks, Razorlight, Laura Marling, Dizzee Rascal, Natasha Bedingfield and Leona Lewis.
London is also a centre for Urban music. In particular the genres UK Garage, Drum and Bass and Grime evolved in the city from the foreign genres of hiphop and reggae, alongside local rave music. Black music station BBC 1Xtra was set up to support the rise of homegrown urban music both in London and the rest of the UK.
Wembley Stadium is home to English football and is the most expensive stadium in the world.
The Wimbledon Championships, a tennis Grand Slam tournament.
London has hosted the Summer Olympics twice, in 1908 and 1948. In July 2005 London was chosen to host the Games in 2012, which will make it the first city in the world to host the Summer Olympics three times. London was also the host of the British Empire Games in 1934.
London's most popular sport (for both participants and spectators) is football. London has thirteen League football clubs, including five in the Premier League: Arsenal, Chelsea, Fulham, Tottenham Hotspur and West Ham United. London also has four rugby union teams in the Guinness Premiership (London Irish, Saracens, Wasps and Harlequins), although only the Harlequins play in London (all the other three now play outside Greater London, although Saracens still play within the M25). There are two professional rugby league clubs in London - Harlequins Rugby League who play in the Super League at the Stoop and the National League 2 side the London Skolars (based in Haringey).
Since 1924, the original Wembley Stadium was the home of the English national football team, and served as the venue for the FA Cup final as well as rugby league's Challenge Cup final. The new Wembley Stadium serves exactly the same purposes and has a capacity of 90,000. Twickenham Stadium in west London is the national rugby union stadium, and has a capacity of 84,000 now that the new south stand has been completed.
Cricket in London centres on its two Test cricket grounds at Lord's (home of Middlesex C.C.C) in St John's Wood, and The Oval (home of Surrey C.C.C) in Kennington. One of London's best-known annual sports competitions is the Wimbledon Tennis Championships, held at the All England Club in the south-western suburb of Wimbledon. Other key events are the annual mass-participation London Marathon which sees some 35,000 runners attempt a course around the city, and the Oxford vs. Cambridge Boat Race on the River Thames between Putney and Mortlake.
Transport is one of the four areas of policy administered by the Mayor of London, however the mayor's financial control is limited and he does not control the heavy rail network, although in November 2007 he assumed responsibility for the North London Railway as well as several other lines, to form London Overground. The public transport network, administered by Transport for London (TfL), is one of the most extensive in the world, but faces congestion and reliability issues, which a large investment programme is attempting to address, including £7 billion (â¬10 billion) of improvements planned for the Olympics. London has been commended as the city with the best public transport. Cycling is an increasingly popular way to get around London. The London Cycling Campaign lobbies for better provision.
The London Underground is the oldest, longest, and most expansive metro system in the world, dating from 1863.
The centrepiece of the public transport network is the London Underground â commonly referred to as The Tube â which has eleven interconnecting lines. It is the oldest, longest, and most expansive metro system in the world, dating from 1863. The system was home to the world's first underground electric line, the City & South London Railway, which began service in 1890. Over three million journeys a day are made on the Underground network, nearly 1 billion journeys each year. The Underground serves the central area and most suburbs to the north of the Thames, while those to the south are served by an extensive suburban rail surface network.
The Docklands Light Railway is a second metro system using smaller and lighter trains, which opened in 1987, serving East London and Greenwich on both sides of the Thames. Commuter and intercity railways generally do not cross the city, instead running into fourteen terminal stations scattered around its historic centre; the exception is the Thameslink route operated by First Capital Connect, with terminus stations at Bedford, Brighton and Moorgate. Since the early 1990s, increasing pressures on the commuter rail and Underground networks have led to increasing demands â particularly from businesses and the City of London Corporation â for Crossrail: a £10 billion east â west heavy rail connection under central London, which was given the green light in early October 2007.
High-speed Eurostar trains link St Pancras International with Lille and Paris in France, and Brussels in Belgium. Journey times to Paris and Brussels of 2h 15 and 1h 51 respectively make London closer to continental Europe than the rest of Britain by virtue of the newly completed High Speed 1 rail link to the Channel Tunnel. From 2009 this line will also allow for high speed domestic travel from Kent into London. The redevelopment of St. Pancras was key to London's Olympic bid, as the station also serves two international airports through Thameslink, and will also provide direct rail links to the Olympic site at Stratford using British Rail Class 395 trains running under the Olympic Javelin name; these will be based on Japanese Shinkansen high-speed trains.
The modern Enviro400 double-decker bus
London's bus network is one of the largest in the world, running 24 hours a day, with 8,000 buses, 700 bus routes, and over 6 million passenger journeys made every weekday. In 2003, the network's ridership was estimated at over 1.5 billion passenger trips per annum, more than the Underground. Around £850 m is taken in revenue each year.
London has the largest wheelchair accessible network in the world and, from the 3rd quarter of 2007, became more accessible to hearing and visually impaired passengers as audio-visual announcements were introduced. The distinctive red double-decker buses are internationally recognised, and are a trademark of London transport along with black cabs and the Tube.
Terminal 5 at Heathrow Airport, which is the world's busiest airport by international passenger traffic.
London is a major international air transport hub with the largest city airspace in the world. Eight airports use the words London Airport in their name, but most traffic passes through one of five major airports. London Heathrow Airport is the busiest airport in the world for international traffic, and is the major hub of the nation's flag carrier, British Airways. In March 2008 its fifth terminal was opened, and plans are already being considered for a sixth terminal. Similar traffic, with the addition of some low-cost short-haul flights, is also handled at London Gatwick Airport. London Stansted Airport and London Luton Airport cater mostly for low-cost short-haul flights. London City Airport, the smallest and most central airport, is focused on business travellers, with a mixture of full service short-haul scheduled flights and considerable business jet traffic.
Although the majority of journeys involving central London are made by public transport, travel in outer London is car-dominated. The inner ring road (around the city centre), the North and South Circular roads (in the suburbs), and the outer orbital motorway (the M25, outside the built-up area) encircle the city and are intersected by a number of busy radial routes â but very few motorways penetrate into inner London. The M25 is the longest ring-road motorway in the world at long. A plan for a comprehensive network of motorways throughout the city (the Ringways Plan) was prepared in the 1960s but was mostly cancelled in the early 1970s. In 2003, a congestion charge was introduced to reduce traffic volumes in the city centre. With a few exceptions, motorists are required to pay £8 per day to drive within a defined zone encompassing much of congested central London. Motorists who are residents of the defined zone can buy a vastly reduced season pass which is renewed monthly and is cheaper than a corresponding bus fare.
Royal Holloway, as a part of the University of London, a federation of London higher education institutions
Home to a range of universities, colleges and schools, London has a student population of about 378,000 and is a centre of research and development. Most primary and secondary schools in London follow the same system as the rest of England â comprehensive schooling.
With 125,000 students, the University of London is the largest contact teaching university in the United Kingdom and in Europe. It comprises 20 colleges as well as several smaller institutes each with a high degree of autonomy. Constituent colleges have their own admissions procedures, and are effectively universities in their own right, although most degrees are awarded by the University of London rather than the individual colleges. Its constituents include multi-disciplinary colleges such as UCL, King's, Goldsmiths, Queen Mary and more specialised institutions such as the London School of Economics, SOAS, the Royal Academy of Music, the Courtauld Institute of Art and the Institute of Education.
Imperial College London and University College London have been ranked among the top ten universities in the world by The Times Higher Education Supplement: in 2008 Imperial was ranked the 6th best and UCL the 7th best university in the world.
In addition, the London School of Economics is the worldâs leading social science institution for teaching and research, plus has the most international student body of any university in the world today.
A number of colleges are dedicated to the fine arts, including the Royal College of Music, Royal College of Art, and Guildhall School of Music and Drama.
Senate House, the headquarters of the federal University of London
London's other universities, such as Brunel University, City University, London Metropolitan University, Middlesex University, University of East London, University of the Arts London, University of Westminster, Kingston University and London South Bank University are not part of the University of London but are still leaders in their field and popular choices among students both nationally and internationally. Some were polytechnics until these were granted university status in 1992, and others which were founded much earlier. Imperial College London left the federal University of London in 2007. Since the merger of University of North London and London Guildhall University in 2003, London Metropolitan University is the largest unitary university in the capital, with over 34,000 students from 155 countries. About London Met London Metropolitan University, August 2008 London is also known globally for its business education, with the London Business School (ranked 1st in Europe â Business Week) and Cass Business School (Europe's largest finance school) both being top world-rated business schools. In addition there are three international universities: Schiller International University, Richmond University and Regent's College.
There are 46 other places on six continents named after London. Jack Malvern. Richmond, in Surrey, is the most widely copied British place name worldwide, timesonline 2008-12-29. The original byline for the article in The Times of the same day was "The 55 corners of foreign fields that will be for ever ... Richmond" (page 9). Cites The Times Universal Atlas of the World. As well as London's twinning, the Boroughs of London have twinnings with parts of other cities across the world. Shown below is the list of cities that the Greater London Authority is twinned with.
* New York City,
* Moscow,
* Berlin,
The following cities have a friendship agreement with London:
* Sofia,
* Delhi,
* Mumbai,
* Beijing,
* Istanbul,
* Paris,
* Tehran,
* Tokyo,
* Bogotá,
* Podgorica,
* Algiers,
* Global city
* Geography of England
* Large Cities Climate Leadership Group
* Largest European cities and metropolitan areas
* London Assembly
* Megacity
*
*
*
*
* Mayor of London, London Assembly and the Greater London Authority â Official city government site
* Transport for London (TfL) â city transport authority
* BBC London
* Office for National Statistics: Focus on London 2007 â compendium of official statistics about London
* Museum of London Group Portal - Home
* VisitLondon.com â Official London site
* Map of Early Modern London â Historical Map and Encyclopaedia of Shakespeare's London (Scholarly)
* London Bridges â A view of London Bridges over the River Thames
|
Lyre | Are the strings of a classical lyre made of gut? | Yes | data/set2/a10 | Lyre
The lyre is a stringed musical instrument well known for its use in classical antiquity and later. The recitations of the Ancient Greeks were accompanied by lyre playing. The lyre of Classical Antiquity was ordinarily played by being strummed with a plectrum, like a guitar or a zither, rather than being plucked, like a harp. The fingers of the free hand silenced the unwanted strings in the chord.
Lyres from various times and places are regarded by some organologists (specialists in the history of musical instruments) as a branch of the zither family, a general category which includes many different stringed instruments, such as lutes, guitars, kantele, and psalteries, not just zithers.
Others view the lyre and zither as being two separate classes. Those specialists maintain that the zither is distinguished by strings spread across all or most of its soundboard, or the top surface of its sound chest, also called soundbox or resonator, as opposed to the lyre, whose strings emanate from a more or less common point off the soundboard, such as a tailpiece. Examples of that difference include a piano (a keyed zither) and a violin (referred to by some as a species of fingerboard lyre). Some specialists even argue that instruments such as the violin and guitar belong to a class apart from the lyre because they have no yokes or uprights surmounting their resonators as "true" lyres have. This group they usually refer to as the lute class, after the instrument of that name, and include within it the guitar, the violin, the banjo, and similar stringed instruments with fingerboards. Those who differ with that opinion counter by calling the lute, violin, guitar, banjo, and other such instruments "independent fingerboard lyres," as opposed to simply "fingerboard lyres" such as the Welsh crwth, which have both fingerboards and frameworks above their resonators.
One point on which organologists universally agree is that the distinction between harps on the one hand and zithers and lyres (and, in some views, lutes) on the other is that harps have strings emanating directly from the soundboard and residing in a plane that is basically perpendicular to the soundboard, as opposed to the other instruments, whose strings are attached to one or more points somewhere off the soundboard (e.g., wrest pins on a zither, tailpiece on a lyre or lute) and lie in a plane essentially parallel to it. They also agree that neither the overall size of the instrument nor the number of strings on it have anything to do with its classification. For example, small Scottish and Irish harps can be held on the lap, while some ancient Sumerian lyres appear to have been as tall as a seated man (see Kinsky; also Sachs, History ..., under "References"). Regarding the number of strings, the standard 88-key piano has many more strings than even the largest harp.
Women posing as a Siren with a lyre in 1913.
A classical lyre has a hollow body or sound-chest (also known as soundbox or resonator). Extending from this sound-chest are two raised arms, which are sometimes hollow, and are curved both outward and forward. They are connected near the top by a crossbar or yoke. An additional crossbar, fixed to the sound-chest, forms the bridge which transmits the vibrations of the strings. The deepest note was that farthest from the player's body; as the strings did not differ much in length, more weight may have been gained for the deeper notes by thicker strings, as in the violin and similar modern instruments, or they were tuned by having a slacker tension. The strings were of gut. They were stretched between the yoke and bridge, or to a tailpiece below the bridge. There were two ways of tuning: one was to fasten the strings to pegs which might be turned; the other was to change the place of the string upon the crossbar; probably both expedients were used simultaneously.
Statue of the Olympian deity, Apollo holding a lyre.
According to ancient Greek mythology, the young god Hermes created the lyre from a slaughtered cow from Apollo's sacred herd, using the intestines for the strings. Lyres were associated with Apollonian virtues of moderation and equilibrium, contrasting with the Dionysian pipes and aulos, both of which represented ecstasy and celebration.
Locales in southern Europe, western Asia, or north Africa have been proposed as the historic birthplace of the genus. The instrument is still played in north-eastern parts of Africa.
Some of the cultures using and developing the lyre were the Aeolian and Ionian Greek colonies on the coasts of Asia (ancient Asia Minor, modern day Turkey) bordering the Lydian empire. Some mythic masters like Orpheus, Musaeus, and Thamyris were believed to have been born in Thrace, another place of extensive Greek colonization.
The name kissar (kithara) given by the ancient Greeks to Egyptian box instruments reveals the apparent similarities recognized by Greeks themselves. The cultural peak of ancient Egypt, and thus the possible age of the earliest instruments of this type, predates the 5th century classic Greece.
This indicates the possibility that the lyre might have existed in one of Greece's neighboring countries, either Thrace, Lydia, or Egypt, and was introduced into Greece at pre-classic times.
The number of strings on the classical lyre varied at different epochs, and possibly in different localities â four, seven and ten having been favorite numbers. They were used without a fingerboard, no Greek description or representation having ever been met with that can be construed as referring to one. Nor was a bow possible, the flat sound-board being an insuperable impediment. The plectrum, however, was in constant use. It was held in the right hand to set the upper strings in vibration; when not in use, it hung from the instrument by a ribbon. The fingers of the left hand touched the lower strings (presumably to silence those whose notes were not wanted).
There is no evidence as to the stringing of the Greek lyre in the heroic age. Plutarch says that Olympus and Terpander used but three strings to accompany their recitation. As the four strings led to seven and eight by doubling the tetrachord, so the trichord is connected with the hexachord or six-stringed lyre depicted on so many archaic Greek vases. The accuracy of this representation cannot be insisted upon, the vase painters being little mindful of the complete expression of details; yet one may suppose their tendency would be rather to imitate than to invent a number. It was their constant practice to represent the strings as being damped by the fingers of the left hand of the player, after having been struck by the plectrum which he held in the right hand. Before Greek civilization had assumed its historic form, there was likely to have been great freedom and independence of different localities in the matter of lyre stringing, which is corroborated by the antique use of the chromatic (half-tone) and enharmonic (quarter-tone) tunings pointing to an early exuberance, and perhaps also to an Asiatic bias towards refinements of intonation.
While the lyre is no longer played in modern Greece, the term lyra lives on as the name shared by various regional types of fiddles (bowed lutes) found throughout the country. There are two basic styles of lyra fiddles: 1) a pear-shaped instrument with a vaulted back which is found in the Greek islands â in particular, the Dodecanese and Crete â and the northern mainland regions of Macedonia and Thrace; and 2) an instrument with a narrow rectangular cylinder body of the Pontic Greeks who trace their roots to Pontos (Pontus), the Black Sea region of northern Turkey. (The Pontic Greek lyra is also known as kemenche.) Both types of lyra typically have three strings. They are held vertically upright and bowed horizontally; if the player is seated, the instrument's base rests on the player's upper left thigh. The Cretan lyra is traditionally played in a duo with the laouto, a long-neck fretted lute that is strummed like a guitar.
Reproduction of the lyre from the royal burial at Sutton Hoo, late 6th/early 7th century AD
Other instruments known as lyres have been fashioned and used in Europe outside the Greco-Roman world since at least the early Middle Ages, and one view holds that many modern stringed instruments are late-emerging examples of the lyre class. There is no clear evidence that non-Greco-Roman lyres were played exclusively with plectra, and numerous instruments regarded by some as modern lyres are played with bows.
Lyres appearing to have emerged independently of Greco-Roman prototypes were used by the Teutonic, Gallic, Scandinavian, and Celtic peoples over a thousand years ago. Dates of origin, which probably vary from region to region, cannot be determined, but the oldest known fragments of such instruments are thought to date from around the sixth century of the Common Era. After the bow made its way into Europe from the Middle-East, around two centuries later, it was applied to several species of those lyres that were small enough to make bowing practical. There came to be two broad classes of bowed European yoke lyres: those with fingerboards dividing the open space within the yoke longitudinally, and those without fingerboards. The last surviving examples of instruments within the latter class were the Scandinavian talharpa and jouhikko. Different tones could be obtained from a single bowed string by pressing the fingernails of the player's left hand against various points along the string to fret the string.
The last of the bowed yoke lyres with fingerboard was the "modern" (ca. 1485 - ca. 1800) Welsh crwth. It had several predecessors both in the British Isles and in Continental Europe. Pitch was changed on individual strings by pressing the string firmly against the fingerboard with the fingertips. Like a violin, this method shortened the vibrating length of the string to produce higher tones, while releasing the finger gave the string a greater vibrating length, thereby producing a tone lower in pitch. This is the principle on which the modern violin and guitar work.
While the dates of origin and other evolutionary details of the European bowed yoke lyres continue to be disputed among organologists, there is general agreement that none of them were the ancestors of modern orchestral bowed stringed instruments, as once was thought.
In furniture design, a lyre arm is a wooden lyre-shaped element often used at the front of the arm of a chair, typically created as an exposed wooden part of a chair, sofa or other furniture piece.
A music holder used by marching bands is also called a "lyre" for its shape similar to this instrument.
Lyre also can denote the framework supporting the foot pedals underneath a piano. The term is most often used in connection with older pianos of ornate designs.
The constellation Lyra is said to resemble a lyre shape, but it looks more like a lute.
*Arabian peninsula - tanbūra
*Djibouti - tanbūra
*Egypt - kissar, tanbūra, simsimiyya
*England - rote
*Estonia - talharpa
*Ethiopia - begena, dita, krar
*Finland - Jouhikko
*Greece - barbiton, kithara, lyra
*Iraq - sammu, tanbūra, zami, zinar
*Israel - kinnor
*Kenya - kibugander, litungu, nyatiti, obokano
*Norway - Giga
*Scotland - Gue
*Somalia - tanbūra
*Sudan - kissar, tanbūra
*Tanzania - litungu
*Uganda - endongo, ntongoli
*Wales - crwth
*Yemen - tanbūra, simsimiyya
*Harp
*Levy, Michael "King David's Lyre; Echoes of Ancient Israel"; restoring the sound of the ancient Jewish Temple Lyre of the Levites
*
*Andersson, Otto. The Bowed Harp, translated and edited by Kathleen Schlesinger (London: New Temple Press, 1930).
*Bachmann, Werner. The Origins of Bowing, trans. Norma Deane (London: Oxford University Press, 1969).
*Jenkins, J. "A Short Note on African Lyres in Use Today." Iraq 31 (1969), p. 103 (+ pl. XVIII).
*Kinsky, George. A History of Music in Pictures (New York: E.P. Dutton, 1937).
*Sachs, Curt. The Rise of Music in the Ancient World, East and West (New York: W.W. Norton, 1943).
*Sachs, Curt. The History of Musical Instruments (New York: W.W. Norton, 1940).
|
Lyre | Does a classical lyre have a sound-chest? | Yes | data/set2/a10 | Lyre
The lyre is a stringed musical instrument well known for its use in classical antiquity and later. The recitations of the Ancient Greeks were accompanied by lyre playing. The lyre of Classical Antiquity was ordinarily played by being strummed with a plectrum, like a guitar or a zither, rather than being plucked, like a harp. The fingers of the free hand silenced the unwanted strings in the chord.
Lyres from various times and places are regarded by some organologists (specialists in the history of musical instruments) as a branch of the zither family, a general category which includes many different stringed instruments, such as lutes, guitars, kantele, and psalteries, not just zithers.
Others view the lyre and zither as being two separate classes. Those specialists maintain that the zither is distinguished by strings spread across all or most of its soundboard, or the top surface of its sound chest, also called soundbox or resonator, as opposed to the lyre, whose strings emanate from a more or less common point off the soundboard, such as a tailpiece. Examples of that difference include a piano (a keyed zither) and a violin (referred to by some as a species of fingerboard lyre). Some specialists even argue that instruments such as the violin and guitar belong to a class apart from the lyre because they have no yokes or uprights surmounting their resonators as "true" lyres have. This group they usually refer to as the lute class, after the instrument of that name, and include within it the guitar, the violin, the banjo, and similar stringed instruments with fingerboards. Those who differ with that opinion counter by calling the lute, violin, guitar, banjo, and other such instruments "independent fingerboard lyres," as opposed to simply "fingerboard lyres" such as the Welsh crwth, which have both fingerboards and frameworks above their resonators.
One point on which organologists universally agree is that the distinction between harps on the one hand and zithers and lyres (and, in some views, lutes) on the other is that harps have strings emanating directly from the soundboard and residing in a plane that is basically perpendicular to the soundboard, as opposed to the other instruments, whose strings are attached to one or more points somewhere off the soundboard (e.g., wrest pins on a zither, tailpiece on a lyre or lute) and lie in a plane essentially parallel to it. They also agree that neither the overall size of the instrument nor the number of strings on it have anything to do with its classification. For example, small Scottish and Irish harps can be held on the lap, while some ancient Sumerian lyres appear to have been as tall as a seated man (see Kinsky; also Sachs, History ..., under "References"). Regarding the number of strings, the standard 88-key piano has many more strings than even the largest harp.
Women posing as a Siren with a lyre in 1913.
A classical lyre has a hollow body or sound-chest (also known as soundbox or resonator). Extending from this sound-chest are two raised arms, which are sometimes hollow, and are curved both outward and forward. They are connected near the top by a crossbar or yoke. An additional crossbar, fixed to the sound-chest, forms the bridge which transmits the vibrations of the strings. The deepest note was that farthest from the player's body; as the strings did not differ much in length, more weight may have been gained for the deeper notes by thicker strings, as in the violin and similar modern instruments, or they were tuned by having a slacker tension. The strings were of gut. They were stretched between the yoke and bridge, or to a tailpiece below the bridge. There were two ways of tuning: one was to fasten the strings to pegs which might be turned; the other was to change the place of the string upon the crossbar; probably both expedients were used simultaneously.
Statue of the Olympian deity, Apollo holding a lyre.
According to ancient Greek mythology, the young god Hermes created the lyre from a slaughtered cow from Apollo's sacred herd, using the intestines for the strings. Lyres were associated with Apollonian virtues of moderation and equilibrium, contrasting with the Dionysian pipes and aulos, both of which represented ecstasy and celebration.
Locales in southern Europe, western Asia, or north Africa have been proposed as the historic birthplace of the genus. The instrument is still played in north-eastern parts of Africa.
Some of the cultures using and developing the lyre were the Aeolian and Ionian Greek colonies on the coasts of Asia (ancient Asia Minor, modern day Turkey) bordering the Lydian empire. Some mythic masters like Orpheus, Musaeus, and Thamyris were believed to have been born in Thrace, another place of extensive Greek colonization.
The name kissar (kithara) given by the ancient Greeks to Egyptian box instruments reveals the apparent similarities recognized by Greeks themselves. The cultural peak of ancient Egypt, and thus the possible age of the earliest instruments of this type, predates the 5th century classic Greece.
This indicates the possibility that the lyre might have existed in one of Greece's neighboring countries, either Thrace, Lydia, or Egypt, and was introduced into Greece at pre-classic times.
The number of strings on the classical lyre varied at different epochs, and possibly in different localities â four, seven and ten having been favorite numbers. They were used without a fingerboard, no Greek description or representation having ever been met with that can be construed as referring to one. Nor was a bow possible, the flat sound-board being an insuperable impediment. The plectrum, however, was in constant use. It was held in the right hand to set the upper strings in vibration; when not in use, it hung from the instrument by a ribbon. The fingers of the left hand touched the lower strings (presumably to silence those whose notes were not wanted).
There is no evidence as to the stringing of the Greek lyre in the heroic age. Plutarch says that Olympus and Terpander used but three strings to accompany their recitation. As the four strings led to seven and eight by doubling the tetrachord, so the trichord is connected with the hexachord or six-stringed lyre depicted on so many archaic Greek vases. The accuracy of this representation cannot be insisted upon, the vase painters being little mindful of the complete expression of details; yet one may suppose their tendency would be rather to imitate than to invent a number. It was their constant practice to represent the strings as being damped by the fingers of the left hand of the player, after having been struck by the plectrum which he held in the right hand. Before Greek civilization had assumed its historic form, there was likely to have been great freedom and independence of different localities in the matter of lyre stringing, which is corroborated by the antique use of the chromatic (half-tone) and enharmonic (quarter-tone) tunings pointing to an early exuberance, and perhaps also to an Asiatic bias towards refinements of intonation.
While the lyre is no longer played in modern Greece, the term lyra lives on as the name shared by various regional types of fiddles (bowed lutes) found throughout the country. There are two basic styles of lyra fiddles: 1) a pear-shaped instrument with a vaulted back which is found in the Greek islands â in particular, the Dodecanese and Crete â and the northern mainland regions of Macedonia and Thrace; and 2) an instrument with a narrow rectangular cylinder body of the Pontic Greeks who trace their roots to Pontos (Pontus), the Black Sea region of northern Turkey. (The Pontic Greek lyra is also known as kemenche.) Both types of lyra typically have three strings. They are held vertically upright and bowed horizontally; if the player is seated, the instrument's base rests on the player's upper left thigh. The Cretan lyra is traditionally played in a duo with the laouto, a long-neck fretted lute that is strummed like a guitar.
Reproduction of the lyre from the royal burial at Sutton Hoo, late 6th/early 7th century AD
Other instruments known as lyres have been fashioned and used in Europe outside the Greco-Roman world since at least the early Middle Ages, and one view holds that many modern stringed instruments are late-emerging examples of the lyre class. There is no clear evidence that non-Greco-Roman lyres were played exclusively with plectra, and numerous instruments regarded by some as modern lyres are played with bows.
Lyres appearing to have emerged independently of Greco-Roman prototypes were used by the Teutonic, Gallic, Scandinavian, and Celtic peoples over a thousand years ago. Dates of origin, which probably vary from region to region, cannot be determined, but the oldest known fragments of such instruments are thought to date from around the sixth century of the Common Era. After the bow made its way into Europe from the Middle-East, around two centuries later, it was applied to several species of those lyres that were small enough to make bowing practical. There came to be two broad classes of bowed European yoke lyres: those with fingerboards dividing the open space within the yoke longitudinally, and those without fingerboards. The last surviving examples of instruments within the latter class were the Scandinavian talharpa and jouhikko. Different tones could be obtained from a single bowed string by pressing the fingernails of the player's left hand against various points along the string to fret the string.
The last of the bowed yoke lyres with fingerboard was the "modern" (ca. 1485 - ca. 1800) Welsh crwth. It had several predecessors both in the British Isles and in Continental Europe. Pitch was changed on individual strings by pressing the string firmly against the fingerboard with the fingertips. Like a violin, this method shortened the vibrating length of the string to produce higher tones, while releasing the finger gave the string a greater vibrating length, thereby producing a tone lower in pitch. This is the principle on which the modern violin and guitar work.
While the dates of origin and other evolutionary details of the European bowed yoke lyres continue to be disputed among organologists, there is general agreement that none of them were the ancestors of modern orchestral bowed stringed instruments, as once was thought.
In furniture design, a lyre arm is a wooden lyre-shaped element often used at the front of the arm of a chair, typically created as an exposed wooden part of a chair, sofa or other furniture piece.
A music holder used by marching bands is also called a "lyre" for its shape similar to this instrument.
Lyre also can denote the framework supporting the foot pedals underneath a piano. The term is most often used in connection with older pianos of ornate designs.
The constellation Lyra is said to resemble a lyre shape, but it looks more like a lute.
*Arabian peninsula - tanbūra
*Djibouti - tanbūra
*Egypt - kissar, tanbūra, simsimiyya
*England - rote
*Estonia - talharpa
*Ethiopia - begena, dita, krar
*Finland - Jouhikko
*Greece - barbiton, kithara, lyra
*Iraq - sammu, tanbūra, zami, zinar
*Israel - kinnor
*Kenya - kibugander, litungu, nyatiti, obokano
*Norway - Giga
*Scotland - Gue
*Somalia - tanbūra
*Sudan - kissar, tanbūra
*Tanzania - litungu
*Uganda - endongo, ntongoli
*Wales - crwth
*Yemen - tanbūra, simsimiyya
*Harp
*Levy, Michael "King David's Lyre; Echoes of Ancient Israel"; restoring the sound of the ancient Jewish Temple Lyre of the Levites
*
*Andersson, Otto. The Bowed Harp, translated and edited by Kathleen Schlesinger (London: New Temple Press, 1930).
*Bachmann, Werner. The Origins of Bowing, trans. Norma Deane (London: Oxford University Press, 1969).
*Jenkins, J. "A Short Note on African Lyres in Use Today." Iraq 31 (1969), p. 103 (+ pl. XVIII).
*Kinsky, George. A History of Music in Pictures (New York: E.P. Dutton, 1937).
*Sachs, Curt. The Rise of Music in the Ancient World, East and West (New York: W.W. Norton, 1943).
*Sachs, Curt. The History of Musical Instruments (New York: W.W. Norton, 1940).
|
Lyre | Is lyre played in mordern Greece? | No | data/set2/a10 | Lyre
The lyre is a stringed musical instrument well known for its use in classical antiquity and later. The recitations of the Ancient Greeks were accompanied by lyre playing. The lyre of Classical Antiquity was ordinarily played by being strummed with a plectrum, like a guitar or a zither, rather than being plucked, like a harp. The fingers of the free hand silenced the unwanted strings in the chord.
Lyres from various times and places are regarded by some organologists (specialists in the history of musical instruments) as a branch of the zither family, a general category which includes many different stringed instruments, such as lutes, guitars, kantele, and psalteries, not just zithers.
Others view the lyre and zither as being two separate classes. Those specialists maintain that the zither is distinguished by strings spread across all or most of its soundboard, or the top surface of its sound chest, also called soundbox or resonator, as opposed to the lyre, whose strings emanate from a more or less common point off the soundboard, such as a tailpiece. Examples of that difference include a piano (a keyed zither) and a violin (referred to by some as a species of fingerboard lyre). Some specialists even argue that instruments such as the violin and guitar belong to a class apart from the lyre because they have no yokes or uprights surmounting their resonators as "true" lyres have. This group they usually refer to as the lute class, after the instrument of that name, and include within it the guitar, the violin, the banjo, and similar stringed instruments with fingerboards. Those who differ with that opinion counter by calling the lute, violin, guitar, banjo, and other such instruments "independent fingerboard lyres," as opposed to simply "fingerboard lyres" such as the Welsh crwth, which have both fingerboards and frameworks above their resonators.
One point on which organologists universally agree is that the distinction between harps on the one hand and zithers and lyres (and, in some views, lutes) on the other is that harps have strings emanating directly from the soundboard and residing in a plane that is basically perpendicular to the soundboard, as opposed to the other instruments, whose strings are attached to one or more points somewhere off the soundboard (e.g., wrest pins on a zither, tailpiece on a lyre or lute) and lie in a plane essentially parallel to it. They also agree that neither the overall size of the instrument nor the number of strings on it have anything to do with its classification. For example, small Scottish and Irish harps can be held on the lap, while some ancient Sumerian lyres appear to have been as tall as a seated man (see Kinsky; also Sachs, History ..., under "References"). Regarding the number of strings, the standard 88-key piano has many more strings than even the largest harp.
Women posing as a Siren with a lyre in 1913.
A classical lyre has a hollow body or sound-chest (also known as soundbox or resonator). Extending from this sound-chest are two raised arms, which are sometimes hollow, and are curved both outward and forward. They are connected near the top by a crossbar or yoke. An additional crossbar, fixed to the sound-chest, forms the bridge which transmits the vibrations of the strings. The deepest note was that farthest from the player's body; as the strings did not differ much in length, more weight may have been gained for the deeper notes by thicker strings, as in the violin and similar modern instruments, or they were tuned by having a slacker tension. The strings were of gut. They were stretched between the yoke and bridge, or to a tailpiece below the bridge. There were two ways of tuning: one was to fasten the strings to pegs which might be turned; the other was to change the place of the string upon the crossbar; probably both expedients were used simultaneously.
Statue of the Olympian deity, Apollo holding a lyre.
According to ancient Greek mythology, the young god Hermes created the lyre from a slaughtered cow from Apollo's sacred herd, using the intestines for the strings. Lyres were associated with Apollonian virtues of moderation and equilibrium, contrasting with the Dionysian pipes and aulos, both of which represented ecstasy and celebration.
Locales in southern Europe, western Asia, or north Africa have been proposed as the historic birthplace of the genus. The instrument is still played in north-eastern parts of Africa.
Some of the cultures using and developing the lyre were the Aeolian and Ionian Greek colonies on the coasts of Asia (ancient Asia Minor, modern day Turkey) bordering the Lydian empire. Some mythic masters like Orpheus, Musaeus, and Thamyris were believed to have been born in Thrace, another place of extensive Greek colonization.
The name kissar (kithara) given by the ancient Greeks to Egyptian box instruments reveals the apparent similarities recognized by Greeks themselves. The cultural peak of ancient Egypt, and thus the possible age of the earliest instruments of this type, predates the 5th century classic Greece.
This indicates the possibility that the lyre might have existed in one of Greece's neighboring countries, either Thrace, Lydia, or Egypt, and was introduced into Greece at pre-classic times.
The number of strings on the classical lyre varied at different epochs, and possibly in different localities â four, seven and ten having been favorite numbers. They were used without a fingerboard, no Greek description or representation having ever been met with that can be construed as referring to one. Nor was a bow possible, the flat sound-board being an insuperable impediment. The plectrum, however, was in constant use. It was held in the right hand to set the upper strings in vibration; when not in use, it hung from the instrument by a ribbon. The fingers of the left hand touched the lower strings (presumably to silence those whose notes were not wanted).
There is no evidence as to the stringing of the Greek lyre in the heroic age. Plutarch says that Olympus and Terpander used but three strings to accompany their recitation. As the four strings led to seven and eight by doubling the tetrachord, so the trichord is connected with the hexachord or six-stringed lyre depicted on so many archaic Greek vases. The accuracy of this representation cannot be insisted upon, the vase painters being little mindful of the complete expression of details; yet one may suppose their tendency would be rather to imitate than to invent a number. It was their constant practice to represent the strings as being damped by the fingers of the left hand of the player, after having been struck by the plectrum which he held in the right hand. Before Greek civilization had assumed its historic form, there was likely to have been great freedom and independence of different localities in the matter of lyre stringing, which is corroborated by the antique use of the chromatic (half-tone) and enharmonic (quarter-tone) tunings pointing to an early exuberance, and perhaps also to an Asiatic bias towards refinements of intonation.
While the lyre is no longer played in modern Greece, the term lyra lives on as the name shared by various regional types of fiddles (bowed lutes) found throughout the country. There are two basic styles of lyra fiddles: 1) a pear-shaped instrument with a vaulted back which is found in the Greek islands â in particular, the Dodecanese and Crete â and the northern mainland regions of Macedonia and Thrace; and 2) an instrument with a narrow rectangular cylinder body of the Pontic Greeks who trace their roots to Pontos (Pontus), the Black Sea region of northern Turkey. (The Pontic Greek lyra is also known as kemenche.) Both types of lyra typically have three strings. They are held vertically upright and bowed horizontally; if the player is seated, the instrument's base rests on the player's upper left thigh. The Cretan lyra is traditionally played in a duo with the laouto, a long-neck fretted lute that is strummed like a guitar.
Reproduction of the lyre from the royal burial at Sutton Hoo, late 6th/early 7th century AD
Other instruments known as lyres have been fashioned and used in Europe outside the Greco-Roman world since at least the early Middle Ages, and one view holds that many modern stringed instruments are late-emerging examples of the lyre class. There is no clear evidence that non-Greco-Roman lyres were played exclusively with plectra, and numerous instruments regarded by some as modern lyres are played with bows.
Lyres appearing to have emerged independently of Greco-Roman prototypes were used by the Teutonic, Gallic, Scandinavian, and Celtic peoples over a thousand years ago. Dates of origin, which probably vary from region to region, cannot be determined, but the oldest known fragments of such instruments are thought to date from around the sixth century of the Common Era. After the bow made its way into Europe from the Middle-East, around two centuries later, it was applied to several species of those lyres that were small enough to make bowing practical. There came to be two broad classes of bowed European yoke lyres: those with fingerboards dividing the open space within the yoke longitudinally, and those without fingerboards. The last surviving examples of instruments within the latter class were the Scandinavian talharpa and jouhikko. Different tones could be obtained from a single bowed string by pressing the fingernails of the player's left hand against various points along the string to fret the string.
The last of the bowed yoke lyres with fingerboard was the "modern" (ca. 1485 - ca. 1800) Welsh crwth. It had several predecessors both in the British Isles and in Continental Europe. Pitch was changed on individual strings by pressing the string firmly against the fingerboard with the fingertips. Like a violin, this method shortened the vibrating length of the string to produce higher tones, while releasing the finger gave the string a greater vibrating length, thereby producing a tone lower in pitch. This is the principle on which the modern violin and guitar work.
While the dates of origin and other evolutionary details of the European bowed yoke lyres continue to be disputed among organologists, there is general agreement that none of them were the ancestors of modern orchestral bowed stringed instruments, as once was thought.
In furniture design, a lyre arm is a wooden lyre-shaped element often used at the front of the arm of a chair, typically created as an exposed wooden part of a chair, sofa or other furniture piece.
A music holder used by marching bands is also called a "lyre" for its shape similar to this instrument.
Lyre also can denote the framework supporting the foot pedals underneath a piano. The term is most often used in connection with older pianos of ornate designs.
The constellation Lyra is said to resemble a lyre shape, but it looks more like a lute.
*Arabian peninsula - tanbūra
*Djibouti - tanbūra
*Egypt - kissar, tanbūra, simsimiyya
*England - rote
*Estonia - talharpa
*Ethiopia - begena, dita, krar
*Finland - Jouhikko
*Greece - barbiton, kithara, lyra
*Iraq - sammu, tanbūra, zami, zinar
*Israel - kinnor
*Kenya - kibugander, litungu, nyatiti, obokano
*Norway - Giga
*Scotland - Gue
*Somalia - tanbūra
*Sudan - kissar, tanbūra
*Tanzania - litungu
*Uganda - endongo, ntongoli
*Wales - crwth
*Yemen - tanbūra, simsimiyya
*Harp
*Levy, Michael "King David's Lyre; Echoes of Ancient Israel"; restoring the sound of the ancient Jewish Temple Lyre of the Levites
*
*Andersson, Otto. The Bowed Harp, translated and edited by Kathleen Schlesinger (London: New Temple Press, 1930).
*Bachmann, Werner. The Origins of Bowing, trans. Norma Deane (London: Oxford University Press, 1969).
*Jenkins, J. "A Short Note on African Lyres in Use Today." Iraq 31 (1969), p. 103 (+ pl. XVIII).
*Kinsky, George. A History of Music in Pictures (New York: E.P. Dutton, 1937).
*Sachs, Curt. The Rise of Music in the Ancient World, East and West (New York: W.W. Norton, 1943).
*Sachs, Curt. The History of Musical Instruments (New York: W.W. Norton, 1940).
|
Lyre | Which part of the strings does the left hand touch? | The lower strings | data/set2/a10 | Lyre
The lyre is a stringed musical instrument well known for its use in classical antiquity and later. The recitations of the Ancient Greeks were accompanied by lyre playing. The lyre of Classical Antiquity was ordinarily played by being strummed with a plectrum, like a guitar or a zither, rather than being plucked, like a harp. The fingers of the free hand silenced the unwanted strings in the chord.
Lyres from various times and places are regarded by some organologists (specialists in the history of musical instruments) as a branch of the zither family, a general category which includes many different stringed instruments, such as lutes, guitars, kantele, and psalteries, not just zithers.
Others view the lyre and zither as being two separate classes. Those specialists maintain that the zither is distinguished by strings spread across all or most of its soundboard, or the top surface of its sound chest, also called soundbox or resonator, as opposed to the lyre, whose strings emanate from a more or less common point off the soundboard, such as a tailpiece. Examples of that difference include a piano (a keyed zither) and a violin (referred to by some as a species of fingerboard lyre). Some specialists even argue that instruments such as the violin and guitar belong to a class apart from the lyre because they have no yokes or uprights surmounting their resonators as "true" lyres have. This group they usually refer to as the lute class, after the instrument of that name, and include within it the guitar, the violin, the banjo, and similar stringed instruments with fingerboards. Those who differ with that opinion counter by calling the lute, violin, guitar, banjo, and other such instruments "independent fingerboard lyres," as opposed to simply "fingerboard lyres" such as the Welsh crwth, which have both fingerboards and frameworks above their resonators.
One point on which organologists universally agree is that the distinction between harps on the one hand and zithers and lyres (and, in some views, lutes) on the other is that harps have strings emanating directly from the soundboard and residing in a plane that is basically perpendicular to the soundboard, as opposed to the other instruments, whose strings are attached to one or more points somewhere off the soundboard (e.g., wrest pins on a zither, tailpiece on a lyre or lute) and lie in a plane essentially parallel to it. They also agree that neither the overall size of the instrument nor the number of strings on it have anything to do with its classification. For example, small Scottish and Irish harps can be held on the lap, while some ancient Sumerian lyres appear to have been as tall as a seated man (see Kinsky; also Sachs, History ..., under "References"). Regarding the number of strings, the standard 88-key piano has many more strings than even the largest harp.
Women posing as a Siren with a lyre in 1913.
A classical lyre has a hollow body or sound-chest (also known as soundbox or resonator). Extending from this sound-chest are two raised arms, which are sometimes hollow, and are curved both outward and forward. They are connected near the top by a crossbar or yoke. An additional crossbar, fixed to the sound-chest, forms the bridge which transmits the vibrations of the strings. The deepest note was that farthest from the player's body; as the strings did not differ much in length, more weight may have been gained for the deeper notes by thicker strings, as in the violin and similar modern instruments, or they were tuned by having a slacker tension. The strings were of gut. They were stretched between the yoke and bridge, or to a tailpiece below the bridge. There were two ways of tuning: one was to fasten the strings to pegs which might be turned; the other was to change the place of the string upon the crossbar; probably both expedients were used simultaneously.
Statue of the Olympian deity, Apollo holding a lyre.
According to ancient Greek mythology, the young god Hermes created the lyre from a slaughtered cow from Apollo's sacred herd, using the intestines for the strings. Lyres were associated with Apollonian virtues of moderation and equilibrium, contrasting with the Dionysian pipes and aulos, both of which represented ecstasy and celebration.
Locales in southern Europe, western Asia, or north Africa have been proposed as the historic birthplace of the genus. The instrument is still played in north-eastern parts of Africa.
Some of the cultures using and developing the lyre were the Aeolian and Ionian Greek colonies on the coasts of Asia (ancient Asia Minor, modern day Turkey) bordering the Lydian empire. Some mythic masters like Orpheus, Musaeus, and Thamyris were believed to have been born in Thrace, another place of extensive Greek colonization.
The name kissar (kithara) given by the ancient Greeks to Egyptian box instruments reveals the apparent similarities recognized by Greeks themselves. The cultural peak of ancient Egypt, and thus the possible age of the earliest instruments of this type, predates the 5th century classic Greece.
This indicates the possibility that the lyre might have existed in one of Greece's neighboring countries, either Thrace, Lydia, or Egypt, and was introduced into Greece at pre-classic times.
The number of strings on the classical lyre varied at different epochs, and possibly in different localities â four, seven and ten having been favorite numbers. They were used without a fingerboard, no Greek description or representation having ever been met with that can be construed as referring to one. Nor was a bow possible, the flat sound-board being an insuperable impediment. The plectrum, however, was in constant use. It was held in the right hand to set the upper strings in vibration; when not in use, it hung from the instrument by a ribbon. The fingers of the left hand touched the lower strings (presumably to silence those whose notes were not wanted).
There is no evidence as to the stringing of the Greek lyre in the heroic age. Plutarch says that Olympus and Terpander used but three strings to accompany their recitation. As the four strings led to seven and eight by doubling the tetrachord, so the trichord is connected with the hexachord or six-stringed lyre depicted on so many archaic Greek vases. The accuracy of this representation cannot be insisted upon, the vase painters being little mindful of the complete expression of details; yet one may suppose their tendency would be rather to imitate than to invent a number. It was their constant practice to represent the strings as being damped by the fingers of the left hand of the player, after having been struck by the plectrum which he held in the right hand. Before Greek civilization had assumed its historic form, there was likely to have been great freedom and independence of different localities in the matter of lyre stringing, which is corroborated by the antique use of the chromatic (half-tone) and enharmonic (quarter-tone) tunings pointing to an early exuberance, and perhaps also to an Asiatic bias towards refinements of intonation.
While the lyre is no longer played in modern Greece, the term lyra lives on as the name shared by various regional types of fiddles (bowed lutes) found throughout the country. There are two basic styles of lyra fiddles: 1) a pear-shaped instrument with a vaulted back which is found in the Greek islands â in particular, the Dodecanese and Crete â and the northern mainland regions of Macedonia and Thrace; and 2) an instrument with a narrow rectangular cylinder body of the Pontic Greeks who trace their roots to Pontos (Pontus), the Black Sea region of northern Turkey. (The Pontic Greek lyra is also known as kemenche.) Both types of lyra typically have three strings. They are held vertically upright and bowed horizontally; if the player is seated, the instrument's base rests on the player's upper left thigh. The Cretan lyra is traditionally played in a duo with the laouto, a long-neck fretted lute that is strummed like a guitar.
Reproduction of the lyre from the royal burial at Sutton Hoo, late 6th/early 7th century AD
Other instruments known as lyres have been fashioned and used in Europe outside the Greco-Roman world since at least the early Middle Ages, and one view holds that many modern stringed instruments are late-emerging examples of the lyre class. There is no clear evidence that non-Greco-Roman lyres were played exclusively with plectra, and numerous instruments regarded by some as modern lyres are played with bows.
Lyres appearing to have emerged independently of Greco-Roman prototypes were used by the Teutonic, Gallic, Scandinavian, and Celtic peoples over a thousand years ago. Dates of origin, which probably vary from region to region, cannot be determined, but the oldest known fragments of such instruments are thought to date from around the sixth century of the Common Era. After the bow made its way into Europe from the Middle-East, around two centuries later, it was applied to several species of those lyres that were small enough to make bowing practical. There came to be two broad classes of bowed European yoke lyres: those with fingerboards dividing the open space within the yoke longitudinally, and those without fingerboards. The last surviving examples of instruments within the latter class were the Scandinavian talharpa and jouhikko. Different tones could be obtained from a single bowed string by pressing the fingernails of the player's left hand against various points along the string to fret the string.
The last of the bowed yoke lyres with fingerboard was the "modern" (ca. 1485 - ca. 1800) Welsh crwth. It had several predecessors both in the British Isles and in Continental Europe. Pitch was changed on individual strings by pressing the string firmly against the fingerboard with the fingertips. Like a violin, this method shortened the vibrating length of the string to produce higher tones, while releasing the finger gave the string a greater vibrating length, thereby producing a tone lower in pitch. This is the principle on which the modern violin and guitar work.
While the dates of origin and other evolutionary details of the European bowed yoke lyres continue to be disputed among organologists, there is general agreement that none of them were the ancestors of modern orchestral bowed stringed instruments, as once was thought.
In furniture design, a lyre arm is a wooden lyre-shaped element often used at the front of the arm of a chair, typically created as an exposed wooden part of a chair, sofa or other furniture piece.
A music holder used by marching bands is also called a "lyre" for its shape similar to this instrument.
Lyre also can denote the framework supporting the foot pedals underneath a piano. The term is most often used in connection with older pianos of ornate designs.
The constellation Lyra is said to resemble a lyre shape, but it looks more like a lute.
*Arabian peninsula - tanbūra
*Djibouti - tanbūra
*Egypt - kissar, tanbūra, simsimiyya
*England - rote
*Estonia - talharpa
*Ethiopia - begena, dita, krar
*Finland - Jouhikko
*Greece - barbiton, kithara, lyra
*Iraq - sammu, tanbūra, zami, zinar
*Israel - kinnor
*Kenya - kibugander, litungu, nyatiti, obokano
*Norway - Giga
*Scotland - Gue
*Somalia - tanbūra
*Sudan - kissar, tanbūra
*Tanzania - litungu
*Uganda - endongo, ntongoli
*Wales - crwth
*Yemen - tanbūra, simsimiyya
*Harp
*Levy, Michael "King David's Lyre; Echoes of Ancient Israel"; restoring the sound of the ancient Jewish Temple Lyre of the Levites
*
*Andersson, Otto. The Bowed Harp, translated and edited by Kathleen Schlesinger (London: New Temple Press, 1930).
*Bachmann, Werner. The Origins of Bowing, trans. Norma Deane (London: Oxford University Press, 1969).
*Jenkins, J. "A Short Note on African Lyres in Use Today." Iraq 31 (1969), p. 103 (+ pl. XVIII).
*Kinsky, George. A History of Music in Pictures (New York: E.P. Dutton, 1937).
*Sachs, Curt. The Rise of Music in the Ancient World, East and West (New York: W.W. Norton, 1943).
*Sachs, Curt. The History of Musical Instruments (New York: W.W. Norton, 1940).
|
Lyre | In which place is lyre still played? | North-eastern parts of Africa | data/set2/a10 | Lyre
The lyre is a stringed musical instrument well known for its use in classical antiquity and later. The recitations of the Ancient Greeks were accompanied by lyre playing. The lyre of Classical Antiquity was ordinarily played by being strummed with a plectrum, like a guitar or a zither, rather than being plucked, like a harp. The fingers of the free hand silenced the unwanted strings in the chord.
Lyres from various times and places are regarded by some organologists (specialists in the history of musical instruments) as a branch of the zither family, a general category which includes many different stringed instruments, such as lutes, guitars, kantele, and psalteries, not just zithers.
Others view the lyre and zither as being two separate classes. Those specialists maintain that the zither is distinguished by strings spread across all or most of its soundboard, or the top surface of its sound chest, also called soundbox or resonator, as opposed to the lyre, whose strings emanate from a more or less common point off the soundboard, such as a tailpiece. Examples of that difference include a piano (a keyed zither) and a violin (referred to by some as a species of fingerboard lyre). Some specialists even argue that instruments such as the violin and guitar belong to a class apart from the lyre because they have no yokes or uprights surmounting their resonators as "true" lyres have. This group they usually refer to as the lute class, after the instrument of that name, and include within it the guitar, the violin, the banjo, and similar stringed instruments with fingerboards. Those who differ with that opinion counter by calling the lute, violin, guitar, banjo, and other such instruments "independent fingerboard lyres," as opposed to simply "fingerboard lyres" such as the Welsh crwth, which have both fingerboards and frameworks above their resonators.
One point on which organologists universally agree is that the distinction between harps on the one hand and zithers and lyres (and, in some views, lutes) on the other is that harps have strings emanating directly from the soundboard and residing in a plane that is basically perpendicular to the soundboard, as opposed to the other instruments, whose strings are attached to one or more points somewhere off the soundboard (e.g., wrest pins on a zither, tailpiece on a lyre or lute) and lie in a plane essentially parallel to it. They also agree that neither the overall size of the instrument nor the number of strings on it have anything to do with its classification. For example, small Scottish and Irish harps can be held on the lap, while some ancient Sumerian lyres appear to have been as tall as a seated man (see Kinsky; also Sachs, History ..., under "References"). Regarding the number of strings, the standard 88-key piano has many more strings than even the largest harp.
Women posing as a Siren with a lyre in 1913.
A classical lyre has a hollow body or sound-chest (also known as soundbox or resonator). Extending from this sound-chest are two raised arms, which are sometimes hollow, and are curved both outward and forward. They are connected near the top by a crossbar or yoke. An additional crossbar, fixed to the sound-chest, forms the bridge which transmits the vibrations of the strings. The deepest note was that farthest from the player's body; as the strings did not differ much in length, more weight may have been gained for the deeper notes by thicker strings, as in the violin and similar modern instruments, or they were tuned by having a slacker tension. The strings were of gut. They were stretched between the yoke and bridge, or to a tailpiece below the bridge. There were two ways of tuning: one was to fasten the strings to pegs which might be turned; the other was to change the place of the string upon the crossbar; probably both expedients were used simultaneously.
Statue of the Olympian deity, Apollo holding a lyre.
According to ancient Greek mythology, the young god Hermes created the lyre from a slaughtered cow from Apollo's sacred herd, using the intestines for the strings. Lyres were associated with Apollonian virtues of moderation and equilibrium, contrasting with the Dionysian pipes and aulos, both of which represented ecstasy and celebration.
Locales in southern Europe, western Asia, or north Africa have been proposed as the historic birthplace of the genus. The instrument is still played in north-eastern parts of Africa.
Some of the cultures using and developing the lyre were the Aeolian and Ionian Greek colonies on the coasts of Asia (ancient Asia Minor, modern day Turkey) bordering the Lydian empire. Some mythic masters like Orpheus, Musaeus, and Thamyris were believed to have been born in Thrace, another place of extensive Greek colonization.
The name kissar (kithara) given by the ancient Greeks to Egyptian box instruments reveals the apparent similarities recognized by Greeks themselves. The cultural peak of ancient Egypt, and thus the possible age of the earliest instruments of this type, predates the 5th century classic Greece.
This indicates the possibility that the lyre might have existed in one of Greece's neighboring countries, either Thrace, Lydia, or Egypt, and was introduced into Greece at pre-classic times.
The number of strings on the classical lyre varied at different epochs, and possibly in different localities â four, seven and ten having been favorite numbers. They were used without a fingerboard, no Greek description or representation having ever been met with that can be construed as referring to one. Nor was a bow possible, the flat sound-board being an insuperable impediment. The plectrum, however, was in constant use. It was held in the right hand to set the upper strings in vibration; when not in use, it hung from the instrument by a ribbon. The fingers of the left hand touched the lower strings (presumably to silence those whose notes were not wanted).
There is no evidence as to the stringing of the Greek lyre in the heroic age. Plutarch says that Olympus and Terpander used but three strings to accompany their recitation. As the four strings led to seven and eight by doubling the tetrachord, so the trichord is connected with the hexachord or six-stringed lyre depicted on so many archaic Greek vases. The accuracy of this representation cannot be insisted upon, the vase painters being little mindful of the complete expression of details; yet one may suppose their tendency would be rather to imitate than to invent a number. It was their constant practice to represent the strings as being damped by the fingers of the left hand of the player, after having been struck by the plectrum which he held in the right hand. Before Greek civilization had assumed its historic form, there was likely to have been great freedom and independence of different localities in the matter of lyre stringing, which is corroborated by the antique use of the chromatic (half-tone) and enharmonic (quarter-tone) tunings pointing to an early exuberance, and perhaps also to an Asiatic bias towards refinements of intonation.
While the lyre is no longer played in modern Greece, the term lyra lives on as the name shared by various regional types of fiddles (bowed lutes) found throughout the country. There are two basic styles of lyra fiddles: 1) a pear-shaped instrument with a vaulted back which is found in the Greek islands â in particular, the Dodecanese and Crete â and the northern mainland regions of Macedonia and Thrace; and 2) an instrument with a narrow rectangular cylinder body of the Pontic Greeks who trace their roots to Pontos (Pontus), the Black Sea region of northern Turkey. (The Pontic Greek lyra is also known as kemenche.) Both types of lyra typically have three strings. They are held vertically upright and bowed horizontally; if the player is seated, the instrument's base rests on the player's upper left thigh. The Cretan lyra is traditionally played in a duo with the laouto, a long-neck fretted lute that is strummed like a guitar.
Reproduction of the lyre from the royal burial at Sutton Hoo, late 6th/early 7th century AD
Other instruments known as lyres have been fashioned and used in Europe outside the Greco-Roman world since at least the early Middle Ages, and one view holds that many modern stringed instruments are late-emerging examples of the lyre class. There is no clear evidence that non-Greco-Roman lyres were played exclusively with plectra, and numerous instruments regarded by some as modern lyres are played with bows.
Lyres appearing to have emerged independently of Greco-Roman prototypes were used by the Teutonic, Gallic, Scandinavian, and Celtic peoples over a thousand years ago. Dates of origin, which probably vary from region to region, cannot be determined, but the oldest known fragments of such instruments are thought to date from around the sixth century of the Common Era. After the bow made its way into Europe from the Middle-East, around two centuries later, it was applied to several species of those lyres that were small enough to make bowing practical. There came to be two broad classes of bowed European yoke lyres: those with fingerboards dividing the open space within the yoke longitudinally, and those without fingerboards. The last surviving examples of instruments within the latter class were the Scandinavian talharpa and jouhikko. Different tones could be obtained from a single bowed string by pressing the fingernails of the player's left hand against various points along the string to fret the string.
The last of the bowed yoke lyres with fingerboard was the "modern" (ca. 1485 - ca. 1800) Welsh crwth. It had several predecessors both in the British Isles and in Continental Europe. Pitch was changed on individual strings by pressing the string firmly against the fingerboard with the fingertips. Like a violin, this method shortened the vibrating length of the string to produce higher tones, while releasing the finger gave the string a greater vibrating length, thereby producing a tone lower in pitch. This is the principle on which the modern violin and guitar work.
While the dates of origin and other evolutionary details of the European bowed yoke lyres continue to be disputed among organologists, there is general agreement that none of them were the ancestors of modern orchestral bowed stringed instruments, as once was thought.
In furniture design, a lyre arm is a wooden lyre-shaped element often used at the front of the arm of a chair, typically created as an exposed wooden part of a chair, sofa or other furniture piece.
A music holder used by marching bands is also called a "lyre" for its shape similar to this instrument.
Lyre also can denote the framework supporting the foot pedals underneath a piano. The term is most often used in connection with older pianos of ornate designs.
The constellation Lyra is said to resemble a lyre shape, but it looks more like a lute.
*Arabian peninsula - tanbūra
*Djibouti - tanbūra
*Egypt - kissar, tanbūra, simsimiyya
*England - rote
*Estonia - talharpa
*Ethiopia - begena, dita, krar
*Finland - Jouhikko
*Greece - barbiton, kithara, lyra
*Iraq - sammu, tanbūra, zami, zinar
*Israel - kinnor
*Kenya - kibugander, litungu, nyatiti, obokano
*Norway - Giga
*Scotland - Gue
*Somalia - tanbūra
*Sudan - kissar, tanbūra
*Tanzania - litungu
*Uganda - endongo, ntongoli
*Wales - crwth
*Yemen - tanbūra, simsimiyya
*Harp
*Levy, Michael "King David's Lyre; Echoes of Ancient Israel"; restoring the sound of the ancient Jewish Temple Lyre of the Levites
*
*Andersson, Otto. The Bowed Harp, translated and edited by Kathleen Schlesinger (London: New Temple Press, 1930).
*Bachmann, Werner. The Origins of Bowing, trans. Norma Deane (London: Oxford University Press, 1969).
*Jenkins, J. "A Short Note on African Lyres in Use Today." Iraq 31 (1969), p. 103 (+ pl. XVIII).
*Kinsky, George. A History of Music in Pictures (New York: E.P. Dutton, 1937).
*Sachs, Curt. The Rise of Music in the Ancient World, East and West (New York: W.W. Norton, 1943).
*Sachs, Curt. The History of Musical Instruments (New York: W.W. Norton, 1940).
|
Lyre | Does a classical lyre have a fingerboard? | Yes | data/set2/a10 | Lyre
The lyre is a stringed musical instrument well known for its use in classical antiquity and later. The recitations of the Ancient Greeks were accompanied by lyre playing. The lyre of Classical Antiquity was ordinarily played by being strummed with a plectrum, like a guitar or a zither, rather than being plucked, like a harp. The fingers of the free hand silenced the unwanted strings in the chord.
Lyres from various times and places are regarded by some organologists (specialists in the history of musical instruments) as a branch of the zither family, a general category which includes many different stringed instruments, such as lutes, guitars, kantele, and psalteries, not just zithers.
Others view the lyre and zither as being two separate classes. Those specialists maintain that the zither is distinguished by strings spread across all or most of its soundboard, or the top surface of its sound chest, also called soundbox or resonator, as opposed to the lyre, whose strings emanate from a more or less common point off the soundboard, such as a tailpiece. Examples of that difference include a piano (a keyed zither) and a violin (referred to by some as a species of fingerboard lyre). Some specialists even argue that instruments such as the violin and guitar belong to a class apart from the lyre because they have no yokes or uprights surmounting their resonators as "true" lyres have. This group they usually refer to as the lute class, after the instrument of that name, and include within it the guitar, the violin, the banjo, and similar stringed instruments with fingerboards. Those who differ with that opinion counter by calling the lute, violin, guitar, banjo, and other such instruments "independent fingerboard lyres," as opposed to simply "fingerboard lyres" such as the Welsh crwth, which have both fingerboards and frameworks above their resonators.
One point on which organologists universally agree is that the distinction between harps on the one hand and zithers and lyres (and, in some views, lutes) on the other is that harps have strings emanating directly from the soundboard and residing in a plane that is basically perpendicular to the soundboard, as opposed to the other instruments, whose strings are attached to one or more points somewhere off the soundboard (e.g., wrest pins on a zither, tailpiece on a lyre or lute) and lie in a plane essentially parallel to it. They also agree that neither the overall size of the instrument nor the number of strings on it have anything to do with its classification. For example, small Scottish and Irish harps can be held on the lap, while some ancient Sumerian lyres appear to have been as tall as a seated man (see Kinsky; also Sachs, History ..., under "References"). Regarding the number of strings, the standard 88-key piano has many more strings than even the largest harp.
Women posing as a Siren with a lyre in 1913.
A classical lyre has a hollow body or sound-chest (also known as soundbox or resonator). Extending from this sound-chest are two raised arms, which are sometimes hollow, and are curved both outward and forward. They are connected near the top by a crossbar or yoke. An additional crossbar, fixed to the sound-chest, forms the bridge which transmits the vibrations of the strings. The deepest note was that farthest from the player's body; as the strings did not differ much in length, more weight may have been gained for the deeper notes by thicker strings, as in the violin and similar modern instruments, or they were tuned by having a slacker tension. The strings were of gut. They were stretched between the yoke and bridge, or to a tailpiece below the bridge. There were two ways of tuning: one was to fasten the strings to pegs which might be turned; the other was to change the place of the string upon the crossbar; probably both expedients were used simultaneously.
Statue of the Olympian deity, Apollo holding a lyre.
According to ancient Greek mythology, the young god Hermes created the lyre from a slaughtered cow from Apollo's sacred herd, using the intestines for the strings. Lyres were associated with Apollonian virtues of moderation and equilibrium, contrasting with the Dionysian pipes and aulos, both of which represented ecstasy and celebration.
Locales in southern Europe, western Asia, or north Africa have been proposed as the historic birthplace of the genus. The instrument is still played in north-eastern parts of Africa.
Some of the cultures using and developing the lyre were the Aeolian and Ionian Greek colonies on the coasts of Asia (ancient Asia Minor, modern day Turkey) bordering the Lydian empire. Some mythic masters like Orpheus, Musaeus, and Thamyris were believed to have been born in Thrace, another place of extensive Greek colonization.
The name kissar (kithara) given by the ancient Greeks to Egyptian box instruments reveals the apparent similarities recognized by Greeks themselves. The cultural peak of ancient Egypt, and thus the possible age of the earliest instruments of this type, predates the 5th century classic Greece.
This indicates the possibility that the lyre might have existed in one of Greece's neighboring countries, either Thrace, Lydia, or Egypt, and was introduced into Greece at pre-classic times.
The number of strings on the classical lyre varied at different epochs, and possibly in different localities â four, seven and ten having been favorite numbers. They were used without a fingerboard, no Greek description or representation having ever been met with that can be construed as referring to one. Nor was a bow possible, the flat sound-board being an insuperable impediment. The plectrum, however, was in constant use. It was held in the right hand to set the upper strings in vibration; when not in use, it hung from the instrument by a ribbon. The fingers of the left hand touched the lower strings (presumably to silence those whose notes were not wanted).
There is no evidence as to the stringing of the Greek lyre in the heroic age. Plutarch says that Olympus and Terpander used but three strings to accompany their recitation. As the four strings led to seven and eight by doubling the tetrachord, so the trichord is connected with the hexachord or six-stringed lyre depicted on so many archaic Greek vases. The accuracy of this representation cannot be insisted upon, the vase painters being little mindful of the complete expression of details; yet one may suppose their tendency would be rather to imitate than to invent a number. It was their constant practice to represent the strings as being damped by the fingers of the left hand of the player, after having been struck by the plectrum which he held in the right hand. Before Greek civilization had assumed its historic form, there was likely to have been great freedom and independence of different localities in the matter of lyre stringing, which is corroborated by the antique use of the chromatic (half-tone) and enharmonic (quarter-tone) tunings pointing to an early exuberance, and perhaps also to an Asiatic bias towards refinements of intonation.
While the lyre is no longer played in modern Greece, the term lyra lives on as the name shared by various regional types of fiddles (bowed lutes) found throughout the country. There are two basic styles of lyra fiddles: 1) a pear-shaped instrument with a vaulted back which is found in the Greek islands â in particular, the Dodecanese and Crete â and the northern mainland regions of Macedonia and Thrace; and 2) an instrument with a narrow rectangular cylinder body of the Pontic Greeks who trace their roots to Pontos (Pontus), the Black Sea region of northern Turkey. (The Pontic Greek lyra is also known as kemenche.) Both types of lyra typically have three strings. They are held vertically upright and bowed horizontally; if the player is seated, the instrument's base rests on the player's upper left thigh. The Cretan lyra is traditionally played in a duo with the laouto, a long-neck fretted lute that is strummed like a guitar.
Reproduction of the lyre from the royal burial at Sutton Hoo, late 6th/early 7th century AD
Other instruments known as lyres have been fashioned and used in Europe outside the Greco-Roman world since at least the early Middle Ages, and one view holds that many modern stringed instruments are late-emerging examples of the lyre class. There is no clear evidence that non-Greco-Roman lyres were played exclusively with plectra, and numerous instruments regarded by some as modern lyres are played with bows.
Lyres appearing to have emerged independently of Greco-Roman prototypes were used by the Teutonic, Gallic, Scandinavian, and Celtic peoples over a thousand years ago. Dates of origin, which probably vary from region to region, cannot be determined, but the oldest known fragments of such instruments are thought to date from around the sixth century of the Common Era. After the bow made its way into Europe from the Middle-East, around two centuries later, it was applied to several species of those lyres that were small enough to make bowing practical. There came to be two broad classes of bowed European yoke lyres: those with fingerboards dividing the open space within the yoke longitudinally, and those without fingerboards. The last surviving examples of instruments within the latter class were the Scandinavian talharpa and jouhikko. Different tones could be obtained from a single bowed string by pressing the fingernails of the player's left hand against various points along the string to fret the string.
The last of the bowed yoke lyres with fingerboard was the "modern" (ca. 1485 - ca. 1800) Welsh crwth. It had several predecessors both in the British Isles and in Continental Europe. Pitch was changed on individual strings by pressing the string firmly against the fingerboard with the fingertips. Like a violin, this method shortened the vibrating length of the string to produce higher tones, while releasing the finger gave the string a greater vibrating length, thereby producing a tone lower in pitch. This is the principle on which the modern violin and guitar work.
While the dates of origin and other evolutionary details of the European bowed yoke lyres continue to be disputed among organologists, there is general agreement that none of them were the ancestors of modern orchestral bowed stringed instruments, as once was thought.
In furniture design, a lyre arm is a wooden lyre-shaped element often used at the front of the arm of a chair, typically created as an exposed wooden part of a chair, sofa or other furniture piece.
A music holder used by marching bands is also called a "lyre" for its shape similar to this instrument.
Lyre also can denote the framework supporting the foot pedals underneath a piano. The term is most often used in connection with older pianos of ornate designs.
The constellation Lyra is said to resemble a lyre shape, but it looks more like a lute.
*Arabian peninsula - tanbūra
*Djibouti - tanbūra
*Egypt - kissar, tanbūra, simsimiyya
*England - rote
*Estonia - talharpa
*Ethiopia - begena, dita, krar
*Finland - Jouhikko
*Greece - barbiton, kithara, lyra
*Iraq - sammu, tanbūra, zami, zinar
*Israel - kinnor
*Kenya - kibugander, litungu, nyatiti, obokano
*Norway - Giga
*Scotland - Gue
*Somalia - tanbūra
*Sudan - kissar, tanbūra
*Tanzania - litungu
*Uganda - endongo, ntongoli
*Wales - crwth
*Yemen - tanbūra, simsimiyya
*Harp
*Levy, Michael "King David's Lyre; Echoes of Ancient Israel"; restoring the sound of the ancient Jewish Temple Lyre of the Levites
*
*Andersson, Otto. The Bowed Harp, translated and edited by Kathleen Schlesinger (London: New Temple Press, 1930).
*Bachmann, Werner. The Origins of Bowing, trans. Norma Deane (London: Oxford University Press, 1969).
*Jenkins, J. "A Short Note on African Lyres in Use Today." Iraq 31 (1969), p. 103 (+ pl. XVIII).
*Kinsky, George. A History of Music in Pictures (New York: E.P. Dutton, 1937).
*Sachs, Curt. The Rise of Music in the Ancient World, East and West (New York: W.W. Norton, 1943).
*Sachs, Curt. The History of Musical Instruments (New York: W.W. Norton, 1940).
|
Lyre | Is a guitar played with a plectrum like a lyre? | Yes | data/set2/a10 | Lyre
The lyre is a stringed musical instrument well known for its use in classical antiquity and later. The recitations of the Ancient Greeks were accompanied by lyre playing. The lyre of Classical Antiquity was ordinarily played by being strummed with a plectrum, like a guitar or a zither, rather than being plucked, like a harp. The fingers of the free hand silenced the unwanted strings in the chord.
Lyres from various times and places are regarded by some organologists (specialists in the history of musical instruments) as a branch of the zither family, a general category which includes many different stringed instruments, such as lutes, guitars, kantele, and psalteries, not just zithers.
Others view the lyre and zither as being two separate classes. Those specialists maintain that the zither is distinguished by strings spread across all or most of its soundboard, or the top surface of its sound chest, also called soundbox or resonator, as opposed to the lyre, whose strings emanate from a more or less common point off the soundboard, such as a tailpiece. Examples of that difference include a piano (a keyed zither) and a violin (referred to by some as a species of fingerboard lyre). Some specialists even argue that instruments such as the violin and guitar belong to a class apart from the lyre because they have no yokes or uprights surmounting their resonators as "true" lyres have. This group they usually refer to as the lute class, after the instrument of that name, and include within it the guitar, the violin, the banjo, and similar stringed instruments with fingerboards. Those who differ with that opinion counter by calling the lute, violin, guitar, banjo, and other such instruments "independent fingerboard lyres," as opposed to simply "fingerboard lyres" such as the Welsh crwth, which have both fingerboards and frameworks above their resonators.
One point on which organologists universally agree is that the distinction between harps on the one hand and zithers and lyres (and, in some views, lutes) on the other is that harps have strings emanating directly from the soundboard and residing in a plane that is basically perpendicular to the soundboard, as opposed to the other instruments, whose strings are attached to one or more points somewhere off the soundboard (e.g., wrest pins on a zither, tailpiece on a lyre or lute) and lie in a plane essentially parallel to it. They also agree that neither the overall size of the instrument nor the number of strings on it have anything to do with its classification. For example, small Scottish and Irish harps can be held on the lap, while some ancient Sumerian lyres appear to have been as tall as a seated man (see Kinsky; also Sachs, History ..., under "References"). Regarding the number of strings, the standard 88-key piano has many more strings than even the largest harp.
Women posing as a Siren with a lyre in 1913.
A classical lyre has a hollow body or sound-chest (also known as soundbox or resonator). Extending from this sound-chest are two raised arms, which are sometimes hollow, and are curved both outward and forward. They are connected near the top by a crossbar or yoke. An additional crossbar, fixed to the sound-chest, forms the bridge which transmits the vibrations of the strings. The deepest note was that farthest from the player's body; as the strings did not differ much in length, more weight may have been gained for the deeper notes by thicker strings, as in the violin and similar modern instruments, or they were tuned by having a slacker tension. The strings were of gut. They were stretched between the yoke and bridge, or to a tailpiece below the bridge. There were two ways of tuning: one was to fasten the strings to pegs which might be turned; the other was to change the place of the string upon the crossbar; probably both expedients were used simultaneously.
Statue of the Olympian deity, Apollo holding a lyre.
According to ancient Greek mythology, the young god Hermes created the lyre from a slaughtered cow from Apollo's sacred herd, using the intestines for the strings. Lyres were associated with Apollonian virtues of moderation and equilibrium, contrasting with the Dionysian pipes and aulos, both of which represented ecstasy and celebration.
Locales in southern Europe, western Asia, or north Africa have been proposed as the historic birthplace of the genus. The instrument is still played in north-eastern parts of Africa.
Some of the cultures using and developing the lyre were the Aeolian and Ionian Greek colonies on the coasts of Asia (ancient Asia Minor, modern day Turkey) bordering the Lydian empire. Some mythic masters like Orpheus, Musaeus, and Thamyris were believed to have been born in Thrace, another place of extensive Greek colonization.
The name kissar (kithara) given by the ancient Greeks to Egyptian box instruments reveals the apparent similarities recognized by Greeks themselves. The cultural peak of ancient Egypt, and thus the possible age of the earliest instruments of this type, predates the 5th century classic Greece.
This indicates the possibility that the lyre might have existed in one of Greece's neighboring countries, either Thrace, Lydia, or Egypt, and was introduced into Greece at pre-classic times.
The number of strings on the classical lyre varied at different epochs, and possibly in different localities â four, seven and ten having been favorite numbers. They were used without a fingerboard, no Greek description or representation having ever been met with that can be construed as referring to one. Nor was a bow possible, the flat sound-board being an insuperable impediment. The plectrum, however, was in constant use. It was held in the right hand to set the upper strings in vibration; when not in use, it hung from the instrument by a ribbon. The fingers of the left hand touched the lower strings (presumably to silence those whose notes were not wanted).
There is no evidence as to the stringing of the Greek lyre in the heroic age. Plutarch says that Olympus and Terpander used but three strings to accompany their recitation. As the four strings led to seven and eight by doubling the tetrachord, so the trichord is connected with the hexachord or six-stringed lyre depicted on so many archaic Greek vases. The accuracy of this representation cannot be insisted upon, the vase painters being little mindful of the complete expression of details; yet one may suppose their tendency would be rather to imitate than to invent a number. It was their constant practice to represent the strings as being damped by the fingers of the left hand of the player, after having been struck by the plectrum which he held in the right hand. Before Greek civilization had assumed its historic form, there was likely to have been great freedom and independence of different localities in the matter of lyre stringing, which is corroborated by the antique use of the chromatic (half-tone) and enharmonic (quarter-tone) tunings pointing to an early exuberance, and perhaps also to an Asiatic bias towards refinements of intonation.
While the lyre is no longer played in modern Greece, the term lyra lives on as the name shared by various regional types of fiddles (bowed lutes) found throughout the country. There are two basic styles of lyra fiddles: 1) a pear-shaped instrument with a vaulted back which is found in the Greek islands â in particular, the Dodecanese and Crete â and the northern mainland regions of Macedonia and Thrace; and 2) an instrument with a narrow rectangular cylinder body of the Pontic Greeks who trace their roots to Pontos (Pontus), the Black Sea region of northern Turkey. (The Pontic Greek lyra is also known as kemenche.) Both types of lyra typically have three strings. They are held vertically upright and bowed horizontally; if the player is seated, the instrument's base rests on the player's upper left thigh. The Cretan lyra is traditionally played in a duo with the laouto, a long-neck fretted lute that is strummed like a guitar.
Reproduction of the lyre from the royal burial at Sutton Hoo, late 6th/early 7th century AD
Other instruments known as lyres have been fashioned and used in Europe outside the Greco-Roman world since at least the early Middle Ages, and one view holds that many modern stringed instruments are late-emerging examples of the lyre class. There is no clear evidence that non-Greco-Roman lyres were played exclusively with plectra, and numerous instruments regarded by some as modern lyres are played with bows.
Lyres appearing to have emerged independently of Greco-Roman prototypes were used by the Teutonic, Gallic, Scandinavian, and Celtic peoples over a thousand years ago. Dates of origin, which probably vary from region to region, cannot be determined, but the oldest known fragments of such instruments are thought to date from around the sixth century of the Common Era. After the bow made its way into Europe from the Middle-East, around two centuries later, it was applied to several species of those lyres that were small enough to make bowing practical. There came to be two broad classes of bowed European yoke lyres: those with fingerboards dividing the open space within the yoke longitudinally, and those without fingerboards. The last surviving examples of instruments within the latter class were the Scandinavian talharpa and jouhikko. Different tones could be obtained from a single bowed string by pressing the fingernails of the player's left hand against various points along the string to fret the string.
The last of the bowed yoke lyres with fingerboard was the "modern" (ca. 1485 - ca. 1800) Welsh crwth. It had several predecessors both in the British Isles and in Continental Europe. Pitch was changed on individual strings by pressing the string firmly against the fingerboard with the fingertips. Like a violin, this method shortened the vibrating length of the string to produce higher tones, while releasing the finger gave the string a greater vibrating length, thereby producing a tone lower in pitch. This is the principle on which the modern violin and guitar work.
While the dates of origin and other evolutionary details of the European bowed yoke lyres continue to be disputed among organologists, there is general agreement that none of them were the ancestors of modern orchestral bowed stringed instruments, as once was thought.
In furniture design, a lyre arm is a wooden lyre-shaped element often used at the front of the arm of a chair, typically created as an exposed wooden part of a chair, sofa or other furniture piece.
A music holder used by marching bands is also called a "lyre" for its shape similar to this instrument.
Lyre also can denote the framework supporting the foot pedals underneath a piano. The term is most often used in connection with older pianos of ornate designs.
The constellation Lyra is said to resemble a lyre shape, but it looks more like a lute.
*Arabian peninsula - tanbūra
*Djibouti - tanbūra
*Egypt - kissar, tanbūra, simsimiyya
*England - rote
*Estonia - talharpa
*Ethiopia - begena, dita, krar
*Finland - Jouhikko
*Greece - barbiton, kithara, lyra
*Iraq - sammu, tanbūra, zami, zinar
*Israel - kinnor
*Kenya - kibugander, litungu, nyatiti, obokano
*Norway - Giga
*Scotland - Gue
*Somalia - tanbūra
*Sudan - kissar, tanbūra
*Tanzania - litungu
*Uganda - endongo, ntongoli
*Wales - crwth
*Yemen - tanbūra, simsimiyya
*Harp
*Levy, Michael "King David's Lyre; Echoes of Ancient Israel"; restoring the sound of the ancient Jewish Temple Lyre of the Levites
*
*Andersson, Otto. The Bowed Harp, translated and edited by Kathleen Schlesinger (London: New Temple Press, 1930).
*Bachmann, Werner. The Origins of Bowing, trans. Norma Deane (London: Oxford University Press, 1969).
*Jenkins, J. "A Short Note on African Lyres in Use Today." Iraq 31 (1969), p. 103 (+ pl. XVIII).
*Kinsky, George. A History of Music in Pictures (New York: E.P. Dutton, 1937).
*Sachs, Curt. The Rise of Music in the Ancient World, East and West (New York: W.W. Norton, 1943).
*Sachs, Curt. The History of Musical Instruments (New York: W.W. Norton, 1940).
|
Michael_Faraday | Was Michael Faraday an English chemist? | yes | data/set4/a7 | Michael_Faraday
Michael Faraday, FRS (September 22, 1791 â August 25, 1867) was an English chemist and physicist (or natural philosopher, in the terminology of that time) who contributed to the fields of electromagnetism and electrochemistry.
Faraday studied the magnetic field around a conductor carrying a DC electric current, and established the basis for the magnetic field concept in physics. He discovered electromagnetic induction, diamagnetism and electrolysis. He established that magnetism could affect rays of light and that there was an underlying relationship between the two phenomena. Michael Faraday entry at the 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica hosted by LovetoKnow Retrieved January 2007. Institution of Engineering and Technology, London Archives, Michael Faraday His inventions of electromagnetic rotary devices formed the foundation of electric motor technology, and it was largely due to his efforts that electricity became viable for use in technology.
As a chemist, Faraday discovered benzene, investigated the clathrate hydrate of chlorine, invented an early form of the bunsen burner and the system of oxidation numbers, and popularized terminology such as anode, cathode, electrode, and ion.
Although Faraday received little formal education and knew little of higher mathematics, such as calculus, he was one of the most influential scientists in history. Some historians of science refer to him as the best experimentalist in the history of science. "best experimentalist in the history of science." Quoting Dr Peter Ford, from the University of Bathâs Department of Physics. Accessed January 2007. The SI unit of capacitance, the farad, is named after him, as is the Faraday constant, the charge on a mole of electrons (about 96,485 coulombs). Faraday's law of induction states that a magnetic field changing in time creates a proportional electromotive force.
Faraday was the first and foremost Fullerian Professor of Chemistry at the Royal Institution of Great Britain, a position to which he was appointed for life.
Michael Faraday from a photograph by John Watkins, British Library
Michael Faraday was born in Newington Butts, near present-day South London, England. His family was not well off. His father, James, was a member of the Sandemanian sect of Christianity. James Faraday had come to London ca 1790 from Outhgill in Westmorland, where he had been the village blacksmith. The young Michael Faraday, one of four children, having only the most basic of school educations, had to largely educate himself. "Michael Faraday." History of Science and Technology. Houghton Mifflin Company, 2004. Answers.com 4 June 2007. /ref> At fourteen he became apprenticed to a local bookbinder and bookseller George Riebau and, during his seven-year apprenticeship, he read many books, including Isaac Watts' The Improvement of the Mind, and he enthusiastically implemented the principles and suggestions contained therein. He developed an interest in science and specifically in electricity. In particular, he was inspired by the book Conversations in Chemistry by Jane Marcet.
At the age of twenty, in 1812, at the end of his apprenticeship, Faraday attended lectures by the eminent English chemist and physicist Humphry Davy of the Royal Institution and Royal Society, and John Tatum, founder of the City Philosophical Society. Many tickets for these lectures were given to Faraday by William Dance (one of the founders of the Royal Philharmonic Society). Afterwards, Faraday sent Davy a three hundred page book based on notes taken during the lectures. Davy's reply was immediate, kind, and favorable. When Davy damaged his eyesight in an accident with nitrogen trichloride, he decided to employ Faraday as a secretary. When John Payne, one of the Royal Institution's assistants, was fired, Sir Humphry Davy was asked to find a replacement. He appointed Faraday as Chemical Assistant at the Royal Institution on March 1.
In the class-based English society of the time, Faraday was not considered a gentleman. When Davy went on a long tour to the continent in 1813-5, his valet did not wish to go. Faraday was going as Davy's scientific assistant, and was asked to act as Davy's valet until a replacement could be found in Paris. Davy failed to find a replacement, and Faraday was forced to fill the role of valet as well as assistant throughout the trip. Davy's wife, Jane Apreece, refused to treat Faraday as an equal (making him travel outside the coach, eat with the servants, etc.) and generally made Faraday so miserable that he contemplated returning to England alone and giving up science altogether. The trip did, however, give him access to the European scientific elite and a host of stimulating ideas.
His sponsor and mentor was John 'Mad Jack' Fuller, who created the Fullerian Professorship of Chemistry at the Royal Institution.
Faraday was a devout Christian and a member of the small Sandemanian denomination, an offshoot of the Church of Scotland. He later served two terms as an elder in the group's church.
Faraday married Sarah Barnard (1800-1879) on June 2, 1821, although they would never have children. They met through attending the Sandemanian church.
He was elected a member of the Royal Society in 1824, appointed director of the laboratory in 1825; and in 1833 he was appointed Fullerian professor of chemistry in the institution for life, without the obligation to deliver lectures.
The title page of The Chemical History of a Candle (1861)
Faraday's earliest chemical work was as an assistant to Davy. He made a special study of chlorine, and discovered two new chlorides of carbon. He also made the first rough experiments on the diffusion of gases, a phenomenon first pointed out by John Dalton, the physical importance of which was more fully brought to light by Thomas Graham and Joseph Loschmidt. He succeeded in liquefying several gases; he investigated the alloys of steel, and produced several new kinds of glass intended for optical purposes. A specimen of one of these heavy glasses afterwards became historically important as the substance in which Faraday detected the rotation of the plane of polarisation of light when the glass was placed in a magnetic field, and also as the substance which was first repelled by the poles of the magnet. He also endeavoured, with some success, to make the general methods of chemistry, as distinguished from its results, the subject of special study and of popular exposition.
He invented an early form of what was to become the Bunsen burner, which is used almost universally in science laboratories as a convenient source of heat. See page 127 of Faraday's Chemical Manipulation, Being Instructions to Students in Chemistry (1827)
Faraday worked extensively in the field of chemistry, discovering chemical substances such as benzene (which he called bicarburet of hydrogen), inventing the system of oxidation numbers, and liquefying gases such as chlorine. In 1820 Faraday reported on the first syntheses of compounds made from carbon and chlorine, C 2 H 6 and C 2 H 4 , and published his results the following year. Faraday also determined the composition of the chlorine clathrate hydrate, which had been discovered by Humphry Davy in 1810.
Faraday also discovered the laws of electrolysis and popularized terminology such as anode, cathode, electrode, and ion, terms largely created by William Whewell.
Faraday was the first to report what later came to be called metallic nanoparticles. In 1847 he discovered that the optical properties of gold colloids differed from those of the corresponding bulk metal. This was probably the first reported observation of the effects of quantum size, and might be considered to be the birth of nanoscience.
Faraday's greatest work was probably with electricity and magnetism. The first experiment which he recorded was the construction of a voltaic pile with seven halfpence pieces, stacked together with seven disks of sheet zinc, and six pieces of paper moistened with salt water. With this pile he decomposed sulphate of magnesia (first letter to Abbott, July 12, 1812).
[[Image:Faraday photograph ii.jpg|thumb|200px|left|Michael Faraday holding a glass bar of the type he used in 1845 to show that magnetism can affect light. Detail of an engraving by Henry Adlard, based on an earlier photograph by Maull & Polyblank ca. 1857. See National Portrait Gallery, UK ]]
In 1821, soon after the Danish physicist and chemist, Hans Christian Ãrsted discovered the phenomenon of electromagnetism, Davy and British scientist William Hyde Wollaston tried but failed to design an electric motor. Faraday, having discussed the problem with the two men, went on to build two devices to produce what he called electromagnetic rotation: a continuous circular motion from the circular magnetic force around a wire and a wire extending into a pool of mercury with a magnet placed inside would rotate around the magnet if supplied with current from a chemical battery. The latter device is known as a homopolar motor. These experiments and inventions form the foundation of modern electromagnetic technology. Faraday published his results without acknowledging his debt to Wollaston and Davy, and the resulting controversy caused Faraday to withdraw from electromagnetic research for several years.
At this stage, there is also evidence to suggest that Davy may have been trying to slow Faradayâs rise as a scientist (or natural philosopher as it was known then). In 1825, for instance, Davy set him onto optical glass experiments, which progressed for six years with no great results. It was not until Davy's death, in 1829, that Faraday stopped these fruitless tasks and moved on to endeavors that were more worthwhile. Two years later, in 1831, he began his great series of experiments in which he discovered electromagnetic induction. Joseph Henry likely discovered self-induction a few months earlier and both may have been anticipated by the work of Francesco Zantedeschi in Italy in 1829 and 1830.
Faraday's breakthrough came when he wrapped two insulated coils of wire around a massive iron ring, bolted to a chair, and found that upon passing a current through one coil, a momentary current was induced in the other coil. This phenomenon is known as mutual induction. The iron ring-coil apparatus is still on display at the Royal Institution. In subsequent experiments he found that if he moved a magnet through a loop of wire, an electric current flowed in the wire. The current also flowed if the loop was moved over a stationary magnet. His demonstrations established that a changing magnetic field produces an electric field. This relation was mathematically modelled by Faraday's law, which subsequently became one of the four Maxwell equations. These in turn have evolved into the generalization known today as field theory.
Michael Faraday - statue in Savoy Place, London.
Sculptor John Henry Foley RA
Faraday later used the principle to construct the electric dynamo, the ancestor of modern power generators.
In 1839 he completed a series of experiments aimed at investigating the fundamental nature of electricity. Faraday used "static", batteries, and "animal electricity" to produce the phenomena of electrostatic attraction, electrolysis, magnetism, etc. He concluded that, contrary to scientific opinion of the time, the divisions between the various "kinds" of electricity were illusory. Faraday instead proposed that only a single "electricity" exists, and the changing values of quantity and intensity (voltage and charge) would produce different groups of phenomena.
Near the end of his career Faraday proposed that electromagnetic forces extended into the empty space around the conductor. This idea was rejected by his fellow scientists, and Faraday did not live to see this idea eventually accepted. Faraday's concept of lines of flux emanating from charged bodies and magnets provided a way to visualize electric and magnetic fields. That mental model was crucial to the successful development of electromechanical devices which dominated engineering and industry for the remainder of the 19th century.
In 1845, he discovered the phenomenon that he named diamagnetism, and what is now called the Faraday effect: The plane of polarization of linearly polarized light propagated through a material medium can be rotated by the application of an external magnetic field aligned in the propagation direction. He wrote in his notebook, "I have at last succeeded in illuminating a magnetic curve or line of force and in magnetising a ray of light". This established that magnetic force and light were related.
In his work on static electricity, Faraday demonstrated that the charge only resided on the exterior of a charged conductor, and exterior charge had no influence on anything enclosed within a conductor. This is because the exterior charges redistribute such that the interior fields due to them cancel. This shielding effect is used in what is now known as a Faraday cage.
Faraday was an excellent experimentalist who conveyed his ideas in clear and simple language. However, his mathematical abilities did not extend as far as trigonometry or any but the simplest algebra. It was James Clerk Maxwell who took the work of Faraday, and others, and consolidated it with a set of equations that lie at the base of all modern theories of electromagnetic phenomena.
Michael Faraday meets Father Thames, from Punch (July 21, 1855)
Beyond his scientific research into areas such as chemistry, electricity, and magnetism at the Royal Institution, Faraday undertook numerous, and often time-consuming, service projects for private enterprise and the British government. This work included investigations of explosions in mines, being an expert witness in court, and the preparation of high-quality optical glass.
As a respected scientist in a nation with strong maritime interests, Faraday spent extensive amounts of time on projects such as the construction and operation of light houses and protecting the bottoms of ships from corrosion.
Faraday also was active in what would now be called environmental science, or engineering. He investigated industrial pollution at Swansea and was consulted on air pollution at the Royal Mint. In July of 1855, Faraday wrote a letter to The Times on the subject of the foul condition of the River Thames, which resulted in an oft-reprinted cartoon in Punch. (See also The Great Stink.)
Faraday assisted with planning and judging of exhibits for the Great Exhibition of 1851 in London. He also advised the National Gallery on the cleaning and protection of its art collection, and served on the National Gallery Site Commission in 1857.
Education was another area of service for Faraday. He lectured on the topic in 1854 at the Royal Institution, and in 1862 he appeared before a Public Schools Commission to give his views on education in Great Britain. Faraday also weighed in, negatively, on the public's fascination with table-turning, mesmerism, and seances, chastising both the public and the nation's educational system. See The Illustrated London News, July 1853, for Faraday's comments.
125px
In June of 1832, the University of Oxford granted Faraday a Doctor of Civil Law degree (honorary). During his lifetime, Faraday rejected a knighthood and twice refused to become President of the Royal Society.
In 1848, as a result of representations by the Prince Consort, Michael Faraday was awarded a grace and favour house in Hampton Court, Surrey free of all expenses or upkeep. This was the Master Mason's House, later called Faraday House, and now No.37 Hampton Court Road. In 1858 Faraday retired to live there. Twickenham Museum on Faraday and Faraday House, Accessed June 2006
Faraday died at his house at Hampton Court on August 25, 1867. He turned down burial in Westminster Abbey, but he has a memorial plaque there, near Isaac Newton's tomb. Faraday was interred in the Sandemanian plot in Highgate Cemetery.
Michael Faraday's grave at Highgate Cemetery
Faraday gave a successful series of lectures on the chemistry and physics of flames at the Royal Institution, entitled The Chemical History of a Candle. This was one of the earlier Christmas lectures for young people, which are still given each year. Between 1827 and 1860, Faraday gave the Christmas lecture a record nineteen times.
Faraday refused to participate in the production of chemical weapons for the Crimean War citing ethical reasons.
A statue of Faraday stands in Savoy Place, London, outside the Institution of Electrical Engineers.
A recently built hall of accommodation at Brunel University is named after Faraday.
A hall at Loughborough University was named after Faraday in 1960. Near the entrance to its dining hall is a bronze casting, which depicts the symbol of an electrical transformer, and inside there hangs a portrait, both in Faraday's honour.
Faraday's picture was printed on British £20 banknotes from 1991 until 2001. Bank of England, Withdrawn Notes
In the video game Chromehounds there is a ThermoVision Device named the Faraday.
The former UK Faraday Atmospheric Research Station in Antarctica was named after him.
Faraday was one of the then eight foreign members of the French Academy of Sciences.
Michael Faraday's signature
Faraday's books, with the exception of Chemical Manipulation, were collections of scientific papers or transcriptions of lectures. See page 220 of Hamilton's A Life of Discovery: Michael Faraday, Giant of the Scientific Revolution (2002) Since his death, Faraday's diary has been published, as have several large volumes of his letters and Faraday's journal from his travels with Davy in 1813 - 1815.
* Chemical Manipulation, Being Instructions to Students in Chemistry, John Murray, 1st ed. 1827, 2nd ed. 1830, 3rd ed. 1842
* Experimental Researches in Electricity, vols. i. and ii., Richard and John Edward Taylor, vols. i. and ii.. 1844 and 1847; vol. iii., 1844; vol. iii. Richard Taylor and William Francis, 1855
* Experimental Researches in Chemistry and Physics, Taylor and Francis, 1859
* A Course of Six Lectures on the Chemical History of a Candle, edited by W. Crookes, Griffin, Bohn & Co., 1861
* On the Various Forces in Nature, edited by W. Crookes, Chatto & Windus, 1873
* Faraday's Diary edited by T. Martin was published in eight volumes, 1932 - 1936
* Curiosity Perfectly Satisfyed: Faraday's Travels in Europe 1813-1815, edited by B. Bowers and L. Symons, Institution of Electrical Engineers, 1991
* The Correspondence of Michael Faraday, edited by F. A. J. L. James, INSPEC, Inc., volume 1, 1991; volume 2, 1993; volume 3, 1996; volume 4, 1999
* "Nothing is too wonderful to be true if it be consistent with the laws of nature, and in such things as these, experiment is the best test of such consistency." From the entry of 19 March 1849 in Faraday's Diary
* "Work. Finish. Publish." â his well-known advice to the young William Crookes
* "The important thing is to know how to take all things quietly."
* Regarding the hereafter, "Speculations? I have none. I am resting on certainties. I know whom I have believed and am persuaded that he is able to keep that which I have committed unto him against that day."
* "Next Sabbath day (the 22nd) I shall complete my 70th year. I can hardly think of myself so old."
*Above the doorways of the Pfahler Hall of Science at Ursinus College in Collegeville, Pennsylvania, there is a stone inscription of a quote attributed to Michael Faraday which reads "but still try, for who knows what is possible..." See
* "One day sir, you may tax it." Faraday's reply to William Gladstone, then British Minister of Finance, when asked of the practical value of electricity.
* "If you would cause your view ... to be acknowledged by scientific men; you would do a great service to science. If you would even get them to say yes or no to your conclusions it would help to clear the future progress. I believe some hesitate because they do not like their thoughts disturbed." From Life and Letters, 2:389.
* Faraday rotator
* Superconductivity
* Tyndall, John, Faraday as a Discoverer, (Longmans, 1st ed. 1868, 2nd ed. 1870).
* Bence Jones, Henry (1870). The Life and Letters of Faraday in 2 vols, Longmans.
* Gladstone, J. H. (1872). Michael Faraday, Macmillan.
* Thompson, Silvanus (1901, reprinted 2005). Michael Faraday, His Life and Work. Cassell and Company, London, 1901; reprint by Kessenger Publishing, Whitefish, MT. ISBN 1-4179-7036-7
* The British Electrical and Allied Manufacturers Association (1931). Faraday. R. & R. Clark, Ltd., Edinburgh, 1931.
* Williams, L. Pearce (1971), Faraday: A Biography, Simon and Schuster.
* Cantor, Geoffrey (1991). Michael Faraday, Sandemanian and Scientist, Macmillian, ISBN 0-333-55077
* Hamilton, James (2002). Faraday: The Life. London: Harper Collins. ISBN 0-00-716376-2
* Hamilton, James (2004). A Life of Discovery: Michael Faraday, Giant of the Scientific Revolution. New York: Random House. ISBN 1-4000-6016-8
* Agassi, Joseph (1971), Faraday as a Natural Philosopher, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
* Ames, Joseph Sweetman (Ed.), The discovery of induced electric currents Vol. 2. Memoirs, by Michael Faraday. New York, Cincinnati [etc.] American book company [c1900] LCCN 00005889
* Gooding, David (Ed.) (1985), Faraday Rediscovered: Essays on the Life and Work of Michael Faraday, 1791-1867, London/New York, Macmillan/Stockton
* Thomas, John Meurig (1991). Michael Faraday and the Royal Institution: The Genius of Man and Place Bristol: Hilger. ISBN 0-7503-0145-7
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* Biography at The Royal Institution of Great Britain
* Faraday as a Discoverer by John Tyndall, Project Gutenberg (downloads)
* The Christian Character of Michael Faraday
* Michael Faraday on the British twenty-pound banknote
* The Life and Discoveries of Michael Faraday by J. A. Crowther, London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1920
* "Faraday" at LoveToKnow 1911 Britannica Online Encyclopedia.
*
* (downloads)
* "Experimental Researches in Electricity" by Michael Faraday Original text with Biographical Introduction by Professor John Tyndall, 1914, Everyman edition.
* Video Podcast with Sir John Cadogan talking about Benzene since Faraday
* The letters of Faraday and Schoenbein 1836-1862. With notes, comments and references to contemporary letters (1899) full download PDF
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Michael_Faraday | Was Michael Faraday an English chemist? | yes | data/set4/a7 | Michael_Faraday
Michael Faraday, FRS (September 22, 1791 â August 25, 1867) was an English chemist and physicist (or natural philosopher, in the terminology of that time) who contributed to the fields of electromagnetism and electrochemistry.
Faraday studied the magnetic field around a conductor carrying a DC electric current, and established the basis for the magnetic field concept in physics. He discovered electromagnetic induction, diamagnetism and electrolysis. He established that magnetism could affect rays of light and that there was an underlying relationship between the two phenomena. Michael Faraday entry at the 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica hosted by LovetoKnow Retrieved January 2007. Institution of Engineering and Technology, London Archives, Michael Faraday His inventions of electromagnetic rotary devices formed the foundation of electric motor technology, and it was largely due to his efforts that electricity became viable for use in technology.
As a chemist, Faraday discovered benzene, investigated the clathrate hydrate of chlorine, invented an early form of the bunsen burner and the system of oxidation numbers, and popularized terminology such as anode, cathode, electrode, and ion.
Although Faraday received little formal education and knew little of higher mathematics, such as calculus, he was one of the most influential scientists in history. Some historians of science refer to him as the best experimentalist in the history of science. "best experimentalist in the history of science." Quoting Dr Peter Ford, from the University of Bathâs Department of Physics. Accessed January 2007. The SI unit of capacitance, the farad, is named after him, as is the Faraday constant, the charge on a mole of electrons (about 96,485 coulombs). Faraday's law of induction states that a magnetic field changing in time creates a proportional electromotive force.
Faraday was the first and foremost Fullerian Professor of Chemistry at the Royal Institution of Great Britain, a position to which he was appointed for life.
Michael Faraday from a photograph by John Watkins, British Library
Michael Faraday was born in Newington Butts, near present-day South London, England. His family was not well off. His father, James, was a member of the Sandemanian sect of Christianity. James Faraday had come to London ca 1790 from Outhgill in Westmorland, where he had been the village blacksmith. The young Michael Faraday, one of four children, having only the most basic of school educations, had to largely educate himself. "Michael Faraday." History of Science and Technology. Houghton Mifflin Company, 2004. Answers.com 4 June 2007. /ref> At fourteen he became apprenticed to a local bookbinder and bookseller George Riebau and, during his seven-year apprenticeship, he read many books, including Isaac Watts' The Improvement of the Mind, and he enthusiastically implemented the principles and suggestions contained therein. He developed an interest in science and specifically in electricity. In particular, he was inspired by the book Conversations in Chemistry by Jane Marcet.
At the age of twenty, in 1812, at the end of his apprenticeship, Faraday attended lectures by the eminent English chemist and physicist Humphry Davy of the Royal Institution and Royal Society, and John Tatum, founder of the City Philosophical Society. Many tickets for these lectures were given to Faraday by William Dance (one of the founders of the Royal Philharmonic Society). Afterwards, Faraday sent Davy a three hundred page book based on notes taken during the lectures. Davy's reply was immediate, kind, and favorable. When Davy damaged his eyesight in an accident with nitrogen trichloride, he decided to employ Faraday as a secretary. When John Payne, one of the Royal Institution's assistants, was fired, Sir Humphry Davy was asked to find a replacement. He appointed Faraday as Chemical Assistant at the Royal Institution on March 1.
In the class-based English society of the time, Faraday was not considered a gentleman. When Davy went on a long tour to the continent in 1813-5, his valet did not wish to go. Faraday was going as Davy's scientific assistant, and was asked to act as Davy's valet until a replacement could be found in Paris. Davy failed to find a replacement, and Faraday was forced to fill the role of valet as well as assistant throughout the trip. Davy's wife, Jane Apreece, refused to treat Faraday as an equal (making him travel outside the coach, eat with the servants, etc.) and generally made Faraday so miserable that he contemplated returning to England alone and giving up science altogether. The trip did, however, give him access to the European scientific elite and a host of stimulating ideas.
His sponsor and mentor was John 'Mad Jack' Fuller, who created the Fullerian Professorship of Chemistry at the Royal Institution.
Faraday was a devout Christian and a member of the small Sandemanian denomination, an offshoot of the Church of Scotland. He later served two terms as an elder in the group's church.
Faraday married Sarah Barnard (1800-1879) on June 2, 1821, although they would never have children. They met through attending the Sandemanian church.
He was elected a member of the Royal Society in 1824, appointed director of the laboratory in 1825; and in 1833 he was appointed Fullerian professor of chemistry in the institution for life, without the obligation to deliver lectures.
The title page of The Chemical History of a Candle (1861)
Faraday's earliest chemical work was as an assistant to Davy. He made a special study of chlorine, and discovered two new chlorides of carbon. He also made the first rough experiments on the diffusion of gases, a phenomenon first pointed out by John Dalton, the physical importance of which was more fully brought to light by Thomas Graham and Joseph Loschmidt. He succeeded in liquefying several gases; he investigated the alloys of steel, and produced several new kinds of glass intended for optical purposes. A specimen of one of these heavy glasses afterwards became historically important as the substance in which Faraday detected the rotation of the plane of polarisation of light when the glass was placed in a magnetic field, and also as the substance which was first repelled by the poles of the magnet. He also endeavoured, with some success, to make the general methods of chemistry, as distinguished from its results, the subject of special study and of popular exposition.
He invented an early form of what was to become the Bunsen burner, which is used almost universally in science laboratories as a convenient source of heat. See page 127 of Faraday's Chemical Manipulation, Being Instructions to Students in Chemistry (1827)
Faraday worked extensively in the field of chemistry, discovering chemical substances such as benzene (which he called bicarburet of hydrogen), inventing the system of oxidation numbers, and liquefying gases such as chlorine. In 1820 Faraday reported on the first syntheses of compounds made from carbon and chlorine, C 2 H 6 and C 2 H 4 , and published his results the following year. Faraday also determined the composition of the chlorine clathrate hydrate, which had been discovered by Humphry Davy in 1810.
Faraday also discovered the laws of electrolysis and popularized terminology such as anode, cathode, electrode, and ion, terms largely created by William Whewell.
Faraday was the first to report what later came to be called metallic nanoparticles. In 1847 he discovered that the optical properties of gold colloids differed from those of the corresponding bulk metal. This was probably the first reported observation of the effects of quantum size, and might be considered to be the birth of nanoscience.
Faraday's greatest work was probably with electricity and magnetism. The first experiment which he recorded was the construction of a voltaic pile with seven halfpence pieces, stacked together with seven disks of sheet zinc, and six pieces of paper moistened with salt water. With this pile he decomposed sulphate of magnesia (first letter to Abbott, July 12, 1812).
[[Image:Faraday photograph ii.jpg|thumb|200px|left|Michael Faraday holding a glass bar of the type he used in 1845 to show that magnetism can affect light. Detail of an engraving by Henry Adlard, based on an earlier photograph by Maull & Polyblank ca. 1857. See National Portrait Gallery, UK ]]
In 1821, soon after the Danish physicist and chemist, Hans Christian Ãrsted discovered the phenomenon of electromagnetism, Davy and British scientist William Hyde Wollaston tried but failed to design an electric motor. Faraday, having discussed the problem with the two men, went on to build two devices to produce what he called electromagnetic rotation: a continuous circular motion from the circular magnetic force around a wire and a wire extending into a pool of mercury with a magnet placed inside would rotate around the magnet if supplied with current from a chemical battery. The latter device is known as a homopolar motor. These experiments and inventions form the foundation of modern electromagnetic technology. Faraday published his results without acknowledging his debt to Wollaston and Davy, and the resulting controversy caused Faraday to withdraw from electromagnetic research for several years.
At this stage, there is also evidence to suggest that Davy may have been trying to slow Faradayâs rise as a scientist (or natural philosopher as it was known then). In 1825, for instance, Davy set him onto optical glass experiments, which progressed for six years with no great results. It was not until Davy's death, in 1829, that Faraday stopped these fruitless tasks and moved on to endeavors that were more worthwhile. Two years later, in 1831, he began his great series of experiments in which he discovered electromagnetic induction. Joseph Henry likely discovered self-induction a few months earlier and both may have been anticipated by the work of Francesco Zantedeschi in Italy in 1829 and 1830.
Faraday's breakthrough came when he wrapped two insulated coils of wire around a massive iron ring, bolted to a chair, and found that upon passing a current through one coil, a momentary current was induced in the other coil. This phenomenon is known as mutual induction. The iron ring-coil apparatus is still on display at the Royal Institution. In subsequent experiments he found that if he moved a magnet through a loop of wire, an electric current flowed in the wire. The current also flowed if the loop was moved over a stationary magnet. His demonstrations established that a changing magnetic field produces an electric field. This relation was mathematically modelled by Faraday's law, which subsequently became one of the four Maxwell equations. These in turn have evolved into the generalization known today as field theory.
Michael Faraday - statue in Savoy Place, London.
Sculptor John Henry Foley RA
Faraday later used the principle to construct the electric dynamo, the ancestor of modern power generators.
In 1839 he completed a series of experiments aimed at investigating the fundamental nature of electricity. Faraday used "static", batteries, and "animal electricity" to produce the phenomena of electrostatic attraction, electrolysis, magnetism, etc. He concluded that, contrary to scientific opinion of the time, the divisions between the various "kinds" of electricity were illusory. Faraday instead proposed that only a single "electricity" exists, and the changing values of quantity and intensity (voltage and charge) would produce different groups of phenomena.
Near the end of his career Faraday proposed that electromagnetic forces extended into the empty space around the conductor. This idea was rejected by his fellow scientists, and Faraday did not live to see this idea eventually accepted. Faraday's concept of lines of flux emanating from charged bodies and magnets provided a way to visualize electric and magnetic fields. That mental model was crucial to the successful development of electromechanical devices which dominated engineering and industry for the remainder of the 19th century.
In 1845, he discovered the phenomenon that he named diamagnetism, and what is now called the Faraday effect: The plane of polarization of linearly polarized light propagated through a material medium can be rotated by the application of an external magnetic field aligned in the propagation direction. He wrote in his notebook, "I have at last succeeded in illuminating a magnetic curve or line of force and in magnetising a ray of light". This established that magnetic force and light were related.
In his work on static electricity, Faraday demonstrated that the charge only resided on the exterior of a charged conductor, and exterior charge had no influence on anything enclosed within a conductor. This is because the exterior charges redistribute such that the interior fields due to them cancel. This shielding effect is used in what is now known as a Faraday cage.
Faraday was an excellent experimentalist who conveyed his ideas in clear and simple language. However, his mathematical abilities did not extend as far as trigonometry or any but the simplest algebra. It was James Clerk Maxwell who took the work of Faraday, and others, and consolidated it with a set of equations that lie at the base of all modern theories of electromagnetic phenomena.
Michael Faraday meets Father Thames, from Punch (July 21, 1855)
Beyond his scientific research into areas such as chemistry, electricity, and magnetism at the Royal Institution, Faraday undertook numerous, and often time-consuming, service projects for private enterprise and the British government. This work included investigations of explosions in mines, being an expert witness in court, and the preparation of high-quality optical glass.
As a respected scientist in a nation with strong maritime interests, Faraday spent extensive amounts of time on projects such as the construction and operation of light houses and protecting the bottoms of ships from corrosion.
Faraday also was active in what would now be called environmental science, or engineering. He investigated industrial pollution at Swansea and was consulted on air pollution at the Royal Mint. In July of 1855, Faraday wrote a letter to The Times on the subject of the foul condition of the River Thames, which resulted in an oft-reprinted cartoon in Punch. (See also The Great Stink.)
Faraday assisted with planning and judging of exhibits for the Great Exhibition of 1851 in London. He also advised the National Gallery on the cleaning and protection of its art collection, and served on the National Gallery Site Commission in 1857.
Education was another area of service for Faraday. He lectured on the topic in 1854 at the Royal Institution, and in 1862 he appeared before a Public Schools Commission to give his views on education in Great Britain. Faraday also weighed in, negatively, on the public's fascination with table-turning, mesmerism, and seances, chastising both the public and the nation's educational system. See The Illustrated London News, July 1853, for Faraday's comments.
125px
In June of 1832, the University of Oxford granted Faraday a Doctor of Civil Law degree (honorary). During his lifetime, Faraday rejected a knighthood and twice refused to become President of the Royal Society.
In 1848, as a result of representations by the Prince Consort, Michael Faraday was awarded a grace and favour house in Hampton Court, Surrey free of all expenses or upkeep. This was the Master Mason's House, later called Faraday House, and now No.37 Hampton Court Road. In 1858 Faraday retired to live there. Twickenham Museum on Faraday and Faraday House, Accessed June 2006
Faraday died at his house at Hampton Court on August 25, 1867. He turned down burial in Westminster Abbey, but he has a memorial plaque there, near Isaac Newton's tomb. Faraday was interred in the Sandemanian plot in Highgate Cemetery.
Michael Faraday's grave at Highgate Cemetery
Faraday gave a successful series of lectures on the chemistry and physics of flames at the Royal Institution, entitled The Chemical History of a Candle. This was one of the earlier Christmas lectures for young people, which are still given each year. Between 1827 and 1860, Faraday gave the Christmas lecture a record nineteen times.
Faraday refused to participate in the production of chemical weapons for the Crimean War citing ethical reasons.
A statue of Faraday stands in Savoy Place, London, outside the Institution of Electrical Engineers.
A recently built hall of accommodation at Brunel University is named after Faraday.
A hall at Loughborough University was named after Faraday in 1960. Near the entrance to its dining hall is a bronze casting, which depicts the symbol of an electrical transformer, and inside there hangs a portrait, both in Faraday's honour.
Faraday's picture was printed on British £20 banknotes from 1991 until 2001. Bank of England, Withdrawn Notes
In the video game Chromehounds there is a ThermoVision Device named the Faraday.
The former UK Faraday Atmospheric Research Station in Antarctica was named after him.
Faraday was one of the then eight foreign members of the French Academy of Sciences.
Michael Faraday's signature
Faraday's books, with the exception of Chemical Manipulation, were collections of scientific papers or transcriptions of lectures. See page 220 of Hamilton's A Life of Discovery: Michael Faraday, Giant of the Scientific Revolution (2002) Since his death, Faraday's diary has been published, as have several large volumes of his letters and Faraday's journal from his travels with Davy in 1813 - 1815.
* Chemical Manipulation, Being Instructions to Students in Chemistry, John Murray, 1st ed. 1827, 2nd ed. 1830, 3rd ed. 1842
* Experimental Researches in Electricity, vols. i. and ii., Richard and John Edward Taylor, vols. i. and ii.. 1844 and 1847; vol. iii., 1844; vol. iii. Richard Taylor and William Francis, 1855
* Experimental Researches in Chemistry and Physics, Taylor and Francis, 1859
* A Course of Six Lectures on the Chemical History of a Candle, edited by W. Crookes, Griffin, Bohn & Co., 1861
* On the Various Forces in Nature, edited by W. Crookes, Chatto & Windus, 1873
* Faraday's Diary edited by T. Martin was published in eight volumes, 1932 - 1936
* Curiosity Perfectly Satisfyed: Faraday's Travels in Europe 1813-1815, edited by B. Bowers and L. Symons, Institution of Electrical Engineers, 1991
* The Correspondence of Michael Faraday, edited by F. A. J. L. James, INSPEC, Inc., volume 1, 1991; volume 2, 1993; volume 3, 1996; volume 4, 1999
* "Nothing is too wonderful to be true if it be consistent with the laws of nature, and in such things as these, experiment is the best test of such consistency." From the entry of 19 March 1849 in Faraday's Diary
* "Work. Finish. Publish." â his well-known advice to the young William Crookes
* "The important thing is to know how to take all things quietly."
* Regarding the hereafter, "Speculations? I have none. I am resting on certainties. I know whom I have believed and am persuaded that he is able to keep that which I have committed unto him against that day."
* "Next Sabbath day (the 22nd) I shall complete my 70th year. I can hardly think of myself so old."
*Above the doorways of the Pfahler Hall of Science at Ursinus College in Collegeville, Pennsylvania, there is a stone inscription of a quote attributed to Michael Faraday which reads "but still try, for who knows what is possible..." See
* "One day sir, you may tax it." Faraday's reply to William Gladstone, then British Minister of Finance, when asked of the practical value of electricity.
* "If you would cause your view ... to be acknowledged by scientific men; you would do a great service to science. If you would even get them to say yes or no to your conclusions it would help to clear the future progress. I believe some hesitate because they do not like their thoughts disturbed." From Life and Letters, 2:389.
* Faraday rotator
* Superconductivity
* Tyndall, John, Faraday as a Discoverer, (Longmans, 1st ed. 1868, 2nd ed. 1870).
* Bence Jones, Henry (1870). The Life and Letters of Faraday in 2 vols, Longmans.
* Gladstone, J. H. (1872). Michael Faraday, Macmillan.
* Thompson, Silvanus (1901, reprinted 2005). Michael Faraday, His Life and Work. Cassell and Company, London, 1901; reprint by Kessenger Publishing, Whitefish, MT. ISBN 1-4179-7036-7
* The British Electrical and Allied Manufacturers Association (1931). Faraday. R. & R. Clark, Ltd., Edinburgh, 1931.
* Williams, L. Pearce (1971), Faraday: A Biography, Simon and Schuster.
* Cantor, Geoffrey (1991). Michael Faraday, Sandemanian and Scientist, Macmillian, ISBN 0-333-55077
* Hamilton, James (2002). Faraday: The Life. London: Harper Collins. ISBN 0-00-716376-2
* Hamilton, James (2004). A Life of Discovery: Michael Faraday, Giant of the Scientific Revolution. New York: Random House. ISBN 1-4000-6016-8
* Agassi, Joseph (1971), Faraday as a Natural Philosopher, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
* Ames, Joseph Sweetman (Ed.), The discovery of induced electric currents Vol. 2. Memoirs, by Michael Faraday. New York, Cincinnati [etc.] American book company [c1900] LCCN 00005889
* Gooding, David (Ed.) (1985), Faraday Rediscovered: Essays on the Life and Work of Michael Faraday, 1791-1867, London/New York, Macmillan/Stockton
* Thomas, John Meurig (1991). Michael Faraday and the Royal Institution: The Genius of Man and Place Bristol: Hilger. ISBN 0-7503-0145-7
150px
* Biography at The Royal Institution of Great Britain
* Faraday as a Discoverer by John Tyndall, Project Gutenberg (downloads)
* The Christian Character of Michael Faraday
* Michael Faraday on the British twenty-pound banknote
* The Life and Discoveries of Michael Faraday by J. A. Crowther, London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1920
* "Faraday" at LoveToKnow 1911 Britannica Online Encyclopedia.
*
* (downloads)
* "Experimental Researches in Electricity" by Michael Faraday Original text with Biographical Introduction by Professor John Tyndall, 1914, Everyman edition.
* Video Podcast with Sir John Cadogan talking about Benzene since Faraday
* The letters of Faraday and Schoenbein 1836-1862. With notes, comments and references to contemporary letters (1899) full download PDF
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Michael_Faraday | Was Faraday a devout Christian? | yes | data/set4/a7 | Michael_Faraday
Michael Faraday, FRS (September 22, 1791 â August 25, 1867) was an English chemist and physicist (or natural philosopher, in the terminology of that time) who contributed to the fields of electromagnetism and electrochemistry.
Faraday studied the magnetic field around a conductor carrying a DC electric current, and established the basis for the magnetic field concept in physics. He discovered electromagnetic induction, diamagnetism and electrolysis. He established that magnetism could affect rays of light and that there was an underlying relationship between the two phenomena. Michael Faraday entry at the 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica hosted by LovetoKnow Retrieved January 2007. Institution of Engineering and Technology, London Archives, Michael Faraday His inventions of electromagnetic rotary devices formed the foundation of electric motor technology, and it was largely due to his efforts that electricity became viable for use in technology.
As a chemist, Faraday discovered benzene, investigated the clathrate hydrate of chlorine, invented an early form of the bunsen burner and the system of oxidation numbers, and popularized terminology such as anode, cathode, electrode, and ion.
Although Faraday received little formal education and knew little of higher mathematics, such as calculus, he was one of the most influential scientists in history. Some historians of science refer to him as the best experimentalist in the history of science. "best experimentalist in the history of science." Quoting Dr Peter Ford, from the University of Bathâs Department of Physics. Accessed January 2007. The SI unit of capacitance, the farad, is named after him, as is the Faraday constant, the charge on a mole of electrons (about 96,485 coulombs). Faraday's law of induction states that a magnetic field changing in time creates a proportional electromotive force.
Faraday was the first and foremost Fullerian Professor of Chemistry at the Royal Institution of Great Britain, a position to which he was appointed for life.
Michael Faraday from a photograph by John Watkins, British Library
Michael Faraday was born in Newington Butts, near present-day South London, England. His family was not well off. His father, James, was a member of the Sandemanian sect of Christianity. James Faraday had come to London ca 1790 from Outhgill in Westmorland, where he had been the village blacksmith. The young Michael Faraday, one of four children, having only the most basic of school educations, had to largely educate himself. "Michael Faraday." History of Science and Technology. Houghton Mifflin Company, 2004. Answers.com 4 June 2007. /ref> At fourteen he became apprenticed to a local bookbinder and bookseller George Riebau and, during his seven-year apprenticeship, he read many books, including Isaac Watts' The Improvement of the Mind, and he enthusiastically implemented the principles and suggestions contained therein. He developed an interest in science and specifically in electricity. In particular, he was inspired by the book Conversations in Chemistry by Jane Marcet.
At the age of twenty, in 1812, at the end of his apprenticeship, Faraday attended lectures by the eminent English chemist and physicist Humphry Davy of the Royal Institution and Royal Society, and John Tatum, founder of the City Philosophical Society. Many tickets for these lectures were given to Faraday by William Dance (one of the founders of the Royal Philharmonic Society). Afterwards, Faraday sent Davy a three hundred page book based on notes taken during the lectures. Davy's reply was immediate, kind, and favorable. When Davy damaged his eyesight in an accident with nitrogen trichloride, he decided to employ Faraday as a secretary. When John Payne, one of the Royal Institution's assistants, was fired, Sir Humphry Davy was asked to find a replacement. He appointed Faraday as Chemical Assistant at the Royal Institution on March 1.
In the class-based English society of the time, Faraday was not considered a gentleman. When Davy went on a long tour to the continent in 1813-5, his valet did not wish to go. Faraday was going as Davy's scientific assistant, and was asked to act as Davy's valet until a replacement could be found in Paris. Davy failed to find a replacement, and Faraday was forced to fill the role of valet as well as assistant throughout the trip. Davy's wife, Jane Apreece, refused to treat Faraday as an equal (making him travel outside the coach, eat with the servants, etc.) and generally made Faraday so miserable that he contemplated returning to England alone and giving up science altogether. The trip did, however, give him access to the European scientific elite and a host of stimulating ideas.
His sponsor and mentor was John 'Mad Jack' Fuller, who created the Fullerian Professorship of Chemistry at the Royal Institution.
Faraday was a devout Christian and a member of the small Sandemanian denomination, an offshoot of the Church of Scotland. He later served two terms as an elder in the group's church.
Faraday married Sarah Barnard (1800-1879) on June 2, 1821, although they would never have children. They met through attending the Sandemanian church.
He was elected a member of the Royal Society in 1824, appointed director of the laboratory in 1825; and in 1833 he was appointed Fullerian professor of chemistry in the institution for life, without the obligation to deliver lectures.
The title page of The Chemical History of a Candle (1861)
Faraday's earliest chemical work was as an assistant to Davy. He made a special study of chlorine, and discovered two new chlorides of carbon. He also made the first rough experiments on the diffusion of gases, a phenomenon first pointed out by John Dalton, the physical importance of which was more fully brought to light by Thomas Graham and Joseph Loschmidt. He succeeded in liquefying several gases; he investigated the alloys of steel, and produced several new kinds of glass intended for optical purposes. A specimen of one of these heavy glasses afterwards became historically important as the substance in which Faraday detected the rotation of the plane of polarisation of light when the glass was placed in a magnetic field, and also as the substance which was first repelled by the poles of the magnet. He also endeavoured, with some success, to make the general methods of chemistry, as distinguished from its results, the subject of special study and of popular exposition.
He invented an early form of what was to become the Bunsen burner, which is used almost universally in science laboratories as a convenient source of heat. See page 127 of Faraday's Chemical Manipulation, Being Instructions to Students in Chemistry (1827)
Faraday worked extensively in the field of chemistry, discovering chemical substances such as benzene (which he called bicarburet of hydrogen), inventing the system of oxidation numbers, and liquefying gases such as chlorine. In 1820 Faraday reported on the first syntheses of compounds made from carbon and chlorine, C 2 H 6 and C 2 H 4 , and published his results the following year. Faraday also determined the composition of the chlorine clathrate hydrate, which had been discovered by Humphry Davy in 1810.
Faraday also discovered the laws of electrolysis and popularized terminology such as anode, cathode, electrode, and ion, terms largely created by William Whewell.
Faraday was the first to report what later came to be called metallic nanoparticles. In 1847 he discovered that the optical properties of gold colloids differed from those of the corresponding bulk metal. This was probably the first reported observation of the effects of quantum size, and might be considered to be the birth of nanoscience.
Faraday's greatest work was probably with electricity and magnetism. The first experiment which he recorded was the construction of a voltaic pile with seven halfpence pieces, stacked together with seven disks of sheet zinc, and six pieces of paper moistened with salt water. With this pile he decomposed sulphate of magnesia (first letter to Abbott, July 12, 1812).
[[Image:Faraday photograph ii.jpg|thumb|200px|left|Michael Faraday holding a glass bar of the type he used in 1845 to show that magnetism can affect light. Detail of an engraving by Henry Adlard, based on an earlier photograph by Maull & Polyblank ca. 1857. See National Portrait Gallery, UK ]]
In 1821, soon after the Danish physicist and chemist, Hans Christian Ãrsted discovered the phenomenon of electromagnetism, Davy and British scientist William Hyde Wollaston tried but failed to design an electric motor. Faraday, having discussed the problem with the two men, went on to build two devices to produce what he called electromagnetic rotation: a continuous circular motion from the circular magnetic force around a wire and a wire extending into a pool of mercury with a magnet placed inside would rotate around the magnet if supplied with current from a chemical battery. The latter device is known as a homopolar motor. These experiments and inventions form the foundation of modern electromagnetic technology. Faraday published his results without acknowledging his debt to Wollaston and Davy, and the resulting controversy caused Faraday to withdraw from electromagnetic research for several years.
At this stage, there is also evidence to suggest that Davy may have been trying to slow Faradayâs rise as a scientist (or natural philosopher as it was known then). In 1825, for instance, Davy set him onto optical glass experiments, which progressed for six years with no great results. It was not until Davy's death, in 1829, that Faraday stopped these fruitless tasks and moved on to endeavors that were more worthwhile. Two years later, in 1831, he began his great series of experiments in which he discovered electromagnetic induction. Joseph Henry likely discovered self-induction a few months earlier and both may have been anticipated by the work of Francesco Zantedeschi in Italy in 1829 and 1830.
Faraday's breakthrough came when he wrapped two insulated coils of wire around a massive iron ring, bolted to a chair, and found that upon passing a current through one coil, a momentary current was induced in the other coil. This phenomenon is known as mutual induction. The iron ring-coil apparatus is still on display at the Royal Institution. In subsequent experiments he found that if he moved a magnet through a loop of wire, an electric current flowed in the wire. The current also flowed if the loop was moved over a stationary magnet. His demonstrations established that a changing magnetic field produces an electric field. This relation was mathematically modelled by Faraday's law, which subsequently became one of the four Maxwell equations. These in turn have evolved into the generalization known today as field theory.
Michael Faraday - statue in Savoy Place, London.
Sculptor John Henry Foley RA
Faraday later used the principle to construct the electric dynamo, the ancestor of modern power generators.
In 1839 he completed a series of experiments aimed at investigating the fundamental nature of electricity. Faraday used "static", batteries, and "animal electricity" to produce the phenomena of electrostatic attraction, electrolysis, magnetism, etc. He concluded that, contrary to scientific opinion of the time, the divisions between the various "kinds" of electricity were illusory. Faraday instead proposed that only a single "electricity" exists, and the changing values of quantity and intensity (voltage and charge) would produce different groups of phenomena.
Near the end of his career Faraday proposed that electromagnetic forces extended into the empty space around the conductor. This idea was rejected by his fellow scientists, and Faraday did not live to see this idea eventually accepted. Faraday's concept of lines of flux emanating from charged bodies and magnets provided a way to visualize electric and magnetic fields. That mental model was crucial to the successful development of electromechanical devices which dominated engineering and industry for the remainder of the 19th century.
In 1845, he discovered the phenomenon that he named diamagnetism, and what is now called the Faraday effect: The plane of polarization of linearly polarized light propagated through a material medium can be rotated by the application of an external magnetic field aligned in the propagation direction. He wrote in his notebook, "I have at last succeeded in illuminating a magnetic curve or line of force and in magnetising a ray of light". This established that magnetic force and light were related.
In his work on static electricity, Faraday demonstrated that the charge only resided on the exterior of a charged conductor, and exterior charge had no influence on anything enclosed within a conductor. This is because the exterior charges redistribute such that the interior fields due to them cancel. This shielding effect is used in what is now known as a Faraday cage.
Faraday was an excellent experimentalist who conveyed his ideas in clear and simple language. However, his mathematical abilities did not extend as far as trigonometry or any but the simplest algebra. It was James Clerk Maxwell who took the work of Faraday, and others, and consolidated it with a set of equations that lie at the base of all modern theories of electromagnetic phenomena.
Michael Faraday meets Father Thames, from Punch (July 21, 1855)
Beyond his scientific research into areas such as chemistry, electricity, and magnetism at the Royal Institution, Faraday undertook numerous, and often time-consuming, service projects for private enterprise and the British government. This work included investigations of explosions in mines, being an expert witness in court, and the preparation of high-quality optical glass.
As a respected scientist in a nation with strong maritime interests, Faraday spent extensive amounts of time on projects such as the construction and operation of light houses and protecting the bottoms of ships from corrosion.
Faraday also was active in what would now be called environmental science, or engineering. He investigated industrial pollution at Swansea and was consulted on air pollution at the Royal Mint. In July of 1855, Faraday wrote a letter to The Times on the subject of the foul condition of the River Thames, which resulted in an oft-reprinted cartoon in Punch. (See also The Great Stink.)
Faraday assisted with planning and judging of exhibits for the Great Exhibition of 1851 in London. He also advised the National Gallery on the cleaning and protection of its art collection, and served on the National Gallery Site Commission in 1857.
Education was another area of service for Faraday. He lectured on the topic in 1854 at the Royal Institution, and in 1862 he appeared before a Public Schools Commission to give his views on education in Great Britain. Faraday also weighed in, negatively, on the public's fascination with table-turning, mesmerism, and seances, chastising both the public and the nation's educational system. See The Illustrated London News, July 1853, for Faraday's comments.
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In June of 1832, the University of Oxford granted Faraday a Doctor of Civil Law degree (honorary). During his lifetime, Faraday rejected a knighthood and twice refused to become President of the Royal Society.
In 1848, as a result of representations by the Prince Consort, Michael Faraday was awarded a grace and favour house in Hampton Court, Surrey free of all expenses or upkeep. This was the Master Mason's House, later called Faraday House, and now No.37 Hampton Court Road. In 1858 Faraday retired to live there. Twickenham Museum on Faraday and Faraday House, Accessed June 2006
Faraday died at his house at Hampton Court on August 25, 1867. He turned down burial in Westminster Abbey, but he has a memorial plaque there, near Isaac Newton's tomb. Faraday was interred in the Sandemanian plot in Highgate Cemetery.
Michael Faraday's grave at Highgate Cemetery
Faraday gave a successful series of lectures on the chemistry and physics of flames at the Royal Institution, entitled The Chemical History of a Candle. This was one of the earlier Christmas lectures for young people, which are still given each year. Between 1827 and 1860, Faraday gave the Christmas lecture a record nineteen times.
Faraday refused to participate in the production of chemical weapons for the Crimean War citing ethical reasons.
A statue of Faraday stands in Savoy Place, London, outside the Institution of Electrical Engineers.
A recently built hall of accommodation at Brunel University is named after Faraday.
A hall at Loughborough University was named after Faraday in 1960. Near the entrance to its dining hall is a bronze casting, which depicts the symbol of an electrical transformer, and inside there hangs a portrait, both in Faraday's honour.
Faraday's picture was printed on British £20 banknotes from 1991 until 2001. Bank of England, Withdrawn Notes
In the video game Chromehounds there is a ThermoVision Device named the Faraday.
The former UK Faraday Atmospheric Research Station in Antarctica was named after him.
Faraday was one of the then eight foreign members of the French Academy of Sciences.
Michael Faraday's signature
Faraday's books, with the exception of Chemical Manipulation, were collections of scientific papers or transcriptions of lectures. See page 220 of Hamilton's A Life of Discovery: Michael Faraday, Giant of the Scientific Revolution (2002) Since his death, Faraday's diary has been published, as have several large volumes of his letters and Faraday's journal from his travels with Davy in 1813 - 1815.
* Chemical Manipulation, Being Instructions to Students in Chemistry, John Murray, 1st ed. 1827, 2nd ed. 1830, 3rd ed. 1842
* Experimental Researches in Electricity, vols. i. and ii., Richard and John Edward Taylor, vols. i. and ii.. 1844 and 1847; vol. iii., 1844; vol. iii. Richard Taylor and William Francis, 1855
* Experimental Researches in Chemistry and Physics, Taylor and Francis, 1859
* A Course of Six Lectures on the Chemical History of a Candle, edited by W. Crookes, Griffin, Bohn & Co., 1861
* On the Various Forces in Nature, edited by W. Crookes, Chatto & Windus, 1873
* Faraday's Diary edited by T. Martin was published in eight volumes, 1932 - 1936
* Curiosity Perfectly Satisfyed: Faraday's Travels in Europe 1813-1815, edited by B. Bowers and L. Symons, Institution of Electrical Engineers, 1991
* The Correspondence of Michael Faraday, edited by F. A. J. L. James, INSPEC, Inc., volume 1, 1991; volume 2, 1993; volume 3, 1996; volume 4, 1999
* "Nothing is too wonderful to be true if it be consistent with the laws of nature, and in such things as these, experiment is the best test of such consistency." From the entry of 19 March 1849 in Faraday's Diary
* "Work. Finish. Publish." â his well-known advice to the young William Crookes
* "The important thing is to know how to take all things quietly."
* Regarding the hereafter, "Speculations? I have none. I am resting on certainties. I know whom I have believed and am persuaded that he is able to keep that which I have committed unto him against that day."
* "Next Sabbath day (the 22nd) I shall complete my 70th year. I can hardly think of myself so old."
*Above the doorways of the Pfahler Hall of Science at Ursinus College in Collegeville, Pennsylvania, there is a stone inscription of a quote attributed to Michael Faraday which reads "but still try, for who knows what is possible..." See
* "One day sir, you may tax it." Faraday's reply to William Gladstone, then British Minister of Finance, when asked of the practical value of electricity.
* "If you would cause your view ... to be acknowledged by scientific men; you would do a great service to science. If you would even get them to say yes or no to your conclusions it would help to clear the future progress. I believe some hesitate because they do not like their thoughts disturbed." From Life and Letters, 2:389.
* Faraday rotator
* Superconductivity
* Tyndall, John, Faraday as a Discoverer, (Longmans, 1st ed. 1868, 2nd ed. 1870).
* Bence Jones, Henry (1870). The Life and Letters of Faraday in 2 vols, Longmans.
* Gladstone, J. H. (1872). Michael Faraday, Macmillan.
* Thompson, Silvanus (1901, reprinted 2005). Michael Faraday, His Life and Work. Cassell and Company, London, 1901; reprint by Kessenger Publishing, Whitefish, MT. ISBN 1-4179-7036-7
* The British Electrical and Allied Manufacturers Association (1931). Faraday. R. & R. Clark, Ltd., Edinburgh, 1931.
* Williams, L. Pearce (1971), Faraday: A Biography, Simon and Schuster.
* Cantor, Geoffrey (1991). Michael Faraday, Sandemanian and Scientist, Macmillian, ISBN 0-333-55077
* Hamilton, James (2002). Faraday: The Life. London: Harper Collins. ISBN 0-00-716376-2
* Hamilton, James (2004). A Life of Discovery: Michael Faraday, Giant of the Scientific Revolution. New York: Random House. ISBN 1-4000-6016-8
* Agassi, Joseph (1971), Faraday as a Natural Philosopher, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
* Ames, Joseph Sweetman (Ed.), The discovery of induced electric currents Vol. 2. Memoirs, by Michael Faraday. New York, Cincinnati [etc.] American book company [c1900] LCCN 00005889
* Gooding, David (Ed.) (1985), Faraday Rediscovered: Essays on the Life and Work of Michael Faraday, 1791-1867, London/New York, Macmillan/Stockton
* Thomas, John Meurig (1991). Michael Faraday and the Royal Institution: The Genius of Man and Place Bristol: Hilger. ISBN 0-7503-0145-7
150px
* Biography at The Royal Institution of Great Britain
* Faraday as a Discoverer by John Tyndall, Project Gutenberg (downloads)
* The Christian Character of Michael Faraday
* Michael Faraday on the British twenty-pound banknote
* The Life and Discoveries of Michael Faraday by J. A. Crowther, London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1920
* "Faraday" at LoveToKnow 1911 Britannica Online Encyclopedia.
*
* (downloads)
* "Experimental Researches in Electricity" by Michael Faraday Original text with Biographical Introduction by Professor John Tyndall, 1914, Everyman edition.
* Video Podcast with Sir John Cadogan talking about Benzene since Faraday
* The letters of Faraday and Schoenbein 1836-1862. With notes, comments and references to contemporary letters (1899) full download PDF
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Humphry Davy
Electromagnetic induction
Electrochemistry
Faraday effect
Royal Medal
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England
chemist
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electrochemistry
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field (physics)
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electromagnetic induction
diamagnetism
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electricity
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clathrate hydrate
bunsen burner
oxidation number
anode
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mathematics
scientist
experimentalist
experimentalist
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capacitance
farad
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mole (unit)
electron
coulomb
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magnetic field
electromotive force
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South London
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chlorine
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England
August 25
1867
Hampton Court
London
England
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Michael_Faraday | Was Faraday a devout Christian? | yes | data/set4/a7 | Michael_Faraday
Michael Faraday, FRS (September 22, 1791 â August 25, 1867) was an English chemist and physicist (or natural philosopher, in the terminology of that time) who contributed to the fields of electromagnetism and electrochemistry.
Faraday studied the magnetic field around a conductor carrying a DC electric current, and established the basis for the magnetic field concept in physics. He discovered electromagnetic induction, diamagnetism and electrolysis. He established that magnetism could affect rays of light and that there was an underlying relationship between the two phenomena. Michael Faraday entry at the 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica hosted by LovetoKnow Retrieved January 2007. Institution of Engineering and Technology, London Archives, Michael Faraday His inventions of electromagnetic rotary devices formed the foundation of electric motor technology, and it was largely due to his efforts that electricity became viable for use in technology.
As a chemist, Faraday discovered benzene, investigated the clathrate hydrate of chlorine, invented an early form of the bunsen burner and the system of oxidation numbers, and popularized terminology such as anode, cathode, electrode, and ion.
Although Faraday received little formal education and knew little of higher mathematics, such as calculus, he was one of the most influential scientists in history. Some historians of science refer to him as the best experimentalist in the history of science. "best experimentalist in the history of science." Quoting Dr Peter Ford, from the University of Bathâs Department of Physics. Accessed January 2007. The SI unit of capacitance, the farad, is named after him, as is the Faraday constant, the charge on a mole of electrons (about 96,485 coulombs). Faraday's law of induction states that a magnetic field changing in time creates a proportional electromotive force.
Faraday was the first and foremost Fullerian Professor of Chemistry at the Royal Institution of Great Britain, a position to which he was appointed for life.
Michael Faraday from a photograph by John Watkins, British Library
Michael Faraday was born in Newington Butts, near present-day South London, England. His family was not well off. His father, James, was a member of the Sandemanian sect of Christianity. James Faraday had come to London ca 1790 from Outhgill in Westmorland, where he had been the village blacksmith. The young Michael Faraday, one of four children, having only the most basic of school educations, had to largely educate himself. "Michael Faraday." History of Science and Technology. Houghton Mifflin Company, 2004. Answers.com 4 June 2007. /ref> At fourteen he became apprenticed to a local bookbinder and bookseller George Riebau and, during his seven-year apprenticeship, he read many books, including Isaac Watts' The Improvement of the Mind, and he enthusiastically implemented the principles and suggestions contained therein. He developed an interest in science and specifically in electricity. In particular, he was inspired by the book Conversations in Chemistry by Jane Marcet.
At the age of twenty, in 1812, at the end of his apprenticeship, Faraday attended lectures by the eminent English chemist and physicist Humphry Davy of the Royal Institution and Royal Society, and John Tatum, founder of the City Philosophical Society. Many tickets for these lectures were given to Faraday by William Dance (one of the founders of the Royal Philharmonic Society). Afterwards, Faraday sent Davy a three hundred page book based on notes taken during the lectures. Davy's reply was immediate, kind, and favorable. When Davy damaged his eyesight in an accident with nitrogen trichloride, he decided to employ Faraday as a secretary. When John Payne, one of the Royal Institution's assistants, was fired, Sir Humphry Davy was asked to find a replacement. He appointed Faraday as Chemical Assistant at the Royal Institution on March 1.
In the class-based English society of the time, Faraday was not considered a gentleman. When Davy went on a long tour to the continent in 1813-5, his valet did not wish to go. Faraday was going as Davy's scientific assistant, and was asked to act as Davy's valet until a replacement could be found in Paris. Davy failed to find a replacement, and Faraday was forced to fill the role of valet as well as assistant throughout the trip. Davy's wife, Jane Apreece, refused to treat Faraday as an equal (making him travel outside the coach, eat with the servants, etc.) and generally made Faraday so miserable that he contemplated returning to England alone and giving up science altogether. The trip did, however, give him access to the European scientific elite and a host of stimulating ideas.
His sponsor and mentor was John 'Mad Jack' Fuller, who created the Fullerian Professorship of Chemistry at the Royal Institution.
Faraday was a devout Christian and a member of the small Sandemanian denomination, an offshoot of the Church of Scotland. He later served two terms as an elder in the group's church.
Faraday married Sarah Barnard (1800-1879) on June 2, 1821, although they would never have children. They met through attending the Sandemanian church.
He was elected a member of the Royal Society in 1824, appointed director of the laboratory in 1825; and in 1833 he was appointed Fullerian professor of chemistry in the institution for life, without the obligation to deliver lectures.
The title page of The Chemical History of a Candle (1861)
Faraday's earliest chemical work was as an assistant to Davy. He made a special study of chlorine, and discovered two new chlorides of carbon. He also made the first rough experiments on the diffusion of gases, a phenomenon first pointed out by John Dalton, the physical importance of which was more fully brought to light by Thomas Graham and Joseph Loschmidt. He succeeded in liquefying several gases; he investigated the alloys of steel, and produced several new kinds of glass intended for optical purposes. A specimen of one of these heavy glasses afterwards became historically important as the substance in which Faraday detected the rotation of the plane of polarisation of light when the glass was placed in a magnetic field, and also as the substance which was first repelled by the poles of the magnet. He also endeavoured, with some success, to make the general methods of chemistry, as distinguished from its results, the subject of special study and of popular exposition.
He invented an early form of what was to become the Bunsen burner, which is used almost universally in science laboratories as a convenient source of heat. See page 127 of Faraday's Chemical Manipulation, Being Instructions to Students in Chemistry (1827)
Faraday worked extensively in the field of chemistry, discovering chemical substances such as benzene (which he called bicarburet of hydrogen), inventing the system of oxidation numbers, and liquefying gases such as chlorine. In 1820 Faraday reported on the first syntheses of compounds made from carbon and chlorine, C 2 H 6 and C 2 H 4 , and published his results the following year. Faraday also determined the composition of the chlorine clathrate hydrate, which had been discovered by Humphry Davy in 1810.
Faraday also discovered the laws of electrolysis and popularized terminology such as anode, cathode, electrode, and ion, terms largely created by William Whewell.
Faraday was the first to report what later came to be called metallic nanoparticles. In 1847 he discovered that the optical properties of gold colloids differed from those of the corresponding bulk metal. This was probably the first reported observation of the effects of quantum size, and might be considered to be the birth of nanoscience.
Faraday's greatest work was probably with electricity and magnetism. The first experiment which he recorded was the construction of a voltaic pile with seven halfpence pieces, stacked together with seven disks of sheet zinc, and six pieces of paper moistened with salt water. With this pile he decomposed sulphate of magnesia (first letter to Abbott, July 12, 1812).
[[Image:Faraday photograph ii.jpg|thumb|200px|left|Michael Faraday holding a glass bar of the type he used in 1845 to show that magnetism can affect light. Detail of an engraving by Henry Adlard, based on an earlier photograph by Maull & Polyblank ca. 1857. See National Portrait Gallery, UK ]]
In 1821, soon after the Danish physicist and chemist, Hans Christian Ãrsted discovered the phenomenon of electromagnetism, Davy and British scientist William Hyde Wollaston tried but failed to design an electric motor. Faraday, having discussed the problem with the two men, went on to build two devices to produce what he called electromagnetic rotation: a continuous circular motion from the circular magnetic force around a wire and a wire extending into a pool of mercury with a magnet placed inside would rotate around the magnet if supplied with current from a chemical battery. The latter device is known as a homopolar motor. These experiments and inventions form the foundation of modern electromagnetic technology. Faraday published his results without acknowledging his debt to Wollaston and Davy, and the resulting controversy caused Faraday to withdraw from electromagnetic research for several years.
At this stage, there is also evidence to suggest that Davy may have been trying to slow Faradayâs rise as a scientist (or natural philosopher as it was known then). In 1825, for instance, Davy set him onto optical glass experiments, which progressed for six years with no great results. It was not until Davy's death, in 1829, that Faraday stopped these fruitless tasks and moved on to endeavors that were more worthwhile. Two years later, in 1831, he began his great series of experiments in which he discovered electromagnetic induction. Joseph Henry likely discovered self-induction a few months earlier and both may have been anticipated by the work of Francesco Zantedeschi in Italy in 1829 and 1830.
Faraday's breakthrough came when he wrapped two insulated coils of wire around a massive iron ring, bolted to a chair, and found that upon passing a current through one coil, a momentary current was induced in the other coil. This phenomenon is known as mutual induction. The iron ring-coil apparatus is still on display at the Royal Institution. In subsequent experiments he found that if he moved a magnet through a loop of wire, an electric current flowed in the wire. The current also flowed if the loop was moved over a stationary magnet. His demonstrations established that a changing magnetic field produces an electric field. This relation was mathematically modelled by Faraday's law, which subsequently became one of the four Maxwell equations. These in turn have evolved into the generalization known today as field theory.
Michael Faraday - statue in Savoy Place, London.
Sculptor John Henry Foley RA
Faraday later used the principle to construct the electric dynamo, the ancestor of modern power generators.
In 1839 he completed a series of experiments aimed at investigating the fundamental nature of electricity. Faraday used "static", batteries, and "animal electricity" to produce the phenomena of electrostatic attraction, electrolysis, magnetism, etc. He concluded that, contrary to scientific opinion of the time, the divisions between the various "kinds" of electricity were illusory. Faraday instead proposed that only a single "electricity" exists, and the changing values of quantity and intensity (voltage and charge) would produce different groups of phenomena.
Near the end of his career Faraday proposed that electromagnetic forces extended into the empty space around the conductor. This idea was rejected by his fellow scientists, and Faraday did not live to see this idea eventually accepted. Faraday's concept of lines of flux emanating from charged bodies and magnets provided a way to visualize electric and magnetic fields. That mental model was crucial to the successful development of electromechanical devices which dominated engineering and industry for the remainder of the 19th century.
In 1845, he discovered the phenomenon that he named diamagnetism, and what is now called the Faraday effect: The plane of polarization of linearly polarized light propagated through a material medium can be rotated by the application of an external magnetic field aligned in the propagation direction. He wrote in his notebook, "I have at last succeeded in illuminating a magnetic curve or line of force and in magnetising a ray of light". This established that magnetic force and light were related.
In his work on static electricity, Faraday demonstrated that the charge only resided on the exterior of a charged conductor, and exterior charge had no influence on anything enclosed within a conductor. This is because the exterior charges redistribute such that the interior fields due to them cancel. This shielding effect is used in what is now known as a Faraday cage.
Faraday was an excellent experimentalist who conveyed his ideas in clear and simple language. However, his mathematical abilities did not extend as far as trigonometry or any but the simplest algebra. It was James Clerk Maxwell who took the work of Faraday, and others, and consolidated it with a set of equations that lie at the base of all modern theories of electromagnetic phenomena.
Michael Faraday meets Father Thames, from Punch (July 21, 1855)
Beyond his scientific research into areas such as chemistry, electricity, and magnetism at the Royal Institution, Faraday undertook numerous, and often time-consuming, service projects for private enterprise and the British government. This work included investigations of explosions in mines, being an expert witness in court, and the preparation of high-quality optical glass.
As a respected scientist in a nation with strong maritime interests, Faraday spent extensive amounts of time on projects such as the construction and operation of light houses and protecting the bottoms of ships from corrosion.
Faraday also was active in what would now be called environmental science, or engineering. He investigated industrial pollution at Swansea and was consulted on air pollution at the Royal Mint. In July of 1855, Faraday wrote a letter to The Times on the subject of the foul condition of the River Thames, which resulted in an oft-reprinted cartoon in Punch. (See also The Great Stink.)
Faraday assisted with planning and judging of exhibits for the Great Exhibition of 1851 in London. He also advised the National Gallery on the cleaning and protection of its art collection, and served on the National Gallery Site Commission in 1857.
Education was another area of service for Faraday. He lectured on the topic in 1854 at the Royal Institution, and in 1862 he appeared before a Public Schools Commission to give his views on education in Great Britain. Faraday also weighed in, negatively, on the public's fascination with table-turning, mesmerism, and seances, chastising both the public and the nation's educational system. See The Illustrated London News, July 1853, for Faraday's comments.
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In June of 1832, the University of Oxford granted Faraday a Doctor of Civil Law degree (honorary). During his lifetime, Faraday rejected a knighthood and twice refused to become President of the Royal Society.
In 1848, as a result of representations by the Prince Consort, Michael Faraday was awarded a grace and favour house in Hampton Court, Surrey free of all expenses or upkeep. This was the Master Mason's House, later called Faraday House, and now No.37 Hampton Court Road. In 1858 Faraday retired to live there. Twickenham Museum on Faraday and Faraday House, Accessed June 2006
Faraday died at his house at Hampton Court on August 25, 1867. He turned down burial in Westminster Abbey, but he has a memorial plaque there, near Isaac Newton's tomb. Faraday was interred in the Sandemanian plot in Highgate Cemetery.
Michael Faraday's grave at Highgate Cemetery
Faraday gave a successful series of lectures on the chemistry and physics of flames at the Royal Institution, entitled The Chemical History of a Candle. This was one of the earlier Christmas lectures for young people, which are still given each year. Between 1827 and 1860, Faraday gave the Christmas lecture a record nineteen times.
Faraday refused to participate in the production of chemical weapons for the Crimean War citing ethical reasons.
A statue of Faraday stands in Savoy Place, London, outside the Institution of Electrical Engineers.
A recently built hall of accommodation at Brunel University is named after Faraday.
A hall at Loughborough University was named after Faraday in 1960. Near the entrance to its dining hall is a bronze casting, which depicts the symbol of an electrical transformer, and inside there hangs a portrait, both in Faraday's honour.
Faraday's picture was printed on British £20 banknotes from 1991 until 2001. Bank of England, Withdrawn Notes
In the video game Chromehounds there is a ThermoVision Device named the Faraday.
The former UK Faraday Atmospheric Research Station in Antarctica was named after him.
Faraday was one of the then eight foreign members of the French Academy of Sciences.
Michael Faraday's signature
Faraday's books, with the exception of Chemical Manipulation, were collections of scientific papers or transcriptions of lectures. See page 220 of Hamilton's A Life of Discovery: Michael Faraday, Giant of the Scientific Revolution (2002) Since his death, Faraday's diary has been published, as have several large volumes of his letters and Faraday's journal from his travels with Davy in 1813 - 1815.
* Chemical Manipulation, Being Instructions to Students in Chemistry, John Murray, 1st ed. 1827, 2nd ed. 1830, 3rd ed. 1842
* Experimental Researches in Electricity, vols. i. and ii., Richard and John Edward Taylor, vols. i. and ii.. 1844 and 1847; vol. iii., 1844; vol. iii. Richard Taylor and William Francis, 1855
* Experimental Researches in Chemistry and Physics, Taylor and Francis, 1859
* A Course of Six Lectures on the Chemical History of a Candle, edited by W. Crookes, Griffin, Bohn & Co., 1861
* On the Various Forces in Nature, edited by W. Crookes, Chatto & Windus, 1873
* Faraday's Diary edited by T. Martin was published in eight volumes, 1932 - 1936
* Curiosity Perfectly Satisfyed: Faraday's Travels in Europe 1813-1815, edited by B. Bowers and L. Symons, Institution of Electrical Engineers, 1991
* The Correspondence of Michael Faraday, edited by F. A. J. L. James, INSPEC, Inc., volume 1, 1991; volume 2, 1993; volume 3, 1996; volume 4, 1999
* "Nothing is too wonderful to be true if it be consistent with the laws of nature, and in such things as these, experiment is the best test of such consistency." From the entry of 19 March 1849 in Faraday's Diary
* "Work. Finish. Publish." â his well-known advice to the young William Crookes
* "The important thing is to know how to take all things quietly."
* Regarding the hereafter, "Speculations? I have none. I am resting on certainties. I know whom I have believed and am persuaded that he is able to keep that which I have committed unto him against that day."
* "Next Sabbath day (the 22nd) I shall complete my 70th year. I can hardly think of myself so old."
*Above the doorways of the Pfahler Hall of Science at Ursinus College in Collegeville, Pennsylvania, there is a stone inscription of a quote attributed to Michael Faraday which reads "but still try, for who knows what is possible..." See
* "One day sir, you may tax it." Faraday's reply to William Gladstone, then British Minister of Finance, when asked of the practical value of electricity.
* "If you would cause your view ... to be acknowledged by scientific men; you would do a great service to science. If you would even get them to say yes or no to your conclusions it would help to clear the future progress. I believe some hesitate because they do not like their thoughts disturbed." From Life and Letters, 2:389.
* Faraday rotator
* Superconductivity
* Tyndall, John, Faraday as a Discoverer, (Longmans, 1st ed. 1868, 2nd ed. 1870).
* Bence Jones, Henry (1870). The Life and Letters of Faraday in 2 vols, Longmans.
* Gladstone, J. H. (1872). Michael Faraday, Macmillan.
* Thompson, Silvanus (1901, reprinted 2005). Michael Faraday, His Life and Work. Cassell and Company, London, 1901; reprint by Kessenger Publishing, Whitefish, MT. ISBN 1-4179-7036-7
* The British Electrical and Allied Manufacturers Association (1931). Faraday. R. & R. Clark, Ltd., Edinburgh, 1931.
* Williams, L. Pearce (1971), Faraday: A Biography, Simon and Schuster.
* Cantor, Geoffrey (1991). Michael Faraday, Sandemanian and Scientist, Macmillian, ISBN 0-333-55077
* Hamilton, James (2002). Faraday: The Life. London: Harper Collins. ISBN 0-00-716376-2
* Hamilton, James (2004). A Life of Discovery: Michael Faraday, Giant of the Scientific Revolution. New York: Random House. ISBN 1-4000-6016-8
* Agassi, Joseph (1971), Faraday as a Natural Philosopher, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
* Ames, Joseph Sweetman (Ed.), The discovery of induced electric currents Vol. 2. Memoirs, by Michael Faraday. New York, Cincinnati [etc.] American book company [c1900] LCCN 00005889
* Gooding, David (Ed.) (1985), Faraday Rediscovered: Essays on the Life and Work of Michael Faraday, 1791-1867, London/New York, Macmillan/Stockton
* Thomas, John Meurig (1991). Michael Faraday and the Royal Institution: The Genius of Man and Place Bristol: Hilger. ISBN 0-7503-0145-7
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* Biography at The Royal Institution of Great Britain
* Faraday as a Discoverer by John Tyndall, Project Gutenberg (downloads)
* The Christian Character of Michael Faraday
* Michael Faraday on the British twenty-pound banknote
* The Life and Discoveries of Michael Faraday by J. A. Crowther, London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1920
* "Faraday" at LoveToKnow 1911 Britannica Online Encyclopedia.
*
* (downloads)
* "Experimental Researches in Electricity" by Michael Faraday Original text with Biographical Introduction by Professor John Tyndall, 1914, Everyman edition.
* Video Podcast with Sir John Cadogan talking about Benzene since Faraday
* The letters of Faraday and Schoenbein 1836-1862. With notes, comments and references to contemporary letters (1899) full download PDF
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Michael_Faraday | Was Faraday considered a gentleman? | no | data/set4/a7 | Michael_Faraday
Michael Faraday, FRS (September 22, 1791 â August 25, 1867) was an English chemist and physicist (or natural philosopher, in the terminology of that time) who contributed to the fields of electromagnetism and electrochemistry.
Faraday studied the magnetic field around a conductor carrying a DC electric current, and established the basis for the magnetic field concept in physics. He discovered electromagnetic induction, diamagnetism and electrolysis. He established that magnetism could affect rays of light and that there was an underlying relationship between the two phenomena. Michael Faraday entry at the 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica hosted by LovetoKnow Retrieved January 2007. Institution of Engineering and Technology, London Archives, Michael Faraday His inventions of electromagnetic rotary devices formed the foundation of electric motor technology, and it was largely due to his efforts that electricity became viable for use in technology.
As a chemist, Faraday discovered benzene, investigated the clathrate hydrate of chlorine, invented an early form of the bunsen burner and the system of oxidation numbers, and popularized terminology such as anode, cathode, electrode, and ion.
Although Faraday received little formal education and knew little of higher mathematics, such as calculus, he was one of the most influential scientists in history. Some historians of science refer to him as the best experimentalist in the history of science. "best experimentalist in the history of science." Quoting Dr Peter Ford, from the University of Bathâs Department of Physics. Accessed January 2007. The SI unit of capacitance, the farad, is named after him, as is the Faraday constant, the charge on a mole of electrons (about 96,485 coulombs). Faraday's law of induction states that a magnetic field changing in time creates a proportional electromotive force.
Faraday was the first and foremost Fullerian Professor of Chemistry at the Royal Institution of Great Britain, a position to which he was appointed for life.
Michael Faraday from a photograph by John Watkins, British Library
Michael Faraday was born in Newington Butts, near present-day South London, England. His family was not well off. His father, James, was a member of the Sandemanian sect of Christianity. James Faraday had come to London ca 1790 from Outhgill in Westmorland, where he had been the village blacksmith. The young Michael Faraday, one of four children, having only the most basic of school educations, had to largely educate himself. "Michael Faraday." History of Science and Technology. Houghton Mifflin Company, 2004. Answers.com 4 June 2007. /ref> At fourteen he became apprenticed to a local bookbinder and bookseller George Riebau and, during his seven-year apprenticeship, he read many books, including Isaac Watts' The Improvement of the Mind, and he enthusiastically implemented the principles and suggestions contained therein. He developed an interest in science and specifically in electricity. In particular, he was inspired by the book Conversations in Chemistry by Jane Marcet.
At the age of twenty, in 1812, at the end of his apprenticeship, Faraday attended lectures by the eminent English chemist and physicist Humphry Davy of the Royal Institution and Royal Society, and John Tatum, founder of the City Philosophical Society. Many tickets for these lectures were given to Faraday by William Dance (one of the founders of the Royal Philharmonic Society). Afterwards, Faraday sent Davy a three hundred page book based on notes taken during the lectures. Davy's reply was immediate, kind, and favorable. When Davy damaged his eyesight in an accident with nitrogen trichloride, he decided to employ Faraday as a secretary. When John Payne, one of the Royal Institution's assistants, was fired, Sir Humphry Davy was asked to find a replacement. He appointed Faraday as Chemical Assistant at the Royal Institution on March 1.
In the class-based English society of the time, Faraday was not considered a gentleman. When Davy went on a long tour to the continent in 1813-5, his valet did not wish to go. Faraday was going as Davy's scientific assistant, and was asked to act as Davy's valet until a replacement could be found in Paris. Davy failed to find a replacement, and Faraday was forced to fill the role of valet as well as assistant throughout the trip. Davy's wife, Jane Apreece, refused to treat Faraday as an equal (making him travel outside the coach, eat with the servants, etc.) and generally made Faraday so miserable that he contemplated returning to England alone and giving up science altogether. The trip did, however, give him access to the European scientific elite and a host of stimulating ideas.
His sponsor and mentor was John 'Mad Jack' Fuller, who created the Fullerian Professorship of Chemistry at the Royal Institution.
Faraday was a devout Christian and a member of the small Sandemanian denomination, an offshoot of the Church of Scotland. He later served two terms as an elder in the group's church.
Faraday married Sarah Barnard (1800-1879) on June 2, 1821, although they would never have children. They met through attending the Sandemanian church.
He was elected a member of the Royal Society in 1824, appointed director of the laboratory in 1825; and in 1833 he was appointed Fullerian professor of chemistry in the institution for life, without the obligation to deliver lectures.
The title page of The Chemical History of a Candle (1861)
Faraday's earliest chemical work was as an assistant to Davy. He made a special study of chlorine, and discovered two new chlorides of carbon. He also made the first rough experiments on the diffusion of gases, a phenomenon first pointed out by John Dalton, the physical importance of which was more fully brought to light by Thomas Graham and Joseph Loschmidt. He succeeded in liquefying several gases; he investigated the alloys of steel, and produced several new kinds of glass intended for optical purposes. A specimen of one of these heavy glasses afterwards became historically important as the substance in which Faraday detected the rotation of the plane of polarisation of light when the glass was placed in a magnetic field, and also as the substance which was first repelled by the poles of the magnet. He also endeavoured, with some success, to make the general methods of chemistry, as distinguished from its results, the subject of special study and of popular exposition.
He invented an early form of what was to become the Bunsen burner, which is used almost universally in science laboratories as a convenient source of heat. See page 127 of Faraday's Chemical Manipulation, Being Instructions to Students in Chemistry (1827)
Faraday worked extensively in the field of chemistry, discovering chemical substances such as benzene (which he called bicarburet of hydrogen), inventing the system of oxidation numbers, and liquefying gases such as chlorine. In 1820 Faraday reported on the first syntheses of compounds made from carbon and chlorine, C 2 H 6 and C 2 H 4 , and published his results the following year. Faraday also determined the composition of the chlorine clathrate hydrate, which had been discovered by Humphry Davy in 1810.
Faraday also discovered the laws of electrolysis and popularized terminology such as anode, cathode, electrode, and ion, terms largely created by William Whewell.
Faraday was the first to report what later came to be called metallic nanoparticles. In 1847 he discovered that the optical properties of gold colloids differed from those of the corresponding bulk metal. This was probably the first reported observation of the effects of quantum size, and might be considered to be the birth of nanoscience.
Faraday's greatest work was probably with electricity and magnetism. The first experiment which he recorded was the construction of a voltaic pile with seven halfpence pieces, stacked together with seven disks of sheet zinc, and six pieces of paper moistened with salt water. With this pile he decomposed sulphate of magnesia (first letter to Abbott, July 12, 1812).
[[Image:Faraday photograph ii.jpg|thumb|200px|left|Michael Faraday holding a glass bar of the type he used in 1845 to show that magnetism can affect light. Detail of an engraving by Henry Adlard, based on an earlier photograph by Maull & Polyblank ca. 1857. See National Portrait Gallery, UK ]]
In 1821, soon after the Danish physicist and chemist, Hans Christian Ãrsted discovered the phenomenon of electromagnetism, Davy and British scientist William Hyde Wollaston tried but failed to design an electric motor. Faraday, having discussed the problem with the two men, went on to build two devices to produce what he called electromagnetic rotation: a continuous circular motion from the circular magnetic force around a wire and a wire extending into a pool of mercury with a magnet placed inside would rotate around the magnet if supplied with current from a chemical battery. The latter device is known as a homopolar motor. These experiments and inventions form the foundation of modern electromagnetic technology. Faraday published his results without acknowledging his debt to Wollaston and Davy, and the resulting controversy caused Faraday to withdraw from electromagnetic research for several years.
At this stage, there is also evidence to suggest that Davy may have been trying to slow Faradayâs rise as a scientist (or natural philosopher as it was known then). In 1825, for instance, Davy set him onto optical glass experiments, which progressed for six years with no great results. It was not until Davy's death, in 1829, that Faraday stopped these fruitless tasks and moved on to endeavors that were more worthwhile. Two years later, in 1831, he began his great series of experiments in which he discovered electromagnetic induction. Joseph Henry likely discovered self-induction a few months earlier and both may have been anticipated by the work of Francesco Zantedeschi in Italy in 1829 and 1830.
Faraday's breakthrough came when he wrapped two insulated coils of wire around a massive iron ring, bolted to a chair, and found that upon passing a current through one coil, a momentary current was induced in the other coil. This phenomenon is known as mutual induction. The iron ring-coil apparatus is still on display at the Royal Institution. In subsequent experiments he found that if he moved a magnet through a loop of wire, an electric current flowed in the wire. The current also flowed if the loop was moved over a stationary magnet. His demonstrations established that a changing magnetic field produces an electric field. This relation was mathematically modelled by Faraday's law, which subsequently became one of the four Maxwell equations. These in turn have evolved into the generalization known today as field theory.
Michael Faraday - statue in Savoy Place, London.
Sculptor John Henry Foley RA
Faraday later used the principle to construct the electric dynamo, the ancestor of modern power generators.
In 1839 he completed a series of experiments aimed at investigating the fundamental nature of electricity. Faraday used "static", batteries, and "animal electricity" to produce the phenomena of electrostatic attraction, electrolysis, magnetism, etc. He concluded that, contrary to scientific opinion of the time, the divisions between the various "kinds" of electricity were illusory. Faraday instead proposed that only a single "electricity" exists, and the changing values of quantity and intensity (voltage and charge) would produce different groups of phenomena.
Near the end of his career Faraday proposed that electromagnetic forces extended into the empty space around the conductor. This idea was rejected by his fellow scientists, and Faraday did not live to see this idea eventually accepted. Faraday's concept of lines of flux emanating from charged bodies and magnets provided a way to visualize electric and magnetic fields. That mental model was crucial to the successful development of electromechanical devices which dominated engineering and industry for the remainder of the 19th century.
In 1845, he discovered the phenomenon that he named diamagnetism, and what is now called the Faraday effect: The plane of polarization of linearly polarized light propagated through a material medium can be rotated by the application of an external magnetic field aligned in the propagation direction. He wrote in his notebook, "I have at last succeeded in illuminating a magnetic curve or line of force and in magnetising a ray of light". This established that magnetic force and light were related.
In his work on static electricity, Faraday demonstrated that the charge only resided on the exterior of a charged conductor, and exterior charge had no influence on anything enclosed within a conductor. This is because the exterior charges redistribute such that the interior fields due to them cancel. This shielding effect is used in what is now known as a Faraday cage.
Faraday was an excellent experimentalist who conveyed his ideas in clear and simple language. However, his mathematical abilities did not extend as far as trigonometry or any but the simplest algebra. It was James Clerk Maxwell who took the work of Faraday, and others, and consolidated it with a set of equations that lie at the base of all modern theories of electromagnetic phenomena.
Michael Faraday meets Father Thames, from Punch (July 21, 1855)
Beyond his scientific research into areas such as chemistry, electricity, and magnetism at the Royal Institution, Faraday undertook numerous, and often time-consuming, service projects for private enterprise and the British government. This work included investigations of explosions in mines, being an expert witness in court, and the preparation of high-quality optical glass.
As a respected scientist in a nation with strong maritime interests, Faraday spent extensive amounts of time on projects such as the construction and operation of light houses and protecting the bottoms of ships from corrosion.
Faraday also was active in what would now be called environmental science, or engineering. He investigated industrial pollution at Swansea and was consulted on air pollution at the Royal Mint. In July of 1855, Faraday wrote a letter to The Times on the subject of the foul condition of the River Thames, which resulted in an oft-reprinted cartoon in Punch. (See also The Great Stink.)
Faraday assisted with planning and judging of exhibits for the Great Exhibition of 1851 in London. He also advised the National Gallery on the cleaning and protection of its art collection, and served on the National Gallery Site Commission in 1857.
Education was another area of service for Faraday. He lectured on the topic in 1854 at the Royal Institution, and in 1862 he appeared before a Public Schools Commission to give his views on education in Great Britain. Faraday also weighed in, negatively, on the public's fascination with table-turning, mesmerism, and seances, chastising both the public and the nation's educational system. See The Illustrated London News, July 1853, for Faraday's comments.
125px
In June of 1832, the University of Oxford granted Faraday a Doctor of Civil Law degree (honorary). During his lifetime, Faraday rejected a knighthood and twice refused to become President of the Royal Society.
In 1848, as a result of representations by the Prince Consort, Michael Faraday was awarded a grace and favour house in Hampton Court, Surrey free of all expenses or upkeep. This was the Master Mason's House, later called Faraday House, and now No.37 Hampton Court Road. In 1858 Faraday retired to live there. Twickenham Museum on Faraday and Faraday House, Accessed June 2006
Faraday died at his house at Hampton Court on August 25, 1867. He turned down burial in Westminster Abbey, but he has a memorial plaque there, near Isaac Newton's tomb. Faraday was interred in the Sandemanian plot in Highgate Cemetery.
Michael Faraday's grave at Highgate Cemetery
Faraday gave a successful series of lectures on the chemistry and physics of flames at the Royal Institution, entitled The Chemical History of a Candle. This was one of the earlier Christmas lectures for young people, which are still given each year. Between 1827 and 1860, Faraday gave the Christmas lecture a record nineteen times.
Faraday refused to participate in the production of chemical weapons for the Crimean War citing ethical reasons.
A statue of Faraday stands in Savoy Place, London, outside the Institution of Electrical Engineers.
A recently built hall of accommodation at Brunel University is named after Faraday.
A hall at Loughborough University was named after Faraday in 1960. Near the entrance to its dining hall is a bronze casting, which depicts the symbol of an electrical transformer, and inside there hangs a portrait, both in Faraday's honour.
Faraday's picture was printed on British £20 banknotes from 1991 until 2001. Bank of England, Withdrawn Notes
In the video game Chromehounds there is a ThermoVision Device named the Faraday.
The former UK Faraday Atmospheric Research Station in Antarctica was named after him.
Faraday was one of the then eight foreign members of the French Academy of Sciences.
Michael Faraday's signature
Faraday's books, with the exception of Chemical Manipulation, were collections of scientific papers or transcriptions of lectures. See page 220 of Hamilton's A Life of Discovery: Michael Faraday, Giant of the Scientific Revolution (2002) Since his death, Faraday's diary has been published, as have several large volumes of his letters and Faraday's journal from his travels with Davy in 1813 - 1815.
* Chemical Manipulation, Being Instructions to Students in Chemistry, John Murray, 1st ed. 1827, 2nd ed. 1830, 3rd ed. 1842
* Experimental Researches in Electricity, vols. i. and ii., Richard and John Edward Taylor, vols. i. and ii.. 1844 and 1847; vol. iii., 1844; vol. iii. Richard Taylor and William Francis, 1855
* Experimental Researches in Chemistry and Physics, Taylor and Francis, 1859
* A Course of Six Lectures on the Chemical History of a Candle, edited by W. Crookes, Griffin, Bohn & Co., 1861
* On the Various Forces in Nature, edited by W. Crookes, Chatto & Windus, 1873
* Faraday's Diary edited by T. Martin was published in eight volumes, 1932 - 1936
* Curiosity Perfectly Satisfyed: Faraday's Travels in Europe 1813-1815, edited by B. Bowers and L. Symons, Institution of Electrical Engineers, 1991
* The Correspondence of Michael Faraday, edited by F. A. J. L. James, INSPEC, Inc., volume 1, 1991; volume 2, 1993; volume 3, 1996; volume 4, 1999
* "Nothing is too wonderful to be true if it be consistent with the laws of nature, and in such things as these, experiment is the best test of such consistency." From the entry of 19 March 1849 in Faraday's Diary
* "Work. Finish. Publish." â his well-known advice to the young William Crookes
* "The important thing is to know how to take all things quietly."
* Regarding the hereafter, "Speculations? I have none. I am resting on certainties. I know whom I have believed and am persuaded that he is able to keep that which I have committed unto him against that day."
* "Next Sabbath day (the 22nd) I shall complete my 70th year. I can hardly think of myself so old."
*Above the doorways of the Pfahler Hall of Science at Ursinus College in Collegeville, Pennsylvania, there is a stone inscription of a quote attributed to Michael Faraday which reads "but still try, for who knows what is possible..." See
* "One day sir, you may tax it." Faraday's reply to William Gladstone, then British Minister of Finance, when asked of the practical value of electricity.
* "If you would cause your view ... to be acknowledged by scientific men; you would do a great service to science. If you would even get them to say yes or no to your conclusions it would help to clear the future progress. I believe some hesitate because they do not like their thoughts disturbed." From Life and Letters, 2:389.
* Faraday rotator
* Superconductivity
* Tyndall, John, Faraday as a Discoverer, (Longmans, 1st ed. 1868, 2nd ed. 1870).
* Bence Jones, Henry (1870). The Life and Letters of Faraday in 2 vols, Longmans.
* Gladstone, J. H. (1872). Michael Faraday, Macmillan.
* Thompson, Silvanus (1901, reprinted 2005). Michael Faraday, His Life and Work. Cassell and Company, London, 1901; reprint by Kessenger Publishing, Whitefish, MT. ISBN 1-4179-7036-7
* The British Electrical and Allied Manufacturers Association (1931). Faraday. R. & R. Clark, Ltd., Edinburgh, 1931.
* Williams, L. Pearce (1971), Faraday: A Biography, Simon and Schuster.
* Cantor, Geoffrey (1991). Michael Faraday, Sandemanian and Scientist, Macmillian, ISBN 0-333-55077
* Hamilton, James (2002). Faraday: The Life. London: Harper Collins. ISBN 0-00-716376-2
* Hamilton, James (2004). A Life of Discovery: Michael Faraday, Giant of the Scientific Revolution. New York: Random House. ISBN 1-4000-6016-8
* Agassi, Joseph (1971), Faraday as a Natural Philosopher, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
* Ames, Joseph Sweetman (Ed.), The discovery of induced electric currents Vol. 2. Memoirs, by Michael Faraday. New York, Cincinnati [etc.] American book company [c1900] LCCN 00005889
* Gooding, David (Ed.) (1985), Faraday Rediscovered: Essays on the Life and Work of Michael Faraday, 1791-1867, London/New York, Macmillan/Stockton
* Thomas, John Meurig (1991). Michael Faraday and the Royal Institution: The Genius of Man and Place Bristol: Hilger. ISBN 0-7503-0145-7
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* Biography at The Royal Institution of Great Britain
* Faraday as a Discoverer by John Tyndall, Project Gutenberg (downloads)
* The Christian Character of Michael Faraday
* Michael Faraday on the British twenty-pound banknote
* The Life and Discoveries of Michael Faraday by J. A. Crowther, London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1920
* "Faraday" at LoveToKnow 1911 Britannica Online Encyclopedia.
*
* (downloads)
* "Experimental Researches in Electricity" by Michael Faraday Original text with Biographical Introduction by Professor John Tyndall, 1914, Everyman edition.
* Video Podcast with Sir John Cadogan talking about Benzene since Faraday
* The letters of Faraday and Schoenbein 1836-1862. With notes, comments and references to contemporary letters (1899) full download PDF
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Michael_Faraday | Was Faraday considered a gentleman? | no | data/set4/a7 | Michael_Faraday
Michael Faraday, FRS (September 22, 1791 â August 25, 1867) was an English chemist and physicist (or natural philosopher, in the terminology of that time) who contributed to the fields of electromagnetism and electrochemistry.
Faraday studied the magnetic field around a conductor carrying a DC electric current, and established the basis for the magnetic field concept in physics. He discovered electromagnetic induction, diamagnetism and electrolysis. He established that magnetism could affect rays of light and that there was an underlying relationship between the two phenomena. Michael Faraday entry at the 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica hosted by LovetoKnow Retrieved January 2007. Institution of Engineering and Technology, London Archives, Michael Faraday His inventions of electromagnetic rotary devices formed the foundation of electric motor technology, and it was largely due to his efforts that electricity became viable for use in technology.
As a chemist, Faraday discovered benzene, investigated the clathrate hydrate of chlorine, invented an early form of the bunsen burner and the system of oxidation numbers, and popularized terminology such as anode, cathode, electrode, and ion.
Although Faraday received little formal education and knew little of higher mathematics, such as calculus, he was one of the most influential scientists in history. Some historians of science refer to him as the best experimentalist in the history of science. "best experimentalist in the history of science." Quoting Dr Peter Ford, from the University of Bathâs Department of Physics. Accessed January 2007. The SI unit of capacitance, the farad, is named after him, as is the Faraday constant, the charge on a mole of electrons (about 96,485 coulombs). Faraday's law of induction states that a magnetic field changing in time creates a proportional electromotive force.
Faraday was the first and foremost Fullerian Professor of Chemistry at the Royal Institution of Great Britain, a position to which he was appointed for life.
Michael Faraday from a photograph by John Watkins, British Library
Michael Faraday was born in Newington Butts, near present-day South London, England. His family was not well off. His father, James, was a member of the Sandemanian sect of Christianity. James Faraday had come to London ca 1790 from Outhgill in Westmorland, where he had been the village blacksmith. The young Michael Faraday, one of four children, having only the most basic of school educations, had to largely educate himself. "Michael Faraday." History of Science and Technology. Houghton Mifflin Company, 2004. Answers.com 4 June 2007. /ref> At fourteen he became apprenticed to a local bookbinder and bookseller George Riebau and, during his seven-year apprenticeship, he read many books, including Isaac Watts' The Improvement of the Mind, and he enthusiastically implemented the principles and suggestions contained therein. He developed an interest in science and specifically in electricity. In particular, he was inspired by the book Conversations in Chemistry by Jane Marcet.
At the age of twenty, in 1812, at the end of his apprenticeship, Faraday attended lectures by the eminent English chemist and physicist Humphry Davy of the Royal Institution and Royal Society, and John Tatum, founder of the City Philosophical Society. Many tickets for these lectures were given to Faraday by William Dance (one of the founders of the Royal Philharmonic Society). Afterwards, Faraday sent Davy a three hundred page book based on notes taken during the lectures. Davy's reply was immediate, kind, and favorable. When Davy damaged his eyesight in an accident with nitrogen trichloride, he decided to employ Faraday as a secretary. When John Payne, one of the Royal Institution's assistants, was fired, Sir Humphry Davy was asked to find a replacement. He appointed Faraday as Chemical Assistant at the Royal Institution on March 1.
In the class-based English society of the time, Faraday was not considered a gentleman. When Davy went on a long tour to the continent in 1813-5, his valet did not wish to go. Faraday was going as Davy's scientific assistant, and was asked to act as Davy's valet until a replacement could be found in Paris. Davy failed to find a replacement, and Faraday was forced to fill the role of valet as well as assistant throughout the trip. Davy's wife, Jane Apreece, refused to treat Faraday as an equal (making him travel outside the coach, eat with the servants, etc.) and generally made Faraday so miserable that he contemplated returning to England alone and giving up science altogether. The trip did, however, give him access to the European scientific elite and a host of stimulating ideas.
His sponsor and mentor was John 'Mad Jack' Fuller, who created the Fullerian Professorship of Chemistry at the Royal Institution.
Faraday was a devout Christian and a member of the small Sandemanian denomination, an offshoot of the Church of Scotland. He later served two terms as an elder in the group's church.
Faraday married Sarah Barnard (1800-1879) on June 2, 1821, although they would never have children. They met through attending the Sandemanian church.
He was elected a member of the Royal Society in 1824, appointed director of the laboratory in 1825; and in 1833 he was appointed Fullerian professor of chemistry in the institution for life, without the obligation to deliver lectures.
The title page of The Chemical History of a Candle (1861)
Faraday's earliest chemical work was as an assistant to Davy. He made a special study of chlorine, and discovered two new chlorides of carbon. He also made the first rough experiments on the diffusion of gases, a phenomenon first pointed out by John Dalton, the physical importance of which was more fully brought to light by Thomas Graham and Joseph Loschmidt. He succeeded in liquefying several gases; he investigated the alloys of steel, and produced several new kinds of glass intended for optical purposes. A specimen of one of these heavy glasses afterwards became historically important as the substance in which Faraday detected the rotation of the plane of polarisation of light when the glass was placed in a magnetic field, and also as the substance which was first repelled by the poles of the magnet. He also endeavoured, with some success, to make the general methods of chemistry, as distinguished from its results, the subject of special study and of popular exposition.
He invented an early form of what was to become the Bunsen burner, which is used almost universally in science laboratories as a convenient source of heat. See page 127 of Faraday's Chemical Manipulation, Being Instructions to Students in Chemistry (1827)
Faraday worked extensively in the field of chemistry, discovering chemical substances such as benzene (which he called bicarburet of hydrogen), inventing the system of oxidation numbers, and liquefying gases such as chlorine. In 1820 Faraday reported on the first syntheses of compounds made from carbon and chlorine, C 2 H 6 and C 2 H 4 , and published his results the following year. Faraday also determined the composition of the chlorine clathrate hydrate, which had been discovered by Humphry Davy in 1810.
Faraday also discovered the laws of electrolysis and popularized terminology such as anode, cathode, electrode, and ion, terms largely created by William Whewell.
Faraday was the first to report what later came to be called metallic nanoparticles. In 1847 he discovered that the optical properties of gold colloids differed from those of the corresponding bulk metal. This was probably the first reported observation of the effects of quantum size, and might be considered to be the birth of nanoscience.
Faraday's greatest work was probably with electricity and magnetism. The first experiment which he recorded was the construction of a voltaic pile with seven halfpence pieces, stacked together with seven disks of sheet zinc, and six pieces of paper moistened with salt water. With this pile he decomposed sulphate of magnesia (first letter to Abbott, July 12, 1812).
[[Image:Faraday photograph ii.jpg|thumb|200px|left|Michael Faraday holding a glass bar of the type he used in 1845 to show that magnetism can affect light. Detail of an engraving by Henry Adlard, based on an earlier photograph by Maull & Polyblank ca. 1857. See National Portrait Gallery, UK ]]
In 1821, soon after the Danish physicist and chemist, Hans Christian Ãrsted discovered the phenomenon of electromagnetism, Davy and British scientist William Hyde Wollaston tried but failed to design an electric motor. Faraday, having discussed the problem with the two men, went on to build two devices to produce what he called electromagnetic rotation: a continuous circular motion from the circular magnetic force around a wire and a wire extending into a pool of mercury with a magnet placed inside would rotate around the magnet if supplied with current from a chemical battery. The latter device is known as a homopolar motor. These experiments and inventions form the foundation of modern electromagnetic technology. Faraday published his results without acknowledging his debt to Wollaston and Davy, and the resulting controversy caused Faraday to withdraw from electromagnetic research for several years.
At this stage, there is also evidence to suggest that Davy may have been trying to slow Faradayâs rise as a scientist (or natural philosopher as it was known then). In 1825, for instance, Davy set him onto optical glass experiments, which progressed for six years with no great results. It was not until Davy's death, in 1829, that Faraday stopped these fruitless tasks and moved on to endeavors that were more worthwhile. Two years later, in 1831, he began his great series of experiments in which he discovered electromagnetic induction. Joseph Henry likely discovered self-induction a few months earlier and both may have been anticipated by the work of Francesco Zantedeschi in Italy in 1829 and 1830.
Faraday's breakthrough came when he wrapped two insulated coils of wire around a massive iron ring, bolted to a chair, and found that upon passing a current through one coil, a momentary current was induced in the other coil. This phenomenon is known as mutual induction. The iron ring-coil apparatus is still on display at the Royal Institution. In subsequent experiments he found that if he moved a magnet through a loop of wire, an electric current flowed in the wire. The current also flowed if the loop was moved over a stationary magnet. His demonstrations established that a changing magnetic field produces an electric field. This relation was mathematically modelled by Faraday's law, which subsequently became one of the four Maxwell equations. These in turn have evolved into the generalization known today as field theory.
Michael Faraday - statue in Savoy Place, London.
Sculptor John Henry Foley RA
Faraday later used the principle to construct the electric dynamo, the ancestor of modern power generators.
In 1839 he completed a series of experiments aimed at investigating the fundamental nature of electricity. Faraday used "static", batteries, and "animal electricity" to produce the phenomena of electrostatic attraction, electrolysis, magnetism, etc. He concluded that, contrary to scientific opinion of the time, the divisions between the various "kinds" of electricity were illusory. Faraday instead proposed that only a single "electricity" exists, and the changing values of quantity and intensity (voltage and charge) would produce different groups of phenomena.
Near the end of his career Faraday proposed that electromagnetic forces extended into the empty space around the conductor. This idea was rejected by his fellow scientists, and Faraday did not live to see this idea eventually accepted. Faraday's concept of lines of flux emanating from charged bodies and magnets provided a way to visualize electric and magnetic fields. That mental model was crucial to the successful development of electromechanical devices which dominated engineering and industry for the remainder of the 19th century.
In 1845, he discovered the phenomenon that he named diamagnetism, and what is now called the Faraday effect: The plane of polarization of linearly polarized light propagated through a material medium can be rotated by the application of an external magnetic field aligned in the propagation direction. He wrote in his notebook, "I have at last succeeded in illuminating a magnetic curve or line of force and in magnetising a ray of light". This established that magnetic force and light were related.
In his work on static electricity, Faraday demonstrated that the charge only resided on the exterior of a charged conductor, and exterior charge had no influence on anything enclosed within a conductor. This is because the exterior charges redistribute such that the interior fields due to them cancel. This shielding effect is used in what is now known as a Faraday cage.
Faraday was an excellent experimentalist who conveyed his ideas in clear and simple language. However, his mathematical abilities did not extend as far as trigonometry or any but the simplest algebra. It was James Clerk Maxwell who took the work of Faraday, and others, and consolidated it with a set of equations that lie at the base of all modern theories of electromagnetic phenomena.
Michael Faraday meets Father Thames, from Punch (July 21, 1855)
Beyond his scientific research into areas such as chemistry, electricity, and magnetism at the Royal Institution, Faraday undertook numerous, and often time-consuming, service projects for private enterprise and the British government. This work included investigations of explosions in mines, being an expert witness in court, and the preparation of high-quality optical glass.
As a respected scientist in a nation with strong maritime interests, Faraday spent extensive amounts of time on projects such as the construction and operation of light houses and protecting the bottoms of ships from corrosion.
Faraday also was active in what would now be called environmental science, or engineering. He investigated industrial pollution at Swansea and was consulted on air pollution at the Royal Mint. In July of 1855, Faraday wrote a letter to The Times on the subject of the foul condition of the River Thames, which resulted in an oft-reprinted cartoon in Punch. (See also The Great Stink.)
Faraday assisted with planning and judging of exhibits for the Great Exhibition of 1851 in London. He also advised the National Gallery on the cleaning and protection of its art collection, and served on the National Gallery Site Commission in 1857.
Education was another area of service for Faraday. He lectured on the topic in 1854 at the Royal Institution, and in 1862 he appeared before a Public Schools Commission to give his views on education in Great Britain. Faraday also weighed in, negatively, on the public's fascination with table-turning, mesmerism, and seances, chastising both the public and the nation's educational system. See The Illustrated London News, July 1853, for Faraday's comments.
125px
In June of 1832, the University of Oxford granted Faraday a Doctor of Civil Law degree (honorary). During his lifetime, Faraday rejected a knighthood and twice refused to become President of the Royal Society.
In 1848, as a result of representations by the Prince Consort, Michael Faraday was awarded a grace and favour house in Hampton Court, Surrey free of all expenses or upkeep. This was the Master Mason's House, later called Faraday House, and now No.37 Hampton Court Road. In 1858 Faraday retired to live there. Twickenham Museum on Faraday and Faraday House, Accessed June 2006
Faraday died at his house at Hampton Court on August 25, 1867. He turned down burial in Westminster Abbey, but he has a memorial plaque there, near Isaac Newton's tomb. Faraday was interred in the Sandemanian plot in Highgate Cemetery.
Michael Faraday's grave at Highgate Cemetery
Faraday gave a successful series of lectures on the chemistry and physics of flames at the Royal Institution, entitled The Chemical History of a Candle. This was one of the earlier Christmas lectures for young people, which are still given each year. Between 1827 and 1860, Faraday gave the Christmas lecture a record nineteen times.
Faraday refused to participate in the production of chemical weapons for the Crimean War citing ethical reasons.
A statue of Faraday stands in Savoy Place, London, outside the Institution of Electrical Engineers.
A recently built hall of accommodation at Brunel University is named after Faraday.
A hall at Loughborough University was named after Faraday in 1960. Near the entrance to its dining hall is a bronze casting, which depicts the symbol of an electrical transformer, and inside there hangs a portrait, both in Faraday's honour.
Faraday's picture was printed on British £20 banknotes from 1991 until 2001. Bank of England, Withdrawn Notes
In the video game Chromehounds there is a ThermoVision Device named the Faraday.
The former UK Faraday Atmospheric Research Station in Antarctica was named after him.
Faraday was one of the then eight foreign members of the French Academy of Sciences.
Michael Faraday's signature
Faraday's books, with the exception of Chemical Manipulation, were collections of scientific papers or transcriptions of lectures. See page 220 of Hamilton's A Life of Discovery: Michael Faraday, Giant of the Scientific Revolution (2002) Since his death, Faraday's diary has been published, as have several large volumes of his letters and Faraday's journal from his travels with Davy in 1813 - 1815.
* Chemical Manipulation, Being Instructions to Students in Chemistry, John Murray, 1st ed. 1827, 2nd ed. 1830, 3rd ed. 1842
* Experimental Researches in Electricity, vols. i. and ii., Richard and John Edward Taylor, vols. i. and ii.. 1844 and 1847; vol. iii., 1844; vol. iii. Richard Taylor and William Francis, 1855
* Experimental Researches in Chemistry and Physics, Taylor and Francis, 1859
* A Course of Six Lectures on the Chemical History of a Candle, edited by W. Crookes, Griffin, Bohn & Co., 1861
* On the Various Forces in Nature, edited by W. Crookes, Chatto & Windus, 1873
* Faraday's Diary edited by T. Martin was published in eight volumes, 1932 - 1936
* Curiosity Perfectly Satisfyed: Faraday's Travels in Europe 1813-1815, edited by B. Bowers and L. Symons, Institution of Electrical Engineers, 1991
* The Correspondence of Michael Faraday, edited by F. A. J. L. James, INSPEC, Inc., volume 1, 1991; volume 2, 1993; volume 3, 1996; volume 4, 1999
* "Nothing is too wonderful to be true if it be consistent with the laws of nature, and in such things as these, experiment is the best test of such consistency." From the entry of 19 March 1849 in Faraday's Diary
* "Work. Finish. Publish." â his well-known advice to the young William Crookes
* "The important thing is to know how to take all things quietly."
* Regarding the hereafter, "Speculations? I have none. I am resting on certainties. I know whom I have believed and am persuaded that he is able to keep that which I have committed unto him against that day."
* "Next Sabbath day (the 22nd) I shall complete my 70th year. I can hardly think of myself so old."
*Above the doorways of the Pfahler Hall of Science at Ursinus College in Collegeville, Pennsylvania, there is a stone inscription of a quote attributed to Michael Faraday which reads "but still try, for who knows what is possible..." See
* "One day sir, you may tax it." Faraday's reply to William Gladstone, then British Minister of Finance, when asked of the practical value of electricity.
* "If you would cause your view ... to be acknowledged by scientific men; you would do a great service to science. If you would even get them to say yes or no to your conclusions it would help to clear the future progress. I believe some hesitate because they do not like their thoughts disturbed." From Life and Letters, 2:389.
* Faraday rotator
* Superconductivity
* Tyndall, John, Faraday as a Discoverer, (Longmans, 1st ed. 1868, 2nd ed. 1870).
* Bence Jones, Henry (1870). The Life and Letters of Faraday in 2 vols, Longmans.
* Gladstone, J. H. (1872). Michael Faraday, Macmillan.
* Thompson, Silvanus (1901, reprinted 2005). Michael Faraday, His Life and Work. Cassell and Company, London, 1901; reprint by Kessenger Publishing, Whitefish, MT. ISBN 1-4179-7036-7
* The British Electrical and Allied Manufacturers Association (1931). Faraday. R. & R. Clark, Ltd., Edinburgh, 1931.
* Williams, L. Pearce (1971), Faraday: A Biography, Simon and Schuster.
* Cantor, Geoffrey (1991). Michael Faraday, Sandemanian and Scientist, Macmillian, ISBN 0-333-55077
* Hamilton, James (2002). Faraday: The Life. London: Harper Collins. ISBN 0-00-716376-2
* Hamilton, James (2004). A Life of Discovery: Michael Faraday, Giant of the Scientific Revolution. New York: Random House. ISBN 1-4000-6016-8
* Agassi, Joseph (1971), Faraday as a Natural Philosopher, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
* Ames, Joseph Sweetman (Ed.), The discovery of induced electric currents Vol. 2. Memoirs, by Michael Faraday. New York, Cincinnati [etc.] American book company [c1900] LCCN 00005889
* Gooding, David (Ed.) (1985), Faraday Rediscovered: Essays on the Life and Work of Michael Faraday, 1791-1867, London/New York, Macmillan/Stockton
* Thomas, John Meurig (1991). Michael Faraday and the Royal Institution: The Genius of Man and Place Bristol: Hilger. ISBN 0-7503-0145-7
150px
* Biography at The Royal Institution of Great Britain
* Faraday as a Discoverer by John Tyndall, Project Gutenberg (downloads)
* The Christian Character of Michael Faraday
* Michael Faraday on the British twenty-pound banknote
* The Life and Discoveries of Michael Faraday by J. A. Crowther, London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1920
* "Faraday" at LoveToKnow 1911 Britannica Online Encyclopedia.
*
* (downloads)
* "Experimental Researches in Electricity" by Michael Faraday Original text with Biographical Introduction by Professor John Tyndall, 1914, Everyman edition.
* Video Podcast with Sir John Cadogan talking about Benzene since Faraday
* The letters of Faraday and Schoenbein 1836-1862. With notes, comments and references to contemporary letters (1899) full download PDF
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Michael_Faraday | Who was a member of the Sandemanian sect of Christianity? | yes | data/set4/a7 | Michael_Faraday
Michael Faraday, FRS (September 22, 1791 â August 25, 1867) was an English chemist and physicist (or natural philosopher, in the terminology of that time) who contributed to the fields of electromagnetism and electrochemistry.
Faraday studied the magnetic field around a conductor carrying a DC electric current, and established the basis for the magnetic field concept in physics. He discovered electromagnetic induction, diamagnetism and electrolysis. He established that magnetism could affect rays of light and that there was an underlying relationship between the two phenomena. Michael Faraday entry at the 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica hosted by LovetoKnow Retrieved January 2007. Institution of Engineering and Technology, London Archives, Michael Faraday His inventions of electromagnetic rotary devices formed the foundation of electric motor technology, and it was largely due to his efforts that electricity became viable for use in technology.
As a chemist, Faraday discovered benzene, investigated the clathrate hydrate of chlorine, invented an early form of the bunsen burner and the system of oxidation numbers, and popularized terminology such as anode, cathode, electrode, and ion.
Although Faraday received little formal education and knew little of higher mathematics, such as calculus, he was one of the most influential scientists in history. Some historians of science refer to him as the best experimentalist in the history of science. "best experimentalist in the history of science." Quoting Dr Peter Ford, from the University of Bathâs Department of Physics. Accessed January 2007. The SI unit of capacitance, the farad, is named after him, as is the Faraday constant, the charge on a mole of electrons (about 96,485 coulombs). Faraday's law of induction states that a magnetic field changing in time creates a proportional electromotive force.
Faraday was the first and foremost Fullerian Professor of Chemistry at the Royal Institution of Great Britain, a position to which he was appointed for life.
Michael Faraday from a photograph by John Watkins, British Library
Michael Faraday was born in Newington Butts, near present-day South London, England. His family was not well off. His father, James, was a member of the Sandemanian sect of Christianity. James Faraday had come to London ca 1790 from Outhgill in Westmorland, where he had been the village blacksmith. The young Michael Faraday, one of four children, having only the most basic of school educations, had to largely educate himself. "Michael Faraday." History of Science and Technology. Houghton Mifflin Company, 2004. Answers.com 4 June 2007. /ref> At fourteen he became apprenticed to a local bookbinder and bookseller George Riebau and, during his seven-year apprenticeship, he read many books, including Isaac Watts' The Improvement of the Mind, and he enthusiastically implemented the principles and suggestions contained therein. He developed an interest in science and specifically in electricity. In particular, he was inspired by the book Conversations in Chemistry by Jane Marcet.
At the age of twenty, in 1812, at the end of his apprenticeship, Faraday attended lectures by the eminent English chemist and physicist Humphry Davy of the Royal Institution and Royal Society, and John Tatum, founder of the City Philosophical Society. Many tickets for these lectures were given to Faraday by William Dance (one of the founders of the Royal Philharmonic Society). Afterwards, Faraday sent Davy a three hundred page book based on notes taken during the lectures. Davy's reply was immediate, kind, and favorable. When Davy damaged his eyesight in an accident with nitrogen trichloride, he decided to employ Faraday as a secretary. When John Payne, one of the Royal Institution's assistants, was fired, Sir Humphry Davy was asked to find a replacement. He appointed Faraday as Chemical Assistant at the Royal Institution on March 1.
In the class-based English society of the time, Faraday was not considered a gentleman. When Davy went on a long tour to the continent in 1813-5, his valet did not wish to go. Faraday was going as Davy's scientific assistant, and was asked to act as Davy's valet until a replacement could be found in Paris. Davy failed to find a replacement, and Faraday was forced to fill the role of valet as well as assistant throughout the trip. Davy's wife, Jane Apreece, refused to treat Faraday as an equal (making him travel outside the coach, eat with the servants, etc.) and generally made Faraday so miserable that he contemplated returning to England alone and giving up science altogether. The trip did, however, give him access to the European scientific elite and a host of stimulating ideas.
His sponsor and mentor was John 'Mad Jack' Fuller, who created the Fullerian Professorship of Chemistry at the Royal Institution.
Faraday was a devout Christian and a member of the small Sandemanian denomination, an offshoot of the Church of Scotland. He later served two terms as an elder in the group's church.
Faraday married Sarah Barnard (1800-1879) on June 2, 1821, although they would never have children. They met through attending the Sandemanian church.
He was elected a member of the Royal Society in 1824, appointed director of the laboratory in 1825; and in 1833 he was appointed Fullerian professor of chemistry in the institution for life, without the obligation to deliver lectures.
The title page of The Chemical History of a Candle (1861)
Faraday's earliest chemical work was as an assistant to Davy. He made a special study of chlorine, and discovered two new chlorides of carbon. He also made the first rough experiments on the diffusion of gases, a phenomenon first pointed out by John Dalton, the physical importance of which was more fully brought to light by Thomas Graham and Joseph Loschmidt. He succeeded in liquefying several gases; he investigated the alloys of steel, and produced several new kinds of glass intended for optical purposes. A specimen of one of these heavy glasses afterwards became historically important as the substance in which Faraday detected the rotation of the plane of polarisation of light when the glass was placed in a magnetic field, and also as the substance which was first repelled by the poles of the magnet. He also endeavoured, with some success, to make the general methods of chemistry, as distinguished from its results, the subject of special study and of popular exposition.
He invented an early form of what was to become the Bunsen burner, which is used almost universally in science laboratories as a convenient source of heat. See page 127 of Faraday's Chemical Manipulation, Being Instructions to Students in Chemistry (1827)
Faraday worked extensively in the field of chemistry, discovering chemical substances such as benzene (which he called bicarburet of hydrogen), inventing the system of oxidation numbers, and liquefying gases such as chlorine. In 1820 Faraday reported on the first syntheses of compounds made from carbon and chlorine, C 2 H 6 and C 2 H 4 , and published his results the following year. Faraday also determined the composition of the chlorine clathrate hydrate, which had been discovered by Humphry Davy in 1810.
Faraday also discovered the laws of electrolysis and popularized terminology such as anode, cathode, electrode, and ion, terms largely created by William Whewell.
Faraday was the first to report what later came to be called metallic nanoparticles. In 1847 he discovered that the optical properties of gold colloids differed from those of the corresponding bulk metal. This was probably the first reported observation of the effects of quantum size, and might be considered to be the birth of nanoscience.
Faraday's greatest work was probably with electricity and magnetism. The first experiment which he recorded was the construction of a voltaic pile with seven halfpence pieces, stacked together with seven disks of sheet zinc, and six pieces of paper moistened with salt water. With this pile he decomposed sulphate of magnesia (first letter to Abbott, July 12, 1812).
[[Image:Faraday photograph ii.jpg|thumb|200px|left|Michael Faraday holding a glass bar of the type he used in 1845 to show that magnetism can affect light. Detail of an engraving by Henry Adlard, based on an earlier photograph by Maull & Polyblank ca. 1857. See National Portrait Gallery, UK ]]
In 1821, soon after the Danish physicist and chemist, Hans Christian Ãrsted discovered the phenomenon of electromagnetism, Davy and British scientist William Hyde Wollaston tried but failed to design an electric motor. Faraday, having discussed the problem with the two men, went on to build two devices to produce what he called electromagnetic rotation: a continuous circular motion from the circular magnetic force around a wire and a wire extending into a pool of mercury with a magnet placed inside would rotate around the magnet if supplied with current from a chemical battery. The latter device is known as a homopolar motor. These experiments and inventions form the foundation of modern electromagnetic technology. Faraday published his results without acknowledging his debt to Wollaston and Davy, and the resulting controversy caused Faraday to withdraw from electromagnetic research for several years.
At this stage, there is also evidence to suggest that Davy may have been trying to slow Faradayâs rise as a scientist (or natural philosopher as it was known then). In 1825, for instance, Davy set him onto optical glass experiments, which progressed for six years with no great results. It was not until Davy's death, in 1829, that Faraday stopped these fruitless tasks and moved on to endeavors that were more worthwhile. Two years later, in 1831, he began his great series of experiments in which he discovered electromagnetic induction. Joseph Henry likely discovered self-induction a few months earlier and both may have been anticipated by the work of Francesco Zantedeschi in Italy in 1829 and 1830.
Faraday's breakthrough came when he wrapped two insulated coils of wire around a massive iron ring, bolted to a chair, and found that upon passing a current through one coil, a momentary current was induced in the other coil. This phenomenon is known as mutual induction. The iron ring-coil apparatus is still on display at the Royal Institution. In subsequent experiments he found that if he moved a magnet through a loop of wire, an electric current flowed in the wire. The current also flowed if the loop was moved over a stationary magnet. His demonstrations established that a changing magnetic field produces an electric field. This relation was mathematically modelled by Faraday's law, which subsequently became one of the four Maxwell equations. These in turn have evolved into the generalization known today as field theory.
Michael Faraday - statue in Savoy Place, London.
Sculptor John Henry Foley RA
Faraday later used the principle to construct the electric dynamo, the ancestor of modern power generators.
In 1839 he completed a series of experiments aimed at investigating the fundamental nature of electricity. Faraday used "static", batteries, and "animal electricity" to produce the phenomena of electrostatic attraction, electrolysis, magnetism, etc. He concluded that, contrary to scientific opinion of the time, the divisions between the various "kinds" of electricity were illusory. Faraday instead proposed that only a single "electricity" exists, and the changing values of quantity and intensity (voltage and charge) would produce different groups of phenomena.
Near the end of his career Faraday proposed that electromagnetic forces extended into the empty space around the conductor. This idea was rejected by his fellow scientists, and Faraday did not live to see this idea eventually accepted. Faraday's concept of lines of flux emanating from charged bodies and magnets provided a way to visualize electric and magnetic fields. That mental model was crucial to the successful development of electromechanical devices which dominated engineering and industry for the remainder of the 19th century.
In 1845, he discovered the phenomenon that he named diamagnetism, and what is now called the Faraday effect: The plane of polarization of linearly polarized light propagated through a material medium can be rotated by the application of an external magnetic field aligned in the propagation direction. He wrote in his notebook, "I have at last succeeded in illuminating a magnetic curve or line of force and in magnetising a ray of light". This established that magnetic force and light were related.
In his work on static electricity, Faraday demonstrated that the charge only resided on the exterior of a charged conductor, and exterior charge had no influence on anything enclosed within a conductor. This is because the exterior charges redistribute such that the interior fields due to them cancel. This shielding effect is used in what is now known as a Faraday cage.
Faraday was an excellent experimentalist who conveyed his ideas in clear and simple language. However, his mathematical abilities did not extend as far as trigonometry or any but the simplest algebra. It was James Clerk Maxwell who took the work of Faraday, and others, and consolidated it with a set of equations that lie at the base of all modern theories of electromagnetic phenomena.
Michael Faraday meets Father Thames, from Punch (July 21, 1855)
Beyond his scientific research into areas such as chemistry, electricity, and magnetism at the Royal Institution, Faraday undertook numerous, and often time-consuming, service projects for private enterprise and the British government. This work included investigations of explosions in mines, being an expert witness in court, and the preparation of high-quality optical glass.
As a respected scientist in a nation with strong maritime interests, Faraday spent extensive amounts of time on projects such as the construction and operation of light houses and protecting the bottoms of ships from corrosion.
Faraday also was active in what would now be called environmental science, or engineering. He investigated industrial pollution at Swansea and was consulted on air pollution at the Royal Mint. In July of 1855, Faraday wrote a letter to The Times on the subject of the foul condition of the River Thames, which resulted in an oft-reprinted cartoon in Punch. (See also The Great Stink.)
Faraday assisted with planning and judging of exhibits for the Great Exhibition of 1851 in London. He also advised the National Gallery on the cleaning and protection of its art collection, and served on the National Gallery Site Commission in 1857.
Education was another area of service for Faraday. He lectured on the topic in 1854 at the Royal Institution, and in 1862 he appeared before a Public Schools Commission to give his views on education in Great Britain. Faraday also weighed in, negatively, on the public's fascination with table-turning, mesmerism, and seances, chastising both the public and the nation's educational system. See The Illustrated London News, July 1853, for Faraday's comments.
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In June of 1832, the University of Oxford granted Faraday a Doctor of Civil Law degree (honorary). During his lifetime, Faraday rejected a knighthood and twice refused to become President of the Royal Society.
In 1848, as a result of representations by the Prince Consort, Michael Faraday was awarded a grace and favour house in Hampton Court, Surrey free of all expenses or upkeep. This was the Master Mason's House, later called Faraday House, and now No.37 Hampton Court Road. In 1858 Faraday retired to live there. Twickenham Museum on Faraday and Faraday House, Accessed June 2006
Faraday died at his house at Hampton Court on August 25, 1867. He turned down burial in Westminster Abbey, but he has a memorial plaque there, near Isaac Newton's tomb. Faraday was interred in the Sandemanian plot in Highgate Cemetery.
Michael Faraday's grave at Highgate Cemetery
Faraday gave a successful series of lectures on the chemistry and physics of flames at the Royal Institution, entitled The Chemical History of a Candle. This was one of the earlier Christmas lectures for young people, which are still given each year. Between 1827 and 1860, Faraday gave the Christmas lecture a record nineteen times.
Faraday refused to participate in the production of chemical weapons for the Crimean War citing ethical reasons.
A statue of Faraday stands in Savoy Place, London, outside the Institution of Electrical Engineers.
A recently built hall of accommodation at Brunel University is named after Faraday.
A hall at Loughborough University was named after Faraday in 1960. Near the entrance to its dining hall is a bronze casting, which depicts the symbol of an electrical transformer, and inside there hangs a portrait, both in Faraday's honour.
Faraday's picture was printed on British £20 banknotes from 1991 until 2001. Bank of England, Withdrawn Notes
In the video game Chromehounds there is a ThermoVision Device named the Faraday.
The former UK Faraday Atmospheric Research Station in Antarctica was named after him.
Faraday was one of the then eight foreign members of the French Academy of Sciences.
Michael Faraday's signature
Faraday's books, with the exception of Chemical Manipulation, were collections of scientific papers or transcriptions of lectures. See page 220 of Hamilton's A Life of Discovery: Michael Faraday, Giant of the Scientific Revolution (2002) Since his death, Faraday's diary has been published, as have several large volumes of his letters and Faraday's journal from his travels with Davy in 1813 - 1815.
* Chemical Manipulation, Being Instructions to Students in Chemistry, John Murray, 1st ed. 1827, 2nd ed. 1830, 3rd ed. 1842
* Experimental Researches in Electricity, vols. i. and ii., Richard and John Edward Taylor, vols. i. and ii.. 1844 and 1847; vol. iii., 1844; vol. iii. Richard Taylor and William Francis, 1855
* Experimental Researches in Chemistry and Physics, Taylor and Francis, 1859
* A Course of Six Lectures on the Chemical History of a Candle, edited by W. Crookes, Griffin, Bohn & Co., 1861
* On the Various Forces in Nature, edited by W. Crookes, Chatto & Windus, 1873
* Faraday's Diary edited by T. Martin was published in eight volumes, 1932 - 1936
* Curiosity Perfectly Satisfyed: Faraday's Travels in Europe 1813-1815, edited by B. Bowers and L. Symons, Institution of Electrical Engineers, 1991
* The Correspondence of Michael Faraday, edited by F. A. J. L. James, INSPEC, Inc., volume 1, 1991; volume 2, 1993; volume 3, 1996; volume 4, 1999
* "Nothing is too wonderful to be true if it be consistent with the laws of nature, and in such things as these, experiment is the best test of such consistency." From the entry of 19 March 1849 in Faraday's Diary
* "Work. Finish. Publish." â his well-known advice to the young William Crookes
* "The important thing is to know how to take all things quietly."
* Regarding the hereafter, "Speculations? I have none. I am resting on certainties. I know whom I have believed and am persuaded that he is able to keep that which I have committed unto him against that day."
* "Next Sabbath day (the 22nd) I shall complete my 70th year. I can hardly think of myself so old."
*Above the doorways of the Pfahler Hall of Science at Ursinus College in Collegeville, Pennsylvania, there is a stone inscription of a quote attributed to Michael Faraday which reads "but still try, for who knows what is possible..." See
* "One day sir, you may tax it." Faraday's reply to William Gladstone, then British Minister of Finance, when asked of the practical value of electricity.
* "If you would cause your view ... to be acknowledged by scientific men; you would do a great service to science. If you would even get them to say yes or no to your conclusions it would help to clear the future progress. I believe some hesitate because they do not like their thoughts disturbed." From Life and Letters, 2:389.
* Faraday rotator
* Superconductivity
* Tyndall, John, Faraday as a Discoverer, (Longmans, 1st ed. 1868, 2nd ed. 1870).
* Bence Jones, Henry (1870). The Life and Letters of Faraday in 2 vols, Longmans.
* Gladstone, J. H. (1872). Michael Faraday, Macmillan.
* Thompson, Silvanus (1901, reprinted 2005). Michael Faraday, His Life and Work. Cassell and Company, London, 1901; reprint by Kessenger Publishing, Whitefish, MT. ISBN 1-4179-7036-7
* The British Electrical and Allied Manufacturers Association (1931). Faraday. R. & R. Clark, Ltd., Edinburgh, 1931.
* Williams, L. Pearce (1971), Faraday: A Biography, Simon and Schuster.
* Cantor, Geoffrey (1991). Michael Faraday, Sandemanian and Scientist, Macmillian, ISBN 0-333-55077
* Hamilton, James (2002). Faraday: The Life. London: Harper Collins. ISBN 0-00-716376-2
* Hamilton, James (2004). A Life of Discovery: Michael Faraday, Giant of the Scientific Revolution. New York: Random House. ISBN 1-4000-6016-8
* Agassi, Joseph (1971), Faraday as a Natural Philosopher, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
* Ames, Joseph Sweetman (Ed.), The discovery of induced electric currents Vol. 2. Memoirs, by Michael Faraday. New York, Cincinnati [etc.] American book company [c1900] LCCN 00005889
* Gooding, David (Ed.) (1985), Faraday Rediscovered: Essays on the Life and Work of Michael Faraday, 1791-1867, London/New York, Macmillan/Stockton
* Thomas, John Meurig (1991). Michael Faraday and the Royal Institution: The Genius of Man and Place Bristol: Hilger. ISBN 0-7503-0145-7
150px
* Biography at The Royal Institution of Great Britain
* Faraday as a Discoverer by John Tyndall, Project Gutenberg (downloads)
* The Christian Character of Michael Faraday
* Michael Faraday on the British twenty-pound banknote
* The Life and Discoveries of Michael Faraday by J. A. Crowther, London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1920
* "Faraday" at LoveToKnow 1911 Britannica Online Encyclopedia.
*
* (downloads)
* "Experimental Researches in Electricity" by Michael Faraday Original text with Biographical Introduction by Professor John Tyndall, 1914, Everyman edition.
* Video Podcast with Sir John Cadogan talking about Benzene since Faraday
* The letters of Faraday and Schoenbein 1836-1862. With notes, comments and references to contemporary letters (1899) full download PDF
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Humphry Davy
Electromagnetic induction
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Faraday effect
Royal Medal
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mole (unit)
electron
coulomb
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Joseph Loschmidt
steel
Bunsen burner
chemistry
benzene
oxidation number
hexachloroethane
tetrachloroethylene
clathrate hydrate
electrolysis
anode
cathode
electrode
ion
William Whewell
nanoparticles
quantum
nanoscience
voltaic pile
July 12
1812
Henry Adlard
1821
Hans Christian Ãrsted
electromagnetism
William Hyde Wollaston
electric motor
mercury (element)
homopolar motor
1831
electromagnetic induction
Joseph Henry
Electromagnetic induction
Francesco Zantedeschi
mutual induction
Faraday's law of induction
Maxwell's equations
field theory
John Henry Foley
Electrical generator#Dynamo
1839
Electrostatics
Battery (electricity)
Bioelectromagnetism
electrolysis
Electromagnetism
diamagnetism
Faraday effect
polarization
Faraday cage
James Clerk Maxwell
July 21
1855
Swansea
Royal Mint
The Times
River Thames
Punch
The Great Stink
Great Exhibition
University of Oxford
knighthood
President of the Royal Society
Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha
grace and favour
Hampton Court
Surrey
Hampton Court
August 25
1867
Westminster Abbey
Isaac Newton
Highgate Cemetery
Highgate Cemetery
Royal Institution
The Chemical History of a Candle
Royal Institution Christmas Lectures
Crimean War
Institution of Electrical Engineers
Brunel University
Loughborough University
1960
transformer
British banknotes
video game
Chromehounds
Faraday Atmospheric Research Station in Antarctica (GALINDEZ ISLAND - 65.15S/64.16W)
French Academy of Sciences
William Crookes
Ursinus College
Faraday rotator
Superconductivity
George Biddell Airy
Copley Medal
Siméon Denis Poisson
Giovanni Antonio Amedeo Plana
Antoine César Becquerel
John Frederic Daniell
Copley Medal
Carl Friedrich Gauss
Robert Brown (botanist)
Physicist
Chemist
September 22
1791
Newington Butts
England
August 25
1867
Hampton Court
London
England
|
Michael_Faraday | Who was a member of the Sandemanian sect of Christianity? | Faraday | data/set4/a7 | Michael_Faraday
Michael Faraday, FRS (September 22, 1791 â August 25, 1867) was an English chemist and physicist (or natural philosopher, in the terminology of that time) who contributed to the fields of electromagnetism and electrochemistry.
Faraday studied the magnetic field around a conductor carrying a DC electric current, and established the basis for the magnetic field concept in physics. He discovered electromagnetic induction, diamagnetism and electrolysis. He established that magnetism could affect rays of light and that there was an underlying relationship between the two phenomena. Michael Faraday entry at the 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica hosted by LovetoKnow Retrieved January 2007. Institution of Engineering and Technology, London Archives, Michael Faraday His inventions of electromagnetic rotary devices formed the foundation of electric motor technology, and it was largely due to his efforts that electricity became viable for use in technology.
As a chemist, Faraday discovered benzene, investigated the clathrate hydrate of chlorine, invented an early form of the bunsen burner and the system of oxidation numbers, and popularized terminology such as anode, cathode, electrode, and ion.
Although Faraday received little formal education and knew little of higher mathematics, such as calculus, he was one of the most influential scientists in history. Some historians of science refer to him as the best experimentalist in the history of science. "best experimentalist in the history of science." Quoting Dr Peter Ford, from the University of Bathâs Department of Physics. Accessed January 2007. The SI unit of capacitance, the farad, is named after him, as is the Faraday constant, the charge on a mole of electrons (about 96,485 coulombs). Faraday's law of induction states that a magnetic field changing in time creates a proportional electromotive force.
Faraday was the first and foremost Fullerian Professor of Chemistry at the Royal Institution of Great Britain, a position to which he was appointed for life.
Michael Faraday from a photograph by John Watkins, British Library
Michael Faraday was born in Newington Butts, near present-day South London, England. His family was not well off. His father, James, was a member of the Sandemanian sect of Christianity. James Faraday had come to London ca 1790 from Outhgill in Westmorland, where he had been the village blacksmith. The young Michael Faraday, one of four children, having only the most basic of school educations, had to largely educate himself. "Michael Faraday." History of Science and Technology. Houghton Mifflin Company, 2004. Answers.com 4 June 2007. /ref> At fourteen he became apprenticed to a local bookbinder and bookseller George Riebau and, during his seven-year apprenticeship, he read many books, including Isaac Watts' The Improvement of the Mind, and he enthusiastically implemented the principles and suggestions contained therein. He developed an interest in science and specifically in electricity. In particular, he was inspired by the book Conversations in Chemistry by Jane Marcet.
At the age of twenty, in 1812, at the end of his apprenticeship, Faraday attended lectures by the eminent English chemist and physicist Humphry Davy of the Royal Institution and Royal Society, and John Tatum, founder of the City Philosophical Society. Many tickets for these lectures were given to Faraday by William Dance (one of the founders of the Royal Philharmonic Society). Afterwards, Faraday sent Davy a three hundred page book based on notes taken during the lectures. Davy's reply was immediate, kind, and favorable. When Davy damaged his eyesight in an accident with nitrogen trichloride, he decided to employ Faraday as a secretary. When John Payne, one of the Royal Institution's assistants, was fired, Sir Humphry Davy was asked to find a replacement. He appointed Faraday as Chemical Assistant at the Royal Institution on March 1.
In the class-based English society of the time, Faraday was not considered a gentleman. When Davy went on a long tour to the continent in 1813-5, his valet did not wish to go. Faraday was going as Davy's scientific assistant, and was asked to act as Davy's valet until a replacement could be found in Paris. Davy failed to find a replacement, and Faraday was forced to fill the role of valet as well as assistant throughout the trip. Davy's wife, Jane Apreece, refused to treat Faraday as an equal (making him travel outside the coach, eat with the servants, etc.) and generally made Faraday so miserable that he contemplated returning to England alone and giving up science altogether. The trip did, however, give him access to the European scientific elite and a host of stimulating ideas.
His sponsor and mentor was John 'Mad Jack' Fuller, who created the Fullerian Professorship of Chemistry at the Royal Institution.
Faraday was a devout Christian and a member of the small Sandemanian denomination, an offshoot of the Church of Scotland. He later served two terms as an elder in the group's church.
Faraday married Sarah Barnard (1800-1879) on June 2, 1821, although they would never have children. They met through attending the Sandemanian church.
He was elected a member of the Royal Society in 1824, appointed director of the laboratory in 1825; and in 1833 he was appointed Fullerian professor of chemistry in the institution for life, without the obligation to deliver lectures.
The title page of The Chemical History of a Candle (1861)
Faraday's earliest chemical work was as an assistant to Davy. He made a special study of chlorine, and discovered two new chlorides of carbon. He also made the first rough experiments on the diffusion of gases, a phenomenon first pointed out by John Dalton, the physical importance of which was more fully brought to light by Thomas Graham and Joseph Loschmidt. He succeeded in liquefying several gases; he investigated the alloys of steel, and produced several new kinds of glass intended for optical purposes. A specimen of one of these heavy glasses afterwards became historically important as the substance in which Faraday detected the rotation of the plane of polarisation of light when the glass was placed in a magnetic field, and also as the substance which was first repelled by the poles of the magnet. He also endeavoured, with some success, to make the general methods of chemistry, as distinguished from its results, the subject of special study and of popular exposition.
He invented an early form of what was to become the Bunsen burner, which is used almost universally in science laboratories as a convenient source of heat. See page 127 of Faraday's Chemical Manipulation, Being Instructions to Students in Chemistry (1827)
Faraday worked extensively in the field of chemistry, discovering chemical substances such as benzene (which he called bicarburet of hydrogen), inventing the system of oxidation numbers, and liquefying gases such as chlorine. In 1820 Faraday reported on the first syntheses of compounds made from carbon and chlorine, C 2 H 6 and C 2 H 4 , and published his results the following year. Faraday also determined the composition of the chlorine clathrate hydrate, which had been discovered by Humphry Davy in 1810.
Faraday also discovered the laws of electrolysis and popularized terminology such as anode, cathode, electrode, and ion, terms largely created by William Whewell.
Faraday was the first to report what later came to be called metallic nanoparticles. In 1847 he discovered that the optical properties of gold colloids differed from those of the corresponding bulk metal. This was probably the first reported observation of the effects of quantum size, and might be considered to be the birth of nanoscience.
Faraday's greatest work was probably with electricity and magnetism. The first experiment which he recorded was the construction of a voltaic pile with seven halfpence pieces, stacked together with seven disks of sheet zinc, and six pieces of paper moistened with salt water. With this pile he decomposed sulphate of magnesia (first letter to Abbott, July 12, 1812).
[[Image:Faraday photograph ii.jpg|thumb|200px|left|Michael Faraday holding a glass bar of the type he used in 1845 to show that magnetism can affect light. Detail of an engraving by Henry Adlard, based on an earlier photograph by Maull & Polyblank ca. 1857. See National Portrait Gallery, UK ]]
In 1821, soon after the Danish physicist and chemist, Hans Christian Ãrsted discovered the phenomenon of electromagnetism, Davy and British scientist William Hyde Wollaston tried but failed to design an electric motor. Faraday, having discussed the problem with the two men, went on to build two devices to produce what he called electromagnetic rotation: a continuous circular motion from the circular magnetic force around a wire and a wire extending into a pool of mercury with a magnet placed inside would rotate around the magnet if supplied with current from a chemical battery. The latter device is known as a homopolar motor. These experiments and inventions form the foundation of modern electromagnetic technology. Faraday published his results without acknowledging his debt to Wollaston and Davy, and the resulting controversy caused Faraday to withdraw from electromagnetic research for several years.
At this stage, there is also evidence to suggest that Davy may have been trying to slow Faradayâs rise as a scientist (or natural philosopher as it was known then). In 1825, for instance, Davy set him onto optical glass experiments, which progressed for six years with no great results. It was not until Davy's death, in 1829, that Faraday stopped these fruitless tasks and moved on to endeavors that were more worthwhile. Two years later, in 1831, he began his great series of experiments in which he discovered electromagnetic induction. Joseph Henry likely discovered self-induction a few months earlier and both may have been anticipated by the work of Francesco Zantedeschi in Italy in 1829 and 1830.
Faraday's breakthrough came when he wrapped two insulated coils of wire around a massive iron ring, bolted to a chair, and found that upon passing a current through one coil, a momentary current was induced in the other coil. This phenomenon is known as mutual induction. The iron ring-coil apparatus is still on display at the Royal Institution. In subsequent experiments he found that if he moved a magnet through a loop of wire, an electric current flowed in the wire. The current also flowed if the loop was moved over a stationary magnet. His demonstrations established that a changing magnetic field produces an electric field. This relation was mathematically modelled by Faraday's law, which subsequently became one of the four Maxwell equations. These in turn have evolved into the generalization known today as field theory.
Michael Faraday - statue in Savoy Place, London.
Sculptor John Henry Foley RA
Faraday later used the principle to construct the electric dynamo, the ancestor of modern power generators.
In 1839 he completed a series of experiments aimed at investigating the fundamental nature of electricity. Faraday used "static", batteries, and "animal electricity" to produce the phenomena of electrostatic attraction, electrolysis, magnetism, etc. He concluded that, contrary to scientific opinion of the time, the divisions between the various "kinds" of electricity were illusory. Faraday instead proposed that only a single "electricity" exists, and the changing values of quantity and intensity (voltage and charge) would produce different groups of phenomena.
Near the end of his career Faraday proposed that electromagnetic forces extended into the empty space around the conductor. This idea was rejected by his fellow scientists, and Faraday did not live to see this idea eventually accepted. Faraday's concept of lines of flux emanating from charged bodies and magnets provided a way to visualize electric and magnetic fields. That mental model was crucial to the successful development of electromechanical devices which dominated engineering and industry for the remainder of the 19th century.
In 1845, he discovered the phenomenon that he named diamagnetism, and what is now called the Faraday effect: The plane of polarization of linearly polarized light propagated through a material medium can be rotated by the application of an external magnetic field aligned in the propagation direction. He wrote in his notebook, "I have at last succeeded in illuminating a magnetic curve or line of force and in magnetising a ray of light". This established that magnetic force and light were related.
In his work on static electricity, Faraday demonstrated that the charge only resided on the exterior of a charged conductor, and exterior charge had no influence on anything enclosed within a conductor. This is because the exterior charges redistribute such that the interior fields due to them cancel. This shielding effect is used in what is now known as a Faraday cage.
Faraday was an excellent experimentalist who conveyed his ideas in clear and simple language. However, his mathematical abilities did not extend as far as trigonometry or any but the simplest algebra. It was James Clerk Maxwell who took the work of Faraday, and others, and consolidated it with a set of equations that lie at the base of all modern theories of electromagnetic phenomena.
Michael Faraday meets Father Thames, from Punch (July 21, 1855)
Beyond his scientific research into areas such as chemistry, electricity, and magnetism at the Royal Institution, Faraday undertook numerous, and often time-consuming, service projects for private enterprise and the British government. This work included investigations of explosions in mines, being an expert witness in court, and the preparation of high-quality optical glass.
As a respected scientist in a nation with strong maritime interests, Faraday spent extensive amounts of time on projects such as the construction and operation of light houses and protecting the bottoms of ships from corrosion.
Faraday also was active in what would now be called environmental science, or engineering. He investigated industrial pollution at Swansea and was consulted on air pollution at the Royal Mint. In July of 1855, Faraday wrote a letter to The Times on the subject of the foul condition of the River Thames, which resulted in an oft-reprinted cartoon in Punch. (See also The Great Stink.)
Faraday assisted with planning and judging of exhibits for the Great Exhibition of 1851 in London. He also advised the National Gallery on the cleaning and protection of its art collection, and served on the National Gallery Site Commission in 1857.
Education was another area of service for Faraday. He lectured on the topic in 1854 at the Royal Institution, and in 1862 he appeared before a Public Schools Commission to give his views on education in Great Britain. Faraday also weighed in, negatively, on the public's fascination with table-turning, mesmerism, and seances, chastising both the public and the nation's educational system. See The Illustrated London News, July 1853, for Faraday's comments.
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In June of 1832, the University of Oxford granted Faraday a Doctor of Civil Law degree (honorary). During his lifetime, Faraday rejected a knighthood and twice refused to become President of the Royal Society.
In 1848, as a result of representations by the Prince Consort, Michael Faraday was awarded a grace and favour house in Hampton Court, Surrey free of all expenses or upkeep. This was the Master Mason's House, later called Faraday House, and now No.37 Hampton Court Road. In 1858 Faraday retired to live there. Twickenham Museum on Faraday and Faraday House, Accessed June 2006
Faraday died at his house at Hampton Court on August 25, 1867. He turned down burial in Westminster Abbey, but he has a memorial plaque there, near Isaac Newton's tomb. Faraday was interred in the Sandemanian plot in Highgate Cemetery.
Michael Faraday's grave at Highgate Cemetery
Faraday gave a successful series of lectures on the chemistry and physics of flames at the Royal Institution, entitled The Chemical History of a Candle. This was one of the earlier Christmas lectures for young people, which are still given each year. Between 1827 and 1860, Faraday gave the Christmas lecture a record nineteen times.
Faraday refused to participate in the production of chemical weapons for the Crimean War citing ethical reasons.
A statue of Faraday stands in Savoy Place, London, outside the Institution of Electrical Engineers.
A recently built hall of accommodation at Brunel University is named after Faraday.
A hall at Loughborough University was named after Faraday in 1960. Near the entrance to its dining hall is a bronze casting, which depicts the symbol of an electrical transformer, and inside there hangs a portrait, both in Faraday's honour.
Faraday's picture was printed on British £20 banknotes from 1991 until 2001. Bank of England, Withdrawn Notes
In the video game Chromehounds there is a ThermoVision Device named the Faraday.
The former UK Faraday Atmospheric Research Station in Antarctica was named after him.
Faraday was one of the then eight foreign members of the French Academy of Sciences.
Michael Faraday's signature
Faraday's books, with the exception of Chemical Manipulation, were collections of scientific papers or transcriptions of lectures. See page 220 of Hamilton's A Life of Discovery: Michael Faraday, Giant of the Scientific Revolution (2002) Since his death, Faraday's diary has been published, as have several large volumes of his letters and Faraday's journal from his travels with Davy in 1813 - 1815.
* Chemical Manipulation, Being Instructions to Students in Chemistry, John Murray, 1st ed. 1827, 2nd ed. 1830, 3rd ed. 1842
* Experimental Researches in Electricity, vols. i. and ii., Richard and John Edward Taylor, vols. i. and ii.. 1844 and 1847; vol. iii., 1844; vol. iii. Richard Taylor and William Francis, 1855
* Experimental Researches in Chemistry and Physics, Taylor and Francis, 1859
* A Course of Six Lectures on the Chemical History of a Candle, edited by W. Crookes, Griffin, Bohn & Co., 1861
* On the Various Forces in Nature, edited by W. Crookes, Chatto & Windus, 1873
* Faraday's Diary edited by T. Martin was published in eight volumes, 1932 - 1936
* Curiosity Perfectly Satisfyed: Faraday's Travels in Europe 1813-1815, edited by B. Bowers and L. Symons, Institution of Electrical Engineers, 1991
* The Correspondence of Michael Faraday, edited by F. A. J. L. James, INSPEC, Inc., volume 1, 1991; volume 2, 1993; volume 3, 1996; volume 4, 1999
* "Nothing is too wonderful to be true if it be consistent with the laws of nature, and in such things as these, experiment is the best test of such consistency." From the entry of 19 March 1849 in Faraday's Diary
* "Work. Finish. Publish." â his well-known advice to the young William Crookes
* "The important thing is to know how to take all things quietly."
* Regarding the hereafter, "Speculations? I have none. I am resting on certainties. I know whom I have believed and am persuaded that he is able to keep that which I have committed unto him against that day."
* "Next Sabbath day (the 22nd) I shall complete my 70th year. I can hardly think of myself so old."
*Above the doorways of the Pfahler Hall of Science at Ursinus College in Collegeville, Pennsylvania, there is a stone inscription of a quote attributed to Michael Faraday which reads "but still try, for who knows what is possible..." See
* "One day sir, you may tax it." Faraday's reply to William Gladstone, then British Minister of Finance, when asked of the practical value of electricity.
* "If you would cause your view ... to be acknowledged by scientific men; you would do a great service to science. If you would even get them to say yes or no to your conclusions it would help to clear the future progress. I believe some hesitate because they do not like their thoughts disturbed." From Life and Letters, 2:389.
* Faraday rotator
* Superconductivity
* Tyndall, John, Faraday as a Discoverer, (Longmans, 1st ed. 1868, 2nd ed. 1870).
* Bence Jones, Henry (1870). The Life and Letters of Faraday in 2 vols, Longmans.
* Gladstone, J. H. (1872). Michael Faraday, Macmillan.
* Thompson, Silvanus (1901, reprinted 2005). Michael Faraday, His Life and Work. Cassell and Company, London, 1901; reprint by Kessenger Publishing, Whitefish, MT. ISBN 1-4179-7036-7
* The British Electrical and Allied Manufacturers Association (1931). Faraday. R. & R. Clark, Ltd., Edinburgh, 1931.
* Williams, L. Pearce (1971), Faraday: A Biography, Simon and Schuster.
* Cantor, Geoffrey (1991). Michael Faraday, Sandemanian and Scientist, Macmillian, ISBN 0-333-55077
* Hamilton, James (2002). Faraday: The Life. London: Harper Collins. ISBN 0-00-716376-2
* Hamilton, James (2004). A Life of Discovery: Michael Faraday, Giant of the Scientific Revolution. New York: Random House. ISBN 1-4000-6016-8
* Agassi, Joseph (1971), Faraday as a Natural Philosopher, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
* Ames, Joseph Sweetman (Ed.), The discovery of induced electric currents Vol. 2. Memoirs, by Michael Faraday. New York, Cincinnati [etc.] American book company [c1900] LCCN 00005889
* Gooding, David (Ed.) (1985), Faraday Rediscovered: Essays on the Life and Work of Michael Faraday, 1791-1867, London/New York, Macmillan/Stockton
* Thomas, John Meurig (1991). Michael Faraday and the Royal Institution: The Genius of Man and Place Bristol: Hilger. ISBN 0-7503-0145-7
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* Biography at The Royal Institution of Great Britain
* Faraday as a Discoverer by John Tyndall, Project Gutenberg (downloads)
* The Christian Character of Michael Faraday
* Michael Faraday on the British twenty-pound banknote
* The Life and Discoveries of Michael Faraday by J. A. Crowther, London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1920
* "Faraday" at LoveToKnow 1911 Britannica Online Encyclopedia.
*
* (downloads)
* "Experimental Researches in Electricity" by Michael Faraday Original text with Biographical Introduction by Professor John Tyndall, 1914, Everyman edition.
* Video Podcast with Sir John Cadogan talking about Benzene since Faraday
* The letters of Faraday and Schoenbein 1836-1862. With notes, comments and references to contemporary letters (1899) full download PDF
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Michael_Faraday | What did Joseph Henry likely discover? | self-induction | data/set4/a7 | Michael_Faraday
Michael Faraday, FRS (September 22, 1791 â August 25, 1867) was an English chemist and physicist (or natural philosopher, in the terminology of that time) who contributed to the fields of electromagnetism and electrochemistry.
Faraday studied the magnetic field around a conductor carrying a DC electric current, and established the basis for the magnetic field concept in physics. He discovered electromagnetic induction, diamagnetism and electrolysis. He established that magnetism could affect rays of light and that there was an underlying relationship between the two phenomena. Michael Faraday entry at the 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica hosted by LovetoKnow Retrieved January 2007. Institution of Engineering and Technology, London Archives, Michael Faraday His inventions of electromagnetic rotary devices formed the foundation of electric motor technology, and it was largely due to his efforts that electricity became viable for use in technology.
As a chemist, Faraday discovered benzene, investigated the clathrate hydrate of chlorine, invented an early form of the bunsen burner and the system of oxidation numbers, and popularized terminology such as anode, cathode, electrode, and ion.
Although Faraday received little formal education and knew little of higher mathematics, such as calculus, he was one of the most influential scientists in history. Some historians of science refer to him as the best experimentalist in the history of science. "best experimentalist in the history of science." Quoting Dr Peter Ford, from the University of Bathâs Department of Physics. Accessed January 2007. The SI unit of capacitance, the farad, is named after him, as is the Faraday constant, the charge on a mole of electrons (about 96,485 coulombs). Faraday's law of induction states that a magnetic field changing in time creates a proportional electromotive force.
Faraday was the first and foremost Fullerian Professor of Chemistry at the Royal Institution of Great Britain, a position to which he was appointed for life.
Michael Faraday from a photograph by John Watkins, British Library
Michael Faraday was born in Newington Butts, near present-day South London, England. His family was not well off. His father, James, was a member of the Sandemanian sect of Christianity. James Faraday had come to London ca 1790 from Outhgill in Westmorland, where he had been the village blacksmith. The young Michael Faraday, one of four children, having only the most basic of school educations, had to largely educate himself. "Michael Faraday." History of Science and Technology. Houghton Mifflin Company, 2004. Answers.com 4 June 2007. /ref> At fourteen he became apprenticed to a local bookbinder and bookseller George Riebau and, during his seven-year apprenticeship, he read many books, including Isaac Watts' The Improvement of the Mind, and he enthusiastically implemented the principles and suggestions contained therein. He developed an interest in science and specifically in electricity. In particular, he was inspired by the book Conversations in Chemistry by Jane Marcet.
At the age of twenty, in 1812, at the end of his apprenticeship, Faraday attended lectures by the eminent English chemist and physicist Humphry Davy of the Royal Institution and Royal Society, and John Tatum, founder of the City Philosophical Society. Many tickets for these lectures were given to Faraday by William Dance (one of the founders of the Royal Philharmonic Society). Afterwards, Faraday sent Davy a three hundred page book based on notes taken during the lectures. Davy's reply was immediate, kind, and favorable. When Davy damaged his eyesight in an accident with nitrogen trichloride, he decided to employ Faraday as a secretary. When John Payne, one of the Royal Institution's assistants, was fired, Sir Humphry Davy was asked to find a replacement. He appointed Faraday as Chemical Assistant at the Royal Institution on March 1.
In the class-based English society of the time, Faraday was not considered a gentleman. When Davy went on a long tour to the continent in 1813-5, his valet did not wish to go. Faraday was going as Davy's scientific assistant, and was asked to act as Davy's valet until a replacement could be found in Paris. Davy failed to find a replacement, and Faraday was forced to fill the role of valet as well as assistant throughout the trip. Davy's wife, Jane Apreece, refused to treat Faraday as an equal (making him travel outside the coach, eat with the servants, etc.) and generally made Faraday so miserable that he contemplated returning to England alone and giving up science altogether. The trip did, however, give him access to the European scientific elite and a host of stimulating ideas.
His sponsor and mentor was John 'Mad Jack' Fuller, who created the Fullerian Professorship of Chemistry at the Royal Institution.
Faraday was a devout Christian and a member of the small Sandemanian denomination, an offshoot of the Church of Scotland. He later served two terms as an elder in the group's church.
Faraday married Sarah Barnard (1800-1879) on June 2, 1821, although they would never have children. They met through attending the Sandemanian church.
He was elected a member of the Royal Society in 1824, appointed director of the laboratory in 1825; and in 1833 he was appointed Fullerian professor of chemistry in the institution for life, without the obligation to deliver lectures.
The title page of The Chemical History of a Candle (1861)
Faraday's earliest chemical work was as an assistant to Davy. He made a special study of chlorine, and discovered two new chlorides of carbon. He also made the first rough experiments on the diffusion of gases, a phenomenon first pointed out by John Dalton, the physical importance of which was more fully brought to light by Thomas Graham and Joseph Loschmidt. He succeeded in liquefying several gases; he investigated the alloys of steel, and produced several new kinds of glass intended for optical purposes. A specimen of one of these heavy glasses afterwards became historically important as the substance in which Faraday detected the rotation of the plane of polarisation of light when the glass was placed in a magnetic field, and also as the substance which was first repelled by the poles of the magnet. He also endeavoured, with some success, to make the general methods of chemistry, as distinguished from its results, the subject of special study and of popular exposition.
He invented an early form of what was to become the Bunsen burner, which is used almost universally in science laboratories as a convenient source of heat. See page 127 of Faraday's Chemical Manipulation, Being Instructions to Students in Chemistry (1827)
Faraday worked extensively in the field of chemistry, discovering chemical substances such as benzene (which he called bicarburet of hydrogen), inventing the system of oxidation numbers, and liquefying gases such as chlorine. In 1820 Faraday reported on the first syntheses of compounds made from carbon and chlorine, C 2 H 6 and C 2 H 4 , and published his results the following year. Faraday also determined the composition of the chlorine clathrate hydrate, which had been discovered by Humphry Davy in 1810.
Faraday also discovered the laws of electrolysis and popularized terminology such as anode, cathode, electrode, and ion, terms largely created by William Whewell.
Faraday was the first to report what later came to be called metallic nanoparticles. In 1847 he discovered that the optical properties of gold colloids differed from those of the corresponding bulk metal. This was probably the first reported observation of the effects of quantum size, and might be considered to be the birth of nanoscience.
Faraday's greatest work was probably with electricity and magnetism. The first experiment which he recorded was the construction of a voltaic pile with seven halfpence pieces, stacked together with seven disks of sheet zinc, and six pieces of paper moistened with salt water. With this pile he decomposed sulphate of magnesia (first letter to Abbott, July 12, 1812).
[[Image:Faraday photograph ii.jpg|thumb|200px|left|Michael Faraday holding a glass bar of the type he used in 1845 to show that magnetism can affect light. Detail of an engraving by Henry Adlard, based on an earlier photograph by Maull & Polyblank ca. 1857. See National Portrait Gallery, UK ]]
In 1821, soon after the Danish physicist and chemist, Hans Christian Ãrsted discovered the phenomenon of electromagnetism, Davy and British scientist William Hyde Wollaston tried but failed to design an electric motor. Faraday, having discussed the problem with the two men, went on to build two devices to produce what he called electromagnetic rotation: a continuous circular motion from the circular magnetic force around a wire and a wire extending into a pool of mercury with a magnet placed inside would rotate around the magnet if supplied with current from a chemical battery. The latter device is known as a homopolar motor. These experiments and inventions form the foundation of modern electromagnetic technology. Faraday published his results without acknowledging his debt to Wollaston and Davy, and the resulting controversy caused Faraday to withdraw from electromagnetic research for several years.
At this stage, there is also evidence to suggest that Davy may have been trying to slow Faradayâs rise as a scientist (or natural philosopher as it was known then). In 1825, for instance, Davy set him onto optical glass experiments, which progressed for six years with no great results. It was not until Davy's death, in 1829, that Faraday stopped these fruitless tasks and moved on to endeavors that were more worthwhile. Two years later, in 1831, he began his great series of experiments in which he discovered electromagnetic induction. Joseph Henry likely discovered self-induction a few months earlier and both may have been anticipated by the work of Francesco Zantedeschi in Italy in 1829 and 1830.
Faraday's breakthrough came when he wrapped two insulated coils of wire around a massive iron ring, bolted to a chair, and found that upon passing a current through one coil, a momentary current was induced in the other coil. This phenomenon is known as mutual induction. The iron ring-coil apparatus is still on display at the Royal Institution. In subsequent experiments he found that if he moved a magnet through a loop of wire, an electric current flowed in the wire. The current also flowed if the loop was moved over a stationary magnet. His demonstrations established that a changing magnetic field produces an electric field. This relation was mathematically modelled by Faraday's law, which subsequently became one of the four Maxwell equations. These in turn have evolved into the generalization known today as field theory.
Michael Faraday - statue in Savoy Place, London.
Sculptor John Henry Foley RA
Faraday later used the principle to construct the electric dynamo, the ancestor of modern power generators.
In 1839 he completed a series of experiments aimed at investigating the fundamental nature of electricity. Faraday used "static", batteries, and "animal electricity" to produce the phenomena of electrostatic attraction, electrolysis, magnetism, etc. He concluded that, contrary to scientific opinion of the time, the divisions between the various "kinds" of electricity were illusory. Faraday instead proposed that only a single "electricity" exists, and the changing values of quantity and intensity (voltage and charge) would produce different groups of phenomena.
Near the end of his career Faraday proposed that electromagnetic forces extended into the empty space around the conductor. This idea was rejected by his fellow scientists, and Faraday did not live to see this idea eventually accepted. Faraday's concept of lines of flux emanating from charged bodies and magnets provided a way to visualize electric and magnetic fields. That mental model was crucial to the successful development of electromechanical devices which dominated engineering and industry for the remainder of the 19th century.
In 1845, he discovered the phenomenon that he named diamagnetism, and what is now called the Faraday effect: The plane of polarization of linearly polarized light propagated through a material medium can be rotated by the application of an external magnetic field aligned in the propagation direction. He wrote in his notebook, "I have at last succeeded in illuminating a magnetic curve or line of force and in magnetising a ray of light". This established that magnetic force and light were related.
In his work on static electricity, Faraday demonstrated that the charge only resided on the exterior of a charged conductor, and exterior charge had no influence on anything enclosed within a conductor. This is because the exterior charges redistribute such that the interior fields due to them cancel. This shielding effect is used in what is now known as a Faraday cage.
Faraday was an excellent experimentalist who conveyed his ideas in clear and simple language. However, his mathematical abilities did not extend as far as trigonometry or any but the simplest algebra. It was James Clerk Maxwell who took the work of Faraday, and others, and consolidated it with a set of equations that lie at the base of all modern theories of electromagnetic phenomena.
Michael Faraday meets Father Thames, from Punch (July 21, 1855)
Beyond his scientific research into areas such as chemistry, electricity, and magnetism at the Royal Institution, Faraday undertook numerous, and often time-consuming, service projects for private enterprise and the British government. This work included investigations of explosions in mines, being an expert witness in court, and the preparation of high-quality optical glass.
As a respected scientist in a nation with strong maritime interests, Faraday spent extensive amounts of time on projects such as the construction and operation of light houses and protecting the bottoms of ships from corrosion.
Faraday also was active in what would now be called environmental science, or engineering. He investigated industrial pollution at Swansea and was consulted on air pollution at the Royal Mint. In July of 1855, Faraday wrote a letter to The Times on the subject of the foul condition of the River Thames, which resulted in an oft-reprinted cartoon in Punch. (See also The Great Stink.)
Faraday assisted with planning and judging of exhibits for the Great Exhibition of 1851 in London. He also advised the National Gallery on the cleaning and protection of its art collection, and served on the National Gallery Site Commission in 1857.
Education was another area of service for Faraday. He lectured on the topic in 1854 at the Royal Institution, and in 1862 he appeared before a Public Schools Commission to give his views on education in Great Britain. Faraday also weighed in, negatively, on the public's fascination with table-turning, mesmerism, and seances, chastising both the public and the nation's educational system. See The Illustrated London News, July 1853, for Faraday's comments.
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In June of 1832, the University of Oxford granted Faraday a Doctor of Civil Law degree (honorary). During his lifetime, Faraday rejected a knighthood and twice refused to become President of the Royal Society.
In 1848, as a result of representations by the Prince Consort, Michael Faraday was awarded a grace and favour house in Hampton Court, Surrey free of all expenses or upkeep. This was the Master Mason's House, later called Faraday House, and now No.37 Hampton Court Road. In 1858 Faraday retired to live there. Twickenham Museum on Faraday and Faraday House, Accessed June 2006
Faraday died at his house at Hampton Court on August 25, 1867. He turned down burial in Westminster Abbey, but he has a memorial plaque there, near Isaac Newton's tomb. Faraday was interred in the Sandemanian plot in Highgate Cemetery.
Michael Faraday's grave at Highgate Cemetery
Faraday gave a successful series of lectures on the chemistry and physics of flames at the Royal Institution, entitled The Chemical History of a Candle. This was one of the earlier Christmas lectures for young people, which are still given each year. Between 1827 and 1860, Faraday gave the Christmas lecture a record nineteen times.
Faraday refused to participate in the production of chemical weapons for the Crimean War citing ethical reasons.
A statue of Faraday stands in Savoy Place, London, outside the Institution of Electrical Engineers.
A recently built hall of accommodation at Brunel University is named after Faraday.
A hall at Loughborough University was named after Faraday in 1960. Near the entrance to its dining hall is a bronze casting, which depicts the symbol of an electrical transformer, and inside there hangs a portrait, both in Faraday's honour.
Faraday's picture was printed on British £20 banknotes from 1991 until 2001. Bank of England, Withdrawn Notes
In the video game Chromehounds there is a ThermoVision Device named the Faraday.
The former UK Faraday Atmospheric Research Station in Antarctica was named after him.
Faraday was one of the then eight foreign members of the French Academy of Sciences.
Michael Faraday's signature
Faraday's books, with the exception of Chemical Manipulation, were collections of scientific papers or transcriptions of lectures. See page 220 of Hamilton's A Life of Discovery: Michael Faraday, Giant of the Scientific Revolution (2002) Since his death, Faraday's diary has been published, as have several large volumes of his letters and Faraday's journal from his travels with Davy in 1813 - 1815.
* Chemical Manipulation, Being Instructions to Students in Chemistry, John Murray, 1st ed. 1827, 2nd ed. 1830, 3rd ed. 1842
* Experimental Researches in Electricity, vols. i. and ii., Richard and John Edward Taylor, vols. i. and ii.. 1844 and 1847; vol. iii., 1844; vol. iii. Richard Taylor and William Francis, 1855
* Experimental Researches in Chemistry and Physics, Taylor and Francis, 1859
* A Course of Six Lectures on the Chemical History of a Candle, edited by W. Crookes, Griffin, Bohn & Co., 1861
* On the Various Forces in Nature, edited by W. Crookes, Chatto & Windus, 1873
* Faraday's Diary edited by T. Martin was published in eight volumes, 1932 - 1936
* Curiosity Perfectly Satisfyed: Faraday's Travels in Europe 1813-1815, edited by B. Bowers and L. Symons, Institution of Electrical Engineers, 1991
* The Correspondence of Michael Faraday, edited by F. A. J. L. James, INSPEC, Inc., volume 1, 1991; volume 2, 1993; volume 3, 1996; volume 4, 1999
* "Nothing is too wonderful to be true if it be consistent with the laws of nature, and in such things as these, experiment is the best test of such consistency." From the entry of 19 March 1849 in Faraday's Diary
* "Work. Finish. Publish." â his well-known advice to the young William Crookes
* "The important thing is to know how to take all things quietly."
* Regarding the hereafter, "Speculations? I have none. I am resting on certainties. I know whom I have believed and am persuaded that he is able to keep that which I have committed unto him against that day."
* "Next Sabbath day (the 22nd) I shall complete my 70th year. I can hardly think of myself so old."
*Above the doorways of the Pfahler Hall of Science at Ursinus College in Collegeville, Pennsylvania, there is a stone inscription of a quote attributed to Michael Faraday which reads "but still try, for who knows what is possible..." See
* "One day sir, you may tax it." Faraday's reply to William Gladstone, then British Minister of Finance, when asked of the practical value of electricity.
* "If you would cause your view ... to be acknowledged by scientific men; you would do a great service to science. If you would even get them to say yes or no to your conclusions it would help to clear the future progress. I believe some hesitate because they do not like their thoughts disturbed." From Life and Letters, 2:389.
* Faraday rotator
* Superconductivity
* Tyndall, John, Faraday as a Discoverer, (Longmans, 1st ed. 1868, 2nd ed. 1870).
* Bence Jones, Henry (1870). The Life and Letters of Faraday in 2 vols, Longmans.
* Gladstone, J. H. (1872). Michael Faraday, Macmillan.
* Thompson, Silvanus (1901, reprinted 2005). Michael Faraday, His Life and Work. Cassell and Company, London, 1901; reprint by Kessenger Publishing, Whitefish, MT. ISBN 1-4179-7036-7
* The British Electrical and Allied Manufacturers Association (1931). Faraday. R. & R. Clark, Ltd., Edinburgh, 1931.
* Williams, L. Pearce (1971), Faraday: A Biography, Simon and Schuster.
* Cantor, Geoffrey (1991). Michael Faraday, Sandemanian and Scientist, Macmillian, ISBN 0-333-55077
* Hamilton, James (2002). Faraday: The Life. London: Harper Collins. ISBN 0-00-716376-2
* Hamilton, James (2004). A Life of Discovery: Michael Faraday, Giant of the Scientific Revolution. New York: Random House. ISBN 1-4000-6016-8
* Agassi, Joseph (1971), Faraday as a Natural Philosopher, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
* Ames, Joseph Sweetman (Ed.), The discovery of induced electric currents Vol. 2. Memoirs, by Michael Faraday. New York, Cincinnati [etc.] American book company [c1900] LCCN 00005889
* Gooding, David (Ed.) (1985), Faraday Rediscovered: Essays on the Life and Work of Michael Faraday, 1791-1867, London/New York, Macmillan/Stockton
* Thomas, John Meurig (1991). Michael Faraday and the Royal Institution: The Genius of Man and Place Bristol: Hilger. ISBN 0-7503-0145-7
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* Biography at The Royal Institution of Great Britain
* Faraday as a Discoverer by John Tyndall, Project Gutenberg (downloads)
* The Christian Character of Michael Faraday
* Michael Faraday on the British twenty-pound banknote
* The Life and Discoveries of Michael Faraday by J. A. Crowther, London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1920
* "Faraday" at LoveToKnow 1911 Britannica Online Encyclopedia.
*
* (downloads)
* "Experimental Researches in Electricity" by Michael Faraday Original text with Biographical Introduction by Professor John Tyndall, 1914, Everyman edition.
* Video Podcast with Sir John Cadogan talking about Benzene since Faraday
* The letters of Faraday and Schoenbein 1836-1862. With notes, comments and references to contemporary letters (1899) full download PDF
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Michael_Faraday | What did Joseph Henry likely discover? | self-induction | data/set4/a7 | Michael_Faraday
Michael Faraday, FRS (September 22, 1791 â August 25, 1867) was an English chemist and physicist (or natural philosopher, in the terminology of that time) who contributed to the fields of electromagnetism and electrochemistry.
Faraday studied the magnetic field around a conductor carrying a DC electric current, and established the basis for the magnetic field concept in physics. He discovered electromagnetic induction, diamagnetism and electrolysis. He established that magnetism could affect rays of light and that there was an underlying relationship between the two phenomena. Michael Faraday entry at the 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica hosted by LovetoKnow Retrieved January 2007. Institution of Engineering and Technology, London Archives, Michael Faraday His inventions of electromagnetic rotary devices formed the foundation of electric motor technology, and it was largely due to his efforts that electricity became viable for use in technology.
As a chemist, Faraday discovered benzene, investigated the clathrate hydrate of chlorine, invented an early form of the bunsen burner and the system of oxidation numbers, and popularized terminology such as anode, cathode, electrode, and ion.
Although Faraday received little formal education and knew little of higher mathematics, such as calculus, he was one of the most influential scientists in history. Some historians of science refer to him as the best experimentalist in the history of science. "best experimentalist in the history of science." Quoting Dr Peter Ford, from the University of Bathâs Department of Physics. Accessed January 2007. The SI unit of capacitance, the farad, is named after him, as is the Faraday constant, the charge on a mole of electrons (about 96,485 coulombs). Faraday's law of induction states that a magnetic field changing in time creates a proportional electromotive force.
Faraday was the first and foremost Fullerian Professor of Chemistry at the Royal Institution of Great Britain, a position to which he was appointed for life.
Michael Faraday from a photograph by John Watkins, British Library
Michael Faraday was born in Newington Butts, near present-day South London, England. His family was not well off. His father, James, was a member of the Sandemanian sect of Christianity. James Faraday had come to London ca 1790 from Outhgill in Westmorland, where he had been the village blacksmith. The young Michael Faraday, one of four children, having only the most basic of school educations, had to largely educate himself. "Michael Faraday." History of Science and Technology. Houghton Mifflin Company, 2004. Answers.com 4 June 2007. /ref> At fourteen he became apprenticed to a local bookbinder and bookseller George Riebau and, during his seven-year apprenticeship, he read many books, including Isaac Watts' The Improvement of the Mind, and he enthusiastically implemented the principles and suggestions contained therein. He developed an interest in science and specifically in electricity. In particular, he was inspired by the book Conversations in Chemistry by Jane Marcet.
At the age of twenty, in 1812, at the end of his apprenticeship, Faraday attended lectures by the eminent English chemist and physicist Humphry Davy of the Royal Institution and Royal Society, and John Tatum, founder of the City Philosophical Society. Many tickets for these lectures were given to Faraday by William Dance (one of the founders of the Royal Philharmonic Society). Afterwards, Faraday sent Davy a three hundred page book based on notes taken during the lectures. Davy's reply was immediate, kind, and favorable. When Davy damaged his eyesight in an accident with nitrogen trichloride, he decided to employ Faraday as a secretary. When John Payne, one of the Royal Institution's assistants, was fired, Sir Humphry Davy was asked to find a replacement. He appointed Faraday as Chemical Assistant at the Royal Institution on March 1.
In the class-based English society of the time, Faraday was not considered a gentleman. When Davy went on a long tour to the continent in 1813-5, his valet did not wish to go. Faraday was going as Davy's scientific assistant, and was asked to act as Davy's valet until a replacement could be found in Paris. Davy failed to find a replacement, and Faraday was forced to fill the role of valet as well as assistant throughout the trip. Davy's wife, Jane Apreece, refused to treat Faraday as an equal (making him travel outside the coach, eat with the servants, etc.) and generally made Faraday so miserable that he contemplated returning to England alone and giving up science altogether. The trip did, however, give him access to the European scientific elite and a host of stimulating ideas.
His sponsor and mentor was John 'Mad Jack' Fuller, who created the Fullerian Professorship of Chemistry at the Royal Institution.
Faraday was a devout Christian and a member of the small Sandemanian denomination, an offshoot of the Church of Scotland. He later served two terms as an elder in the group's church.
Faraday married Sarah Barnard (1800-1879) on June 2, 1821, although they would never have children. They met through attending the Sandemanian church.
He was elected a member of the Royal Society in 1824, appointed director of the laboratory in 1825; and in 1833 he was appointed Fullerian professor of chemistry in the institution for life, without the obligation to deliver lectures.
The title page of The Chemical History of a Candle (1861)
Faraday's earliest chemical work was as an assistant to Davy. He made a special study of chlorine, and discovered two new chlorides of carbon. He also made the first rough experiments on the diffusion of gases, a phenomenon first pointed out by John Dalton, the physical importance of which was more fully brought to light by Thomas Graham and Joseph Loschmidt. He succeeded in liquefying several gases; he investigated the alloys of steel, and produced several new kinds of glass intended for optical purposes. A specimen of one of these heavy glasses afterwards became historically important as the substance in which Faraday detected the rotation of the plane of polarisation of light when the glass was placed in a magnetic field, and also as the substance which was first repelled by the poles of the magnet. He also endeavoured, with some success, to make the general methods of chemistry, as distinguished from its results, the subject of special study and of popular exposition.
He invented an early form of what was to become the Bunsen burner, which is used almost universally in science laboratories as a convenient source of heat. See page 127 of Faraday's Chemical Manipulation, Being Instructions to Students in Chemistry (1827)
Faraday worked extensively in the field of chemistry, discovering chemical substances such as benzene (which he called bicarburet of hydrogen), inventing the system of oxidation numbers, and liquefying gases such as chlorine. In 1820 Faraday reported on the first syntheses of compounds made from carbon and chlorine, C 2 H 6 and C 2 H 4 , and published his results the following year. Faraday also determined the composition of the chlorine clathrate hydrate, which had been discovered by Humphry Davy in 1810.
Faraday also discovered the laws of electrolysis and popularized terminology such as anode, cathode, electrode, and ion, terms largely created by William Whewell.
Faraday was the first to report what later came to be called metallic nanoparticles. In 1847 he discovered that the optical properties of gold colloids differed from those of the corresponding bulk metal. This was probably the first reported observation of the effects of quantum size, and might be considered to be the birth of nanoscience.
Faraday's greatest work was probably with electricity and magnetism. The first experiment which he recorded was the construction of a voltaic pile with seven halfpence pieces, stacked together with seven disks of sheet zinc, and six pieces of paper moistened with salt water. With this pile he decomposed sulphate of magnesia (first letter to Abbott, July 12, 1812).
[[Image:Faraday photograph ii.jpg|thumb|200px|left|Michael Faraday holding a glass bar of the type he used in 1845 to show that magnetism can affect light. Detail of an engraving by Henry Adlard, based on an earlier photograph by Maull & Polyblank ca. 1857. See National Portrait Gallery, UK ]]
In 1821, soon after the Danish physicist and chemist, Hans Christian Ãrsted discovered the phenomenon of electromagnetism, Davy and British scientist William Hyde Wollaston tried but failed to design an electric motor. Faraday, having discussed the problem with the two men, went on to build two devices to produce what he called electromagnetic rotation: a continuous circular motion from the circular magnetic force around a wire and a wire extending into a pool of mercury with a magnet placed inside would rotate around the magnet if supplied with current from a chemical battery. The latter device is known as a homopolar motor. These experiments and inventions form the foundation of modern electromagnetic technology. Faraday published his results without acknowledging his debt to Wollaston and Davy, and the resulting controversy caused Faraday to withdraw from electromagnetic research for several years.
At this stage, there is also evidence to suggest that Davy may have been trying to slow Faradayâs rise as a scientist (or natural philosopher as it was known then). In 1825, for instance, Davy set him onto optical glass experiments, which progressed for six years with no great results. It was not until Davy's death, in 1829, that Faraday stopped these fruitless tasks and moved on to endeavors that were more worthwhile. Two years later, in 1831, he began his great series of experiments in which he discovered electromagnetic induction. Joseph Henry likely discovered self-induction a few months earlier and both may have been anticipated by the work of Francesco Zantedeschi in Italy in 1829 and 1830.
Faraday's breakthrough came when he wrapped two insulated coils of wire around a massive iron ring, bolted to a chair, and found that upon passing a current through one coil, a momentary current was induced in the other coil. This phenomenon is known as mutual induction. The iron ring-coil apparatus is still on display at the Royal Institution. In subsequent experiments he found that if he moved a magnet through a loop of wire, an electric current flowed in the wire. The current also flowed if the loop was moved over a stationary magnet. His demonstrations established that a changing magnetic field produces an electric field. This relation was mathematically modelled by Faraday's law, which subsequently became one of the four Maxwell equations. These in turn have evolved into the generalization known today as field theory.
Michael Faraday - statue in Savoy Place, London.
Sculptor John Henry Foley RA
Faraday later used the principle to construct the electric dynamo, the ancestor of modern power generators.
In 1839 he completed a series of experiments aimed at investigating the fundamental nature of electricity. Faraday used "static", batteries, and "animal electricity" to produce the phenomena of electrostatic attraction, electrolysis, magnetism, etc. He concluded that, contrary to scientific opinion of the time, the divisions between the various "kinds" of electricity were illusory. Faraday instead proposed that only a single "electricity" exists, and the changing values of quantity and intensity (voltage and charge) would produce different groups of phenomena.
Near the end of his career Faraday proposed that electromagnetic forces extended into the empty space around the conductor. This idea was rejected by his fellow scientists, and Faraday did not live to see this idea eventually accepted. Faraday's concept of lines of flux emanating from charged bodies and magnets provided a way to visualize electric and magnetic fields. That mental model was crucial to the successful development of electromechanical devices which dominated engineering and industry for the remainder of the 19th century.
In 1845, he discovered the phenomenon that he named diamagnetism, and what is now called the Faraday effect: The plane of polarization of linearly polarized light propagated through a material medium can be rotated by the application of an external magnetic field aligned in the propagation direction. He wrote in his notebook, "I have at last succeeded in illuminating a magnetic curve or line of force and in magnetising a ray of light". This established that magnetic force and light were related.
In his work on static electricity, Faraday demonstrated that the charge only resided on the exterior of a charged conductor, and exterior charge had no influence on anything enclosed within a conductor. This is because the exterior charges redistribute such that the interior fields due to them cancel. This shielding effect is used in what is now known as a Faraday cage.
Faraday was an excellent experimentalist who conveyed his ideas in clear and simple language. However, his mathematical abilities did not extend as far as trigonometry or any but the simplest algebra. It was James Clerk Maxwell who took the work of Faraday, and others, and consolidated it with a set of equations that lie at the base of all modern theories of electromagnetic phenomena.
Michael Faraday meets Father Thames, from Punch (July 21, 1855)
Beyond his scientific research into areas such as chemistry, electricity, and magnetism at the Royal Institution, Faraday undertook numerous, and often time-consuming, service projects for private enterprise and the British government. This work included investigations of explosions in mines, being an expert witness in court, and the preparation of high-quality optical glass.
As a respected scientist in a nation with strong maritime interests, Faraday spent extensive amounts of time on projects such as the construction and operation of light houses and protecting the bottoms of ships from corrosion.
Faraday also was active in what would now be called environmental science, or engineering. He investigated industrial pollution at Swansea and was consulted on air pollution at the Royal Mint. In July of 1855, Faraday wrote a letter to The Times on the subject of the foul condition of the River Thames, which resulted in an oft-reprinted cartoon in Punch. (See also The Great Stink.)
Faraday assisted with planning and judging of exhibits for the Great Exhibition of 1851 in London. He also advised the National Gallery on the cleaning and protection of its art collection, and served on the National Gallery Site Commission in 1857.
Education was another area of service for Faraday. He lectured on the topic in 1854 at the Royal Institution, and in 1862 he appeared before a Public Schools Commission to give his views on education in Great Britain. Faraday also weighed in, negatively, on the public's fascination with table-turning, mesmerism, and seances, chastising both the public and the nation's educational system. See The Illustrated London News, July 1853, for Faraday's comments.
125px
In June of 1832, the University of Oxford granted Faraday a Doctor of Civil Law degree (honorary). During his lifetime, Faraday rejected a knighthood and twice refused to become President of the Royal Society.
In 1848, as a result of representations by the Prince Consort, Michael Faraday was awarded a grace and favour house in Hampton Court, Surrey free of all expenses or upkeep. This was the Master Mason's House, later called Faraday House, and now No.37 Hampton Court Road. In 1858 Faraday retired to live there. Twickenham Museum on Faraday and Faraday House, Accessed June 2006
Faraday died at his house at Hampton Court on August 25, 1867. He turned down burial in Westminster Abbey, but he has a memorial plaque there, near Isaac Newton's tomb. Faraday was interred in the Sandemanian plot in Highgate Cemetery.
Michael Faraday's grave at Highgate Cemetery
Faraday gave a successful series of lectures on the chemistry and physics of flames at the Royal Institution, entitled The Chemical History of a Candle. This was one of the earlier Christmas lectures for young people, which are still given each year. Between 1827 and 1860, Faraday gave the Christmas lecture a record nineteen times.
Faraday refused to participate in the production of chemical weapons for the Crimean War citing ethical reasons.
A statue of Faraday stands in Savoy Place, London, outside the Institution of Electrical Engineers.
A recently built hall of accommodation at Brunel University is named after Faraday.
A hall at Loughborough University was named after Faraday in 1960. Near the entrance to its dining hall is a bronze casting, which depicts the symbol of an electrical transformer, and inside there hangs a portrait, both in Faraday's honour.
Faraday's picture was printed on British £20 banknotes from 1991 until 2001. Bank of England, Withdrawn Notes
In the video game Chromehounds there is a ThermoVision Device named the Faraday.
The former UK Faraday Atmospheric Research Station in Antarctica was named after him.
Faraday was one of the then eight foreign members of the French Academy of Sciences.
Michael Faraday's signature
Faraday's books, with the exception of Chemical Manipulation, were collections of scientific papers or transcriptions of lectures. See page 220 of Hamilton's A Life of Discovery: Michael Faraday, Giant of the Scientific Revolution (2002) Since his death, Faraday's diary has been published, as have several large volumes of his letters and Faraday's journal from his travels with Davy in 1813 - 1815.
* Chemical Manipulation, Being Instructions to Students in Chemistry, John Murray, 1st ed. 1827, 2nd ed. 1830, 3rd ed. 1842
* Experimental Researches in Electricity, vols. i. and ii., Richard and John Edward Taylor, vols. i. and ii.. 1844 and 1847; vol. iii., 1844; vol. iii. Richard Taylor and William Francis, 1855
* Experimental Researches in Chemistry and Physics, Taylor and Francis, 1859
* A Course of Six Lectures on the Chemical History of a Candle, edited by W. Crookes, Griffin, Bohn & Co., 1861
* On the Various Forces in Nature, edited by W. Crookes, Chatto & Windus, 1873
* Faraday's Diary edited by T. Martin was published in eight volumes, 1932 - 1936
* Curiosity Perfectly Satisfyed: Faraday's Travels in Europe 1813-1815, edited by B. Bowers and L. Symons, Institution of Electrical Engineers, 1991
* The Correspondence of Michael Faraday, edited by F. A. J. L. James, INSPEC, Inc., volume 1, 1991; volume 2, 1993; volume 3, 1996; volume 4, 1999
* "Nothing is too wonderful to be true if it be consistent with the laws of nature, and in such things as these, experiment is the best test of such consistency." From the entry of 19 March 1849 in Faraday's Diary
* "Work. Finish. Publish." â his well-known advice to the young William Crookes
* "The important thing is to know how to take all things quietly."
* Regarding the hereafter, "Speculations? I have none. I am resting on certainties. I know whom I have believed and am persuaded that he is able to keep that which I have committed unto him against that day."
* "Next Sabbath day (the 22nd) I shall complete my 70th year. I can hardly think of myself so old."
*Above the doorways of the Pfahler Hall of Science at Ursinus College in Collegeville, Pennsylvania, there is a stone inscription of a quote attributed to Michael Faraday which reads "but still try, for who knows what is possible..." See
* "One day sir, you may tax it." Faraday's reply to William Gladstone, then British Minister of Finance, when asked of the practical value of electricity.
* "If you would cause your view ... to be acknowledged by scientific men; you would do a great service to science. If you would even get them to say yes or no to your conclusions it would help to clear the future progress. I believe some hesitate because they do not like their thoughts disturbed." From Life and Letters, 2:389.
* Faraday rotator
* Superconductivity
* Tyndall, John, Faraday as a Discoverer, (Longmans, 1st ed. 1868, 2nd ed. 1870).
* Bence Jones, Henry (1870). The Life and Letters of Faraday in 2 vols, Longmans.
* Gladstone, J. H. (1872). Michael Faraday, Macmillan.
* Thompson, Silvanus (1901, reprinted 2005). Michael Faraday, His Life and Work. Cassell and Company, London, 1901; reprint by Kessenger Publishing, Whitefish, MT. ISBN 1-4179-7036-7
* The British Electrical and Allied Manufacturers Association (1931). Faraday. R. & R. Clark, Ltd., Edinburgh, 1931.
* Williams, L. Pearce (1971), Faraday: A Biography, Simon and Schuster.
* Cantor, Geoffrey (1991). Michael Faraday, Sandemanian and Scientist, Macmillian, ISBN 0-333-55077
* Hamilton, James (2002). Faraday: The Life. London: Harper Collins. ISBN 0-00-716376-2
* Hamilton, James (2004). A Life of Discovery: Michael Faraday, Giant of the Scientific Revolution. New York: Random House. ISBN 1-4000-6016-8
* Agassi, Joseph (1971), Faraday as a Natural Philosopher, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
* Ames, Joseph Sweetman (Ed.), The discovery of induced electric currents Vol. 2. Memoirs, by Michael Faraday. New York, Cincinnati [etc.] American book company [c1900] LCCN 00005889
* Gooding, David (Ed.) (1985), Faraday Rediscovered: Essays on the Life and Work of Michael Faraday, 1791-1867, London/New York, Macmillan/Stockton
* Thomas, John Meurig (1991). Michael Faraday and the Royal Institution: The Genius of Man and Place Bristol: Hilger. ISBN 0-7503-0145-7
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* Biography at The Royal Institution of Great Britain
* Faraday as a Discoverer by John Tyndall, Project Gutenberg (downloads)
* The Christian Character of Michael Faraday
* Michael Faraday on the British twenty-pound banknote
* The Life and Discoveries of Michael Faraday by J. A. Crowther, London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1920
* "Faraday" at LoveToKnow 1911 Britannica Online Encyclopedia.
*
* (downloads)
* "Experimental Researches in Electricity" by Michael Faraday Original text with Biographical Introduction by Professor John Tyndall, 1914, Everyman edition.
* Video Podcast with Sir John Cadogan talking about Benzene since Faraday
* The letters of Faraday and Schoenbein 1836-1862. With notes, comments and references to contemporary letters (1899) full download PDF
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Michael_Faraday | What did the University of Oxford grant Faraday? | a Doctor of Civil Law degree (honorary) | data/set4/a7 | Michael_Faraday
Michael Faraday, FRS (September 22, 1791 â August 25, 1867) was an English chemist and physicist (or natural philosopher, in the terminology of that time) who contributed to the fields of electromagnetism and electrochemistry.
Faraday studied the magnetic field around a conductor carrying a DC electric current, and established the basis for the magnetic field concept in physics. He discovered electromagnetic induction, diamagnetism and electrolysis. He established that magnetism could affect rays of light and that there was an underlying relationship between the two phenomena. Michael Faraday entry at the 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica hosted by LovetoKnow Retrieved January 2007. Institution of Engineering and Technology, London Archives, Michael Faraday His inventions of electromagnetic rotary devices formed the foundation of electric motor technology, and it was largely due to his efforts that electricity became viable for use in technology.
As a chemist, Faraday discovered benzene, investigated the clathrate hydrate of chlorine, invented an early form of the bunsen burner and the system of oxidation numbers, and popularized terminology such as anode, cathode, electrode, and ion.
Although Faraday received little formal education and knew little of higher mathematics, such as calculus, he was one of the most influential scientists in history. Some historians of science refer to him as the best experimentalist in the history of science. "best experimentalist in the history of science." Quoting Dr Peter Ford, from the University of Bathâs Department of Physics. Accessed January 2007. The SI unit of capacitance, the farad, is named after him, as is the Faraday constant, the charge on a mole of electrons (about 96,485 coulombs). Faraday's law of induction states that a magnetic field changing in time creates a proportional electromotive force.
Faraday was the first and foremost Fullerian Professor of Chemistry at the Royal Institution of Great Britain, a position to which he was appointed for life.
Michael Faraday from a photograph by John Watkins, British Library
Michael Faraday was born in Newington Butts, near present-day South London, England. His family was not well off. His father, James, was a member of the Sandemanian sect of Christianity. James Faraday had come to London ca 1790 from Outhgill in Westmorland, where he had been the village blacksmith. The young Michael Faraday, one of four children, having only the most basic of school educations, had to largely educate himself. "Michael Faraday." History of Science and Technology. Houghton Mifflin Company, 2004. Answers.com 4 June 2007. /ref> At fourteen he became apprenticed to a local bookbinder and bookseller George Riebau and, during his seven-year apprenticeship, he read many books, including Isaac Watts' The Improvement of the Mind, and he enthusiastically implemented the principles and suggestions contained therein. He developed an interest in science and specifically in electricity. In particular, he was inspired by the book Conversations in Chemistry by Jane Marcet.
At the age of twenty, in 1812, at the end of his apprenticeship, Faraday attended lectures by the eminent English chemist and physicist Humphry Davy of the Royal Institution and Royal Society, and John Tatum, founder of the City Philosophical Society. Many tickets for these lectures were given to Faraday by William Dance (one of the founders of the Royal Philharmonic Society). Afterwards, Faraday sent Davy a three hundred page book based on notes taken during the lectures. Davy's reply was immediate, kind, and favorable. When Davy damaged his eyesight in an accident with nitrogen trichloride, he decided to employ Faraday as a secretary. When John Payne, one of the Royal Institution's assistants, was fired, Sir Humphry Davy was asked to find a replacement. He appointed Faraday as Chemical Assistant at the Royal Institution on March 1.
In the class-based English society of the time, Faraday was not considered a gentleman. When Davy went on a long tour to the continent in 1813-5, his valet did not wish to go. Faraday was going as Davy's scientific assistant, and was asked to act as Davy's valet until a replacement could be found in Paris. Davy failed to find a replacement, and Faraday was forced to fill the role of valet as well as assistant throughout the trip. Davy's wife, Jane Apreece, refused to treat Faraday as an equal (making him travel outside the coach, eat with the servants, etc.) and generally made Faraday so miserable that he contemplated returning to England alone and giving up science altogether. The trip did, however, give him access to the European scientific elite and a host of stimulating ideas.
His sponsor and mentor was John 'Mad Jack' Fuller, who created the Fullerian Professorship of Chemistry at the Royal Institution.
Faraday was a devout Christian and a member of the small Sandemanian denomination, an offshoot of the Church of Scotland. He later served two terms as an elder in the group's church.
Faraday married Sarah Barnard (1800-1879) on June 2, 1821, although they would never have children. They met through attending the Sandemanian church.
He was elected a member of the Royal Society in 1824, appointed director of the laboratory in 1825; and in 1833 he was appointed Fullerian professor of chemistry in the institution for life, without the obligation to deliver lectures.
The title page of The Chemical History of a Candle (1861)
Faraday's earliest chemical work was as an assistant to Davy. He made a special study of chlorine, and discovered two new chlorides of carbon. He also made the first rough experiments on the diffusion of gases, a phenomenon first pointed out by John Dalton, the physical importance of which was more fully brought to light by Thomas Graham and Joseph Loschmidt. He succeeded in liquefying several gases; he investigated the alloys of steel, and produced several new kinds of glass intended for optical purposes. A specimen of one of these heavy glasses afterwards became historically important as the substance in which Faraday detected the rotation of the plane of polarisation of light when the glass was placed in a magnetic field, and also as the substance which was first repelled by the poles of the magnet. He also endeavoured, with some success, to make the general methods of chemistry, as distinguished from its results, the subject of special study and of popular exposition.
He invented an early form of what was to become the Bunsen burner, which is used almost universally in science laboratories as a convenient source of heat. See page 127 of Faraday's Chemical Manipulation, Being Instructions to Students in Chemistry (1827)
Faraday worked extensively in the field of chemistry, discovering chemical substances such as benzene (which he called bicarburet of hydrogen), inventing the system of oxidation numbers, and liquefying gases such as chlorine. In 1820 Faraday reported on the first syntheses of compounds made from carbon and chlorine, C 2 H 6 and C 2 H 4 , and published his results the following year. Faraday also determined the composition of the chlorine clathrate hydrate, which had been discovered by Humphry Davy in 1810.
Faraday also discovered the laws of electrolysis and popularized terminology such as anode, cathode, electrode, and ion, terms largely created by William Whewell.
Faraday was the first to report what later came to be called metallic nanoparticles. In 1847 he discovered that the optical properties of gold colloids differed from those of the corresponding bulk metal. This was probably the first reported observation of the effects of quantum size, and might be considered to be the birth of nanoscience.
Faraday's greatest work was probably with electricity and magnetism. The first experiment which he recorded was the construction of a voltaic pile with seven halfpence pieces, stacked together with seven disks of sheet zinc, and six pieces of paper moistened with salt water. With this pile he decomposed sulphate of magnesia (first letter to Abbott, July 12, 1812).
[[Image:Faraday photograph ii.jpg|thumb|200px|left|Michael Faraday holding a glass bar of the type he used in 1845 to show that magnetism can affect light. Detail of an engraving by Henry Adlard, based on an earlier photograph by Maull & Polyblank ca. 1857. See National Portrait Gallery, UK ]]
In 1821, soon after the Danish physicist and chemist, Hans Christian Ãrsted discovered the phenomenon of electromagnetism, Davy and British scientist William Hyde Wollaston tried but failed to design an electric motor. Faraday, having discussed the problem with the two men, went on to build two devices to produce what he called electromagnetic rotation: a continuous circular motion from the circular magnetic force around a wire and a wire extending into a pool of mercury with a magnet placed inside would rotate around the magnet if supplied with current from a chemical battery. The latter device is known as a homopolar motor. These experiments and inventions form the foundation of modern electromagnetic technology. Faraday published his results without acknowledging his debt to Wollaston and Davy, and the resulting controversy caused Faraday to withdraw from electromagnetic research for several years.
At this stage, there is also evidence to suggest that Davy may have been trying to slow Faradayâs rise as a scientist (or natural philosopher as it was known then). In 1825, for instance, Davy set him onto optical glass experiments, which progressed for six years with no great results. It was not until Davy's death, in 1829, that Faraday stopped these fruitless tasks and moved on to endeavors that were more worthwhile. Two years later, in 1831, he began his great series of experiments in which he discovered electromagnetic induction. Joseph Henry likely discovered self-induction a few months earlier and both may have been anticipated by the work of Francesco Zantedeschi in Italy in 1829 and 1830.
Faraday's breakthrough came when he wrapped two insulated coils of wire around a massive iron ring, bolted to a chair, and found that upon passing a current through one coil, a momentary current was induced in the other coil. This phenomenon is known as mutual induction. The iron ring-coil apparatus is still on display at the Royal Institution. In subsequent experiments he found that if he moved a magnet through a loop of wire, an electric current flowed in the wire. The current also flowed if the loop was moved over a stationary magnet. His demonstrations established that a changing magnetic field produces an electric field. This relation was mathematically modelled by Faraday's law, which subsequently became one of the four Maxwell equations. These in turn have evolved into the generalization known today as field theory.
Michael Faraday - statue in Savoy Place, London.
Sculptor John Henry Foley RA
Faraday later used the principle to construct the electric dynamo, the ancestor of modern power generators.
In 1839 he completed a series of experiments aimed at investigating the fundamental nature of electricity. Faraday used "static", batteries, and "animal electricity" to produce the phenomena of electrostatic attraction, electrolysis, magnetism, etc. He concluded that, contrary to scientific opinion of the time, the divisions between the various "kinds" of electricity were illusory. Faraday instead proposed that only a single "electricity" exists, and the changing values of quantity and intensity (voltage and charge) would produce different groups of phenomena.
Near the end of his career Faraday proposed that electromagnetic forces extended into the empty space around the conductor. This idea was rejected by his fellow scientists, and Faraday did not live to see this idea eventually accepted. Faraday's concept of lines of flux emanating from charged bodies and magnets provided a way to visualize electric and magnetic fields. That mental model was crucial to the successful development of electromechanical devices which dominated engineering and industry for the remainder of the 19th century.
In 1845, he discovered the phenomenon that he named diamagnetism, and what is now called the Faraday effect: The plane of polarization of linearly polarized light propagated through a material medium can be rotated by the application of an external magnetic field aligned in the propagation direction. He wrote in his notebook, "I have at last succeeded in illuminating a magnetic curve or line of force and in magnetising a ray of light". This established that magnetic force and light were related.
In his work on static electricity, Faraday demonstrated that the charge only resided on the exterior of a charged conductor, and exterior charge had no influence on anything enclosed within a conductor. This is because the exterior charges redistribute such that the interior fields due to them cancel. This shielding effect is used in what is now known as a Faraday cage.
Faraday was an excellent experimentalist who conveyed his ideas in clear and simple language. However, his mathematical abilities did not extend as far as trigonometry or any but the simplest algebra. It was James Clerk Maxwell who took the work of Faraday, and others, and consolidated it with a set of equations that lie at the base of all modern theories of electromagnetic phenomena.
Michael Faraday meets Father Thames, from Punch (July 21, 1855)
Beyond his scientific research into areas such as chemistry, electricity, and magnetism at the Royal Institution, Faraday undertook numerous, and often time-consuming, service projects for private enterprise and the British government. This work included investigations of explosions in mines, being an expert witness in court, and the preparation of high-quality optical glass.
As a respected scientist in a nation with strong maritime interests, Faraday spent extensive amounts of time on projects such as the construction and operation of light houses and protecting the bottoms of ships from corrosion.
Faraday also was active in what would now be called environmental science, or engineering. He investigated industrial pollution at Swansea and was consulted on air pollution at the Royal Mint. In July of 1855, Faraday wrote a letter to The Times on the subject of the foul condition of the River Thames, which resulted in an oft-reprinted cartoon in Punch. (See also The Great Stink.)
Faraday assisted with planning and judging of exhibits for the Great Exhibition of 1851 in London. He also advised the National Gallery on the cleaning and protection of its art collection, and served on the National Gallery Site Commission in 1857.
Education was another area of service for Faraday. He lectured on the topic in 1854 at the Royal Institution, and in 1862 he appeared before a Public Schools Commission to give his views on education in Great Britain. Faraday also weighed in, negatively, on the public's fascination with table-turning, mesmerism, and seances, chastising both the public and the nation's educational system. See The Illustrated London News, July 1853, for Faraday's comments.
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In June of 1832, the University of Oxford granted Faraday a Doctor of Civil Law degree (honorary). During his lifetime, Faraday rejected a knighthood and twice refused to become President of the Royal Society.
In 1848, as a result of representations by the Prince Consort, Michael Faraday was awarded a grace and favour house in Hampton Court, Surrey free of all expenses or upkeep. This was the Master Mason's House, later called Faraday House, and now No.37 Hampton Court Road. In 1858 Faraday retired to live there. Twickenham Museum on Faraday and Faraday House, Accessed June 2006
Faraday died at his house at Hampton Court on August 25, 1867. He turned down burial in Westminster Abbey, but he has a memorial plaque there, near Isaac Newton's tomb. Faraday was interred in the Sandemanian plot in Highgate Cemetery.
Michael Faraday's grave at Highgate Cemetery
Faraday gave a successful series of lectures on the chemistry and physics of flames at the Royal Institution, entitled The Chemical History of a Candle. This was one of the earlier Christmas lectures for young people, which are still given each year. Between 1827 and 1860, Faraday gave the Christmas lecture a record nineteen times.
Faraday refused to participate in the production of chemical weapons for the Crimean War citing ethical reasons.
A statue of Faraday stands in Savoy Place, London, outside the Institution of Electrical Engineers.
A recently built hall of accommodation at Brunel University is named after Faraday.
A hall at Loughborough University was named after Faraday in 1960. Near the entrance to its dining hall is a bronze casting, which depicts the symbol of an electrical transformer, and inside there hangs a portrait, both in Faraday's honour.
Faraday's picture was printed on British £20 banknotes from 1991 until 2001. Bank of England, Withdrawn Notes
In the video game Chromehounds there is a ThermoVision Device named the Faraday.
The former UK Faraday Atmospheric Research Station in Antarctica was named after him.
Faraday was one of the then eight foreign members of the French Academy of Sciences.
Michael Faraday's signature
Faraday's books, with the exception of Chemical Manipulation, were collections of scientific papers or transcriptions of lectures. See page 220 of Hamilton's A Life of Discovery: Michael Faraday, Giant of the Scientific Revolution (2002) Since his death, Faraday's diary has been published, as have several large volumes of his letters and Faraday's journal from his travels with Davy in 1813 - 1815.
* Chemical Manipulation, Being Instructions to Students in Chemistry, John Murray, 1st ed. 1827, 2nd ed. 1830, 3rd ed. 1842
* Experimental Researches in Electricity, vols. i. and ii., Richard and John Edward Taylor, vols. i. and ii.. 1844 and 1847; vol. iii., 1844; vol. iii. Richard Taylor and William Francis, 1855
* Experimental Researches in Chemistry and Physics, Taylor and Francis, 1859
* A Course of Six Lectures on the Chemical History of a Candle, edited by W. Crookes, Griffin, Bohn & Co., 1861
* On the Various Forces in Nature, edited by W. Crookes, Chatto & Windus, 1873
* Faraday's Diary edited by T. Martin was published in eight volumes, 1932 - 1936
* Curiosity Perfectly Satisfyed: Faraday's Travels in Europe 1813-1815, edited by B. Bowers and L. Symons, Institution of Electrical Engineers, 1991
* The Correspondence of Michael Faraday, edited by F. A. J. L. James, INSPEC, Inc., volume 1, 1991; volume 2, 1993; volume 3, 1996; volume 4, 1999
* "Nothing is too wonderful to be true if it be consistent with the laws of nature, and in such things as these, experiment is the best test of such consistency." From the entry of 19 March 1849 in Faraday's Diary
* "Work. Finish. Publish." â his well-known advice to the young William Crookes
* "The important thing is to know how to take all things quietly."
* Regarding the hereafter, "Speculations? I have none. I am resting on certainties. I know whom I have believed and am persuaded that he is able to keep that which I have committed unto him against that day."
* "Next Sabbath day (the 22nd) I shall complete my 70th year. I can hardly think of myself so old."
*Above the doorways of the Pfahler Hall of Science at Ursinus College in Collegeville, Pennsylvania, there is a stone inscription of a quote attributed to Michael Faraday which reads "but still try, for who knows what is possible..." See
* "One day sir, you may tax it." Faraday's reply to William Gladstone, then British Minister of Finance, when asked of the practical value of electricity.
* "If you would cause your view ... to be acknowledged by scientific men; you would do a great service to science. If you would even get them to say yes or no to your conclusions it would help to clear the future progress. I believe some hesitate because they do not like their thoughts disturbed." From Life and Letters, 2:389.
* Faraday rotator
* Superconductivity
* Tyndall, John, Faraday as a Discoverer, (Longmans, 1st ed. 1868, 2nd ed. 1870).
* Bence Jones, Henry (1870). The Life and Letters of Faraday in 2 vols, Longmans.
* Gladstone, J. H. (1872). Michael Faraday, Macmillan.
* Thompson, Silvanus (1901, reprinted 2005). Michael Faraday, His Life and Work. Cassell and Company, London, 1901; reprint by Kessenger Publishing, Whitefish, MT. ISBN 1-4179-7036-7
* The British Electrical and Allied Manufacturers Association (1931). Faraday. R. & R. Clark, Ltd., Edinburgh, 1931.
* Williams, L. Pearce (1971), Faraday: A Biography, Simon and Schuster.
* Cantor, Geoffrey (1991). Michael Faraday, Sandemanian and Scientist, Macmillian, ISBN 0-333-55077
* Hamilton, James (2002). Faraday: The Life. London: Harper Collins. ISBN 0-00-716376-2
* Hamilton, James (2004). A Life of Discovery: Michael Faraday, Giant of the Scientific Revolution. New York: Random House. ISBN 1-4000-6016-8
* Agassi, Joseph (1971), Faraday as a Natural Philosopher, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
* Ames, Joseph Sweetman (Ed.), The discovery of induced electric currents Vol. 2. Memoirs, by Michael Faraday. New York, Cincinnati [etc.] American book company [c1900] LCCN 00005889
* Gooding, David (Ed.) (1985), Faraday Rediscovered: Essays on the Life and Work of Michael Faraday, 1791-1867, London/New York, Macmillan/Stockton
* Thomas, John Meurig (1991). Michael Faraday and the Royal Institution: The Genius of Man and Place Bristol: Hilger. ISBN 0-7503-0145-7
150px
* Biography at The Royal Institution of Great Britain
* Faraday as a Discoverer by John Tyndall, Project Gutenberg (downloads)
* The Christian Character of Michael Faraday
* Michael Faraday on the British twenty-pound banknote
* The Life and Discoveries of Michael Faraday by J. A. Crowther, London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1920
* "Faraday" at LoveToKnow 1911 Britannica Online Encyclopedia.
*
* (downloads)
* "Experimental Researches in Electricity" by Michael Faraday Original text with Biographical Introduction by Professor John Tyndall, 1914, Everyman edition.
* Video Podcast with Sir John Cadogan talking about Benzene since Faraday
* The letters of Faraday and Schoenbein 1836-1862. With notes, comments and references to contemporary letters (1899) full download PDF
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|
Michael_Faraday | What did the University of Oxford grant Faraday? | Doctor of Civil Law degree (honorary) | data/set4/a7 | Michael_Faraday
Michael Faraday, FRS (September 22, 1791 â August 25, 1867) was an English chemist and physicist (or natural philosopher, in the terminology of that time) who contributed to the fields of electromagnetism and electrochemistry.
Faraday studied the magnetic field around a conductor carrying a DC electric current, and established the basis for the magnetic field concept in physics. He discovered electromagnetic induction, diamagnetism and electrolysis. He established that magnetism could affect rays of light and that there was an underlying relationship between the two phenomena. Michael Faraday entry at the 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica hosted by LovetoKnow Retrieved January 2007. Institution of Engineering and Technology, London Archives, Michael Faraday His inventions of electromagnetic rotary devices formed the foundation of electric motor technology, and it was largely due to his efforts that electricity became viable for use in technology.
As a chemist, Faraday discovered benzene, investigated the clathrate hydrate of chlorine, invented an early form of the bunsen burner and the system of oxidation numbers, and popularized terminology such as anode, cathode, electrode, and ion.
Although Faraday received little formal education and knew little of higher mathematics, such as calculus, he was one of the most influential scientists in history. Some historians of science refer to him as the best experimentalist in the history of science. "best experimentalist in the history of science." Quoting Dr Peter Ford, from the University of Bathâs Department of Physics. Accessed January 2007. The SI unit of capacitance, the farad, is named after him, as is the Faraday constant, the charge on a mole of electrons (about 96,485 coulombs). Faraday's law of induction states that a magnetic field changing in time creates a proportional electromotive force.
Faraday was the first and foremost Fullerian Professor of Chemistry at the Royal Institution of Great Britain, a position to which he was appointed for life.
Michael Faraday from a photograph by John Watkins, British Library
Michael Faraday was born in Newington Butts, near present-day South London, England. His family was not well off. His father, James, was a member of the Sandemanian sect of Christianity. James Faraday had come to London ca 1790 from Outhgill in Westmorland, where he had been the village blacksmith. The young Michael Faraday, one of four children, having only the most basic of school educations, had to largely educate himself. "Michael Faraday." History of Science and Technology. Houghton Mifflin Company, 2004. Answers.com 4 June 2007. /ref> At fourteen he became apprenticed to a local bookbinder and bookseller George Riebau and, during his seven-year apprenticeship, he read many books, including Isaac Watts' The Improvement of the Mind, and he enthusiastically implemented the principles and suggestions contained therein. He developed an interest in science and specifically in electricity. In particular, he was inspired by the book Conversations in Chemistry by Jane Marcet.
At the age of twenty, in 1812, at the end of his apprenticeship, Faraday attended lectures by the eminent English chemist and physicist Humphry Davy of the Royal Institution and Royal Society, and John Tatum, founder of the City Philosophical Society. Many tickets for these lectures were given to Faraday by William Dance (one of the founders of the Royal Philharmonic Society). Afterwards, Faraday sent Davy a three hundred page book based on notes taken during the lectures. Davy's reply was immediate, kind, and favorable. When Davy damaged his eyesight in an accident with nitrogen trichloride, he decided to employ Faraday as a secretary. When John Payne, one of the Royal Institution's assistants, was fired, Sir Humphry Davy was asked to find a replacement. He appointed Faraday as Chemical Assistant at the Royal Institution on March 1.
In the class-based English society of the time, Faraday was not considered a gentleman. When Davy went on a long tour to the continent in 1813-5, his valet did not wish to go. Faraday was going as Davy's scientific assistant, and was asked to act as Davy's valet until a replacement could be found in Paris. Davy failed to find a replacement, and Faraday was forced to fill the role of valet as well as assistant throughout the trip. Davy's wife, Jane Apreece, refused to treat Faraday as an equal (making him travel outside the coach, eat with the servants, etc.) and generally made Faraday so miserable that he contemplated returning to England alone and giving up science altogether. The trip did, however, give him access to the European scientific elite and a host of stimulating ideas.
His sponsor and mentor was John 'Mad Jack' Fuller, who created the Fullerian Professorship of Chemistry at the Royal Institution.
Faraday was a devout Christian and a member of the small Sandemanian denomination, an offshoot of the Church of Scotland. He later served two terms as an elder in the group's church.
Faraday married Sarah Barnard (1800-1879) on June 2, 1821, although they would never have children. They met through attending the Sandemanian church.
He was elected a member of the Royal Society in 1824, appointed director of the laboratory in 1825; and in 1833 he was appointed Fullerian professor of chemistry in the institution for life, without the obligation to deliver lectures.
The title page of The Chemical History of a Candle (1861)
Faraday's earliest chemical work was as an assistant to Davy. He made a special study of chlorine, and discovered two new chlorides of carbon. He also made the first rough experiments on the diffusion of gases, a phenomenon first pointed out by John Dalton, the physical importance of which was more fully brought to light by Thomas Graham and Joseph Loschmidt. He succeeded in liquefying several gases; he investigated the alloys of steel, and produced several new kinds of glass intended for optical purposes. A specimen of one of these heavy glasses afterwards became historically important as the substance in which Faraday detected the rotation of the plane of polarisation of light when the glass was placed in a magnetic field, and also as the substance which was first repelled by the poles of the magnet. He also endeavoured, with some success, to make the general methods of chemistry, as distinguished from its results, the subject of special study and of popular exposition.
He invented an early form of what was to become the Bunsen burner, which is used almost universally in science laboratories as a convenient source of heat. See page 127 of Faraday's Chemical Manipulation, Being Instructions to Students in Chemistry (1827)
Faraday worked extensively in the field of chemistry, discovering chemical substances such as benzene (which he called bicarburet of hydrogen), inventing the system of oxidation numbers, and liquefying gases such as chlorine. In 1820 Faraday reported on the first syntheses of compounds made from carbon and chlorine, C 2 H 6 and C 2 H 4 , and published his results the following year. Faraday also determined the composition of the chlorine clathrate hydrate, which had been discovered by Humphry Davy in 1810.
Faraday also discovered the laws of electrolysis and popularized terminology such as anode, cathode, electrode, and ion, terms largely created by William Whewell.
Faraday was the first to report what later came to be called metallic nanoparticles. In 1847 he discovered that the optical properties of gold colloids differed from those of the corresponding bulk metal. This was probably the first reported observation of the effects of quantum size, and might be considered to be the birth of nanoscience.
Faraday's greatest work was probably with electricity and magnetism. The first experiment which he recorded was the construction of a voltaic pile with seven halfpence pieces, stacked together with seven disks of sheet zinc, and six pieces of paper moistened with salt water. With this pile he decomposed sulphate of magnesia (first letter to Abbott, July 12, 1812).
[[Image:Faraday photograph ii.jpg|thumb|200px|left|Michael Faraday holding a glass bar of the type he used in 1845 to show that magnetism can affect light. Detail of an engraving by Henry Adlard, based on an earlier photograph by Maull & Polyblank ca. 1857. See National Portrait Gallery, UK ]]
In 1821, soon after the Danish physicist and chemist, Hans Christian Ãrsted discovered the phenomenon of electromagnetism, Davy and British scientist William Hyde Wollaston tried but failed to design an electric motor. Faraday, having discussed the problem with the two men, went on to build two devices to produce what he called electromagnetic rotation: a continuous circular motion from the circular magnetic force around a wire and a wire extending into a pool of mercury with a magnet placed inside would rotate around the magnet if supplied with current from a chemical battery. The latter device is known as a homopolar motor. These experiments and inventions form the foundation of modern electromagnetic technology. Faraday published his results without acknowledging his debt to Wollaston and Davy, and the resulting controversy caused Faraday to withdraw from electromagnetic research for several years.
At this stage, there is also evidence to suggest that Davy may have been trying to slow Faradayâs rise as a scientist (or natural philosopher as it was known then). In 1825, for instance, Davy set him onto optical glass experiments, which progressed for six years with no great results. It was not until Davy's death, in 1829, that Faraday stopped these fruitless tasks and moved on to endeavors that were more worthwhile. Two years later, in 1831, he began his great series of experiments in which he discovered electromagnetic induction. Joseph Henry likely discovered self-induction a few months earlier and both may have been anticipated by the work of Francesco Zantedeschi in Italy in 1829 and 1830.
Faraday's breakthrough came when he wrapped two insulated coils of wire around a massive iron ring, bolted to a chair, and found that upon passing a current through one coil, a momentary current was induced in the other coil. This phenomenon is known as mutual induction. The iron ring-coil apparatus is still on display at the Royal Institution. In subsequent experiments he found that if he moved a magnet through a loop of wire, an electric current flowed in the wire. The current also flowed if the loop was moved over a stationary magnet. His demonstrations established that a changing magnetic field produces an electric field. This relation was mathematically modelled by Faraday's law, which subsequently became one of the four Maxwell equations. These in turn have evolved into the generalization known today as field theory.
Michael Faraday - statue in Savoy Place, London.
Sculptor John Henry Foley RA
Faraday later used the principle to construct the electric dynamo, the ancestor of modern power generators.
In 1839 he completed a series of experiments aimed at investigating the fundamental nature of electricity. Faraday used "static", batteries, and "animal electricity" to produce the phenomena of electrostatic attraction, electrolysis, magnetism, etc. He concluded that, contrary to scientific opinion of the time, the divisions between the various "kinds" of electricity were illusory. Faraday instead proposed that only a single "electricity" exists, and the changing values of quantity and intensity (voltage and charge) would produce different groups of phenomena.
Near the end of his career Faraday proposed that electromagnetic forces extended into the empty space around the conductor. This idea was rejected by his fellow scientists, and Faraday did not live to see this idea eventually accepted. Faraday's concept of lines of flux emanating from charged bodies and magnets provided a way to visualize electric and magnetic fields. That mental model was crucial to the successful development of electromechanical devices which dominated engineering and industry for the remainder of the 19th century.
In 1845, he discovered the phenomenon that he named diamagnetism, and what is now called the Faraday effect: The plane of polarization of linearly polarized light propagated through a material medium can be rotated by the application of an external magnetic field aligned in the propagation direction. He wrote in his notebook, "I have at last succeeded in illuminating a magnetic curve or line of force and in magnetising a ray of light". This established that magnetic force and light were related.
In his work on static electricity, Faraday demonstrated that the charge only resided on the exterior of a charged conductor, and exterior charge had no influence on anything enclosed within a conductor. This is because the exterior charges redistribute such that the interior fields due to them cancel. This shielding effect is used in what is now known as a Faraday cage.
Faraday was an excellent experimentalist who conveyed his ideas in clear and simple language. However, his mathematical abilities did not extend as far as trigonometry or any but the simplest algebra. It was James Clerk Maxwell who took the work of Faraday, and others, and consolidated it with a set of equations that lie at the base of all modern theories of electromagnetic phenomena.
Michael Faraday meets Father Thames, from Punch (July 21, 1855)
Beyond his scientific research into areas such as chemistry, electricity, and magnetism at the Royal Institution, Faraday undertook numerous, and often time-consuming, service projects for private enterprise and the British government. This work included investigations of explosions in mines, being an expert witness in court, and the preparation of high-quality optical glass.
As a respected scientist in a nation with strong maritime interests, Faraday spent extensive amounts of time on projects such as the construction and operation of light houses and protecting the bottoms of ships from corrosion.
Faraday also was active in what would now be called environmental science, or engineering. He investigated industrial pollution at Swansea and was consulted on air pollution at the Royal Mint. In July of 1855, Faraday wrote a letter to The Times on the subject of the foul condition of the River Thames, which resulted in an oft-reprinted cartoon in Punch. (See also The Great Stink.)
Faraday assisted with planning and judging of exhibits for the Great Exhibition of 1851 in London. He also advised the National Gallery on the cleaning and protection of its art collection, and served on the National Gallery Site Commission in 1857.
Education was another area of service for Faraday. He lectured on the topic in 1854 at the Royal Institution, and in 1862 he appeared before a Public Schools Commission to give his views on education in Great Britain. Faraday also weighed in, negatively, on the public's fascination with table-turning, mesmerism, and seances, chastising both the public and the nation's educational system. See The Illustrated London News, July 1853, for Faraday's comments.
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In June of 1832, the University of Oxford granted Faraday a Doctor of Civil Law degree (honorary). During his lifetime, Faraday rejected a knighthood and twice refused to become President of the Royal Society.
In 1848, as a result of representations by the Prince Consort, Michael Faraday was awarded a grace and favour house in Hampton Court, Surrey free of all expenses or upkeep. This was the Master Mason's House, later called Faraday House, and now No.37 Hampton Court Road. In 1858 Faraday retired to live there. Twickenham Museum on Faraday and Faraday House, Accessed June 2006
Faraday died at his house at Hampton Court on August 25, 1867. He turned down burial in Westminster Abbey, but he has a memorial plaque there, near Isaac Newton's tomb. Faraday was interred in the Sandemanian plot in Highgate Cemetery.
Michael Faraday's grave at Highgate Cemetery
Faraday gave a successful series of lectures on the chemistry and physics of flames at the Royal Institution, entitled The Chemical History of a Candle. This was one of the earlier Christmas lectures for young people, which are still given each year. Between 1827 and 1860, Faraday gave the Christmas lecture a record nineteen times.
Faraday refused to participate in the production of chemical weapons for the Crimean War citing ethical reasons.
A statue of Faraday stands in Savoy Place, London, outside the Institution of Electrical Engineers.
A recently built hall of accommodation at Brunel University is named after Faraday.
A hall at Loughborough University was named after Faraday in 1960. Near the entrance to its dining hall is a bronze casting, which depicts the symbol of an electrical transformer, and inside there hangs a portrait, both in Faraday's honour.
Faraday's picture was printed on British £20 banknotes from 1991 until 2001. Bank of England, Withdrawn Notes
In the video game Chromehounds there is a ThermoVision Device named the Faraday.
The former UK Faraday Atmospheric Research Station in Antarctica was named after him.
Faraday was one of the then eight foreign members of the French Academy of Sciences.
Michael Faraday's signature
Faraday's books, with the exception of Chemical Manipulation, were collections of scientific papers or transcriptions of lectures. See page 220 of Hamilton's A Life of Discovery: Michael Faraday, Giant of the Scientific Revolution (2002) Since his death, Faraday's diary has been published, as have several large volumes of his letters and Faraday's journal from his travels with Davy in 1813 - 1815.
* Chemical Manipulation, Being Instructions to Students in Chemistry, John Murray, 1st ed. 1827, 2nd ed. 1830, 3rd ed. 1842
* Experimental Researches in Electricity, vols. i. and ii., Richard and John Edward Taylor, vols. i. and ii.. 1844 and 1847; vol. iii., 1844; vol. iii. Richard Taylor and William Francis, 1855
* Experimental Researches in Chemistry and Physics, Taylor and Francis, 1859
* A Course of Six Lectures on the Chemical History of a Candle, edited by W. Crookes, Griffin, Bohn & Co., 1861
* On the Various Forces in Nature, edited by W. Crookes, Chatto & Windus, 1873
* Faraday's Diary edited by T. Martin was published in eight volumes, 1932 - 1936
* Curiosity Perfectly Satisfyed: Faraday's Travels in Europe 1813-1815, edited by B. Bowers and L. Symons, Institution of Electrical Engineers, 1991
* The Correspondence of Michael Faraday, edited by F. A. J. L. James, INSPEC, Inc., volume 1, 1991; volume 2, 1993; volume 3, 1996; volume 4, 1999
* "Nothing is too wonderful to be true if it be consistent with the laws of nature, and in such things as these, experiment is the best test of such consistency." From the entry of 19 March 1849 in Faraday's Diary
* "Work. Finish. Publish." â his well-known advice to the young William Crookes
* "The important thing is to know how to take all things quietly."
* Regarding the hereafter, "Speculations? I have none. I am resting on certainties. I know whom I have believed and am persuaded that he is able to keep that which I have committed unto him against that day."
* "Next Sabbath day (the 22nd) I shall complete my 70th year. I can hardly think of myself so old."
*Above the doorways of the Pfahler Hall of Science at Ursinus College in Collegeville, Pennsylvania, there is a stone inscription of a quote attributed to Michael Faraday which reads "but still try, for who knows what is possible..." See
* "One day sir, you may tax it." Faraday's reply to William Gladstone, then British Minister of Finance, when asked of the practical value of electricity.
* "If you would cause your view ... to be acknowledged by scientific men; you would do a great service to science. If you would even get them to say yes or no to your conclusions it would help to clear the future progress. I believe some hesitate because they do not like their thoughts disturbed." From Life and Letters, 2:389.
* Faraday rotator
* Superconductivity
* Tyndall, John, Faraday as a Discoverer, (Longmans, 1st ed. 1868, 2nd ed. 1870).
* Bence Jones, Henry (1870). The Life and Letters of Faraday in 2 vols, Longmans.
* Gladstone, J. H. (1872). Michael Faraday, Macmillan.
* Thompson, Silvanus (1901, reprinted 2005). Michael Faraday, His Life and Work. Cassell and Company, London, 1901; reprint by Kessenger Publishing, Whitefish, MT. ISBN 1-4179-7036-7
* The British Electrical and Allied Manufacturers Association (1931). Faraday. R. & R. Clark, Ltd., Edinburgh, 1931.
* Williams, L. Pearce (1971), Faraday: A Biography, Simon and Schuster.
* Cantor, Geoffrey (1991). Michael Faraday, Sandemanian and Scientist, Macmillian, ISBN 0-333-55077
* Hamilton, James (2002). Faraday: The Life. London: Harper Collins. ISBN 0-00-716376-2
* Hamilton, James (2004). A Life of Discovery: Michael Faraday, Giant of the Scientific Revolution. New York: Random House. ISBN 1-4000-6016-8
* Agassi, Joseph (1971), Faraday as a Natural Philosopher, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
* Ames, Joseph Sweetman (Ed.), The discovery of induced electric currents Vol. 2. Memoirs, by Michael Faraday. New York, Cincinnati [etc.] American book company [c1900] LCCN 00005889
* Gooding, David (Ed.) (1985), Faraday Rediscovered: Essays on the Life and Work of Michael Faraday, 1791-1867, London/New York, Macmillan/Stockton
* Thomas, John Meurig (1991). Michael Faraday and the Royal Institution: The Genius of Man and Place Bristol: Hilger. ISBN 0-7503-0145-7
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* Biography at The Royal Institution of Great Britain
* Faraday as a Discoverer by John Tyndall, Project Gutenberg (downloads)
* The Christian Character of Michael Faraday
* Michael Faraday on the British twenty-pound banknote
* The Life and Discoveries of Michael Faraday by J. A. Crowther, London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1920
* "Faraday" at LoveToKnow 1911 Britannica Online Encyclopedia.
*
* (downloads)
* "Experimental Researches in Electricity" by Michael Faraday Original text with Biographical Introduction by Professor John Tyndall, 1914, Everyman edition.
* Video Podcast with Sir John Cadogan talking about Benzene since Faraday
* The letters of Faraday and Schoenbein 1836-1862. With notes, comments and references to contemporary letters (1899) full download PDF
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mole (unit)
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Michael_Faraday | Who was made to travel outside the coach? | Faraday | data/set4/a7 | Michael_Faraday
Michael Faraday, FRS (September 22, 1791 â August 25, 1867) was an English chemist and physicist (or natural philosopher, in the terminology of that time) who contributed to the fields of electromagnetism and electrochemistry.
Faraday studied the magnetic field around a conductor carrying a DC electric current, and established the basis for the magnetic field concept in physics. He discovered electromagnetic induction, diamagnetism and electrolysis. He established that magnetism could affect rays of light and that there was an underlying relationship between the two phenomena. Michael Faraday entry at the 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica hosted by LovetoKnow Retrieved January 2007. Institution of Engineering and Technology, London Archives, Michael Faraday His inventions of electromagnetic rotary devices formed the foundation of electric motor technology, and it was largely due to his efforts that electricity became viable for use in technology.
As a chemist, Faraday discovered benzene, investigated the clathrate hydrate of chlorine, invented an early form of the bunsen burner and the system of oxidation numbers, and popularized terminology such as anode, cathode, electrode, and ion.
Although Faraday received little formal education and knew little of higher mathematics, such as calculus, he was one of the most influential scientists in history. Some historians of science refer to him as the best experimentalist in the history of science. "best experimentalist in the history of science." Quoting Dr Peter Ford, from the University of Bathâs Department of Physics. Accessed January 2007. The SI unit of capacitance, the farad, is named after him, as is the Faraday constant, the charge on a mole of electrons (about 96,485 coulombs). Faraday's law of induction states that a magnetic field changing in time creates a proportional electromotive force.
Faraday was the first and foremost Fullerian Professor of Chemistry at the Royal Institution of Great Britain, a position to which he was appointed for life.
Michael Faraday from a photograph by John Watkins, British Library
Michael Faraday was born in Newington Butts, near present-day South London, England. His family was not well off. His father, James, was a member of the Sandemanian sect of Christianity. James Faraday had come to London ca 1790 from Outhgill in Westmorland, where he had been the village blacksmith. The young Michael Faraday, one of four children, having only the most basic of school educations, had to largely educate himself. "Michael Faraday." History of Science and Technology. Houghton Mifflin Company, 2004. Answers.com 4 June 2007. /ref> At fourteen he became apprenticed to a local bookbinder and bookseller George Riebau and, during his seven-year apprenticeship, he read many books, including Isaac Watts' The Improvement of the Mind, and he enthusiastically implemented the principles and suggestions contained therein. He developed an interest in science and specifically in electricity. In particular, he was inspired by the book Conversations in Chemistry by Jane Marcet.
At the age of twenty, in 1812, at the end of his apprenticeship, Faraday attended lectures by the eminent English chemist and physicist Humphry Davy of the Royal Institution and Royal Society, and John Tatum, founder of the City Philosophical Society. Many tickets for these lectures were given to Faraday by William Dance (one of the founders of the Royal Philharmonic Society). Afterwards, Faraday sent Davy a three hundred page book based on notes taken during the lectures. Davy's reply was immediate, kind, and favorable. When Davy damaged his eyesight in an accident with nitrogen trichloride, he decided to employ Faraday as a secretary. When John Payne, one of the Royal Institution's assistants, was fired, Sir Humphry Davy was asked to find a replacement. He appointed Faraday as Chemical Assistant at the Royal Institution on March 1.
In the class-based English society of the time, Faraday was not considered a gentleman. When Davy went on a long tour to the continent in 1813-5, his valet did not wish to go. Faraday was going as Davy's scientific assistant, and was asked to act as Davy's valet until a replacement could be found in Paris. Davy failed to find a replacement, and Faraday was forced to fill the role of valet as well as assistant throughout the trip. Davy's wife, Jane Apreece, refused to treat Faraday as an equal (making him travel outside the coach, eat with the servants, etc.) and generally made Faraday so miserable that he contemplated returning to England alone and giving up science altogether. The trip did, however, give him access to the European scientific elite and a host of stimulating ideas.
His sponsor and mentor was John 'Mad Jack' Fuller, who created the Fullerian Professorship of Chemistry at the Royal Institution.
Faraday was a devout Christian and a member of the small Sandemanian denomination, an offshoot of the Church of Scotland. He later served two terms as an elder in the group's church.
Faraday married Sarah Barnard (1800-1879) on June 2, 1821, although they would never have children. They met through attending the Sandemanian church.
He was elected a member of the Royal Society in 1824, appointed director of the laboratory in 1825; and in 1833 he was appointed Fullerian professor of chemistry in the institution for life, without the obligation to deliver lectures.
The title page of The Chemical History of a Candle (1861)
Faraday's earliest chemical work was as an assistant to Davy. He made a special study of chlorine, and discovered two new chlorides of carbon. He also made the first rough experiments on the diffusion of gases, a phenomenon first pointed out by John Dalton, the physical importance of which was more fully brought to light by Thomas Graham and Joseph Loschmidt. He succeeded in liquefying several gases; he investigated the alloys of steel, and produced several new kinds of glass intended for optical purposes. A specimen of one of these heavy glasses afterwards became historically important as the substance in which Faraday detected the rotation of the plane of polarisation of light when the glass was placed in a magnetic field, and also as the substance which was first repelled by the poles of the magnet. He also endeavoured, with some success, to make the general methods of chemistry, as distinguished from its results, the subject of special study and of popular exposition.
He invented an early form of what was to become the Bunsen burner, which is used almost universally in science laboratories as a convenient source of heat. See page 127 of Faraday's Chemical Manipulation, Being Instructions to Students in Chemistry (1827)
Faraday worked extensively in the field of chemistry, discovering chemical substances such as benzene (which he called bicarburet of hydrogen), inventing the system of oxidation numbers, and liquefying gases such as chlorine. In 1820 Faraday reported on the first syntheses of compounds made from carbon and chlorine, C 2 H 6 and C 2 H 4 , and published his results the following year. Faraday also determined the composition of the chlorine clathrate hydrate, which had been discovered by Humphry Davy in 1810.
Faraday also discovered the laws of electrolysis and popularized terminology such as anode, cathode, electrode, and ion, terms largely created by William Whewell.
Faraday was the first to report what later came to be called metallic nanoparticles. In 1847 he discovered that the optical properties of gold colloids differed from those of the corresponding bulk metal. This was probably the first reported observation of the effects of quantum size, and might be considered to be the birth of nanoscience.
Faraday's greatest work was probably with electricity and magnetism. The first experiment which he recorded was the construction of a voltaic pile with seven halfpence pieces, stacked together with seven disks of sheet zinc, and six pieces of paper moistened with salt water. With this pile he decomposed sulphate of magnesia (first letter to Abbott, July 12, 1812).
[[Image:Faraday photograph ii.jpg|thumb|200px|left|Michael Faraday holding a glass bar of the type he used in 1845 to show that magnetism can affect light. Detail of an engraving by Henry Adlard, based on an earlier photograph by Maull & Polyblank ca. 1857. See National Portrait Gallery, UK ]]
In 1821, soon after the Danish physicist and chemist, Hans Christian Ãrsted discovered the phenomenon of electromagnetism, Davy and British scientist William Hyde Wollaston tried but failed to design an electric motor. Faraday, having discussed the problem with the two men, went on to build two devices to produce what he called electromagnetic rotation: a continuous circular motion from the circular magnetic force around a wire and a wire extending into a pool of mercury with a magnet placed inside would rotate around the magnet if supplied with current from a chemical battery. The latter device is known as a homopolar motor. These experiments and inventions form the foundation of modern electromagnetic technology. Faraday published his results without acknowledging his debt to Wollaston and Davy, and the resulting controversy caused Faraday to withdraw from electromagnetic research for several years.
At this stage, there is also evidence to suggest that Davy may have been trying to slow Faradayâs rise as a scientist (or natural philosopher as it was known then). In 1825, for instance, Davy set him onto optical glass experiments, which progressed for six years with no great results. It was not until Davy's death, in 1829, that Faraday stopped these fruitless tasks and moved on to endeavors that were more worthwhile. Two years later, in 1831, he began his great series of experiments in which he discovered electromagnetic induction. Joseph Henry likely discovered self-induction a few months earlier and both may have been anticipated by the work of Francesco Zantedeschi in Italy in 1829 and 1830.
Faraday's breakthrough came when he wrapped two insulated coils of wire around a massive iron ring, bolted to a chair, and found that upon passing a current through one coil, a momentary current was induced in the other coil. This phenomenon is known as mutual induction. The iron ring-coil apparatus is still on display at the Royal Institution. In subsequent experiments he found that if he moved a magnet through a loop of wire, an electric current flowed in the wire. The current also flowed if the loop was moved over a stationary magnet. His demonstrations established that a changing magnetic field produces an electric field. This relation was mathematically modelled by Faraday's law, which subsequently became one of the four Maxwell equations. These in turn have evolved into the generalization known today as field theory.
Michael Faraday - statue in Savoy Place, London.
Sculptor John Henry Foley RA
Faraday later used the principle to construct the electric dynamo, the ancestor of modern power generators.
In 1839 he completed a series of experiments aimed at investigating the fundamental nature of electricity. Faraday used "static", batteries, and "animal electricity" to produce the phenomena of electrostatic attraction, electrolysis, magnetism, etc. He concluded that, contrary to scientific opinion of the time, the divisions between the various "kinds" of electricity were illusory. Faraday instead proposed that only a single "electricity" exists, and the changing values of quantity and intensity (voltage and charge) would produce different groups of phenomena.
Near the end of his career Faraday proposed that electromagnetic forces extended into the empty space around the conductor. This idea was rejected by his fellow scientists, and Faraday did not live to see this idea eventually accepted. Faraday's concept of lines of flux emanating from charged bodies and magnets provided a way to visualize electric and magnetic fields. That mental model was crucial to the successful development of electromechanical devices which dominated engineering and industry for the remainder of the 19th century.
In 1845, he discovered the phenomenon that he named diamagnetism, and what is now called the Faraday effect: The plane of polarization of linearly polarized light propagated through a material medium can be rotated by the application of an external magnetic field aligned in the propagation direction. He wrote in his notebook, "I have at last succeeded in illuminating a magnetic curve or line of force and in magnetising a ray of light". This established that magnetic force and light were related.
In his work on static electricity, Faraday demonstrated that the charge only resided on the exterior of a charged conductor, and exterior charge had no influence on anything enclosed within a conductor. This is because the exterior charges redistribute such that the interior fields due to them cancel. This shielding effect is used in what is now known as a Faraday cage.
Faraday was an excellent experimentalist who conveyed his ideas in clear and simple language. However, his mathematical abilities did not extend as far as trigonometry or any but the simplest algebra. It was James Clerk Maxwell who took the work of Faraday, and others, and consolidated it with a set of equations that lie at the base of all modern theories of electromagnetic phenomena.
Michael Faraday meets Father Thames, from Punch (July 21, 1855)
Beyond his scientific research into areas such as chemistry, electricity, and magnetism at the Royal Institution, Faraday undertook numerous, and often time-consuming, service projects for private enterprise and the British government. This work included investigations of explosions in mines, being an expert witness in court, and the preparation of high-quality optical glass.
As a respected scientist in a nation with strong maritime interests, Faraday spent extensive amounts of time on projects such as the construction and operation of light houses and protecting the bottoms of ships from corrosion.
Faraday also was active in what would now be called environmental science, or engineering. He investigated industrial pollution at Swansea and was consulted on air pollution at the Royal Mint. In July of 1855, Faraday wrote a letter to The Times on the subject of the foul condition of the River Thames, which resulted in an oft-reprinted cartoon in Punch. (See also The Great Stink.)
Faraday assisted with planning and judging of exhibits for the Great Exhibition of 1851 in London. He also advised the National Gallery on the cleaning and protection of its art collection, and served on the National Gallery Site Commission in 1857.
Education was another area of service for Faraday. He lectured on the topic in 1854 at the Royal Institution, and in 1862 he appeared before a Public Schools Commission to give his views on education in Great Britain. Faraday also weighed in, negatively, on the public's fascination with table-turning, mesmerism, and seances, chastising both the public and the nation's educational system. See The Illustrated London News, July 1853, for Faraday's comments.
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In June of 1832, the University of Oxford granted Faraday a Doctor of Civil Law degree (honorary). During his lifetime, Faraday rejected a knighthood and twice refused to become President of the Royal Society.
In 1848, as a result of representations by the Prince Consort, Michael Faraday was awarded a grace and favour house in Hampton Court, Surrey free of all expenses or upkeep. This was the Master Mason's House, later called Faraday House, and now No.37 Hampton Court Road. In 1858 Faraday retired to live there. Twickenham Museum on Faraday and Faraday House, Accessed June 2006
Faraday died at his house at Hampton Court on August 25, 1867. He turned down burial in Westminster Abbey, but he has a memorial plaque there, near Isaac Newton's tomb. Faraday was interred in the Sandemanian plot in Highgate Cemetery.
Michael Faraday's grave at Highgate Cemetery
Faraday gave a successful series of lectures on the chemistry and physics of flames at the Royal Institution, entitled The Chemical History of a Candle. This was one of the earlier Christmas lectures for young people, which are still given each year. Between 1827 and 1860, Faraday gave the Christmas lecture a record nineteen times.
Faraday refused to participate in the production of chemical weapons for the Crimean War citing ethical reasons.
A statue of Faraday stands in Savoy Place, London, outside the Institution of Electrical Engineers.
A recently built hall of accommodation at Brunel University is named after Faraday.
A hall at Loughborough University was named after Faraday in 1960. Near the entrance to its dining hall is a bronze casting, which depicts the symbol of an electrical transformer, and inside there hangs a portrait, both in Faraday's honour.
Faraday's picture was printed on British £20 banknotes from 1991 until 2001. Bank of England, Withdrawn Notes
In the video game Chromehounds there is a ThermoVision Device named the Faraday.
The former UK Faraday Atmospheric Research Station in Antarctica was named after him.
Faraday was one of the then eight foreign members of the French Academy of Sciences.
Michael Faraday's signature
Faraday's books, with the exception of Chemical Manipulation, were collections of scientific papers or transcriptions of lectures. See page 220 of Hamilton's A Life of Discovery: Michael Faraday, Giant of the Scientific Revolution (2002) Since his death, Faraday's diary has been published, as have several large volumes of his letters and Faraday's journal from his travels with Davy in 1813 - 1815.
* Chemical Manipulation, Being Instructions to Students in Chemistry, John Murray, 1st ed. 1827, 2nd ed. 1830, 3rd ed. 1842
* Experimental Researches in Electricity, vols. i. and ii., Richard and John Edward Taylor, vols. i. and ii.. 1844 and 1847; vol. iii., 1844; vol. iii. Richard Taylor and William Francis, 1855
* Experimental Researches in Chemistry and Physics, Taylor and Francis, 1859
* A Course of Six Lectures on the Chemical History of a Candle, edited by W. Crookes, Griffin, Bohn & Co., 1861
* On the Various Forces in Nature, edited by W. Crookes, Chatto & Windus, 1873
* Faraday's Diary edited by T. Martin was published in eight volumes, 1932 - 1936
* Curiosity Perfectly Satisfyed: Faraday's Travels in Europe 1813-1815, edited by B. Bowers and L. Symons, Institution of Electrical Engineers, 1991
* The Correspondence of Michael Faraday, edited by F. A. J. L. James, INSPEC, Inc., volume 1, 1991; volume 2, 1993; volume 3, 1996; volume 4, 1999
* "Nothing is too wonderful to be true if it be consistent with the laws of nature, and in such things as these, experiment is the best test of such consistency." From the entry of 19 March 1849 in Faraday's Diary
* "Work. Finish. Publish." â his well-known advice to the young William Crookes
* "The important thing is to know how to take all things quietly."
* Regarding the hereafter, "Speculations? I have none. I am resting on certainties. I know whom I have believed and am persuaded that he is able to keep that which I have committed unto him against that day."
* "Next Sabbath day (the 22nd) I shall complete my 70th year. I can hardly think of myself so old."
*Above the doorways of the Pfahler Hall of Science at Ursinus College in Collegeville, Pennsylvania, there is a stone inscription of a quote attributed to Michael Faraday which reads "but still try, for who knows what is possible..." See
* "One day sir, you may tax it." Faraday's reply to William Gladstone, then British Minister of Finance, when asked of the practical value of electricity.
* "If you would cause your view ... to be acknowledged by scientific men; you would do a great service to science. If you would even get them to say yes or no to your conclusions it would help to clear the future progress. I believe some hesitate because they do not like their thoughts disturbed." From Life and Letters, 2:389.
* Faraday rotator
* Superconductivity
* Tyndall, John, Faraday as a Discoverer, (Longmans, 1st ed. 1868, 2nd ed. 1870).
* Bence Jones, Henry (1870). The Life and Letters of Faraday in 2 vols, Longmans.
* Gladstone, J. H. (1872). Michael Faraday, Macmillan.
* Thompson, Silvanus (1901, reprinted 2005). Michael Faraday, His Life and Work. Cassell and Company, London, 1901; reprint by Kessenger Publishing, Whitefish, MT. ISBN 1-4179-7036-7
* The British Electrical and Allied Manufacturers Association (1931). Faraday. R. & R. Clark, Ltd., Edinburgh, 1931.
* Williams, L. Pearce (1971), Faraday: A Biography, Simon and Schuster.
* Cantor, Geoffrey (1991). Michael Faraday, Sandemanian and Scientist, Macmillian, ISBN 0-333-55077
* Hamilton, James (2002). Faraday: The Life. London: Harper Collins. ISBN 0-00-716376-2
* Hamilton, James (2004). A Life of Discovery: Michael Faraday, Giant of the Scientific Revolution. New York: Random House. ISBN 1-4000-6016-8
* Agassi, Joseph (1971), Faraday as a Natural Philosopher, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
* Ames, Joseph Sweetman (Ed.), The discovery of induced electric currents Vol. 2. Memoirs, by Michael Faraday. New York, Cincinnati [etc.] American book company [c1900] LCCN 00005889
* Gooding, David (Ed.) (1985), Faraday Rediscovered: Essays on the Life and Work of Michael Faraday, 1791-1867, London/New York, Macmillan/Stockton
* Thomas, John Meurig (1991). Michael Faraday and the Royal Institution: The Genius of Man and Place Bristol: Hilger. ISBN 0-7503-0145-7
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* Biography at The Royal Institution of Great Britain
* Faraday as a Discoverer by John Tyndall, Project Gutenberg (downloads)
* The Christian Character of Michael Faraday
* Michael Faraday on the British twenty-pound banknote
* The Life and Discoveries of Michael Faraday by J. A. Crowther, London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1920
* "Faraday" at LoveToKnow 1911 Britannica Online Encyclopedia.
*
* (downloads)
* "Experimental Researches in Electricity" by Michael Faraday Original text with Biographical Introduction by Professor John Tyndall, 1914, Everyman edition.
* Video Podcast with Sir John Cadogan talking about Benzene since Faraday
* The letters of Faraday and Schoenbein 1836-1862. With notes, comments and references to contemporary letters (1899) full download PDF
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Michael_Faraday | Did Faraday construct the ancestor of modern power generators? | yes | data/set4/a7 | Michael_Faraday
Michael Faraday, FRS (September 22, 1791 â August 25, 1867) was an English chemist and physicist (or natural philosopher, in the terminology of that time) who contributed to the fields of electromagnetism and electrochemistry.
Faraday studied the magnetic field around a conductor carrying a DC electric current, and established the basis for the magnetic field concept in physics. He discovered electromagnetic induction, diamagnetism and electrolysis. He established that magnetism could affect rays of light and that there was an underlying relationship between the two phenomena. Michael Faraday entry at the 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica hosted by LovetoKnow Retrieved January 2007. Institution of Engineering and Technology, London Archives, Michael Faraday His inventions of electromagnetic rotary devices formed the foundation of electric motor technology, and it was largely due to his efforts that electricity became viable for use in technology.
As a chemist, Faraday discovered benzene, investigated the clathrate hydrate of chlorine, invented an early form of the bunsen burner and the system of oxidation numbers, and popularized terminology such as anode, cathode, electrode, and ion.
Although Faraday received little formal education and knew little of higher mathematics, such as calculus, he was one of the most influential scientists in history. Some historians of science refer to him as the best experimentalist in the history of science. "best experimentalist in the history of science." Quoting Dr Peter Ford, from the University of Bathâs Department of Physics. Accessed January 2007. The SI unit of capacitance, the farad, is named after him, as is the Faraday constant, the charge on a mole of electrons (about 96,485 coulombs). Faraday's law of induction states that a magnetic field changing in time creates a proportional electromotive force.
Faraday was the first and foremost Fullerian Professor of Chemistry at the Royal Institution of Great Britain, a position to which he was appointed for life.
Michael Faraday from a photograph by John Watkins, British Library
Michael Faraday was born in Newington Butts, near present-day South London, England. His family was not well off. His father, James, was a member of the Sandemanian sect of Christianity. James Faraday had come to London ca 1790 from Outhgill in Westmorland, where he had been the village blacksmith. The young Michael Faraday, one of four children, having only the most basic of school educations, had to largely educate himself. "Michael Faraday." History of Science and Technology. Houghton Mifflin Company, 2004. Answers.com 4 June 2007. /ref> At fourteen he became apprenticed to a local bookbinder and bookseller George Riebau and, during his seven-year apprenticeship, he read many books, including Isaac Watts' The Improvement of the Mind, and he enthusiastically implemented the principles and suggestions contained therein. He developed an interest in science and specifically in electricity. In particular, he was inspired by the book Conversations in Chemistry by Jane Marcet.
At the age of twenty, in 1812, at the end of his apprenticeship, Faraday attended lectures by the eminent English chemist and physicist Humphry Davy of the Royal Institution and Royal Society, and John Tatum, founder of the City Philosophical Society. Many tickets for these lectures were given to Faraday by William Dance (one of the founders of the Royal Philharmonic Society). Afterwards, Faraday sent Davy a three hundred page book based on notes taken during the lectures. Davy's reply was immediate, kind, and favorable. When Davy damaged his eyesight in an accident with nitrogen trichloride, he decided to employ Faraday as a secretary. When John Payne, one of the Royal Institution's assistants, was fired, Sir Humphry Davy was asked to find a replacement. He appointed Faraday as Chemical Assistant at the Royal Institution on March 1.
In the class-based English society of the time, Faraday was not considered a gentleman. When Davy went on a long tour to the continent in 1813-5, his valet did not wish to go. Faraday was going as Davy's scientific assistant, and was asked to act as Davy's valet until a replacement could be found in Paris. Davy failed to find a replacement, and Faraday was forced to fill the role of valet as well as assistant throughout the trip. Davy's wife, Jane Apreece, refused to treat Faraday as an equal (making him travel outside the coach, eat with the servants, etc.) and generally made Faraday so miserable that he contemplated returning to England alone and giving up science altogether. The trip did, however, give him access to the European scientific elite and a host of stimulating ideas.
His sponsor and mentor was John 'Mad Jack' Fuller, who created the Fullerian Professorship of Chemistry at the Royal Institution.
Faraday was a devout Christian and a member of the small Sandemanian denomination, an offshoot of the Church of Scotland. He later served two terms as an elder in the group's church.
Faraday married Sarah Barnard (1800-1879) on June 2, 1821, although they would never have children. They met through attending the Sandemanian church.
He was elected a member of the Royal Society in 1824, appointed director of the laboratory in 1825; and in 1833 he was appointed Fullerian professor of chemistry in the institution for life, without the obligation to deliver lectures.
The title page of The Chemical History of a Candle (1861)
Faraday's earliest chemical work was as an assistant to Davy. He made a special study of chlorine, and discovered two new chlorides of carbon. He also made the first rough experiments on the diffusion of gases, a phenomenon first pointed out by John Dalton, the physical importance of which was more fully brought to light by Thomas Graham and Joseph Loschmidt. He succeeded in liquefying several gases; he investigated the alloys of steel, and produced several new kinds of glass intended for optical purposes. A specimen of one of these heavy glasses afterwards became historically important as the substance in which Faraday detected the rotation of the plane of polarisation of light when the glass was placed in a magnetic field, and also as the substance which was first repelled by the poles of the magnet. He also endeavoured, with some success, to make the general methods of chemistry, as distinguished from its results, the subject of special study and of popular exposition.
He invented an early form of what was to become the Bunsen burner, which is used almost universally in science laboratories as a convenient source of heat. See page 127 of Faraday's Chemical Manipulation, Being Instructions to Students in Chemistry (1827)
Faraday worked extensively in the field of chemistry, discovering chemical substances such as benzene (which he called bicarburet of hydrogen), inventing the system of oxidation numbers, and liquefying gases such as chlorine. In 1820 Faraday reported on the first syntheses of compounds made from carbon and chlorine, C 2 H 6 and C 2 H 4 , and published his results the following year. Faraday also determined the composition of the chlorine clathrate hydrate, which had been discovered by Humphry Davy in 1810.
Faraday also discovered the laws of electrolysis and popularized terminology such as anode, cathode, electrode, and ion, terms largely created by William Whewell.
Faraday was the first to report what later came to be called metallic nanoparticles. In 1847 he discovered that the optical properties of gold colloids differed from those of the corresponding bulk metal. This was probably the first reported observation of the effects of quantum size, and might be considered to be the birth of nanoscience.
Faraday's greatest work was probably with electricity and magnetism. The first experiment which he recorded was the construction of a voltaic pile with seven halfpence pieces, stacked together with seven disks of sheet zinc, and six pieces of paper moistened with salt water. With this pile he decomposed sulphate of magnesia (first letter to Abbott, July 12, 1812).
[[Image:Faraday photograph ii.jpg|thumb|200px|left|Michael Faraday holding a glass bar of the type he used in 1845 to show that magnetism can affect light. Detail of an engraving by Henry Adlard, based on an earlier photograph by Maull & Polyblank ca. 1857. See National Portrait Gallery, UK ]]
In 1821, soon after the Danish physicist and chemist, Hans Christian Ãrsted discovered the phenomenon of electromagnetism, Davy and British scientist William Hyde Wollaston tried but failed to design an electric motor. Faraday, having discussed the problem with the two men, went on to build two devices to produce what he called electromagnetic rotation: a continuous circular motion from the circular magnetic force around a wire and a wire extending into a pool of mercury with a magnet placed inside would rotate around the magnet if supplied with current from a chemical battery. The latter device is known as a homopolar motor. These experiments and inventions form the foundation of modern electromagnetic technology. Faraday published his results without acknowledging his debt to Wollaston and Davy, and the resulting controversy caused Faraday to withdraw from electromagnetic research for several years.
At this stage, there is also evidence to suggest that Davy may have been trying to slow Faradayâs rise as a scientist (or natural philosopher as it was known then). In 1825, for instance, Davy set him onto optical glass experiments, which progressed for six years with no great results. It was not until Davy's death, in 1829, that Faraday stopped these fruitless tasks and moved on to endeavors that were more worthwhile. Two years later, in 1831, he began his great series of experiments in which he discovered electromagnetic induction. Joseph Henry likely discovered self-induction a few months earlier and both may have been anticipated by the work of Francesco Zantedeschi in Italy in 1829 and 1830.
Faraday's breakthrough came when he wrapped two insulated coils of wire around a massive iron ring, bolted to a chair, and found that upon passing a current through one coil, a momentary current was induced in the other coil. This phenomenon is known as mutual induction. The iron ring-coil apparatus is still on display at the Royal Institution. In subsequent experiments he found that if he moved a magnet through a loop of wire, an electric current flowed in the wire. The current also flowed if the loop was moved over a stationary magnet. His demonstrations established that a changing magnetic field produces an electric field. This relation was mathematically modelled by Faraday's law, which subsequently became one of the four Maxwell equations. These in turn have evolved into the generalization known today as field theory.
Michael Faraday - statue in Savoy Place, London.
Sculptor John Henry Foley RA
Faraday later used the principle to construct the electric dynamo, the ancestor of modern power generators.
In 1839 he completed a series of experiments aimed at investigating the fundamental nature of electricity. Faraday used "static", batteries, and "animal electricity" to produce the phenomena of electrostatic attraction, electrolysis, magnetism, etc. He concluded that, contrary to scientific opinion of the time, the divisions between the various "kinds" of electricity were illusory. Faraday instead proposed that only a single "electricity" exists, and the changing values of quantity and intensity (voltage and charge) would produce different groups of phenomena.
Near the end of his career Faraday proposed that electromagnetic forces extended into the empty space around the conductor. This idea was rejected by his fellow scientists, and Faraday did not live to see this idea eventually accepted. Faraday's concept of lines of flux emanating from charged bodies and magnets provided a way to visualize electric and magnetic fields. That mental model was crucial to the successful development of electromechanical devices which dominated engineering and industry for the remainder of the 19th century.
In 1845, he discovered the phenomenon that he named diamagnetism, and what is now called the Faraday effect: The plane of polarization of linearly polarized light propagated through a material medium can be rotated by the application of an external magnetic field aligned in the propagation direction. He wrote in his notebook, "I have at last succeeded in illuminating a magnetic curve or line of force and in magnetising a ray of light". This established that magnetic force and light were related.
In his work on static electricity, Faraday demonstrated that the charge only resided on the exterior of a charged conductor, and exterior charge had no influence on anything enclosed within a conductor. This is because the exterior charges redistribute such that the interior fields due to them cancel. This shielding effect is used in what is now known as a Faraday cage.
Faraday was an excellent experimentalist who conveyed his ideas in clear and simple language. However, his mathematical abilities did not extend as far as trigonometry or any but the simplest algebra. It was James Clerk Maxwell who took the work of Faraday, and others, and consolidated it with a set of equations that lie at the base of all modern theories of electromagnetic phenomena.
Michael Faraday meets Father Thames, from Punch (July 21, 1855)
Beyond his scientific research into areas such as chemistry, electricity, and magnetism at the Royal Institution, Faraday undertook numerous, and often time-consuming, service projects for private enterprise and the British government. This work included investigations of explosions in mines, being an expert witness in court, and the preparation of high-quality optical glass.
As a respected scientist in a nation with strong maritime interests, Faraday spent extensive amounts of time on projects such as the construction and operation of light houses and protecting the bottoms of ships from corrosion.
Faraday also was active in what would now be called environmental science, or engineering. He investigated industrial pollution at Swansea and was consulted on air pollution at the Royal Mint. In July of 1855, Faraday wrote a letter to The Times on the subject of the foul condition of the River Thames, which resulted in an oft-reprinted cartoon in Punch. (See also The Great Stink.)
Faraday assisted with planning and judging of exhibits for the Great Exhibition of 1851 in London. He also advised the National Gallery on the cleaning and protection of its art collection, and served on the National Gallery Site Commission in 1857.
Education was another area of service for Faraday. He lectured on the topic in 1854 at the Royal Institution, and in 1862 he appeared before a Public Schools Commission to give his views on education in Great Britain. Faraday also weighed in, negatively, on the public's fascination with table-turning, mesmerism, and seances, chastising both the public and the nation's educational system. See The Illustrated London News, July 1853, for Faraday's comments.
125px
In June of 1832, the University of Oxford granted Faraday a Doctor of Civil Law degree (honorary). During his lifetime, Faraday rejected a knighthood and twice refused to become President of the Royal Society.
In 1848, as a result of representations by the Prince Consort, Michael Faraday was awarded a grace and favour house in Hampton Court, Surrey free of all expenses or upkeep. This was the Master Mason's House, later called Faraday House, and now No.37 Hampton Court Road. In 1858 Faraday retired to live there. Twickenham Museum on Faraday and Faraday House, Accessed June 2006
Faraday died at his house at Hampton Court on August 25, 1867. He turned down burial in Westminster Abbey, but he has a memorial plaque there, near Isaac Newton's tomb. Faraday was interred in the Sandemanian plot in Highgate Cemetery.
Michael Faraday's grave at Highgate Cemetery
Faraday gave a successful series of lectures on the chemistry and physics of flames at the Royal Institution, entitled The Chemical History of a Candle. This was one of the earlier Christmas lectures for young people, which are still given each year. Between 1827 and 1860, Faraday gave the Christmas lecture a record nineteen times.
Faraday refused to participate in the production of chemical weapons for the Crimean War citing ethical reasons.
A statue of Faraday stands in Savoy Place, London, outside the Institution of Electrical Engineers.
A recently built hall of accommodation at Brunel University is named after Faraday.
A hall at Loughborough University was named after Faraday in 1960. Near the entrance to its dining hall is a bronze casting, which depicts the symbol of an electrical transformer, and inside there hangs a portrait, both in Faraday's honour.
Faraday's picture was printed on British £20 banknotes from 1991 until 2001. Bank of England, Withdrawn Notes
In the video game Chromehounds there is a ThermoVision Device named the Faraday.
The former UK Faraday Atmospheric Research Station in Antarctica was named after him.
Faraday was one of the then eight foreign members of the French Academy of Sciences.
Michael Faraday's signature
Faraday's books, with the exception of Chemical Manipulation, were collections of scientific papers or transcriptions of lectures. See page 220 of Hamilton's A Life of Discovery: Michael Faraday, Giant of the Scientific Revolution (2002) Since his death, Faraday's diary has been published, as have several large volumes of his letters and Faraday's journal from his travels with Davy in 1813 - 1815.
* Chemical Manipulation, Being Instructions to Students in Chemistry, John Murray, 1st ed. 1827, 2nd ed. 1830, 3rd ed. 1842
* Experimental Researches in Electricity, vols. i. and ii., Richard and John Edward Taylor, vols. i. and ii.. 1844 and 1847; vol. iii., 1844; vol. iii. Richard Taylor and William Francis, 1855
* Experimental Researches in Chemistry and Physics, Taylor and Francis, 1859
* A Course of Six Lectures on the Chemical History of a Candle, edited by W. Crookes, Griffin, Bohn & Co., 1861
* On the Various Forces in Nature, edited by W. Crookes, Chatto & Windus, 1873
* Faraday's Diary edited by T. Martin was published in eight volumes, 1932 - 1936
* Curiosity Perfectly Satisfyed: Faraday's Travels in Europe 1813-1815, edited by B. Bowers and L. Symons, Institution of Electrical Engineers, 1991
* The Correspondence of Michael Faraday, edited by F. A. J. L. James, INSPEC, Inc., volume 1, 1991; volume 2, 1993; volume 3, 1996; volume 4, 1999
* "Nothing is too wonderful to be true if it be consistent with the laws of nature, and in such things as these, experiment is the best test of such consistency." From the entry of 19 March 1849 in Faraday's Diary
* "Work. Finish. Publish." â his well-known advice to the young William Crookes
* "The important thing is to know how to take all things quietly."
* Regarding the hereafter, "Speculations? I have none. I am resting on certainties. I know whom I have believed and am persuaded that he is able to keep that which I have committed unto him against that day."
* "Next Sabbath day (the 22nd) I shall complete my 70th year. I can hardly think of myself so old."
*Above the doorways of the Pfahler Hall of Science at Ursinus College in Collegeville, Pennsylvania, there is a stone inscription of a quote attributed to Michael Faraday which reads "but still try, for who knows what is possible..." See
* "One day sir, you may tax it." Faraday's reply to William Gladstone, then British Minister of Finance, when asked of the practical value of electricity.
* "If you would cause your view ... to be acknowledged by scientific men; you would do a great service to science. If you would even get them to say yes or no to your conclusions it would help to clear the future progress. I believe some hesitate because they do not like their thoughts disturbed." From Life and Letters, 2:389.
* Faraday rotator
* Superconductivity
* Tyndall, John, Faraday as a Discoverer, (Longmans, 1st ed. 1868, 2nd ed. 1870).
* Bence Jones, Henry (1870). The Life and Letters of Faraday in 2 vols, Longmans.
* Gladstone, J. H. (1872). Michael Faraday, Macmillan.
* Thompson, Silvanus (1901, reprinted 2005). Michael Faraday, His Life and Work. Cassell and Company, London, 1901; reprint by Kessenger Publishing, Whitefish, MT. ISBN 1-4179-7036-7
* The British Electrical and Allied Manufacturers Association (1931). Faraday. R. & R. Clark, Ltd., Edinburgh, 1931.
* Williams, L. Pearce (1971), Faraday: A Biography, Simon and Schuster.
* Cantor, Geoffrey (1991). Michael Faraday, Sandemanian and Scientist, Macmillian, ISBN 0-333-55077
* Hamilton, James (2002). Faraday: The Life. London: Harper Collins. ISBN 0-00-716376-2
* Hamilton, James (2004). A Life of Discovery: Michael Faraday, Giant of the Scientific Revolution. New York: Random House. ISBN 1-4000-6016-8
* Agassi, Joseph (1971), Faraday as a Natural Philosopher, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
* Ames, Joseph Sweetman (Ed.), The discovery of induced electric currents Vol. 2. Memoirs, by Michael Faraday. New York, Cincinnati [etc.] American book company [c1900] LCCN 00005889
* Gooding, David (Ed.) (1985), Faraday Rediscovered: Essays on the Life and Work of Michael Faraday, 1791-1867, London/New York, Macmillan/Stockton
* Thomas, John Meurig (1991). Michael Faraday and the Royal Institution: The Genius of Man and Place Bristol: Hilger. ISBN 0-7503-0145-7
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* Biography at The Royal Institution of Great Britain
* Faraday as a Discoverer by John Tyndall, Project Gutenberg (downloads)
* The Christian Character of Michael Faraday
* Michael Faraday on the British twenty-pound banknote
* The Life and Discoveries of Michael Faraday by J. A. Crowther, London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1920
* "Faraday" at LoveToKnow 1911 Britannica Online Encyclopedia.
*
* (downloads)
* "Experimental Researches in Electricity" by Michael Faraday Original text with Biographical Introduction by Professor John Tyndall, 1914, Everyman edition.
* Video Podcast with Sir John Cadogan talking about Benzene since Faraday
* The letters of Faraday and Schoenbein 1836-1862. With notes, comments and references to contemporary letters (1899) full download PDF
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Michael_Faraday | Did Faraday construct the ancestor of modern power generators? | yes | data/set4/a7 | Michael_Faraday
Michael Faraday, FRS (September 22, 1791 â August 25, 1867) was an English chemist and physicist (or natural philosopher, in the terminology of that time) who contributed to the fields of electromagnetism and electrochemistry.
Faraday studied the magnetic field around a conductor carrying a DC electric current, and established the basis for the magnetic field concept in physics. He discovered electromagnetic induction, diamagnetism and electrolysis. He established that magnetism could affect rays of light and that there was an underlying relationship between the two phenomena. Michael Faraday entry at the 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica hosted by LovetoKnow Retrieved January 2007. Institution of Engineering and Technology, London Archives, Michael Faraday His inventions of electromagnetic rotary devices formed the foundation of electric motor technology, and it was largely due to his efforts that electricity became viable for use in technology.
As a chemist, Faraday discovered benzene, investigated the clathrate hydrate of chlorine, invented an early form of the bunsen burner and the system of oxidation numbers, and popularized terminology such as anode, cathode, electrode, and ion.
Although Faraday received little formal education and knew little of higher mathematics, such as calculus, he was one of the most influential scientists in history. Some historians of science refer to him as the best experimentalist in the history of science. "best experimentalist in the history of science." Quoting Dr Peter Ford, from the University of Bathâs Department of Physics. Accessed January 2007. The SI unit of capacitance, the farad, is named after him, as is the Faraday constant, the charge on a mole of electrons (about 96,485 coulombs). Faraday's law of induction states that a magnetic field changing in time creates a proportional electromotive force.
Faraday was the first and foremost Fullerian Professor of Chemistry at the Royal Institution of Great Britain, a position to which he was appointed for life.
Michael Faraday from a photograph by John Watkins, British Library
Michael Faraday was born in Newington Butts, near present-day South London, England. His family was not well off. His father, James, was a member of the Sandemanian sect of Christianity. James Faraday had come to London ca 1790 from Outhgill in Westmorland, where he had been the village blacksmith. The young Michael Faraday, one of four children, having only the most basic of school educations, had to largely educate himself. "Michael Faraday." History of Science and Technology. Houghton Mifflin Company, 2004. Answers.com 4 June 2007. /ref> At fourteen he became apprenticed to a local bookbinder and bookseller George Riebau and, during his seven-year apprenticeship, he read many books, including Isaac Watts' The Improvement of the Mind, and he enthusiastically implemented the principles and suggestions contained therein. He developed an interest in science and specifically in electricity. In particular, he was inspired by the book Conversations in Chemistry by Jane Marcet.
At the age of twenty, in 1812, at the end of his apprenticeship, Faraday attended lectures by the eminent English chemist and physicist Humphry Davy of the Royal Institution and Royal Society, and John Tatum, founder of the City Philosophical Society. Many tickets for these lectures were given to Faraday by William Dance (one of the founders of the Royal Philharmonic Society). Afterwards, Faraday sent Davy a three hundred page book based on notes taken during the lectures. Davy's reply was immediate, kind, and favorable. When Davy damaged his eyesight in an accident with nitrogen trichloride, he decided to employ Faraday as a secretary. When John Payne, one of the Royal Institution's assistants, was fired, Sir Humphry Davy was asked to find a replacement. He appointed Faraday as Chemical Assistant at the Royal Institution on March 1.
In the class-based English society of the time, Faraday was not considered a gentleman. When Davy went on a long tour to the continent in 1813-5, his valet did not wish to go. Faraday was going as Davy's scientific assistant, and was asked to act as Davy's valet until a replacement could be found in Paris. Davy failed to find a replacement, and Faraday was forced to fill the role of valet as well as assistant throughout the trip. Davy's wife, Jane Apreece, refused to treat Faraday as an equal (making him travel outside the coach, eat with the servants, etc.) and generally made Faraday so miserable that he contemplated returning to England alone and giving up science altogether. The trip did, however, give him access to the European scientific elite and a host of stimulating ideas.
His sponsor and mentor was John 'Mad Jack' Fuller, who created the Fullerian Professorship of Chemistry at the Royal Institution.
Faraday was a devout Christian and a member of the small Sandemanian denomination, an offshoot of the Church of Scotland. He later served two terms as an elder in the group's church.
Faraday married Sarah Barnard (1800-1879) on June 2, 1821, although they would never have children. They met through attending the Sandemanian church.
He was elected a member of the Royal Society in 1824, appointed director of the laboratory in 1825; and in 1833 he was appointed Fullerian professor of chemistry in the institution for life, without the obligation to deliver lectures.
The title page of The Chemical History of a Candle (1861)
Faraday's earliest chemical work was as an assistant to Davy. He made a special study of chlorine, and discovered two new chlorides of carbon. He also made the first rough experiments on the diffusion of gases, a phenomenon first pointed out by John Dalton, the physical importance of which was more fully brought to light by Thomas Graham and Joseph Loschmidt. He succeeded in liquefying several gases; he investigated the alloys of steel, and produced several new kinds of glass intended for optical purposes. A specimen of one of these heavy glasses afterwards became historically important as the substance in which Faraday detected the rotation of the plane of polarisation of light when the glass was placed in a magnetic field, and also as the substance which was first repelled by the poles of the magnet. He also endeavoured, with some success, to make the general methods of chemistry, as distinguished from its results, the subject of special study and of popular exposition.
He invented an early form of what was to become the Bunsen burner, which is used almost universally in science laboratories as a convenient source of heat. See page 127 of Faraday's Chemical Manipulation, Being Instructions to Students in Chemistry (1827)
Faraday worked extensively in the field of chemistry, discovering chemical substances such as benzene (which he called bicarburet of hydrogen), inventing the system of oxidation numbers, and liquefying gases such as chlorine. In 1820 Faraday reported on the first syntheses of compounds made from carbon and chlorine, C 2 H 6 and C 2 H 4 , and published his results the following year. Faraday also determined the composition of the chlorine clathrate hydrate, which had been discovered by Humphry Davy in 1810.
Faraday also discovered the laws of electrolysis and popularized terminology such as anode, cathode, electrode, and ion, terms largely created by William Whewell.
Faraday was the first to report what later came to be called metallic nanoparticles. In 1847 he discovered that the optical properties of gold colloids differed from those of the corresponding bulk metal. This was probably the first reported observation of the effects of quantum size, and might be considered to be the birth of nanoscience.
Faraday's greatest work was probably with electricity and magnetism. The first experiment which he recorded was the construction of a voltaic pile with seven halfpence pieces, stacked together with seven disks of sheet zinc, and six pieces of paper moistened with salt water. With this pile he decomposed sulphate of magnesia (first letter to Abbott, July 12, 1812).
[[Image:Faraday photograph ii.jpg|thumb|200px|left|Michael Faraday holding a glass bar of the type he used in 1845 to show that magnetism can affect light. Detail of an engraving by Henry Adlard, based on an earlier photograph by Maull & Polyblank ca. 1857. See National Portrait Gallery, UK ]]
In 1821, soon after the Danish physicist and chemist, Hans Christian Ãrsted discovered the phenomenon of electromagnetism, Davy and British scientist William Hyde Wollaston tried but failed to design an electric motor. Faraday, having discussed the problem with the two men, went on to build two devices to produce what he called electromagnetic rotation: a continuous circular motion from the circular magnetic force around a wire and a wire extending into a pool of mercury with a magnet placed inside would rotate around the magnet if supplied with current from a chemical battery. The latter device is known as a homopolar motor. These experiments and inventions form the foundation of modern electromagnetic technology. Faraday published his results without acknowledging his debt to Wollaston and Davy, and the resulting controversy caused Faraday to withdraw from electromagnetic research for several years.
At this stage, there is also evidence to suggest that Davy may have been trying to slow Faradayâs rise as a scientist (or natural philosopher as it was known then). In 1825, for instance, Davy set him onto optical glass experiments, which progressed for six years with no great results. It was not until Davy's death, in 1829, that Faraday stopped these fruitless tasks and moved on to endeavors that were more worthwhile. Two years later, in 1831, he began his great series of experiments in which he discovered electromagnetic induction. Joseph Henry likely discovered self-induction a few months earlier and both may have been anticipated by the work of Francesco Zantedeschi in Italy in 1829 and 1830.
Faraday's breakthrough came when he wrapped two insulated coils of wire around a massive iron ring, bolted to a chair, and found that upon passing a current through one coil, a momentary current was induced in the other coil. This phenomenon is known as mutual induction. The iron ring-coil apparatus is still on display at the Royal Institution. In subsequent experiments he found that if he moved a magnet through a loop of wire, an electric current flowed in the wire. The current also flowed if the loop was moved over a stationary magnet. His demonstrations established that a changing magnetic field produces an electric field. This relation was mathematically modelled by Faraday's law, which subsequently became one of the four Maxwell equations. These in turn have evolved into the generalization known today as field theory.
Michael Faraday - statue in Savoy Place, London.
Sculptor John Henry Foley RA
Faraday later used the principle to construct the electric dynamo, the ancestor of modern power generators.
In 1839 he completed a series of experiments aimed at investigating the fundamental nature of electricity. Faraday used "static", batteries, and "animal electricity" to produce the phenomena of electrostatic attraction, electrolysis, magnetism, etc. He concluded that, contrary to scientific opinion of the time, the divisions between the various "kinds" of electricity were illusory. Faraday instead proposed that only a single "electricity" exists, and the changing values of quantity and intensity (voltage and charge) would produce different groups of phenomena.
Near the end of his career Faraday proposed that electromagnetic forces extended into the empty space around the conductor. This idea was rejected by his fellow scientists, and Faraday did not live to see this idea eventually accepted. Faraday's concept of lines of flux emanating from charged bodies and magnets provided a way to visualize electric and magnetic fields. That mental model was crucial to the successful development of electromechanical devices which dominated engineering and industry for the remainder of the 19th century.
In 1845, he discovered the phenomenon that he named diamagnetism, and what is now called the Faraday effect: The plane of polarization of linearly polarized light propagated through a material medium can be rotated by the application of an external magnetic field aligned in the propagation direction. He wrote in his notebook, "I have at last succeeded in illuminating a magnetic curve or line of force and in magnetising a ray of light". This established that magnetic force and light were related.
In his work on static electricity, Faraday demonstrated that the charge only resided on the exterior of a charged conductor, and exterior charge had no influence on anything enclosed within a conductor. This is because the exterior charges redistribute such that the interior fields due to them cancel. This shielding effect is used in what is now known as a Faraday cage.
Faraday was an excellent experimentalist who conveyed his ideas in clear and simple language. However, his mathematical abilities did not extend as far as trigonometry or any but the simplest algebra. It was James Clerk Maxwell who took the work of Faraday, and others, and consolidated it with a set of equations that lie at the base of all modern theories of electromagnetic phenomena.
Michael Faraday meets Father Thames, from Punch (July 21, 1855)
Beyond his scientific research into areas such as chemistry, electricity, and magnetism at the Royal Institution, Faraday undertook numerous, and often time-consuming, service projects for private enterprise and the British government. This work included investigations of explosions in mines, being an expert witness in court, and the preparation of high-quality optical glass.
As a respected scientist in a nation with strong maritime interests, Faraday spent extensive amounts of time on projects such as the construction and operation of light houses and protecting the bottoms of ships from corrosion.
Faraday also was active in what would now be called environmental science, or engineering. He investigated industrial pollution at Swansea and was consulted on air pollution at the Royal Mint. In July of 1855, Faraday wrote a letter to The Times on the subject of the foul condition of the River Thames, which resulted in an oft-reprinted cartoon in Punch. (See also The Great Stink.)
Faraday assisted with planning and judging of exhibits for the Great Exhibition of 1851 in London. He also advised the National Gallery on the cleaning and protection of its art collection, and served on the National Gallery Site Commission in 1857.
Education was another area of service for Faraday. He lectured on the topic in 1854 at the Royal Institution, and in 1862 he appeared before a Public Schools Commission to give his views on education in Great Britain. Faraday also weighed in, negatively, on the public's fascination with table-turning, mesmerism, and seances, chastising both the public and the nation's educational system. See The Illustrated London News, July 1853, for Faraday's comments.
125px
In June of 1832, the University of Oxford granted Faraday a Doctor of Civil Law degree (honorary). During his lifetime, Faraday rejected a knighthood and twice refused to become President of the Royal Society.
In 1848, as a result of representations by the Prince Consort, Michael Faraday was awarded a grace and favour house in Hampton Court, Surrey free of all expenses or upkeep. This was the Master Mason's House, later called Faraday House, and now No.37 Hampton Court Road. In 1858 Faraday retired to live there. Twickenham Museum on Faraday and Faraday House, Accessed June 2006
Faraday died at his house at Hampton Court on August 25, 1867. He turned down burial in Westminster Abbey, but he has a memorial plaque there, near Isaac Newton's tomb. Faraday was interred in the Sandemanian plot in Highgate Cemetery.
Michael Faraday's grave at Highgate Cemetery
Faraday gave a successful series of lectures on the chemistry and physics of flames at the Royal Institution, entitled The Chemical History of a Candle. This was one of the earlier Christmas lectures for young people, which are still given each year. Between 1827 and 1860, Faraday gave the Christmas lecture a record nineteen times.
Faraday refused to participate in the production of chemical weapons for the Crimean War citing ethical reasons.
A statue of Faraday stands in Savoy Place, London, outside the Institution of Electrical Engineers.
A recently built hall of accommodation at Brunel University is named after Faraday.
A hall at Loughborough University was named after Faraday in 1960. Near the entrance to its dining hall is a bronze casting, which depicts the symbol of an electrical transformer, and inside there hangs a portrait, both in Faraday's honour.
Faraday's picture was printed on British £20 banknotes from 1991 until 2001. Bank of England, Withdrawn Notes
In the video game Chromehounds there is a ThermoVision Device named the Faraday.
The former UK Faraday Atmospheric Research Station in Antarctica was named after him.
Faraday was one of the then eight foreign members of the French Academy of Sciences.
Michael Faraday's signature
Faraday's books, with the exception of Chemical Manipulation, were collections of scientific papers or transcriptions of lectures. See page 220 of Hamilton's A Life of Discovery: Michael Faraday, Giant of the Scientific Revolution (2002) Since his death, Faraday's diary has been published, as have several large volumes of his letters and Faraday's journal from his travels with Davy in 1813 - 1815.
* Chemical Manipulation, Being Instructions to Students in Chemistry, John Murray, 1st ed. 1827, 2nd ed. 1830, 3rd ed. 1842
* Experimental Researches in Electricity, vols. i. and ii., Richard and John Edward Taylor, vols. i. and ii.. 1844 and 1847; vol. iii., 1844; vol. iii. Richard Taylor and William Francis, 1855
* Experimental Researches in Chemistry and Physics, Taylor and Francis, 1859
* A Course of Six Lectures on the Chemical History of a Candle, edited by W. Crookes, Griffin, Bohn & Co., 1861
* On the Various Forces in Nature, edited by W. Crookes, Chatto & Windus, 1873
* Faraday's Diary edited by T. Martin was published in eight volumes, 1932 - 1936
* Curiosity Perfectly Satisfyed: Faraday's Travels in Europe 1813-1815, edited by B. Bowers and L. Symons, Institution of Electrical Engineers, 1991
* The Correspondence of Michael Faraday, edited by F. A. J. L. James, INSPEC, Inc., volume 1, 1991; volume 2, 1993; volume 3, 1996; volume 4, 1999
* "Nothing is too wonderful to be true if it be consistent with the laws of nature, and in such things as these, experiment is the best test of such consistency." From the entry of 19 March 1849 in Faraday's Diary
* "Work. Finish. Publish." â his well-known advice to the young William Crookes
* "The important thing is to know how to take all things quietly."
* Regarding the hereafter, "Speculations? I have none. I am resting on certainties. I know whom I have believed and am persuaded that he is able to keep that which I have committed unto him against that day."
* "Next Sabbath day (the 22nd) I shall complete my 70th year. I can hardly think of myself so old."
*Above the doorways of the Pfahler Hall of Science at Ursinus College in Collegeville, Pennsylvania, there is a stone inscription of a quote attributed to Michael Faraday which reads "but still try, for who knows what is possible..." See
* "One day sir, you may tax it." Faraday's reply to William Gladstone, then British Minister of Finance, when asked of the practical value of electricity.
* "If you would cause your view ... to be acknowledged by scientific men; you would do a great service to science. If you would even get them to say yes or no to your conclusions it would help to clear the future progress. I believe some hesitate because they do not like their thoughts disturbed." From Life and Letters, 2:389.
* Faraday rotator
* Superconductivity
* Tyndall, John, Faraday as a Discoverer, (Longmans, 1st ed. 1868, 2nd ed. 1870).
* Bence Jones, Henry (1870). The Life and Letters of Faraday in 2 vols, Longmans.
* Gladstone, J. H. (1872). Michael Faraday, Macmillan.
* Thompson, Silvanus (1901, reprinted 2005). Michael Faraday, His Life and Work. Cassell and Company, London, 1901; reprint by Kessenger Publishing, Whitefish, MT. ISBN 1-4179-7036-7
* The British Electrical and Allied Manufacturers Association (1931). Faraday. R. & R. Clark, Ltd., Edinburgh, 1931.
* Williams, L. Pearce (1971), Faraday: A Biography, Simon and Schuster.
* Cantor, Geoffrey (1991). Michael Faraday, Sandemanian and Scientist, Macmillian, ISBN 0-333-55077
* Hamilton, James (2002). Faraday: The Life. London: Harper Collins. ISBN 0-00-716376-2
* Hamilton, James (2004). A Life of Discovery: Michael Faraday, Giant of the Scientific Revolution. New York: Random House. ISBN 1-4000-6016-8
* Agassi, Joseph (1971), Faraday as a Natural Philosopher, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
* Ames, Joseph Sweetman (Ed.), The discovery of induced electric currents Vol. 2. Memoirs, by Michael Faraday. New York, Cincinnati [etc.] American book company [c1900] LCCN 00005889
* Gooding, David (Ed.) (1985), Faraday Rediscovered: Essays on the Life and Work of Michael Faraday, 1791-1867, London/New York, Macmillan/Stockton
* Thomas, John Meurig (1991). Michael Faraday and the Royal Institution: The Genius of Man and Place Bristol: Hilger. ISBN 0-7503-0145-7
150px
* Biography at The Royal Institution of Great Britain
* Faraday as a Discoverer by John Tyndall, Project Gutenberg (downloads)
* The Christian Character of Michael Faraday
* Michael Faraday on the British twenty-pound banknote
* The Life and Discoveries of Michael Faraday by J. A. Crowther, London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1920
* "Faraday" at LoveToKnow 1911 Britannica Online Encyclopedia.
*
* (downloads)
* "Experimental Researches in Electricity" by Michael Faraday Original text with Biographical Introduction by Professor John Tyndall, 1914, Everyman edition.
* Video Podcast with Sir John Cadogan talking about Benzene since Faraday
* The letters of Faraday and Schoenbein 1836-1862. With notes, comments and references to contemporary letters (1899) full download PDF
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Michael_Faraday | Did Faraday lecture on education in 1854? | yes | data/set4/a7 | Michael_Faraday
Michael Faraday, FRS (September 22, 1791 â August 25, 1867) was an English chemist and physicist (or natural philosopher, in the terminology of that time) who contributed to the fields of electromagnetism and electrochemistry.
Faraday studied the magnetic field around a conductor carrying a DC electric current, and established the basis for the magnetic field concept in physics. He discovered electromagnetic induction, diamagnetism and electrolysis. He established that magnetism could affect rays of light and that there was an underlying relationship between the two phenomena. Michael Faraday entry at the 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica hosted by LovetoKnow Retrieved January 2007. Institution of Engineering and Technology, London Archives, Michael Faraday His inventions of electromagnetic rotary devices formed the foundation of electric motor technology, and it was largely due to his efforts that electricity became viable for use in technology.
As a chemist, Faraday discovered benzene, investigated the clathrate hydrate of chlorine, invented an early form of the bunsen burner and the system of oxidation numbers, and popularized terminology such as anode, cathode, electrode, and ion.
Although Faraday received little formal education and knew little of higher mathematics, such as calculus, he was one of the most influential scientists in history. Some historians of science refer to him as the best experimentalist in the history of science. "best experimentalist in the history of science." Quoting Dr Peter Ford, from the University of Bathâs Department of Physics. Accessed January 2007. The SI unit of capacitance, the farad, is named after him, as is the Faraday constant, the charge on a mole of electrons (about 96,485 coulombs). Faraday's law of induction states that a magnetic field changing in time creates a proportional electromotive force.
Faraday was the first and foremost Fullerian Professor of Chemistry at the Royal Institution of Great Britain, a position to which he was appointed for life.
Michael Faraday from a photograph by John Watkins, British Library
Michael Faraday was born in Newington Butts, near present-day South London, England. His family was not well off. His father, James, was a member of the Sandemanian sect of Christianity. James Faraday had come to London ca 1790 from Outhgill in Westmorland, where he had been the village blacksmith. The young Michael Faraday, one of four children, having only the most basic of school educations, had to largely educate himself. "Michael Faraday." History of Science and Technology. Houghton Mifflin Company, 2004. Answers.com 4 June 2007. /ref> At fourteen he became apprenticed to a local bookbinder and bookseller George Riebau and, during his seven-year apprenticeship, he read many books, including Isaac Watts' The Improvement of the Mind, and he enthusiastically implemented the principles and suggestions contained therein. He developed an interest in science and specifically in electricity. In particular, he was inspired by the book Conversations in Chemistry by Jane Marcet.
At the age of twenty, in 1812, at the end of his apprenticeship, Faraday attended lectures by the eminent English chemist and physicist Humphry Davy of the Royal Institution and Royal Society, and John Tatum, founder of the City Philosophical Society. Many tickets for these lectures were given to Faraday by William Dance (one of the founders of the Royal Philharmonic Society). Afterwards, Faraday sent Davy a three hundred page book based on notes taken during the lectures. Davy's reply was immediate, kind, and favorable. When Davy damaged his eyesight in an accident with nitrogen trichloride, he decided to employ Faraday as a secretary. When John Payne, one of the Royal Institution's assistants, was fired, Sir Humphry Davy was asked to find a replacement. He appointed Faraday as Chemical Assistant at the Royal Institution on March 1.
In the class-based English society of the time, Faraday was not considered a gentleman. When Davy went on a long tour to the continent in 1813-5, his valet did not wish to go. Faraday was going as Davy's scientific assistant, and was asked to act as Davy's valet until a replacement could be found in Paris. Davy failed to find a replacement, and Faraday was forced to fill the role of valet as well as assistant throughout the trip. Davy's wife, Jane Apreece, refused to treat Faraday as an equal (making him travel outside the coach, eat with the servants, etc.) and generally made Faraday so miserable that he contemplated returning to England alone and giving up science altogether. The trip did, however, give him access to the European scientific elite and a host of stimulating ideas.
His sponsor and mentor was John 'Mad Jack' Fuller, who created the Fullerian Professorship of Chemistry at the Royal Institution.
Faraday was a devout Christian and a member of the small Sandemanian denomination, an offshoot of the Church of Scotland. He later served two terms as an elder in the group's church.
Faraday married Sarah Barnard (1800-1879) on June 2, 1821, although they would never have children. They met through attending the Sandemanian church.
He was elected a member of the Royal Society in 1824, appointed director of the laboratory in 1825; and in 1833 he was appointed Fullerian professor of chemistry in the institution for life, without the obligation to deliver lectures.
The title page of The Chemical History of a Candle (1861)
Faraday's earliest chemical work was as an assistant to Davy. He made a special study of chlorine, and discovered two new chlorides of carbon. He also made the first rough experiments on the diffusion of gases, a phenomenon first pointed out by John Dalton, the physical importance of which was more fully brought to light by Thomas Graham and Joseph Loschmidt. He succeeded in liquefying several gases; he investigated the alloys of steel, and produced several new kinds of glass intended for optical purposes. A specimen of one of these heavy glasses afterwards became historically important as the substance in which Faraday detected the rotation of the plane of polarisation of light when the glass was placed in a magnetic field, and also as the substance which was first repelled by the poles of the magnet. He also endeavoured, with some success, to make the general methods of chemistry, as distinguished from its results, the subject of special study and of popular exposition.
He invented an early form of what was to become the Bunsen burner, which is used almost universally in science laboratories as a convenient source of heat. See page 127 of Faraday's Chemical Manipulation, Being Instructions to Students in Chemistry (1827)
Faraday worked extensively in the field of chemistry, discovering chemical substances such as benzene (which he called bicarburet of hydrogen), inventing the system of oxidation numbers, and liquefying gases such as chlorine. In 1820 Faraday reported on the first syntheses of compounds made from carbon and chlorine, C 2 H 6 and C 2 H 4 , and published his results the following year. Faraday also determined the composition of the chlorine clathrate hydrate, which had been discovered by Humphry Davy in 1810.
Faraday also discovered the laws of electrolysis and popularized terminology such as anode, cathode, electrode, and ion, terms largely created by William Whewell.
Faraday was the first to report what later came to be called metallic nanoparticles. In 1847 he discovered that the optical properties of gold colloids differed from those of the corresponding bulk metal. This was probably the first reported observation of the effects of quantum size, and might be considered to be the birth of nanoscience.
Faraday's greatest work was probably with electricity and magnetism. The first experiment which he recorded was the construction of a voltaic pile with seven halfpence pieces, stacked together with seven disks of sheet zinc, and six pieces of paper moistened with salt water. With this pile he decomposed sulphate of magnesia (first letter to Abbott, July 12, 1812).
[[Image:Faraday photograph ii.jpg|thumb|200px|left|Michael Faraday holding a glass bar of the type he used in 1845 to show that magnetism can affect light. Detail of an engraving by Henry Adlard, based on an earlier photograph by Maull & Polyblank ca. 1857. See National Portrait Gallery, UK ]]
In 1821, soon after the Danish physicist and chemist, Hans Christian Ãrsted discovered the phenomenon of electromagnetism, Davy and British scientist William Hyde Wollaston tried but failed to design an electric motor. Faraday, having discussed the problem with the two men, went on to build two devices to produce what he called electromagnetic rotation: a continuous circular motion from the circular magnetic force around a wire and a wire extending into a pool of mercury with a magnet placed inside would rotate around the magnet if supplied with current from a chemical battery. The latter device is known as a homopolar motor. These experiments and inventions form the foundation of modern electromagnetic technology. Faraday published his results without acknowledging his debt to Wollaston and Davy, and the resulting controversy caused Faraday to withdraw from electromagnetic research for several years.
At this stage, there is also evidence to suggest that Davy may have been trying to slow Faradayâs rise as a scientist (or natural philosopher as it was known then). In 1825, for instance, Davy set him onto optical glass experiments, which progressed for six years with no great results. It was not until Davy's death, in 1829, that Faraday stopped these fruitless tasks and moved on to endeavors that were more worthwhile. Two years later, in 1831, he began his great series of experiments in which he discovered electromagnetic induction. Joseph Henry likely discovered self-induction a few months earlier and both may have been anticipated by the work of Francesco Zantedeschi in Italy in 1829 and 1830.
Faraday's breakthrough came when he wrapped two insulated coils of wire around a massive iron ring, bolted to a chair, and found that upon passing a current through one coil, a momentary current was induced in the other coil. This phenomenon is known as mutual induction. The iron ring-coil apparatus is still on display at the Royal Institution. In subsequent experiments he found that if he moved a magnet through a loop of wire, an electric current flowed in the wire. The current also flowed if the loop was moved over a stationary magnet. His demonstrations established that a changing magnetic field produces an electric field. This relation was mathematically modelled by Faraday's law, which subsequently became one of the four Maxwell equations. These in turn have evolved into the generalization known today as field theory.
Michael Faraday - statue in Savoy Place, London.
Sculptor John Henry Foley RA
Faraday later used the principle to construct the electric dynamo, the ancestor of modern power generators.
In 1839 he completed a series of experiments aimed at investigating the fundamental nature of electricity. Faraday used "static", batteries, and "animal electricity" to produce the phenomena of electrostatic attraction, electrolysis, magnetism, etc. He concluded that, contrary to scientific opinion of the time, the divisions between the various "kinds" of electricity were illusory. Faraday instead proposed that only a single "electricity" exists, and the changing values of quantity and intensity (voltage and charge) would produce different groups of phenomena.
Near the end of his career Faraday proposed that electromagnetic forces extended into the empty space around the conductor. This idea was rejected by his fellow scientists, and Faraday did not live to see this idea eventually accepted. Faraday's concept of lines of flux emanating from charged bodies and magnets provided a way to visualize electric and magnetic fields. That mental model was crucial to the successful development of electromechanical devices which dominated engineering and industry for the remainder of the 19th century.
In 1845, he discovered the phenomenon that he named diamagnetism, and what is now called the Faraday effect: The plane of polarization of linearly polarized light propagated through a material medium can be rotated by the application of an external magnetic field aligned in the propagation direction. He wrote in his notebook, "I have at last succeeded in illuminating a magnetic curve or line of force and in magnetising a ray of light". This established that magnetic force and light were related.
In his work on static electricity, Faraday demonstrated that the charge only resided on the exterior of a charged conductor, and exterior charge had no influence on anything enclosed within a conductor. This is because the exterior charges redistribute such that the interior fields due to them cancel. This shielding effect is used in what is now known as a Faraday cage.
Faraday was an excellent experimentalist who conveyed his ideas in clear and simple language. However, his mathematical abilities did not extend as far as trigonometry or any but the simplest algebra. It was James Clerk Maxwell who took the work of Faraday, and others, and consolidated it with a set of equations that lie at the base of all modern theories of electromagnetic phenomena.
Michael Faraday meets Father Thames, from Punch (July 21, 1855)
Beyond his scientific research into areas such as chemistry, electricity, and magnetism at the Royal Institution, Faraday undertook numerous, and often time-consuming, service projects for private enterprise and the British government. This work included investigations of explosions in mines, being an expert witness in court, and the preparation of high-quality optical glass.
As a respected scientist in a nation with strong maritime interests, Faraday spent extensive amounts of time on projects such as the construction and operation of light houses and protecting the bottoms of ships from corrosion.
Faraday also was active in what would now be called environmental science, or engineering. He investigated industrial pollution at Swansea and was consulted on air pollution at the Royal Mint. In July of 1855, Faraday wrote a letter to The Times on the subject of the foul condition of the River Thames, which resulted in an oft-reprinted cartoon in Punch. (See also The Great Stink.)
Faraday assisted with planning and judging of exhibits for the Great Exhibition of 1851 in London. He also advised the National Gallery on the cleaning and protection of its art collection, and served on the National Gallery Site Commission in 1857.
Education was another area of service for Faraday. He lectured on the topic in 1854 at the Royal Institution, and in 1862 he appeared before a Public Schools Commission to give his views on education in Great Britain. Faraday also weighed in, negatively, on the public's fascination with table-turning, mesmerism, and seances, chastising both the public and the nation's educational system. See The Illustrated London News, July 1853, for Faraday's comments.
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In June of 1832, the University of Oxford granted Faraday a Doctor of Civil Law degree (honorary). During his lifetime, Faraday rejected a knighthood and twice refused to become President of the Royal Society.
In 1848, as a result of representations by the Prince Consort, Michael Faraday was awarded a grace and favour house in Hampton Court, Surrey free of all expenses or upkeep. This was the Master Mason's House, later called Faraday House, and now No.37 Hampton Court Road. In 1858 Faraday retired to live there. Twickenham Museum on Faraday and Faraday House, Accessed June 2006
Faraday died at his house at Hampton Court on August 25, 1867. He turned down burial in Westminster Abbey, but he has a memorial plaque there, near Isaac Newton's tomb. Faraday was interred in the Sandemanian plot in Highgate Cemetery.
Michael Faraday's grave at Highgate Cemetery
Faraday gave a successful series of lectures on the chemistry and physics of flames at the Royal Institution, entitled The Chemical History of a Candle. This was one of the earlier Christmas lectures for young people, which are still given each year. Between 1827 and 1860, Faraday gave the Christmas lecture a record nineteen times.
Faraday refused to participate in the production of chemical weapons for the Crimean War citing ethical reasons.
A statue of Faraday stands in Savoy Place, London, outside the Institution of Electrical Engineers.
A recently built hall of accommodation at Brunel University is named after Faraday.
A hall at Loughborough University was named after Faraday in 1960. Near the entrance to its dining hall is a bronze casting, which depicts the symbol of an electrical transformer, and inside there hangs a portrait, both in Faraday's honour.
Faraday's picture was printed on British £20 banknotes from 1991 until 2001. Bank of England, Withdrawn Notes
In the video game Chromehounds there is a ThermoVision Device named the Faraday.
The former UK Faraday Atmospheric Research Station in Antarctica was named after him.
Faraday was one of the then eight foreign members of the French Academy of Sciences.
Michael Faraday's signature
Faraday's books, with the exception of Chemical Manipulation, were collections of scientific papers or transcriptions of lectures. See page 220 of Hamilton's A Life of Discovery: Michael Faraday, Giant of the Scientific Revolution (2002) Since his death, Faraday's diary has been published, as have several large volumes of his letters and Faraday's journal from his travels with Davy in 1813 - 1815.
* Chemical Manipulation, Being Instructions to Students in Chemistry, John Murray, 1st ed. 1827, 2nd ed. 1830, 3rd ed. 1842
* Experimental Researches in Electricity, vols. i. and ii., Richard and John Edward Taylor, vols. i. and ii.. 1844 and 1847; vol. iii., 1844; vol. iii. Richard Taylor and William Francis, 1855
* Experimental Researches in Chemistry and Physics, Taylor and Francis, 1859
* A Course of Six Lectures on the Chemical History of a Candle, edited by W. Crookes, Griffin, Bohn & Co., 1861
* On the Various Forces in Nature, edited by W. Crookes, Chatto & Windus, 1873
* Faraday's Diary edited by T. Martin was published in eight volumes, 1932 - 1936
* Curiosity Perfectly Satisfyed: Faraday's Travels in Europe 1813-1815, edited by B. Bowers and L. Symons, Institution of Electrical Engineers, 1991
* The Correspondence of Michael Faraday, edited by F. A. J. L. James, INSPEC, Inc., volume 1, 1991; volume 2, 1993; volume 3, 1996; volume 4, 1999
* "Nothing is too wonderful to be true if it be consistent with the laws of nature, and in such things as these, experiment is the best test of such consistency." From the entry of 19 March 1849 in Faraday's Diary
* "Work. Finish. Publish." â his well-known advice to the young William Crookes
* "The important thing is to know how to take all things quietly."
* Regarding the hereafter, "Speculations? I have none. I am resting on certainties. I know whom I have believed and am persuaded that he is able to keep that which I have committed unto him against that day."
* "Next Sabbath day (the 22nd) I shall complete my 70th year. I can hardly think of myself so old."
*Above the doorways of the Pfahler Hall of Science at Ursinus College in Collegeville, Pennsylvania, there is a stone inscription of a quote attributed to Michael Faraday which reads "but still try, for who knows what is possible..." See
* "One day sir, you may tax it." Faraday's reply to William Gladstone, then British Minister of Finance, when asked of the practical value of electricity.
* "If you would cause your view ... to be acknowledged by scientific men; you would do a great service to science. If you would even get them to say yes or no to your conclusions it would help to clear the future progress. I believe some hesitate because they do not like their thoughts disturbed." From Life and Letters, 2:389.
* Faraday rotator
* Superconductivity
* Tyndall, John, Faraday as a Discoverer, (Longmans, 1st ed. 1868, 2nd ed. 1870).
* Bence Jones, Henry (1870). The Life and Letters of Faraday in 2 vols, Longmans.
* Gladstone, J. H. (1872). Michael Faraday, Macmillan.
* Thompson, Silvanus (1901, reprinted 2005). Michael Faraday, His Life and Work. Cassell and Company, London, 1901; reprint by Kessenger Publishing, Whitefish, MT. ISBN 1-4179-7036-7
* The British Electrical and Allied Manufacturers Association (1931). Faraday. R. & R. Clark, Ltd., Edinburgh, 1931.
* Williams, L. Pearce (1971), Faraday: A Biography, Simon and Schuster.
* Cantor, Geoffrey (1991). Michael Faraday, Sandemanian and Scientist, Macmillian, ISBN 0-333-55077
* Hamilton, James (2002). Faraday: The Life. London: Harper Collins. ISBN 0-00-716376-2
* Hamilton, James (2004). A Life of Discovery: Michael Faraday, Giant of the Scientific Revolution. New York: Random House. ISBN 1-4000-6016-8
* Agassi, Joseph (1971), Faraday as a Natural Philosopher, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
* Ames, Joseph Sweetman (Ed.), The discovery of induced electric currents Vol. 2. Memoirs, by Michael Faraday. New York, Cincinnati [etc.] American book company [c1900] LCCN 00005889
* Gooding, David (Ed.) (1985), Faraday Rediscovered: Essays on the Life and Work of Michael Faraday, 1791-1867, London/New York, Macmillan/Stockton
* Thomas, John Meurig (1991). Michael Faraday and the Royal Institution: The Genius of Man and Place Bristol: Hilger. ISBN 0-7503-0145-7
150px
* Biography at The Royal Institution of Great Britain
* Faraday as a Discoverer by John Tyndall, Project Gutenberg (downloads)
* The Christian Character of Michael Faraday
* Michael Faraday on the British twenty-pound banknote
* The Life and Discoveries of Michael Faraday by J. A. Crowther, London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1920
* "Faraday" at LoveToKnow 1911 Britannica Online Encyclopedia.
*
* (downloads)
* "Experimental Researches in Electricity" by Michael Faraday Original text with Biographical Introduction by Professor John Tyndall, 1914, Everyman edition.
* Video Podcast with Sir John Cadogan talking about Benzene since Faraday
* The letters of Faraday and Schoenbein 1836-1862. With notes, comments and references to contemporary letters (1899) full download PDF
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Electromagnetic induction
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mole (unit)
electron
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England
August 25
1867
Hampton Court
London
England
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Michael_Faraday | Did Faraday lecture on education in 1854? | yes | data/set4/a7 | Michael_Faraday
Michael Faraday, FRS (September 22, 1791 â August 25, 1867) was an English chemist and physicist (or natural philosopher, in the terminology of that time) who contributed to the fields of electromagnetism and electrochemistry.
Faraday studied the magnetic field around a conductor carrying a DC electric current, and established the basis for the magnetic field concept in physics. He discovered electromagnetic induction, diamagnetism and electrolysis. He established that magnetism could affect rays of light and that there was an underlying relationship between the two phenomena. Michael Faraday entry at the 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica hosted by LovetoKnow Retrieved January 2007. Institution of Engineering and Technology, London Archives, Michael Faraday His inventions of electromagnetic rotary devices formed the foundation of electric motor technology, and it was largely due to his efforts that electricity became viable for use in technology.
As a chemist, Faraday discovered benzene, investigated the clathrate hydrate of chlorine, invented an early form of the bunsen burner and the system of oxidation numbers, and popularized terminology such as anode, cathode, electrode, and ion.
Although Faraday received little formal education and knew little of higher mathematics, such as calculus, he was one of the most influential scientists in history. Some historians of science refer to him as the best experimentalist in the history of science. "best experimentalist in the history of science." Quoting Dr Peter Ford, from the University of Bathâs Department of Physics. Accessed January 2007. The SI unit of capacitance, the farad, is named after him, as is the Faraday constant, the charge on a mole of electrons (about 96,485 coulombs). Faraday's law of induction states that a magnetic field changing in time creates a proportional electromotive force.
Faraday was the first and foremost Fullerian Professor of Chemistry at the Royal Institution of Great Britain, a position to which he was appointed for life.
Michael Faraday from a photograph by John Watkins, British Library
Michael Faraday was born in Newington Butts, near present-day South London, England. His family was not well off. His father, James, was a member of the Sandemanian sect of Christianity. James Faraday had come to London ca 1790 from Outhgill in Westmorland, where he had been the village blacksmith. The young Michael Faraday, one of four children, having only the most basic of school educations, had to largely educate himself. "Michael Faraday." History of Science and Technology. Houghton Mifflin Company, 2004. Answers.com 4 June 2007. /ref> At fourteen he became apprenticed to a local bookbinder and bookseller George Riebau and, during his seven-year apprenticeship, he read many books, including Isaac Watts' The Improvement of the Mind, and he enthusiastically implemented the principles and suggestions contained therein. He developed an interest in science and specifically in electricity. In particular, he was inspired by the book Conversations in Chemistry by Jane Marcet.
At the age of twenty, in 1812, at the end of his apprenticeship, Faraday attended lectures by the eminent English chemist and physicist Humphry Davy of the Royal Institution and Royal Society, and John Tatum, founder of the City Philosophical Society. Many tickets for these lectures were given to Faraday by William Dance (one of the founders of the Royal Philharmonic Society). Afterwards, Faraday sent Davy a three hundred page book based on notes taken during the lectures. Davy's reply was immediate, kind, and favorable. When Davy damaged his eyesight in an accident with nitrogen trichloride, he decided to employ Faraday as a secretary. When John Payne, one of the Royal Institution's assistants, was fired, Sir Humphry Davy was asked to find a replacement. He appointed Faraday as Chemical Assistant at the Royal Institution on March 1.
In the class-based English society of the time, Faraday was not considered a gentleman. When Davy went on a long tour to the continent in 1813-5, his valet did not wish to go. Faraday was going as Davy's scientific assistant, and was asked to act as Davy's valet until a replacement could be found in Paris. Davy failed to find a replacement, and Faraday was forced to fill the role of valet as well as assistant throughout the trip. Davy's wife, Jane Apreece, refused to treat Faraday as an equal (making him travel outside the coach, eat with the servants, etc.) and generally made Faraday so miserable that he contemplated returning to England alone and giving up science altogether. The trip did, however, give him access to the European scientific elite and a host of stimulating ideas.
His sponsor and mentor was John 'Mad Jack' Fuller, who created the Fullerian Professorship of Chemistry at the Royal Institution.
Faraday was a devout Christian and a member of the small Sandemanian denomination, an offshoot of the Church of Scotland. He later served two terms as an elder in the group's church.
Faraday married Sarah Barnard (1800-1879) on June 2, 1821, although they would never have children. They met through attending the Sandemanian church.
He was elected a member of the Royal Society in 1824, appointed director of the laboratory in 1825; and in 1833 he was appointed Fullerian professor of chemistry in the institution for life, without the obligation to deliver lectures.
The title page of The Chemical History of a Candle (1861)
Faraday's earliest chemical work was as an assistant to Davy. He made a special study of chlorine, and discovered two new chlorides of carbon. He also made the first rough experiments on the diffusion of gases, a phenomenon first pointed out by John Dalton, the physical importance of which was more fully brought to light by Thomas Graham and Joseph Loschmidt. He succeeded in liquefying several gases; he investigated the alloys of steel, and produced several new kinds of glass intended for optical purposes. A specimen of one of these heavy glasses afterwards became historically important as the substance in which Faraday detected the rotation of the plane of polarisation of light when the glass was placed in a magnetic field, and also as the substance which was first repelled by the poles of the magnet. He also endeavoured, with some success, to make the general methods of chemistry, as distinguished from its results, the subject of special study and of popular exposition.
He invented an early form of what was to become the Bunsen burner, which is used almost universally in science laboratories as a convenient source of heat. See page 127 of Faraday's Chemical Manipulation, Being Instructions to Students in Chemistry (1827)
Faraday worked extensively in the field of chemistry, discovering chemical substances such as benzene (which he called bicarburet of hydrogen), inventing the system of oxidation numbers, and liquefying gases such as chlorine. In 1820 Faraday reported on the first syntheses of compounds made from carbon and chlorine, C 2 H 6 and C 2 H 4 , and published his results the following year. Faraday also determined the composition of the chlorine clathrate hydrate, which had been discovered by Humphry Davy in 1810.
Faraday also discovered the laws of electrolysis and popularized terminology such as anode, cathode, electrode, and ion, terms largely created by William Whewell.
Faraday was the first to report what later came to be called metallic nanoparticles. In 1847 he discovered that the optical properties of gold colloids differed from those of the corresponding bulk metal. This was probably the first reported observation of the effects of quantum size, and might be considered to be the birth of nanoscience.
Faraday's greatest work was probably with electricity and magnetism. The first experiment which he recorded was the construction of a voltaic pile with seven halfpence pieces, stacked together with seven disks of sheet zinc, and six pieces of paper moistened with salt water. With this pile he decomposed sulphate of magnesia (first letter to Abbott, July 12, 1812).
[[Image:Faraday photograph ii.jpg|thumb|200px|left|Michael Faraday holding a glass bar of the type he used in 1845 to show that magnetism can affect light. Detail of an engraving by Henry Adlard, based on an earlier photograph by Maull & Polyblank ca. 1857. See National Portrait Gallery, UK ]]
In 1821, soon after the Danish physicist and chemist, Hans Christian Ãrsted discovered the phenomenon of electromagnetism, Davy and British scientist William Hyde Wollaston tried but failed to design an electric motor. Faraday, having discussed the problem with the two men, went on to build two devices to produce what he called electromagnetic rotation: a continuous circular motion from the circular magnetic force around a wire and a wire extending into a pool of mercury with a magnet placed inside would rotate around the magnet if supplied with current from a chemical battery. The latter device is known as a homopolar motor. These experiments and inventions form the foundation of modern electromagnetic technology. Faraday published his results without acknowledging his debt to Wollaston and Davy, and the resulting controversy caused Faraday to withdraw from electromagnetic research for several years.
At this stage, there is also evidence to suggest that Davy may have been trying to slow Faradayâs rise as a scientist (or natural philosopher as it was known then). In 1825, for instance, Davy set him onto optical glass experiments, which progressed for six years with no great results. It was not until Davy's death, in 1829, that Faraday stopped these fruitless tasks and moved on to endeavors that were more worthwhile. Two years later, in 1831, he began his great series of experiments in which he discovered electromagnetic induction. Joseph Henry likely discovered self-induction a few months earlier and both may have been anticipated by the work of Francesco Zantedeschi in Italy in 1829 and 1830.
Faraday's breakthrough came when he wrapped two insulated coils of wire around a massive iron ring, bolted to a chair, and found that upon passing a current through one coil, a momentary current was induced in the other coil. This phenomenon is known as mutual induction. The iron ring-coil apparatus is still on display at the Royal Institution. In subsequent experiments he found that if he moved a magnet through a loop of wire, an electric current flowed in the wire. The current also flowed if the loop was moved over a stationary magnet. His demonstrations established that a changing magnetic field produces an electric field. This relation was mathematically modelled by Faraday's law, which subsequently became one of the four Maxwell equations. These in turn have evolved into the generalization known today as field theory.
Michael Faraday - statue in Savoy Place, London.
Sculptor John Henry Foley RA
Faraday later used the principle to construct the electric dynamo, the ancestor of modern power generators.
In 1839 he completed a series of experiments aimed at investigating the fundamental nature of electricity. Faraday used "static", batteries, and "animal electricity" to produce the phenomena of electrostatic attraction, electrolysis, magnetism, etc. He concluded that, contrary to scientific opinion of the time, the divisions between the various "kinds" of electricity were illusory. Faraday instead proposed that only a single "electricity" exists, and the changing values of quantity and intensity (voltage and charge) would produce different groups of phenomena.
Near the end of his career Faraday proposed that electromagnetic forces extended into the empty space around the conductor. This idea was rejected by his fellow scientists, and Faraday did not live to see this idea eventually accepted. Faraday's concept of lines of flux emanating from charged bodies and magnets provided a way to visualize electric and magnetic fields. That mental model was crucial to the successful development of electromechanical devices which dominated engineering and industry for the remainder of the 19th century.
In 1845, he discovered the phenomenon that he named diamagnetism, and what is now called the Faraday effect: The plane of polarization of linearly polarized light propagated through a material medium can be rotated by the application of an external magnetic field aligned in the propagation direction. He wrote in his notebook, "I have at last succeeded in illuminating a magnetic curve or line of force and in magnetising a ray of light". This established that magnetic force and light were related.
In his work on static electricity, Faraday demonstrated that the charge only resided on the exterior of a charged conductor, and exterior charge had no influence on anything enclosed within a conductor. This is because the exterior charges redistribute such that the interior fields due to them cancel. This shielding effect is used in what is now known as a Faraday cage.
Faraday was an excellent experimentalist who conveyed his ideas in clear and simple language. However, his mathematical abilities did not extend as far as trigonometry or any but the simplest algebra. It was James Clerk Maxwell who took the work of Faraday, and others, and consolidated it with a set of equations that lie at the base of all modern theories of electromagnetic phenomena.
Michael Faraday meets Father Thames, from Punch (July 21, 1855)
Beyond his scientific research into areas such as chemistry, electricity, and magnetism at the Royal Institution, Faraday undertook numerous, and often time-consuming, service projects for private enterprise and the British government. This work included investigations of explosions in mines, being an expert witness in court, and the preparation of high-quality optical glass.
As a respected scientist in a nation with strong maritime interests, Faraday spent extensive amounts of time on projects such as the construction and operation of light houses and protecting the bottoms of ships from corrosion.
Faraday also was active in what would now be called environmental science, or engineering. He investigated industrial pollution at Swansea and was consulted on air pollution at the Royal Mint. In July of 1855, Faraday wrote a letter to The Times on the subject of the foul condition of the River Thames, which resulted in an oft-reprinted cartoon in Punch. (See also The Great Stink.)
Faraday assisted with planning and judging of exhibits for the Great Exhibition of 1851 in London. He also advised the National Gallery on the cleaning and protection of its art collection, and served on the National Gallery Site Commission in 1857.
Education was another area of service for Faraday. He lectured on the topic in 1854 at the Royal Institution, and in 1862 he appeared before a Public Schools Commission to give his views on education in Great Britain. Faraday also weighed in, negatively, on the public's fascination with table-turning, mesmerism, and seances, chastising both the public and the nation's educational system. See The Illustrated London News, July 1853, for Faraday's comments.
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In June of 1832, the University of Oxford granted Faraday a Doctor of Civil Law degree (honorary). During his lifetime, Faraday rejected a knighthood and twice refused to become President of the Royal Society.
In 1848, as a result of representations by the Prince Consort, Michael Faraday was awarded a grace and favour house in Hampton Court, Surrey free of all expenses or upkeep. This was the Master Mason's House, later called Faraday House, and now No.37 Hampton Court Road. In 1858 Faraday retired to live there. Twickenham Museum on Faraday and Faraday House, Accessed June 2006
Faraday died at his house at Hampton Court on August 25, 1867. He turned down burial in Westminster Abbey, but he has a memorial plaque there, near Isaac Newton's tomb. Faraday was interred in the Sandemanian plot in Highgate Cemetery.
Michael Faraday's grave at Highgate Cemetery
Faraday gave a successful series of lectures on the chemistry and physics of flames at the Royal Institution, entitled The Chemical History of a Candle. This was one of the earlier Christmas lectures for young people, which are still given each year. Between 1827 and 1860, Faraday gave the Christmas lecture a record nineteen times.
Faraday refused to participate in the production of chemical weapons for the Crimean War citing ethical reasons.
A statue of Faraday stands in Savoy Place, London, outside the Institution of Electrical Engineers.
A recently built hall of accommodation at Brunel University is named after Faraday.
A hall at Loughborough University was named after Faraday in 1960. Near the entrance to its dining hall is a bronze casting, which depicts the symbol of an electrical transformer, and inside there hangs a portrait, both in Faraday's honour.
Faraday's picture was printed on British £20 banknotes from 1991 until 2001. Bank of England, Withdrawn Notes
In the video game Chromehounds there is a ThermoVision Device named the Faraday.
The former UK Faraday Atmospheric Research Station in Antarctica was named after him.
Faraday was one of the then eight foreign members of the French Academy of Sciences.
Michael Faraday's signature
Faraday's books, with the exception of Chemical Manipulation, were collections of scientific papers or transcriptions of lectures. See page 220 of Hamilton's A Life of Discovery: Michael Faraday, Giant of the Scientific Revolution (2002) Since his death, Faraday's diary has been published, as have several large volumes of his letters and Faraday's journal from his travels with Davy in 1813 - 1815.
* Chemical Manipulation, Being Instructions to Students in Chemistry, John Murray, 1st ed. 1827, 2nd ed. 1830, 3rd ed. 1842
* Experimental Researches in Electricity, vols. i. and ii., Richard and John Edward Taylor, vols. i. and ii.. 1844 and 1847; vol. iii., 1844; vol. iii. Richard Taylor and William Francis, 1855
* Experimental Researches in Chemistry and Physics, Taylor and Francis, 1859
* A Course of Six Lectures on the Chemical History of a Candle, edited by W. Crookes, Griffin, Bohn & Co., 1861
* On the Various Forces in Nature, edited by W. Crookes, Chatto & Windus, 1873
* Faraday's Diary edited by T. Martin was published in eight volumes, 1932 - 1936
* Curiosity Perfectly Satisfyed: Faraday's Travels in Europe 1813-1815, edited by B. Bowers and L. Symons, Institution of Electrical Engineers, 1991
* The Correspondence of Michael Faraday, edited by F. A. J. L. James, INSPEC, Inc., volume 1, 1991; volume 2, 1993; volume 3, 1996; volume 4, 1999
* "Nothing is too wonderful to be true if it be consistent with the laws of nature, and in such things as these, experiment is the best test of such consistency." From the entry of 19 March 1849 in Faraday's Diary
* "Work. Finish. Publish." â his well-known advice to the young William Crookes
* "The important thing is to know how to take all things quietly."
* Regarding the hereafter, "Speculations? I have none. I am resting on certainties. I know whom I have believed and am persuaded that he is able to keep that which I have committed unto him against that day."
* "Next Sabbath day (the 22nd) I shall complete my 70th year. I can hardly think of myself so old."
*Above the doorways of the Pfahler Hall of Science at Ursinus College in Collegeville, Pennsylvania, there is a stone inscription of a quote attributed to Michael Faraday which reads "but still try, for who knows what is possible..." See
* "One day sir, you may tax it." Faraday's reply to William Gladstone, then British Minister of Finance, when asked of the practical value of electricity.
* "If you would cause your view ... to be acknowledged by scientific men; you would do a great service to science. If you would even get them to say yes or no to your conclusions it would help to clear the future progress. I believe some hesitate because they do not like their thoughts disturbed." From Life and Letters, 2:389.
* Faraday rotator
* Superconductivity
* Tyndall, John, Faraday as a Discoverer, (Longmans, 1st ed. 1868, 2nd ed. 1870).
* Bence Jones, Henry (1870). The Life and Letters of Faraday in 2 vols, Longmans.
* Gladstone, J. H. (1872). Michael Faraday, Macmillan.
* Thompson, Silvanus (1901, reprinted 2005). Michael Faraday, His Life and Work. Cassell and Company, London, 1901; reprint by Kessenger Publishing, Whitefish, MT. ISBN 1-4179-7036-7
* The British Electrical and Allied Manufacturers Association (1931). Faraday. R. & R. Clark, Ltd., Edinburgh, 1931.
* Williams, L. Pearce (1971), Faraday: A Biography, Simon and Schuster.
* Cantor, Geoffrey (1991). Michael Faraday, Sandemanian and Scientist, Macmillian, ISBN 0-333-55077
* Hamilton, James (2002). Faraday: The Life. London: Harper Collins. ISBN 0-00-716376-2
* Hamilton, James (2004). A Life of Discovery: Michael Faraday, Giant of the Scientific Revolution. New York: Random House. ISBN 1-4000-6016-8
* Agassi, Joseph (1971), Faraday as a Natural Philosopher, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
* Ames, Joseph Sweetman (Ed.), The discovery of induced electric currents Vol. 2. Memoirs, by Michael Faraday. New York, Cincinnati [etc.] American book company [c1900] LCCN 00005889
* Gooding, David (Ed.) (1985), Faraday Rediscovered: Essays on the Life and Work of Michael Faraday, 1791-1867, London/New York, Macmillan/Stockton
* Thomas, John Meurig (1991). Michael Faraday and the Royal Institution: The Genius of Man and Place Bristol: Hilger. ISBN 0-7503-0145-7
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* Biography at The Royal Institution of Great Britain
* Faraday as a Discoverer by John Tyndall, Project Gutenberg (downloads)
* The Christian Character of Michael Faraday
* Michael Faraday on the British twenty-pound banknote
* The Life and Discoveries of Michael Faraday by J. A. Crowther, London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1920
* "Faraday" at LoveToKnow 1911 Britannica Online Encyclopedia.
*
* (downloads)
* "Experimental Researches in Electricity" by Michael Faraday Original text with Biographical Introduction by Professor John Tyndall, 1914, Everyman edition.
* Video Podcast with Sir John Cadogan talking about Benzene since Faraday
* The letters of Faraday and Schoenbein 1836-1862. With notes, comments and references to contemporary letters (1899) full download PDF
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Michael_Faraday | Did Faraday receive an extensive formal education? | no | data/set4/a7 | Michael_Faraday
Michael Faraday, FRS (September 22, 1791 â August 25, 1867) was an English chemist and physicist (or natural philosopher, in the terminology of that time) who contributed to the fields of electromagnetism and electrochemistry.
Faraday studied the magnetic field around a conductor carrying a DC electric current, and established the basis for the magnetic field concept in physics. He discovered electromagnetic induction, diamagnetism and electrolysis. He established that magnetism could affect rays of light and that there was an underlying relationship between the two phenomena. Michael Faraday entry at the 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica hosted by LovetoKnow Retrieved January 2007. Institution of Engineering and Technology, London Archives, Michael Faraday His inventions of electromagnetic rotary devices formed the foundation of electric motor technology, and it was largely due to his efforts that electricity became viable for use in technology.
As a chemist, Faraday discovered benzene, investigated the clathrate hydrate of chlorine, invented an early form of the bunsen burner and the system of oxidation numbers, and popularized terminology such as anode, cathode, electrode, and ion.
Although Faraday received little formal education and knew little of higher mathematics, such as calculus, he was one of the most influential scientists in history. Some historians of science refer to him as the best experimentalist in the history of science. "best experimentalist in the history of science." Quoting Dr Peter Ford, from the University of Bathâs Department of Physics. Accessed January 2007. The SI unit of capacitance, the farad, is named after him, as is the Faraday constant, the charge on a mole of electrons (about 96,485 coulombs). Faraday's law of induction states that a magnetic field changing in time creates a proportional electromotive force.
Faraday was the first and foremost Fullerian Professor of Chemistry at the Royal Institution of Great Britain, a position to which he was appointed for life.
Michael Faraday from a photograph by John Watkins, British Library
Michael Faraday was born in Newington Butts, near present-day South London, England. His family was not well off. His father, James, was a member of the Sandemanian sect of Christianity. James Faraday had come to London ca 1790 from Outhgill in Westmorland, where he had been the village blacksmith. The young Michael Faraday, one of four children, having only the most basic of school educations, had to largely educate himself. "Michael Faraday." History of Science and Technology. Houghton Mifflin Company, 2004. Answers.com 4 June 2007. /ref> At fourteen he became apprenticed to a local bookbinder and bookseller George Riebau and, during his seven-year apprenticeship, he read many books, including Isaac Watts' The Improvement of the Mind, and he enthusiastically implemented the principles and suggestions contained therein. He developed an interest in science and specifically in electricity. In particular, he was inspired by the book Conversations in Chemistry by Jane Marcet.
At the age of twenty, in 1812, at the end of his apprenticeship, Faraday attended lectures by the eminent English chemist and physicist Humphry Davy of the Royal Institution and Royal Society, and John Tatum, founder of the City Philosophical Society. Many tickets for these lectures were given to Faraday by William Dance (one of the founders of the Royal Philharmonic Society). Afterwards, Faraday sent Davy a three hundred page book based on notes taken during the lectures. Davy's reply was immediate, kind, and favorable. When Davy damaged his eyesight in an accident with nitrogen trichloride, he decided to employ Faraday as a secretary. When John Payne, one of the Royal Institution's assistants, was fired, Sir Humphry Davy was asked to find a replacement. He appointed Faraday as Chemical Assistant at the Royal Institution on March 1.
In the class-based English society of the time, Faraday was not considered a gentleman. When Davy went on a long tour to the continent in 1813-5, his valet did not wish to go. Faraday was going as Davy's scientific assistant, and was asked to act as Davy's valet until a replacement could be found in Paris. Davy failed to find a replacement, and Faraday was forced to fill the role of valet as well as assistant throughout the trip. Davy's wife, Jane Apreece, refused to treat Faraday as an equal (making him travel outside the coach, eat with the servants, etc.) and generally made Faraday so miserable that he contemplated returning to England alone and giving up science altogether. The trip did, however, give him access to the European scientific elite and a host of stimulating ideas.
His sponsor and mentor was John 'Mad Jack' Fuller, who created the Fullerian Professorship of Chemistry at the Royal Institution.
Faraday was a devout Christian and a member of the small Sandemanian denomination, an offshoot of the Church of Scotland. He later served two terms as an elder in the group's church.
Faraday married Sarah Barnard (1800-1879) on June 2, 1821, although they would never have children. They met through attending the Sandemanian church.
He was elected a member of the Royal Society in 1824, appointed director of the laboratory in 1825; and in 1833 he was appointed Fullerian professor of chemistry in the institution for life, without the obligation to deliver lectures.
The title page of The Chemical History of a Candle (1861)
Faraday's earliest chemical work was as an assistant to Davy. He made a special study of chlorine, and discovered two new chlorides of carbon. He also made the first rough experiments on the diffusion of gases, a phenomenon first pointed out by John Dalton, the physical importance of which was more fully brought to light by Thomas Graham and Joseph Loschmidt. He succeeded in liquefying several gases; he investigated the alloys of steel, and produced several new kinds of glass intended for optical purposes. A specimen of one of these heavy glasses afterwards became historically important as the substance in which Faraday detected the rotation of the plane of polarisation of light when the glass was placed in a magnetic field, and also as the substance which was first repelled by the poles of the magnet. He also endeavoured, with some success, to make the general methods of chemistry, as distinguished from its results, the subject of special study and of popular exposition.
He invented an early form of what was to become the Bunsen burner, which is used almost universally in science laboratories as a convenient source of heat. See page 127 of Faraday's Chemical Manipulation, Being Instructions to Students in Chemistry (1827)
Faraday worked extensively in the field of chemistry, discovering chemical substances such as benzene (which he called bicarburet of hydrogen), inventing the system of oxidation numbers, and liquefying gases such as chlorine. In 1820 Faraday reported on the first syntheses of compounds made from carbon and chlorine, C 2 H 6 and C 2 H 4 , and published his results the following year. Faraday also determined the composition of the chlorine clathrate hydrate, which had been discovered by Humphry Davy in 1810.
Faraday also discovered the laws of electrolysis and popularized terminology such as anode, cathode, electrode, and ion, terms largely created by William Whewell.
Faraday was the first to report what later came to be called metallic nanoparticles. In 1847 he discovered that the optical properties of gold colloids differed from those of the corresponding bulk metal. This was probably the first reported observation of the effects of quantum size, and might be considered to be the birth of nanoscience.
Faraday's greatest work was probably with electricity and magnetism. The first experiment which he recorded was the construction of a voltaic pile with seven halfpence pieces, stacked together with seven disks of sheet zinc, and six pieces of paper moistened with salt water. With this pile he decomposed sulphate of magnesia (first letter to Abbott, July 12, 1812).
[[Image:Faraday photograph ii.jpg|thumb|200px|left|Michael Faraday holding a glass bar of the type he used in 1845 to show that magnetism can affect light. Detail of an engraving by Henry Adlard, based on an earlier photograph by Maull & Polyblank ca. 1857. See National Portrait Gallery, UK ]]
In 1821, soon after the Danish physicist and chemist, Hans Christian Ãrsted discovered the phenomenon of electromagnetism, Davy and British scientist William Hyde Wollaston tried but failed to design an electric motor. Faraday, having discussed the problem with the two men, went on to build two devices to produce what he called electromagnetic rotation: a continuous circular motion from the circular magnetic force around a wire and a wire extending into a pool of mercury with a magnet placed inside would rotate around the magnet if supplied with current from a chemical battery. The latter device is known as a homopolar motor. These experiments and inventions form the foundation of modern electromagnetic technology. Faraday published his results without acknowledging his debt to Wollaston and Davy, and the resulting controversy caused Faraday to withdraw from electromagnetic research for several years.
At this stage, there is also evidence to suggest that Davy may have been trying to slow Faradayâs rise as a scientist (or natural philosopher as it was known then). In 1825, for instance, Davy set him onto optical glass experiments, which progressed for six years with no great results. It was not until Davy's death, in 1829, that Faraday stopped these fruitless tasks and moved on to endeavors that were more worthwhile. Two years later, in 1831, he began his great series of experiments in which he discovered electromagnetic induction. Joseph Henry likely discovered self-induction a few months earlier and both may have been anticipated by the work of Francesco Zantedeschi in Italy in 1829 and 1830.
Faraday's breakthrough came when he wrapped two insulated coils of wire around a massive iron ring, bolted to a chair, and found that upon passing a current through one coil, a momentary current was induced in the other coil. This phenomenon is known as mutual induction. The iron ring-coil apparatus is still on display at the Royal Institution. In subsequent experiments he found that if he moved a magnet through a loop of wire, an electric current flowed in the wire. The current also flowed if the loop was moved over a stationary magnet. His demonstrations established that a changing magnetic field produces an electric field. This relation was mathematically modelled by Faraday's law, which subsequently became one of the four Maxwell equations. These in turn have evolved into the generalization known today as field theory.
Michael Faraday - statue in Savoy Place, London.
Sculptor John Henry Foley RA
Faraday later used the principle to construct the electric dynamo, the ancestor of modern power generators.
In 1839 he completed a series of experiments aimed at investigating the fundamental nature of electricity. Faraday used "static", batteries, and "animal electricity" to produce the phenomena of electrostatic attraction, electrolysis, magnetism, etc. He concluded that, contrary to scientific opinion of the time, the divisions between the various "kinds" of electricity were illusory. Faraday instead proposed that only a single "electricity" exists, and the changing values of quantity and intensity (voltage and charge) would produce different groups of phenomena.
Near the end of his career Faraday proposed that electromagnetic forces extended into the empty space around the conductor. This idea was rejected by his fellow scientists, and Faraday did not live to see this idea eventually accepted. Faraday's concept of lines of flux emanating from charged bodies and magnets provided a way to visualize electric and magnetic fields. That mental model was crucial to the successful development of electromechanical devices which dominated engineering and industry for the remainder of the 19th century.
In 1845, he discovered the phenomenon that he named diamagnetism, and what is now called the Faraday effect: The plane of polarization of linearly polarized light propagated through a material medium can be rotated by the application of an external magnetic field aligned in the propagation direction. He wrote in his notebook, "I have at last succeeded in illuminating a magnetic curve or line of force and in magnetising a ray of light". This established that magnetic force and light were related.
In his work on static electricity, Faraday demonstrated that the charge only resided on the exterior of a charged conductor, and exterior charge had no influence on anything enclosed within a conductor. This is because the exterior charges redistribute such that the interior fields due to them cancel. This shielding effect is used in what is now known as a Faraday cage.
Faraday was an excellent experimentalist who conveyed his ideas in clear and simple language. However, his mathematical abilities did not extend as far as trigonometry or any but the simplest algebra. It was James Clerk Maxwell who took the work of Faraday, and others, and consolidated it with a set of equations that lie at the base of all modern theories of electromagnetic phenomena.
Michael Faraday meets Father Thames, from Punch (July 21, 1855)
Beyond his scientific research into areas such as chemistry, electricity, and magnetism at the Royal Institution, Faraday undertook numerous, and often time-consuming, service projects for private enterprise and the British government. This work included investigations of explosions in mines, being an expert witness in court, and the preparation of high-quality optical glass.
As a respected scientist in a nation with strong maritime interests, Faraday spent extensive amounts of time on projects such as the construction and operation of light houses and protecting the bottoms of ships from corrosion.
Faraday also was active in what would now be called environmental science, or engineering. He investigated industrial pollution at Swansea and was consulted on air pollution at the Royal Mint. In July of 1855, Faraday wrote a letter to The Times on the subject of the foul condition of the River Thames, which resulted in an oft-reprinted cartoon in Punch. (See also The Great Stink.)
Faraday assisted with planning and judging of exhibits for the Great Exhibition of 1851 in London. He also advised the National Gallery on the cleaning and protection of its art collection, and served on the National Gallery Site Commission in 1857.
Education was another area of service for Faraday. He lectured on the topic in 1854 at the Royal Institution, and in 1862 he appeared before a Public Schools Commission to give his views on education in Great Britain. Faraday also weighed in, negatively, on the public's fascination with table-turning, mesmerism, and seances, chastising both the public and the nation's educational system. See The Illustrated London News, July 1853, for Faraday's comments.
125px
In June of 1832, the University of Oxford granted Faraday a Doctor of Civil Law degree (honorary). During his lifetime, Faraday rejected a knighthood and twice refused to become President of the Royal Society.
In 1848, as a result of representations by the Prince Consort, Michael Faraday was awarded a grace and favour house in Hampton Court, Surrey free of all expenses or upkeep. This was the Master Mason's House, later called Faraday House, and now No.37 Hampton Court Road. In 1858 Faraday retired to live there. Twickenham Museum on Faraday and Faraday House, Accessed June 2006
Faraday died at his house at Hampton Court on August 25, 1867. He turned down burial in Westminster Abbey, but he has a memorial plaque there, near Isaac Newton's tomb. Faraday was interred in the Sandemanian plot in Highgate Cemetery.
Michael Faraday's grave at Highgate Cemetery
Faraday gave a successful series of lectures on the chemistry and physics of flames at the Royal Institution, entitled The Chemical History of a Candle. This was one of the earlier Christmas lectures for young people, which are still given each year. Between 1827 and 1860, Faraday gave the Christmas lecture a record nineteen times.
Faraday refused to participate in the production of chemical weapons for the Crimean War citing ethical reasons.
A statue of Faraday stands in Savoy Place, London, outside the Institution of Electrical Engineers.
A recently built hall of accommodation at Brunel University is named after Faraday.
A hall at Loughborough University was named after Faraday in 1960. Near the entrance to its dining hall is a bronze casting, which depicts the symbol of an electrical transformer, and inside there hangs a portrait, both in Faraday's honour.
Faraday's picture was printed on British £20 banknotes from 1991 until 2001. Bank of England, Withdrawn Notes
In the video game Chromehounds there is a ThermoVision Device named the Faraday.
The former UK Faraday Atmospheric Research Station in Antarctica was named after him.
Faraday was one of the then eight foreign members of the French Academy of Sciences.
Michael Faraday's signature
Faraday's books, with the exception of Chemical Manipulation, were collections of scientific papers or transcriptions of lectures. See page 220 of Hamilton's A Life of Discovery: Michael Faraday, Giant of the Scientific Revolution (2002) Since his death, Faraday's diary has been published, as have several large volumes of his letters and Faraday's journal from his travels with Davy in 1813 - 1815.
* Chemical Manipulation, Being Instructions to Students in Chemistry, John Murray, 1st ed. 1827, 2nd ed. 1830, 3rd ed. 1842
* Experimental Researches in Electricity, vols. i. and ii., Richard and John Edward Taylor, vols. i. and ii.. 1844 and 1847; vol. iii., 1844; vol. iii. Richard Taylor and William Francis, 1855
* Experimental Researches in Chemistry and Physics, Taylor and Francis, 1859
* A Course of Six Lectures on the Chemical History of a Candle, edited by W. Crookes, Griffin, Bohn & Co., 1861
* On the Various Forces in Nature, edited by W. Crookes, Chatto & Windus, 1873
* Faraday's Diary edited by T. Martin was published in eight volumes, 1932 - 1936
* Curiosity Perfectly Satisfyed: Faraday's Travels in Europe 1813-1815, edited by B. Bowers and L. Symons, Institution of Electrical Engineers, 1991
* The Correspondence of Michael Faraday, edited by F. A. J. L. James, INSPEC, Inc., volume 1, 1991; volume 2, 1993; volume 3, 1996; volume 4, 1999
* "Nothing is too wonderful to be true if it be consistent with the laws of nature, and in such things as these, experiment is the best test of such consistency." From the entry of 19 March 1849 in Faraday's Diary
* "Work. Finish. Publish." â his well-known advice to the young William Crookes
* "The important thing is to know how to take all things quietly."
* Regarding the hereafter, "Speculations? I have none. I am resting on certainties. I know whom I have believed and am persuaded that he is able to keep that which I have committed unto him against that day."
* "Next Sabbath day (the 22nd) I shall complete my 70th year. I can hardly think of myself so old."
*Above the doorways of the Pfahler Hall of Science at Ursinus College in Collegeville, Pennsylvania, there is a stone inscription of a quote attributed to Michael Faraday which reads "but still try, for who knows what is possible..." See
* "One day sir, you may tax it." Faraday's reply to William Gladstone, then British Minister of Finance, when asked of the practical value of electricity.
* "If you would cause your view ... to be acknowledged by scientific men; you would do a great service to science. If you would even get them to say yes or no to your conclusions it would help to clear the future progress. I believe some hesitate because they do not like their thoughts disturbed." From Life and Letters, 2:389.
* Faraday rotator
* Superconductivity
* Tyndall, John, Faraday as a Discoverer, (Longmans, 1st ed. 1868, 2nd ed. 1870).
* Bence Jones, Henry (1870). The Life and Letters of Faraday in 2 vols, Longmans.
* Gladstone, J. H. (1872). Michael Faraday, Macmillan.
* Thompson, Silvanus (1901, reprinted 2005). Michael Faraday, His Life and Work. Cassell and Company, London, 1901; reprint by Kessenger Publishing, Whitefish, MT. ISBN 1-4179-7036-7
* The British Electrical and Allied Manufacturers Association (1931). Faraday. R. & R. Clark, Ltd., Edinburgh, 1931.
* Williams, L. Pearce (1971), Faraday: A Biography, Simon and Schuster.
* Cantor, Geoffrey (1991). Michael Faraday, Sandemanian and Scientist, Macmillian, ISBN 0-333-55077
* Hamilton, James (2002). Faraday: The Life. London: Harper Collins. ISBN 0-00-716376-2
* Hamilton, James (2004). A Life of Discovery: Michael Faraday, Giant of the Scientific Revolution. New York: Random House. ISBN 1-4000-6016-8
* Agassi, Joseph (1971), Faraday as a Natural Philosopher, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
* Ames, Joseph Sweetman (Ed.), The discovery of induced electric currents Vol. 2. Memoirs, by Michael Faraday. New York, Cincinnati [etc.] American book company [c1900] LCCN 00005889
* Gooding, David (Ed.) (1985), Faraday Rediscovered: Essays on the Life and Work of Michael Faraday, 1791-1867, London/New York, Macmillan/Stockton
* Thomas, John Meurig (1991). Michael Faraday and the Royal Institution: The Genius of Man and Place Bristol: Hilger. ISBN 0-7503-0145-7
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* Biography at The Royal Institution of Great Britain
* Faraday as a Discoverer by John Tyndall, Project Gutenberg (downloads)
* The Christian Character of Michael Faraday
* Michael Faraday on the British twenty-pound banknote
* The Life and Discoveries of Michael Faraday by J. A. Crowther, London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1920
* "Faraday" at LoveToKnow 1911 Britannica Online Encyclopedia.
*
* (downloads)
* "Experimental Researches in Electricity" by Michael Faraday Original text with Biographical Introduction by Professor John Tyndall, 1914, Everyman edition.
* Video Podcast with Sir John Cadogan talking about Benzene since Faraday
* The letters of Faraday and Schoenbein 1836-1862. With notes, comments and references to contemporary letters (1899) full download PDF
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Michael_Faraday | Did Faraday receive an extensive formal education? | no | data/set4/a7 | Michael_Faraday
Michael Faraday, FRS (September 22, 1791 â August 25, 1867) was an English chemist and physicist (or natural philosopher, in the terminology of that time) who contributed to the fields of electromagnetism and electrochemistry.
Faraday studied the magnetic field around a conductor carrying a DC electric current, and established the basis for the magnetic field concept in physics. He discovered electromagnetic induction, diamagnetism and electrolysis. He established that magnetism could affect rays of light and that there was an underlying relationship between the two phenomena. Michael Faraday entry at the 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica hosted by LovetoKnow Retrieved January 2007. Institution of Engineering and Technology, London Archives, Michael Faraday His inventions of electromagnetic rotary devices formed the foundation of electric motor technology, and it was largely due to his efforts that electricity became viable for use in technology.
As a chemist, Faraday discovered benzene, investigated the clathrate hydrate of chlorine, invented an early form of the bunsen burner and the system of oxidation numbers, and popularized terminology such as anode, cathode, electrode, and ion.
Although Faraday received little formal education and knew little of higher mathematics, such as calculus, he was one of the most influential scientists in history. Some historians of science refer to him as the best experimentalist in the history of science. "best experimentalist in the history of science." Quoting Dr Peter Ford, from the University of Bathâs Department of Physics. Accessed January 2007. The SI unit of capacitance, the farad, is named after him, as is the Faraday constant, the charge on a mole of electrons (about 96,485 coulombs). Faraday's law of induction states that a magnetic field changing in time creates a proportional electromotive force.
Faraday was the first and foremost Fullerian Professor of Chemistry at the Royal Institution of Great Britain, a position to which he was appointed for life.
Michael Faraday from a photograph by John Watkins, British Library
Michael Faraday was born in Newington Butts, near present-day South London, England. His family was not well off. His father, James, was a member of the Sandemanian sect of Christianity. James Faraday had come to London ca 1790 from Outhgill in Westmorland, where he had been the village blacksmith. The young Michael Faraday, one of four children, having only the most basic of school educations, had to largely educate himself. "Michael Faraday." History of Science and Technology. Houghton Mifflin Company, 2004. Answers.com 4 June 2007. /ref> At fourteen he became apprenticed to a local bookbinder and bookseller George Riebau and, during his seven-year apprenticeship, he read many books, including Isaac Watts' The Improvement of the Mind, and he enthusiastically implemented the principles and suggestions contained therein. He developed an interest in science and specifically in electricity. In particular, he was inspired by the book Conversations in Chemistry by Jane Marcet.
At the age of twenty, in 1812, at the end of his apprenticeship, Faraday attended lectures by the eminent English chemist and physicist Humphry Davy of the Royal Institution and Royal Society, and John Tatum, founder of the City Philosophical Society. Many tickets for these lectures were given to Faraday by William Dance (one of the founders of the Royal Philharmonic Society). Afterwards, Faraday sent Davy a three hundred page book based on notes taken during the lectures. Davy's reply was immediate, kind, and favorable. When Davy damaged his eyesight in an accident with nitrogen trichloride, he decided to employ Faraday as a secretary. When John Payne, one of the Royal Institution's assistants, was fired, Sir Humphry Davy was asked to find a replacement. He appointed Faraday as Chemical Assistant at the Royal Institution on March 1.
In the class-based English society of the time, Faraday was not considered a gentleman. When Davy went on a long tour to the continent in 1813-5, his valet did not wish to go. Faraday was going as Davy's scientific assistant, and was asked to act as Davy's valet until a replacement could be found in Paris. Davy failed to find a replacement, and Faraday was forced to fill the role of valet as well as assistant throughout the trip. Davy's wife, Jane Apreece, refused to treat Faraday as an equal (making him travel outside the coach, eat with the servants, etc.) and generally made Faraday so miserable that he contemplated returning to England alone and giving up science altogether. The trip did, however, give him access to the European scientific elite and a host of stimulating ideas.
His sponsor and mentor was John 'Mad Jack' Fuller, who created the Fullerian Professorship of Chemistry at the Royal Institution.
Faraday was a devout Christian and a member of the small Sandemanian denomination, an offshoot of the Church of Scotland. He later served two terms as an elder in the group's church.
Faraday married Sarah Barnard (1800-1879) on June 2, 1821, although they would never have children. They met through attending the Sandemanian church.
He was elected a member of the Royal Society in 1824, appointed director of the laboratory in 1825; and in 1833 he was appointed Fullerian professor of chemistry in the institution for life, without the obligation to deliver lectures.
The title page of The Chemical History of a Candle (1861)
Faraday's earliest chemical work was as an assistant to Davy. He made a special study of chlorine, and discovered two new chlorides of carbon. He also made the first rough experiments on the diffusion of gases, a phenomenon first pointed out by John Dalton, the physical importance of which was more fully brought to light by Thomas Graham and Joseph Loschmidt. He succeeded in liquefying several gases; he investigated the alloys of steel, and produced several new kinds of glass intended for optical purposes. A specimen of one of these heavy glasses afterwards became historically important as the substance in which Faraday detected the rotation of the plane of polarisation of light when the glass was placed in a magnetic field, and also as the substance which was first repelled by the poles of the magnet. He also endeavoured, with some success, to make the general methods of chemistry, as distinguished from its results, the subject of special study and of popular exposition.
He invented an early form of what was to become the Bunsen burner, which is used almost universally in science laboratories as a convenient source of heat. See page 127 of Faraday's Chemical Manipulation, Being Instructions to Students in Chemistry (1827)
Faraday worked extensively in the field of chemistry, discovering chemical substances such as benzene (which he called bicarburet of hydrogen), inventing the system of oxidation numbers, and liquefying gases such as chlorine. In 1820 Faraday reported on the first syntheses of compounds made from carbon and chlorine, C 2 H 6 and C 2 H 4 , and published his results the following year. Faraday also determined the composition of the chlorine clathrate hydrate, which had been discovered by Humphry Davy in 1810.
Faraday also discovered the laws of electrolysis and popularized terminology such as anode, cathode, electrode, and ion, terms largely created by William Whewell.
Faraday was the first to report what later came to be called metallic nanoparticles. In 1847 he discovered that the optical properties of gold colloids differed from those of the corresponding bulk metal. This was probably the first reported observation of the effects of quantum size, and might be considered to be the birth of nanoscience.
Faraday's greatest work was probably with electricity and magnetism. The first experiment which he recorded was the construction of a voltaic pile with seven halfpence pieces, stacked together with seven disks of sheet zinc, and six pieces of paper moistened with salt water. With this pile he decomposed sulphate of magnesia (first letter to Abbott, July 12, 1812).
[[Image:Faraday photograph ii.jpg|thumb|200px|left|Michael Faraday holding a glass bar of the type he used in 1845 to show that magnetism can affect light. Detail of an engraving by Henry Adlard, based on an earlier photograph by Maull & Polyblank ca. 1857. See National Portrait Gallery, UK ]]
In 1821, soon after the Danish physicist and chemist, Hans Christian Ãrsted discovered the phenomenon of electromagnetism, Davy and British scientist William Hyde Wollaston tried but failed to design an electric motor. Faraday, having discussed the problem with the two men, went on to build two devices to produce what he called electromagnetic rotation: a continuous circular motion from the circular magnetic force around a wire and a wire extending into a pool of mercury with a magnet placed inside would rotate around the magnet if supplied with current from a chemical battery. The latter device is known as a homopolar motor. These experiments and inventions form the foundation of modern electromagnetic technology. Faraday published his results without acknowledging his debt to Wollaston and Davy, and the resulting controversy caused Faraday to withdraw from electromagnetic research for several years.
At this stage, there is also evidence to suggest that Davy may have been trying to slow Faradayâs rise as a scientist (or natural philosopher as it was known then). In 1825, for instance, Davy set him onto optical glass experiments, which progressed for six years with no great results. It was not until Davy's death, in 1829, that Faraday stopped these fruitless tasks and moved on to endeavors that were more worthwhile. Two years later, in 1831, he began his great series of experiments in which he discovered electromagnetic induction. Joseph Henry likely discovered self-induction a few months earlier and both may have been anticipated by the work of Francesco Zantedeschi in Italy in 1829 and 1830.
Faraday's breakthrough came when he wrapped two insulated coils of wire around a massive iron ring, bolted to a chair, and found that upon passing a current through one coil, a momentary current was induced in the other coil. This phenomenon is known as mutual induction. The iron ring-coil apparatus is still on display at the Royal Institution. In subsequent experiments he found that if he moved a magnet through a loop of wire, an electric current flowed in the wire. The current also flowed if the loop was moved over a stationary magnet. His demonstrations established that a changing magnetic field produces an electric field. This relation was mathematically modelled by Faraday's law, which subsequently became one of the four Maxwell equations. These in turn have evolved into the generalization known today as field theory.
Michael Faraday - statue in Savoy Place, London.
Sculptor John Henry Foley RA
Faraday later used the principle to construct the electric dynamo, the ancestor of modern power generators.
In 1839 he completed a series of experiments aimed at investigating the fundamental nature of electricity. Faraday used "static", batteries, and "animal electricity" to produce the phenomena of electrostatic attraction, electrolysis, magnetism, etc. He concluded that, contrary to scientific opinion of the time, the divisions between the various "kinds" of electricity were illusory. Faraday instead proposed that only a single "electricity" exists, and the changing values of quantity and intensity (voltage and charge) would produce different groups of phenomena.
Near the end of his career Faraday proposed that electromagnetic forces extended into the empty space around the conductor. This idea was rejected by his fellow scientists, and Faraday did not live to see this idea eventually accepted. Faraday's concept of lines of flux emanating from charged bodies and magnets provided a way to visualize electric and magnetic fields. That mental model was crucial to the successful development of electromechanical devices which dominated engineering and industry for the remainder of the 19th century.
In 1845, he discovered the phenomenon that he named diamagnetism, and what is now called the Faraday effect: The plane of polarization of linearly polarized light propagated through a material medium can be rotated by the application of an external magnetic field aligned in the propagation direction. He wrote in his notebook, "I have at last succeeded in illuminating a magnetic curve or line of force and in magnetising a ray of light". This established that magnetic force and light were related.
In his work on static electricity, Faraday demonstrated that the charge only resided on the exterior of a charged conductor, and exterior charge had no influence on anything enclosed within a conductor. This is because the exterior charges redistribute such that the interior fields due to them cancel. This shielding effect is used in what is now known as a Faraday cage.
Faraday was an excellent experimentalist who conveyed his ideas in clear and simple language. However, his mathematical abilities did not extend as far as trigonometry or any but the simplest algebra. It was James Clerk Maxwell who took the work of Faraday, and others, and consolidated it with a set of equations that lie at the base of all modern theories of electromagnetic phenomena.
Michael Faraday meets Father Thames, from Punch (July 21, 1855)
Beyond his scientific research into areas such as chemistry, electricity, and magnetism at the Royal Institution, Faraday undertook numerous, and often time-consuming, service projects for private enterprise and the British government. This work included investigations of explosions in mines, being an expert witness in court, and the preparation of high-quality optical glass.
As a respected scientist in a nation with strong maritime interests, Faraday spent extensive amounts of time on projects such as the construction and operation of light houses and protecting the bottoms of ships from corrosion.
Faraday also was active in what would now be called environmental science, or engineering. He investigated industrial pollution at Swansea and was consulted on air pollution at the Royal Mint. In July of 1855, Faraday wrote a letter to The Times on the subject of the foul condition of the River Thames, which resulted in an oft-reprinted cartoon in Punch. (See also The Great Stink.)
Faraday assisted with planning and judging of exhibits for the Great Exhibition of 1851 in London. He also advised the National Gallery on the cleaning and protection of its art collection, and served on the National Gallery Site Commission in 1857.
Education was another area of service for Faraday. He lectured on the topic in 1854 at the Royal Institution, and in 1862 he appeared before a Public Schools Commission to give his views on education in Great Britain. Faraday also weighed in, negatively, on the public's fascination with table-turning, mesmerism, and seances, chastising both the public and the nation's educational system. See The Illustrated London News, July 1853, for Faraday's comments.
125px
In June of 1832, the University of Oxford granted Faraday a Doctor of Civil Law degree (honorary). During his lifetime, Faraday rejected a knighthood and twice refused to become President of the Royal Society.
In 1848, as a result of representations by the Prince Consort, Michael Faraday was awarded a grace and favour house in Hampton Court, Surrey free of all expenses or upkeep. This was the Master Mason's House, later called Faraday House, and now No.37 Hampton Court Road. In 1858 Faraday retired to live there. Twickenham Museum on Faraday and Faraday House, Accessed June 2006
Faraday died at his house at Hampton Court on August 25, 1867. He turned down burial in Westminster Abbey, but he has a memorial plaque there, near Isaac Newton's tomb. Faraday was interred in the Sandemanian plot in Highgate Cemetery.
Michael Faraday's grave at Highgate Cemetery
Faraday gave a successful series of lectures on the chemistry and physics of flames at the Royal Institution, entitled The Chemical History of a Candle. This was one of the earlier Christmas lectures for young people, which are still given each year. Between 1827 and 1860, Faraday gave the Christmas lecture a record nineteen times.
Faraday refused to participate in the production of chemical weapons for the Crimean War citing ethical reasons.
A statue of Faraday stands in Savoy Place, London, outside the Institution of Electrical Engineers.
A recently built hall of accommodation at Brunel University is named after Faraday.
A hall at Loughborough University was named after Faraday in 1960. Near the entrance to its dining hall is a bronze casting, which depicts the symbol of an electrical transformer, and inside there hangs a portrait, both in Faraday's honour.
Faraday's picture was printed on British £20 banknotes from 1991 until 2001. Bank of England, Withdrawn Notes
In the video game Chromehounds there is a ThermoVision Device named the Faraday.
The former UK Faraday Atmospheric Research Station in Antarctica was named after him.
Faraday was one of the then eight foreign members of the French Academy of Sciences.
Michael Faraday's signature
Faraday's books, with the exception of Chemical Manipulation, were collections of scientific papers or transcriptions of lectures. See page 220 of Hamilton's A Life of Discovery: Michael Faraday, Giant of the Scientific Revolution (2002) Since his death, Faraday's diary has been published, as have several large volumes of his letters and Faraday's journal from his travels with Davy in 1813 - 1815.
* Chemical Manipulation, Being Instructions to Students in Chemistry, John Murray, 1st ed. 1827, 2nd ed. 1830, 3rd ed. 1842
* Experimental Researches in Electricity, vols. i. and ii., Richard and John Edward Taylor, vols. i. and ii.. 1844 and 1847; vol. iii., 1844; vol. iii. Richard Taylor and William Francis, 1855
* Experimental Researches in Chemistry and Physics, Taylor and Francis, 1859
* A Course of Six Lectures on the Chemical History of a Candle, edited by W. Crookes, Griffin, Bohn & Co., 1861
* On the Various Forces in Nature, edited by W. Crookes, Chatto & Windus, 1873
* Faraday's Diary edited by T. Martin was published in eight volumes, 1932 - 1936
* Curiosity Perfectly Satisfyed: Faraday's Travels in Europe 1813-1815, edited by B. Bowers and L. Symons, Institution of Electrical Engineers, 1991
* The Correspondence of Michael Faraday, edited by F. A. J. L. James, INSPEC, Inc., volume 1, 1991; volume 2, 1993; volume 3, 1996; volume 4, 1999
* "Nothing is too wonderful to be true if it be consistent with the laws of nature, and in such things as these, experiment is the best test of such consistency." From the entry of 19 March 1849 in Faraday's Diary
* "Work. Finish. Publish." â his well-known advice to the young William Crookes
* "The important thing is to know how to take all things quietly."
* Regarding the hereafter, "Speculations? I have none. I am resting on certainties. I know whom I have believed and am persuaded that he is able to keep that which I have committed unto him against that day."
* "Next Sabbath day (the 22nd) I shall complete my 70th year. I can hardly think of myself so old."
*Above the doorways of the Pfahler Hall of Science at Ursinus College in Collegeville, Pennsylvania, there is a stone inscription of a quote attributed to Michael Faraday which reads "but still try, for who knows what is possible..." See
* "One day sir, you may tax it." Faraday's reply to William Gladstone, then British Minister of Finance, when asked of the practical value of electricity.
* "If you would cause your view ... to be acknowledged by scientific men; you would do a great service to science. If you would even get them to say yes or no to your conclusions it would help to clear the future progress. I believe some hesitate because they do not like their thoughts disturbed." From Life and Letters, 2:389.
* Faraday rotator
* Superconductivity
* Tyndall, John, Faraday as a Discoverer, (Longmans, 1st ed. 1868, 2nd ed. 1870).
* Bence Jones, Henry (1870). The Life and Letters of Faraday in 2 vols, Longmans.
* Gladstone, J. H. (1872). Michael Faraday, Macmillan.
* Thompson, Silvanus (1901, reprinted 2005). Michael Faraday, His Life and Work. Cassell and Company, London, 1901; reprint by Kessenger Publishing, Whitefish, MT. ISBN 1-4179-7036-7
* The British Electrical and Allied Manufacturers Association (1931). Faraday. R. & R. Clark, Ltd., Edinburgh, 1931.
* Williams, L. Pearce (1971), Faraday: A Biography, Simon and Schuster.
* Cantor, Geoffrey (1991). Michael Faraday, Sandemanian and Scientist, Macmillian, ISBN 0-333-55077
* Hamilton, James (2002). Faraday: The Life. London: Harper Collins. ISBN 0-00-716376-2
* Hamilton, James (2004). A Life of Discovery: Michael Faraday, Giant of the Scientific Revolution. New York: Random House. ISBN 1-4000-6016-8
* Agassi, Joseph (1971), Faraday as a Natural Philosopher, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
* Ames, Joseph Sweetman (Ed.), The discovery of induced electric currents Vol. 2. Memoirs, by Michael Faraday. New York, Cincinnati [etc.] American book company [c1900] LCCN 00005889
* Gooding, David (Ed.) (1985), Faraday Rediscovered: Essays on the Life and Work of Michael Faraday, 1791-1867, London/New York, Macmillan/Stockton
* Thomas, John Meurig (1991). Michael Faraday and the Royal Institution: The Genius of Man and Place Bristol: Hilger. ISBN 0-7503-0145-7
150px
* Biography at The Royal Institution of Great Britain
* Faraday as a Discoverer by John Tyndall, Project Gutenberg (downloads)
* The Christian Character of Michael Faraday
* Michael Faraday on the British twenty-pound banknote
* The Life and Discoveries of Michael Faraday by J. A. Crowther, London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1920
* "Faraday" at LoveToKnow 1911 Britannica Online Encyclopedia.
*
* (downloads)
* "Experimental Researches in Electricity" by Michael Faraday Original text with Biographical Introduction by Professor John Tyndall, 1914, Everyman edition.
* Video Podcast with Sir John Cadogan talking about Benzene since Faraday
* The letters of Faraday and Schoenbein 1836-1862. With notes, comments and references to contemporary letters (1899) full download PDF
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|
Michael_Faraday | Did Faraday discover the chemical substance benzene? | yes | data/set4/a7 | Michael_Faraday
Michael Faraday, FRS (September 22, 1791 â August 25, 1867) was an English chemist and physicist (or natural philosopher, in the terminology of that time) who contributed to the fields of electromagnetism and electrochemistry.
Faraday studied the magnetic field around a conductor carrying a DC electric current, and established the basis for the magnetic field concept in physics. He discovered electromagnetic induction, diamagnetism and electrolysis. He established that magnetism could affect rays of light and that there was an underlying relationship between the two phenomena. Michael Faraday entry at the 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica hosted by LovetoKnow Retrieved January 2007. Institution of Engineering and Technology, London Archives, Michael Faraday His inventions of electromagnetic rotary devices formed the foundation of electric motor technology, and it was largely due to his efforts that electricity became viable for use in technology.
As a chemist, Faraday discovered benzene, investigated the clathrate hydrate of chlorine, invented an early form of the bunsen burner and the system of oxidation numbers, and popularized terminology such as anode, cathode, electrode, and ion.
Although Faraday received little formal education and knew little of higher mathematics, such as calculus, he was one of the most influential scientists in history. Some historians of science refer to him as the best experimentalist in the history of science. "best experimentalist in the history of science." Quoting Dr Peter Ford, from the University of Bathâs Department of Physics. Accessed January 2007. The SI unit of capacitance, the farad, is named after him, as is the Faraday constant, the charge on a mole of electrons (about 96,485 coulombs). Faraday's law of induction states that a magnetic field changing in time creates a proportional electromotive force.
Faraday was the first and foremost Fullerian Professor of Chemistry at the Royal Institution of Great Britain, a position to which he was appointed for life.
Michael Faraday from a photograph by John Watkins, British Library
Michael Faraday was born in Newington Butts, near present-day South London, England. His family was not well off. His father, James, was a member of the Sandemanian sect of Christianity. James Faraday had come to London ca 1790 from Outhgill in Westmorland, where he had been the village blacksmith. The young Michael Faraday, one of four children, having only the most basic of school educations, had to largely educate himself. "Michael Faraday." History of Science and Technology. Houghton Mifflin Company, 2004. Answers.com 4 June 2007. /ref> At fourteen he became apprenticed to a local bookbinder and bookseller George Riebau and, during his seven-year apprenticeship, he read many books, including Isaac Watts' The Improvement of the Mind, and he enthusiastically implemented the principles and suggestions contained therein. He developed an interest in science and specifically in electricity. In particular, he was inspired by the book Conversations in Chemistry by Jane Marcet.
At the age of twenty, in 1812, at the end of his apprenticeship, Faraday attended lectures by the eminent English chemist and physicist Humphry Davy of the Royal Institution and Royal Society, and John Tatum, founder of the City Philosophical Society. Many tickets for these lectures were given to Faraday by William Dance (one of the founders of the Royal Philharmonic Society). Afterwards, Faraday sent Davy a three hundred page book based on notes taken during the lectures. Davy's reply was immediate, kind, and favorable. When Davy damaged his eyesight in an accident with nitrogen trichloride, he decided to employ Faraday as a secretary. When John Payne, one of the Royal Institution's assistants, was fired, Sir Humphry Davy was asked to find a replacement. He appointed Faraday as Chemical Assistant at the Royal Institution on March 1.
In the class-based English society of the time, Faraday was not considered a gentleman. When Davy went on a long tour to the continent in 1813-5, his valet did not wish to go. Faraday was going as Davy's scientific assistant, and was asked to act as Davy's valet until a replacement could be found in Paris. Davy failed to find a replacement, and Faraday was forced to fill the role of valet as well as assistant throughout the trip. Davy's wife, Jane Apreece, refused to treat Faraday as an equal (making him travel outside the coach, eat with the servants, etc.) and generally made Faraday so miserable that he contemplated returning to England alone and giving up science altogether. The trip did, however, give him access to the European scientific elite and a host of stimulating ideas.
His sponsor and mentor was John 'Mad Jack' Fuller, who created the Fullerian Professorship of Chemistry at the Royal Institution.
Faraday was a devout Christian and a member of the small Sandemanian denomination, an offshoot of the Church of Scotland. He later served two terms as an elder in the group's church.
Faraday married Sarah Barnard (1800-1879) on June 2, 1821, although they would never have children. They met through attending the Sandemanian church.
He was elected a member of the Royal Society in 1824, appointed director of the laboratory in 1825; and in 1833 he was appointed Fullerian professor of chemistry in the institution for life, without the obligation to deliver lectures.
The title page of The Chemical History of a Candle (1861)
Faraday's earliest chemical work was as an assistant to Davy. He made a special study of chlorine, and discovered two new chlorides of carbon. He also made the first rough experiments on the diffusion of gases, a phenomenon first pointed out by John Dalton, the physical importance of which was more fully brought to light by Thomas Graham and Joseph Loschmidt. He succeeded in liquefying several gases; he investigated the alloys of steel, and produced several new kinds of glass intended for optical purposes. A specimen of one of these heavy glasses afterwards became historically important as the substance in which Faraday detected the rotation of the plane of polarisation of light when the glass was placed in a magnetic field, and also as the substance which was first repelled by the poles of the magnet. He also endeavoured, with some success, to make the general methods of chemistry, as distinguished from its results, the subject of special study and of popular exposition.
He invented an early form of what was to become the Bunsen burner, which is used almost universally in science laboratories as a convenient source of heat. See page 127 of Faraday's Chemical Manipulation, Being Instructions to Students in Chemistry (1827)
Faraday worked extensively in the field of chemistry, discovering chemical substances such as benzene (which he called bicarburet of hydrogen), inventing the system of oxidation numbers, and liquefying gases such as chlorine. In 1820 Faraday reported on the first syntheses of compounds made from carbon and chlorine, C 2 H 6 and C 2 H 4 , and published his results the following year. Faraday also determined the composition of the chlorine clathrate hydrate, which had been discovered by Humphry Davy in 1810.
Faraday also discovered the laws of electrolysis and popularized terminology such as anode, cathode, electrode, and ion, terms largely created by William Whewell.
Faraday was the first to report what later came to be called metallic nanoparticles. In 1847 he discovered that the optical properties of gold colloids differed from those of the corresponding bulk metal. This was probably the first reported observation of the effects of quantum size, and might be considered to be the birth of nanoscience.
Faraday's greatest work was probably with electricity and magnetism. The first experiment which he recorded was the construction of a voltaic pile with seven halfpence pieces, stacked together with seven disks of sheet zinc, and six pieces of paper moistened with salt water. With this pile he decomposed sulphate of magnesia (first letter to Abbott, July 12, 1812).
[[Image:Faraday photograph ii.jpg|thumb|200px|left|Michael Faraday holding a glass bar of the type he used in 1845 to show that magnetism can affect light. Detail of an engraving by Henry Adlard, based on an earlier photograph by Maull & Polyblank ca. 1857. See National Portrait Gallery, UK ]]
In 1821, soon after the Danish physicist and chemist, Hans Christian Ãrsted discovered the phenomenon of electromagnetism, Davy and British scientist William Hyde Wollaston tried but failed to design an electric motor. Faraday, having discussed the problem with the two men, went on to build two devices to produce what he called electromagnetic rotation: a continuous circular motion from the circular magnetic force around a wire and a wire extending into a pool of mercury with a magnet placed inside would rotate around the magnet if supplied with current from a chemical battery. The latter device is known as a homopolar motor. These experiments and inventions form the foundation of modern electromagnetic technology. Faraday published his results without acknowledging his debt to Wollaston and Davy, and the resulting controversy caused Faraday to withdraw from electromagnetic research for several years.
At this stage, there is also evidence to suggest that Davy may have been trying to slow Faradayâs rise as a scientist (or natural philosopher as it was known then). In 1825, for instance, Davy set him onto optical glass experiments, which progressed for six years with no great results. It was not until Davy's death, in 1829, that Faraday stopped these fruitless tasks and moved on to endeavors that were more worthwhile. Two years later, in 1831, he began his great series of experiments in which he discovered electromagnetic induction. Joseph Henry likely discovered self-induction a few months earlier and both may have been anticipated by the work of Francesco Zantedeschi in Italy in 1829 and 1830.
Faraday's breakthrough came when he wrapped two insulated coils of wire around a massive iron ring, bolted to a chair, and found that upon passing a current through one coil, a momentary current was induced in the other coil. This phenomenon is known as mutual induction. The iron ring-coil apparatus is still on display at the Royal Institution. In subsequent experiments he found that if he moved a magnet through a loop of wire, an electric current flowed in the wire. The current also flowed if the loop was moved over a stationary magnet. His demonstrations established that a changing magnetic field produces an electric field. This relation was mathematically modelled by Faraday's law, which subsequently became one of the four Maxwell equations. These in turn have evolved into the generalization known today as field theory.
Michael Faraday - statue in Savoy Place, London.
Sculptor John Henry Foley RA
Faraday later used the principle to construct the electric dynamo, the ancestor of modern power generators.
In 1839 he completed a series of experiments aimed at investigating the fundamental nature of electricity. Faraday used "static", batteries, and "animal electricity" to produce the phenomena of electrostatic attraction, electrolysis, magnetism, etc. He concluded that, contrary to scientific opinion of the time, the divisions between the various "kinds" of electricity were illusory. Faraday instead proposed that only a single "electricity" exists, and the changing values of quantity and intensity (voltage and charge) would produce different groups of phenomena.
Near the end of his career Faraday proposed that electromagnetic forces extended into the empty space around the conductor. This idea was rejected by his fellow scientists, and Faraday did not live to see this idea eventually accepted. Faraday's concept of lines of flux emanating from charged bodies and magnets provided a way to visualize electric and magnetic fields. That mental model was crucial to the successful development of electromechanical devices which dominated engineering and industry for the remainder of the 19th century.
In 1845, he discovered the phenomenon that he named diamagnetism, and what is now called the Faraday effect: The plane of polarization of linearly polarized light propagated through a material medium can be rotated by the application of an external magnetic field aligned in the propagation direction. He wrote in his notebook, "I have at last succeeded in illuminating a magnetic curve or line of force and in magnetising a ray of light". This established that magnetic force and light were related.
In his work on static electricity, Faraday demonstrated that the charge only resided on the exterior of a charged conductor, and exterior charge had no influence on anything enclosed within a conductor. This is because the exterior charges redistribute such that the interior fields due to them cancel. This shielding effect is used in what is now known as a Faraday cage.
Faraday was an excellent experimentalist who conveyed his ideas in clear and simple language. However, his mathematical abilities did not extend as far as trigonometry or any but the simplest algebra. It was James Clerk Maxwell who took the work of Faraday, and others, and consolidated it with a set of equations that lie at the base of all modern theories of electromagnetic phenomena.
Michael Faraday meets Father Thames, from Punch (July 21, 1855)
Beyond his scientific research into areas such as chemistry, electricity, and magnetism at the Royal Institution, Faraday undertook numerous, and often time-consuming, service projects for private enterprise and the British government. This work included investigations of explosions in mines, being an expert witness in court, and the preparation of high-quality optical glass.
As a respected scientist in a nation with strong maritime interests, Faraday spent extensive amounts of time on projects such as the construction and operation of light houses and protecting the bottoms of ships from corrosion.
Faraday also was active in what would now be called environmental science, or engineering. He investigated industrial pollution at Swansea and was consulted on air pollution at the Royal Mint. In July of 1855, Faraday wrote a letter to The Times on the subject of the foul condition of the River Thames, which resulted in an oft-reprinted cartoon in Punch. (See also The Great Stink.)
Faraday assisted with planning and judging of exhibits for the Great Exhibition of 1851 in London. He also advised the National Gallery on the cleaning and protection of its art collection, and served on the National Gallery Site Commission in 1857.
Education was another area of service for Faraday. He lectured on the topic in 1854 at the Royal Institution, and in 1862 he appeared before a Public Schools Commission to give his views on education in Great Britain. Faraday also weighed in, negatively, on the public's fascination with table-turning, mesmerism, and seances, chastising both the public and the nation's educational system. See The Illustrated London News, July 1853, for Faraday's comments.
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In June of 1832, the University of Oxford granted Faraday a Doctor of Civil Law degree (honorary). During his lifetime, Faraday rejected a knighthood and twice refused to become President of the Royal Society.
In 1848, as a result of representations by the Prince Consort, Michael Faraday was awarded a grace and favour house in Hampton Court, Surrey free of all expenses or upkeep. This was the Master Mason's House, later called Faraday House, and now No.37 Hampton Court Road. In 1858 Faraday retired to live there. Twickenham Museum on Faraday and Faraday House, Accessed June 2006
Faraday died at his house at Hampton Court on August 25, 1867. He turned down burial in Westminster Abbey, but he has a memorial plaque there, near Isaac Newton's tomb. Faraday was interred in the Sandemanian plot in Highgate Cemetery.
Michael Faraday's grave at Highgate Cemetery
Faraday gave a successful series of lectures on the chemistry and physics of flames at the Royal Institution, entitled The Chemical History of a Candle. This was one of the earlier Christmas lectures for young people, which are still given each year. Between 1827 and 1860, Faraday gave the Christmas lecture a record nineteen times.
Faraday refused to participate in the production of chemical weapons for the Crimean War citing ethical reasons.
A statue of Faraday stands in Savoy Place, London, outside the Institution of Electrical Engineers.
A recently built hall of accommodation at Brunel University is named after Faraday.
A hall at Loughborough University was named after Faraday in 1960. Near the entrance to its dining hall is a bronze casting, which depicts the symbol of an electrical transformer, and inside there hangs a portrait, both in Faraday's honour.
Faraday's picture was printed on British £20 banknotes from 1991 until 2001. Bank of England, Withdrawn Notes
In the video game Chromehounds there is a ThermoVision Device named the Faraday.
The former UK Faraday Atmospheric Research Station in Antarctica was named after him.
Faraday was one of the then eight foreign members of the French Academy of Sciences.
Michael Faraday's signature
Faraday's books, with the exception of Chemical Manipulation, were collections of scientific papers or transcriptions of lectures. See page 220 of Hamilton's A Life of Discovery: Michael Faraday, Giant of the Scientific Revolution (2002) Since his death, Faraday's diary has been published, as have several large volumes of his letters and Faraday's journal from his travels with Davy in 1813 - 1815.
* Chemical Manipulation, Being Instructions to Students in Chemistry, John Murray, 1st ed. 1827, 2nd ed. 1830, 3rd ed. 1842
* Experimental Researches in Electricity, vols. i. and ii., Richard and John Edward Taylor, vols. i. and ii.. 1844 and 1847; vol. iii., 1844; vol. iii. Richard Taylor and William Francis, 1855
* Experimental Researches in Chemistry and Physics, Taylor and Francis, 1859
* A Course of Six Lectures on the Chemical History of a Candle, edited by W. Crookes, Griffin, Bohn & Co., 1861
* On the Various Forces in Nature, edited by W. Crookes, Chatto & Windus, 1873
* Faraday's Diary edited by T. Martin was published in eight volumes, 1932 - 1936
* Curiosity Perfectly Satisfyed: Faraday's Travels in Europe 1813-1815, edited by B. Bowers and L. Symons, Institution of Electrical Engineers, 1991
* The Correspondence of Michael Faraday, edited by F. A. J. L. James, INSPEC, Inc., volume 1, 1991; volume 2, 1993; volume 3, 1996; volume 4, 1999
* "Nothing is too wonderful to be true if it be consistent with the laws of nature, and in such things as these, experiment is the best test of such consistency." From the entry of 19 March 1849 in Faraday's Diary
* "Work. Finish. Publish." â his well-known advice to the young William Crookes
* "The important thing is to know how to take all things quietly."
* Regarding the hereafter, "Speculations? I have none. I am resting on certainties. I know whom I have believed and am persuaded that he is able to keep that which I have committed unto him against that day."
* "Next Sabbath day (the 22nd) I shall complete my 70th year. I can hardly think of myself so old."
*Above the doorways of the Pfahler Hall of Science at Ursinus College in Collegeville, Pennsylvania, there is a stone inscription of a quote attributed to Michael Faraday which reads "but still try, for who knows what is possible..." See
* "One day sir, you may tax it." Faraday's reply to William Gladstone, then British Minister of Finance, when asked of the practical value of electricity.
* "If you would cause your view ... to be acknowledged by scientific men; you would do a great service to science. If you would even get them to say yes or no to your conclusions it would help to clear the future progress. I believe some hesitate because they do not like their thoughts disturbed." From Life and Letters, 2:389.
* Faraday rotator
* Superconductivity
* Tyndall, John, Faraday as a Discoverer, (Longmans, 1st ed. 1868, 2nd ed. 1870).
* Bence Jones, Henry (1870). The Life and Letters of Faraday in 2 vols, Longmans.
* Gladstone, J. H. (1872). Michael Faraday, Macmillan.
* Thompson, Silvanus (1901, reprinted 2005). Michael Faraday, His Life and Work. Cassell and Company, London, 1901; reprint by Kessenger Publishing, Whitefish, MT. ISBN 1-4179-7036-7
* The British Electrical and Allied Manufacturers Association (1931). Faraday. R. & R. Clark, Ltd., Edinburgh, 1931.
* Williams, L. Pearce (1971), Faraday: A Biography, Simon and Schuster.
* Cantor, Geoffrey (1991). Michael Faraday, Sandemanian and Scientist, Macmillian, ISBN 0-333-55077
* Hamilton, James (2002). Faraday: The Life. London: Harper Collins. ISBN 0-00-716376-2
* Hamilton, James (2004). A Life of Discovery: Michael Faraday, Giant of the Scientific Revolution. New York: Random House. ISBN 1-4000-6016-8
* Agassi, Joseph (1971), Faraday as a Natural Philosopher, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
* Ames, Joseph Sweetman (Ed.), The discovery of induced electric currents Vol. 2. Memoirs, by Michael Faraday. New York, Cincinnati [etc.] American book company [c1900] LCCN 00005889
* Gooding, David (Ed.) (1985), Faraday Rediscovered: Essays on the Life and Work of Michael Faraday, 1791-1867, London/New York, Macmillan/Stockton
* Thomas, John Meurig (1991). Michael Faraday and the Royal Institution: The Genius of Man and Place Bristol: Hilger. ISBN 0-7503-0145-7
150px
* Biography at The Royal Institution of Great Britain
* Faraday as a Discoverer by John Tyndall, Project Gutenberg (downloads)
* The Christian Character of Michael Faraday
* Michael Faraday on the British twenty-pound banknote
* The Life and Discoveries of Michael Faraday by J. A. Crowther, London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1920
* "Faraday" at LoveToKnow 1911 Britannica Online Encyclopedia.
*
* (downloads)
* "Experimental Researches in Electricity" by Michael Faraday Original text with Biographical Introduction by Professor John Tyndall, 1914, Everyman edition.
* Video Podcast with Sir John Cadogan talking about Benzene since Faraday
* The letters of Faraday and Schoenbein 1836-1862. With notes, comments and references to contemporary letters (1899) full download PDF
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Thomas Phillips
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Royal Institution
Humphry Davy
Electromagnetic induction
Electrochemistry
Faraday effect
Royal Medal
Sandemanian
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England
chemist
physicist
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electromagnetism
electrochemistry
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field (physics)
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electric current
electromagnetic induction
diamagnetism
electrolysis
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electricity
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clathrate hydrate
bunsen burner
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anode
cathode
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experimentalist
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capacitance
farad
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mole (unit)
electron
coulomb
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magnetic field
electromotive force
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South London
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Outhgill
Westmorland
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steel
Bunsen burner
chemistry
benzene
oxidation number
hexachloroethane
tetrachloroethylene
clathrate hydrate
electrolysis
anode
cathode
electrode
ion
William Whewell
nanoparticles
quantum
nanoscience
voltaic pile
July 12
1812
Henry Adlard
1821
Hans Christian Ãrsted
electromagnetism
William Hyde Wollaston
electric motor
mercury (element)
homopolar motor
1831
electromagnetic induction
Joseph Henry
Electromagnetic induction
Francesco Zantedeschi
mutual induction
Faraday's law of induction
Maxwell's equations
field theory
John Henry Foley
Electrical generator#Dynamo
1839
Electrostatics
Battery (electricity)
Bioelectromagnetism
electrolysis
Electromagnetism
diamagnetism
Faraday effect
polarization
Faraday cage
James Clerk Maxwell
July 21
1855
Swansea
Royal Mint
The Times
River Thames
Punch
The Great Stink
Great Exhibition
University of Oxford
knighthood
President of the Royal Society
Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha
grace and favour
Hampton Court
Surrey
Hampton Court
August 25
1867
Westminster Abbey
Isaac Newton
Highgate Cemetery
Highgate Cemetery
Royal Institution
The Chemical History of a Candle
Royal Institution Christmas Lectures
Crimean War
Institution of Electrical Engineers
Brunel University
Loughborough University
1960
transformer
British banknotes
video game
Chromehounds
Faraday Atmospheric Research Station in Antarctica (GALINDEZ ISLAND - 65.15S/64.16W)
French Academy of Sciences
William Crookes
Ursinus College
Faraday rotator
Superconductivity
George Biddell Airy
Copley Medal
Siméon Denis Poisson
Giovanni Antonio Amedeo Plana
Antoine César Becquerel
John Frederic Daniell
Copley Medal
Carl Friedrich Gauss
Robert Brown (botanist)
Physicist
Chemist
September 22
1791
Newington Butts
England
August 25
1867
Hampton Court
London
England
|
Michael_Faraday | Did Faraday discover the chemical substance benzene? | yes | data/set4/a7 | Michael_Faraday
Michael Faraday, FRS (September 22, 1791 â August 25, 1867) was an English chemist and physicist (or natural philosopher, in the terminology of that time) who contributed to the fields of electromagnetism and electrochemistry.
Faraday studied the magnetic field around a conductor carrying a DC electric current, and established the basis for the magnetic field concept in physics. He discovered electromagnetic induction, diamagnetism and electrolysis. He established that magnetism could affect rays of light and that there was an underlying relationship between the two phenomena. Michael Faraday entry at the 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica hosted by LovetoKnow Retrieved January 2007. Institution of Engineering and Technology, London Archives, Michael Faraday His inventions of electromagnetic rotary devices formed the foundation of electric motor technology, and it was largely due to his efforts that electricity became viable for use in technology.
As a chemist, Faraday discovered benzene, investigated the clathrate hydrate of chlorine, invented an early form of the bunsen burner and the system of oxidation numbers, and popularized terminology such as anode, cathode, electrode, and ion.
Although Faraday received little formal education and knew little of higher mathematics, such as calculus, he was one of the most influential scientists in history. Some historians of science refer to him as the best experimentalist in the history of science. "best experimentalist in the history of science." Quoting Dr Peter Ford, from the University of Bathâs Department of Physics. Accessed January 2007. The SI unit of capacitance, the farad, is named after him, as is the Faraday constant, the charge on a mole of electrons (about 96,485 coulombs). Faraday's law of induction states that a magnetic field changing in time creates a proportional electromotive force.
Faraday was the first and foremost Fullerian Professor of Chemistry at the Royal Institution of Great Britain, a position to which he was appointed for life.
Michael Faraday from a photograph by John Watkins, British Library
Michael Faraday was born in Newington Butts, near present-day South London, England. His family was not well off. His father, James, was a member of the Sandemanian sect of Christianity. James Faraday had come to London ca 1790 from Outhgill in Westmorland, where he had been the village blacksmith. The young Michael Faraday, one of four children, having only the most basic of school educations, had to largely educate himself. "Michael Faraday." History of Science and Technology. Houghton Mifflin Company, 2004. Answers.com 4 June 2007. /ref> At fourteen he became apprenticed to a local bookbinder and bookseller George Riebau and, during his seven-year apprenticeship, he read many books, including Isaac Watts' The Improvement of the Mind, and he enthusiastically implemented the principles and suggestions contained therein. He developed an interest in science and specifically in electricity. In particular, he was inspired by the book Conversations in Chemistry by Jane Marcet.
At the age of twenty, in 1812, at the end of his apprenticeship, Faraday attended lectures by the eminent English chemist and physicist Humphry Davy of the Royal Institution and Royal Society, and John Tatum, founder of the City Philosophical Society. Many tickets for these lectures were given to Faraday by William Dance (one of the founders of the Royal Philharmonic Society). Afterwards, Faraday sent Davy a three hundred page book based on notes taken during the lectures. Davy's reply was immediate, kind, and favorable. When Davy damaged his eyesight in an accident with nitrogen trichloride, he decided to employ Faraday as a secretary. When John Payne, one of the Royal Institution's assistants, was fired, Sir Humphry Davy was asked to find a replacement. He appointed Faraday as Chemical Assistant at the Royal Institution on March 1.
In the class-based English society of the time, Faraday was not considered a gentleman. When Davy went on a long tour to the continent in 1813-5, his valet did not wish to go. Faraday was going as Davy's scientific assistant, and was asked to act as Davy's valet until a replacement could be found in Paris. Davy failed to find a replacement, and Faraday was forced to fill the role of valet as well as assistant throughout the trip. Davy's wife, Jane Apreece, refused to treat Faraday as an equal (making him travel outside the coach, eat with the servants, etc.) and generally made Faraday so miserable that he contemplated returning to England alone and giving up science altogether. The trip did, however, give him access to the European scientific elite and a host of stimulating ideas.
His sponsor and mentor was John 'Mad Jack' Fuller, who created the Fullerian Professorship of Chemistry at the Royal Institution.
Faraday was a devout Christian and a member of the small Sandemanian denomination, an offshoot of the Church of Scotland. He later served two terms as an elder in the group's church.
Faraday married Sarah Barnard (1800-1879) on June 2, 1821, although they would never have children. They met through attending the Sandemanian church.
He was elected a member of the Royal Society in 1824, appointed director of the laboratory in 1825; and in 1833 he was appointed Fullerian professor of chemistry in the institution for life, without the obligation to deliver lectures.
The title page of The Chemical History of a Candle (1861)
Faraday's earliest chemical work was as an assistant to Davy. He made a special study of chlorine, and discovered two new chlorides of carbon. He also made the first rough experiments on the diffusion of gases, a phenomenon first pointed out by John Dalton, the physical importance of which was more fully brought to light by Thomas Graham and Joseph Loschmidt. He succeeded in liquefying several gases; he investigated the alloys of steel, and produced several new kinds of glass intended for optical purposes. A specimen of one of these heavy glasses afterwards became historically important as the substance in which Faraday detected the rotation of the plane of polarisation of light when the glass was placed in a magnetic field, and also as the substance which was first repelled by the poles of the magnet. He also endeavoured, with some success, to make the general methods of chemistry, as distinguished from its results, the subject of special study and of popular exposition.
He invented an early form of what was to become the Bunsen burner, which is used almost universally in science laboratories as a convenient source of heat. See page 127 of Faraday's Chemical Manipulation, Being Instructions to Students in Chemistry (1827)
Faraday worked extensively in the field of chemistry, discovering chemical substances such as benzene (which he called bicarburet of hydrogen), inventing the system of oxidation numbers, and liquefying gases such as chlorine. In 1820 Faraday reported on the first syntheses of compounds made from carbon and chlorine, C 2 H 6 and C 2 H 4 , and published his results the following year. Faraday also determined the composition of the chlorine clathrate hydrate, which had been discovered by Humphry Davy in 1810.
Faraday also discovered the laws of electrolysis and popularized terminology such as anode, cathode, electrode, and ion, terms largely created by William Whewell.
Faraday was the first to report what later came to be called metallic nanoparticles. In 1847 he discovered that the optical properties of gold colloids differed from those of the corresponding bulk metal. This was probably the first reported observation of the effects of quantum size, and might be considered to be the birth of nanoscience.
Faraday's greatest work was probably with electricity and magnetism. The first experiment which he recorded was the construction of a voltaic pile with seven halfpence pieces, stacked together with seven disks of sheet zinc, and six pieces of paper moistened with salt water. With this pile he decomposed sulphate of magnesia (first letter to Abbott, July 12, 1812).
[[Image:Faraday photograph ii.jpg|thumb|200px|left|Michael Faraday holding a glass bar of the type he used in 1845 to show that magnetism can affect light. Detail of an engraving by Henry Adlard, based on an earlier photograph by Maull & Polyblank ca. 1857. See National Portrait Gallery, UK ]]
In 1821, soon after the Danish physicist and chemist, Hans Christian Ãrsted discovered the phenomenon of electromagnetism, Davy and British scientist William Hyde Wollaston tried but failed to design an electric motor. Faraday, having discussed the problem with the two men, went on to build two devices to produce what he called electromagnetic rotation: a continuous circular motion from the circular magnetic force around a wire and a wire extending into a pool of mercury with a magnet placed inside would rotate around the magnet if supplied with current from a chemical battery. The latter device is known as a homopolar motor. These experiments and inventions form the foundation of modern electromagnetic technology. Faraday published his results without acknowledging his debt to Wollaston and Davy, and the resulting controversy caused Faraday to withdraw from electromagnetic research for several years.
At this stage, there is also evidence to suggest that Davy may have been trying to slow Faradayâs rise as a scientist (or natural philosopher as it was known then). In 1825, for instance, Davy set him onto optical glass experiments, which progressed for six years with no great results. It was not until Davy's death, in 1829, that Faraday stopped these fruitless tasks and moved on to endeavors that were more worthwhile. Two years later, in 1831, he began his great series of experiments in which he discovered electromagnetic induction. Joseph Henry likely discovered self-induction a few months earlier and both may have been anticipated by the work of Francesco Zantedeschi in Italy in 1829 and 1830.
Faraday's breakthrough came when he wrapped two insulated coils of wire around a massive iron ring, bolted to a chair, and found that upon passing a current through one coil, a momentary current was induced in the other coil. This phenomenon is known as mutual induction. The iron ring-coil apparatus is still on display at the Royal Institution. In subsequent experiments he found that if he moved a magnet through a loop of wire, an electric current flowed in the wire. The current also flowed if the loop was moved over a stationary magnet. His demonstrations established that a changing magnetic field produces an electric field. This relation was mathematically modelled by Faraday's law, which subsequently became one of the four Maxwell equations. These in turn have evolved into the generalization known today as field theory.
Michael Faraday - statue in Savoy Place, London.
Sculptor John Henry Foley RA
Faraday later used the principle to construct the electric dynamo, the ancestor of modern power generators.
In 1839 he completed a series of experiments aimed at investigating the fundamental nature of electricity. Faraday used "static", batteries, and "animal electricity" to produce the phenomena of electrostatic attraction, electrolysis, magnetism, etc. He concluded that, contrary to scientific opinion of the time, the divisions between the various "kinds" of electricity were illusory. Faraday instead proposed that only a single "electricity" exists, and the changing values of quantity and intensity (voltage and charge) would produce different groups of phenomena.
Near the end of his career Faraday proposed that electromagnetic forces extended into the empty space around the conductor. This idea was rejected by his fellow scientists, and Faraday did not live to see this idea eventually accepted. Faraday's concept of lines of flux emanating from charged bodies and magnets provided a way to visualize electric and magnetic fields. That mental model was crucial to the successful development of electromechanical devices which dominated engineering and industry for the remainder of the 19th century.
In 1845, he discovered the phenomenon that he named diamagnetism, and what is now called the Faraday effect: The plane of polarization of linearly polarized light propagated through a material medium can be rotated by the application of an external magnetic field aligned in the propagation direction. He wrote in his notebook, "I have at last succeeded in illuminating a magnetic curve or line of force and in magnetising a ray of light". This established that magnetic force and light were related.
In his work on static electricity, Faraday demonstrated that the charge only resided on the exterior of a charged conductor, and exterior charge had no influence on anything enclosed within a conductor. This is because the exterior charges redistribute such that the interior fields due to them cancel. This shielding effect is used in what is now known as a Faraday cage.
Faraday was an excellent experimentalist who conveyed his ideas in clear and simple language. However, his mathematical abilities did not extend as far as trigonometry or any but the simplest algebra. It was James Clerk Maxwell who took the work of Faraday, and others, and consolidated it with a set of equations that lie at the base of all modern theories of electromagnetic phenomena.
Michael Faraday meets Father Thames, from Punch (July 21, 1855)
Beyond his scientific research into areas such as chemistry, electricity, and magnetism at the Royal Institution, Faraday undertook numerous, and often time-consuming, service projects for private enterprise and the British government. This work included investigations of explosions in mines, being an expert witness in court, and the preparation of high-quality optical glass.
As a respected scientist in a nation with strong maritime interests, Faraday spent extensive amounts of time on projects such as the construction and operation of light houses and protecting the bottoms of ships from corrosion.
Faraday also was active in what would now be called environmental science, or engineering. He investigated industrial pollution at Swansea and was consulted on air pollution at the Royal Mint. In July of 1855, Faraday wrote a letter to The Times on the subject of the foul condition of the River Thames, which resulted in an oft-reprinted cartoon in Punch. (See also The Great Stink.)
Faraday assisted with planning and judging of exhibits for the Great Exhibition of 1851 in London. He also advised the National Gallery on the cleaning and protection of its art collection, and served on the National Gallery Site Commission in 1857.
Education was another area of service for Faraday. He lectured on the topic in 1854 at the Royal Institution, and in 1862 he appeared before a Public Schools Commission to give his views on education in Great Britain. Faraday also weighed in, negatively, on the public's fascination with table-turning, mesmerism, and seances, chastising both the public and the nation's educational system. See The Illustrated London News, July 1853, for Faraday's comments.
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In June of 1832, the University of Oxford granted Faraday a Doctor of Civil Law degree (honorary). During his lifetime, Faraday rejected a knighthood and twice refused to become President of the Royal Society.
In 1848, as a result of representations by the Prince Consort, Michael Faraday was awarded a grace and favour house in Hampton Court, Surrey free of all expenses or upkeep. This was the Master Mason's House, later called Faraday House, and now No.37 Hampton Court Road. In 1858 Faraday retired to live there. Twickenham Museum on Faraday and Faraday House, Accessed June 2006
Faraday died at his house at Hampton Court on August 25, 1867. He turned down burial in Westminster Abbey, but he has a memorial plaque there, near Isaac Newton's tomb. Faraday was interred in the Sandemanian plot in Highgate Cemetery.
Michael Faraday's grave at Highgate Cemetery
Faraday gave a successful series of lectures on the chemistry and physics of flames at the Royal Institution, entitled The Chemical History of a Candle. This was one of the earlier Christmas lectures for young people, which are still given each year. Between 1827 and 1860, Faraday gave the Christmas lecture a record nineteen times.
Faraday refused to participate in the production of chemical weapons for the Crimean War citing ethical reasons.
A statue of Faraday stands in Savoy Place, London, outside the Institution of Electrical Engineers.
A recently built hall of accommodation at Brunel University is named after Faraday.
A hall at Loughborough University was named after Faraday in 1960. Near the entrance to its dining hall is a bronze casting, which depicts the symbol of an electrical transformer, and inside there hangs a portrait, both in Faraday's honour.
Faraday's picture was printed on British £20 banknotes from 1991 until 2001. Bank of England, Withdrawn Notes
In the video game Chromehounds there is a ThermoVision Device named the Faraday.
The former UK Faraday Atmospheric Research Station in Antarctica was named after him.
Faraday was one of the then eight foreign members of the French Academy of Sciences.
Michael Faraday's signature
Faraday's books, with the exception of Chemical Manipulation, were collections of scientific papers or transcriptions of lectures. See page 220 of Hamilton's A Life of Discovery: Michael Faraday, Giant of the Scientific Revolution (2002) Since his death, Faraday's diary has been published, as have several large volumes of his letters and Faraday's journal from his travels with Davy in 1813 - 1815.
* Chemical Manipulation, Being Instructions to Students in Chemistry, John Murray, 1st ed. 1827, 2nd ed. 1830, 3rd ed. 1842
* Experimental Researches in Electricity, vols. i. and ii., Richard and John Edward Taylor, vols. i. and ii.. 1844 and 1847; vol. iii., 1844; vol. iii. Richard Taylor and William Francis, 1855
* Experimental Researches in Chemistry and Physics, Taylor and Francis, 1859
* A Course of Six Lectures on the Chemical History of a Candle, edited by W. Crookes, Griffin, Bohn & Co., 1861
* On the Various Forces in Nature, edited by W. Crookes, Chatto & Windus, 1873
* Faraday's Diary edited by T. Martin was published in eight volumes, 1932 - 1936
* Curiosity Perfectly Satisfyed: Faraday's Travels in Europe 1813-1815, edited by B. Bowers and L. Symons, Institution of Electrical Engineers, 1991
* The Correspondence of Michael Faraday, edited by F. A. J. L. James, INSPEC, Inc., volume 1, 1991; volume 2, 1993; volume 3, 1996; volume 4, 1999
* "Nothing is too wonderful to be true if it be consistent with the laws of nature, and in such things as these, experiment is the best test of such consistency." From the entry of 19 March 1849 in Faraday's Diary
* "Work. Finish. Publish." â his well-known advice to the young William Crookes
* "The important thing is to know how to take all things quietly."
* Regarding the hereafter, "Speculations? I have none. I am resting on certainties. I know whom I have believed and am persuaded that he is able to keep that which I have committed unto him against that day."
* "Next Sabbath day (the 22nd) I shall complete my 70th year. I can hardly think of myself so old."
*Above the doorways of the Pfahler Hall of Science at Ursinus College in Collegeville, Pennsylvania, there is a stone inscription of a quote attributed to Michael Faraday which reads "but still try, for who knows what is possible..." See
* "One day sir, you may tax it." Faraday's reply to William Gladstone, then British Minister of Finance, when asked of the practical value of electricity.
* "If you would cause your view ... to be acknowledged by scientific men; you would do a great service to science. If you would even get them to say yes or no to your conclusions it would help to clear the future progress. I believe some hesitate because they do not like their thoughts disturbed." From Life and Letters, 2:389.
* Faraday rotator
* Superconductivity
* Tyndall, John, Faraday as a Discoverer, (Longmans, 1st ed. 1868, 2nd ed. 1870).
* Bence Jones, Henry (1870). The Life and Letters of Faraday in 2 vols, Longmans.
* Gladstone, J. H. (1872). Michael Faraday, Macmillan.
* Thompson, Silvanus (1901, reprinted 2005). Michael Faraday, His Life and Work. Cassell and Company, London, 1901; reprint by Kessenger Publishing, Whitefish, MT. ISBN 1-4179-7036-7
* The British Electrical and Allied Manufacturers Association (1931). Faraday. R. & R. Clark, Ltd., Edinburgh, 1931.
* Williams, L. Pearce (1971), Faraday: A Biography, Simon and Schuster.
* Cantor, Geoffrey (1991). Michael Faraday, Sandemanian and Scientist, Macmillian, ISBN 0-333-55077
* Hamilton, James (2002). Faraday: The Life. London: Harper Collins. ISBN 0-00-716376-2
* Hamilton, James (2004). A Life of Discovery: Michael Faraday, Giant of the Scientific Revolution. New York: Random House. ISBN 1-4000-6016-8
* Agassi, Joseph (1971), Faraday as a Natural Philosopher, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
* Ames, Joseph Sweetman (Ed.), The discovery of induced electric currents Vol. 2. Memoirs, by Michael Faraday. New York, Cincinnati [etc.] American book company [c1900] LCCN 00005889
* Gooding, David (Ed.) (1985), Faraday Rediscovered: Essays on the Life and Work of Michael Faraday, 1791-1867, London/New York, Macmillan/Stockton
* Thomas, John Meurig (1991). Michael Faraday and the Royal Institution: The Genius of Man and Place Bristol: Hilger. ISBN 0-7503-0145-7
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* Biography at The Royal Institution of Great Britain
* Faraday as a Discoverer by John Tyndall, Project Gutenberg (downloads)
* The Christian Character of Michael Faraday
* Michael Faraday on the British twenty-pound banknote
* The Life and Discoveries of Michael Faraday by J. A. Crowther, London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1920
* "Faraday" at LoveToKnow 1911 Britannica Online Encyclopedia.
*
* (downloads)
* "Experimental Researches in Electricity" by Michael Faraday Original text with Biographical Introduction by Professor John Tyndall, 1914, Everyman edition.
* Video Podcast with Sir John Cadogan talking about Benzene since Faraday
* The letters of Faraday and Schoenbein 1836-1862. With notes, comments and references to contemporary letters (1899) full download PDF
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Michael_Faraday | Was Faraday born in England? | yes | data/set4/a7 | Michael_Faraday
Michael Faraday, FRS (September 22, 1791 â August 25, 1867) was an English chemist and physicist (or natural philosopher, in the terminology of that time) who contributed to the fields of electromagnetism and electrochemistry.
Faraday studied the magnetic field around a conductor carrying a DC electric current, and established the basis for the magnetic field concept in physics. He discovered electromagnetic induction, diamagnetism and electrolysis. He established that magnetism could affect rays of light and that there was an underlying relationship between the two phenomena. Michael Faraday entry at the 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica hosted by LovetoKnow Retrieved January 2007. Institution of Engineering and Technology, London Archives, Michael Faraday His inventions of electromagnetic rotary devices formed the foundation of electric motor technology, and it was largely due to his efforts that electricity became viable for use in technology.
As a chemist, Faraday discovered benzene, investigated the clathrate hydrate of chlorine, invented an early form of the bunsen burner and the system of oxidation numbers, and popularized terminology such as anode, cathode, electrode, and ion.
Although Faraday received little formal education and knew little of higher mathematics, such as calculus, he was one of the most influential scientists in history. Some historians of science refer to him as the best experimentalist in the history of science. "best experimentalist in the history of science." Quoting Dr Peter Ford, from the University of Bathâs Department of Physics. Accessed January 2007. The SI unit of capacitance, the farad, is named after him, as is the Faraday constant, the charge on a mole of electrons (about 96,485 coulombs). Faraday's law of induction states that a magnetic field changing in time creates a proportional electromotive force.
Faraday was the first and foremost Fullerian Professor of Chemistry at the Royal Institution of Great Britain, a position to which he was appointed for life.
Michael Faraday from a photograph by John Watkins, British Library
Michael Faraday was born in Newington Butts, near present-day South London, England. His family was not well off. His father, James, was a member of the Sandemanian sect of Christianity. James Faraday had come to London ca 1790 from Outhgill in Westmorland, where he had been the village blacksmith. The young Michael Faraday, one of four children, having only the most basic of school educations, had to largely educate himself. "Michael Faraday." History of Science and Technology. Houghton Mifflin Company, 2004. Answers.com 4 June 2007. /ref> At fourteen he became apprenticed to a local bookbinder and bookseller George Riebau and, during his seven-year apprenticeship, he read many books, including Isaac Watts' The Improvement of the Mind, and he enthusiastically implemented the principles and suggestions contained therein. He developed an interest in science and specifically in electricity. In particular, he was inspired by the book Conversations in Chemistry by Jane Marcet.
At the age of twenty, in 1812, at the end of his apprenticeship, Faraday attended lectures by the eminent English chemist and physicist Humphry Davy of the Royal Institution and Royal Society, and John Tatum, founder of the City Philosophical Society. Many tickets for these lectures were given to Faraday by William Dance (one of the founders of the Royal Philharmonic Society). Afterwards, Faraday sent Davy a three hundred page book based on notes taken during the lectures. Davy's reply was immediate, kind, and favorable. When Davy damaged his eyesight in an accident with nitrogen trichloride, he decided to employ Faraday as a secretary. When John Payne, one of the Royal Institution's assistants, was fired, Sir Humphry Davy was asked to find a replacement. He appointed Faraday as Chemical Assistant at the Royal Institution on March 1.
In the class-based English society of the time, Faraday was not considered a gentleman. When Davy went on a long tour to the continent in 1813-5, his valet did not wish to go. Faraday was going as Davy's scientific assistant, and was asked to act as Davy's valet until a replacement could be found in Paris. Davy failed to find a replacement, and Faraday was forced to fill the role of valet as well as assistant throughout the trip. Davy's wife, Jane Apreece, refused to treat Faraday as an equal (making him travel outside the coach, eat with the servants, etc.) and generally made Faraday so miserable that he contemplated returning to England alone and giving up science altogether. The trip did, however, give him access to the European scientific elite and a host of stimulating ideas.
His sponsor and mentor was John 'Mad Jack' Fuller, who created the Fullerian Professorship of Chemistry at the Royal Institution.
Faraday was a devout Christian and a member of the small Sandemanian denomination, an offshoot of the Church of Scotland. He later served two terms as an elder in the group's church.
Faraday married Sarah Barnard (1800-1879) on June 2, 1821, although they would never have children. They met through attending the Sandemanian church.
He was elected a member of the Royal Society in 1824, appointed director of the laboratory in 1825; and in 1833 he was appointed Fullerian professor of chemistry in the institution for life, without the obligation to deliver lectures.
The title page of The Chemical History of a Candle (1861)
Faraday's earliest chemical work was as an assistant to Davy. He made a special study of chlorine, and discovered two new chlorides of carbon. He also made the first rough experiments on the diffusion of gases, a phenomenon first pointed out by John Dalton, the physical importance of which was more fully brought to light by Thomas Graham and Joseph Loschmidt. He succeeded in liquefying several gases; he investigated the alloys of steel, and produced several new kinds of glass intended for optical purposes. A specimen of one of these heavy glasses afterwards became historically important as the substance in which Faraday detected the rotation of the plane of polarisation of light when the glass was placed in a magnetic field, and also as the substance which was first repelled by the poles of the magnet. He also endeavoured, with some success, to make the general methods of chemistry, as distinguished from its results, the subject of special study and of popular exposition.
He invented an early form of what was to become the Bunsen burner, which is used almost universally in science laboratories as a convenient source of heat. See page 127 of Faraday's Chemical Manipulation, Being Instructions to Students in Chemistry (1827)
Faraday worked extensively in the field of chemistry, discovering chemical substances such as benzene (which he called bicarburet of hydrogen), inventing the system of oxidation numbers, and liquefying gases such as chlorine. In 1820 Faraday reported on the first syntheses of compounds made from carbon and chlorine, C 2 H 6 and C 2 H 4 , and published his results the following year. Faraday also determined the composition of the chlorine clathrate hydrate, which had been discovered by Humphry Davy in 1810.
Faraday also discovered the laws of electrolysis and popularized terminology such as anode, cathode, electrode, and ion, terms largely created by William Whewell.
Faraday was the first to report what later came to be called metallic nanoparticles. In 1847 he discovered that the optical properties of gold colloids differed from those of the corresponding bulk metal. This was probably the first reported observation of the effects of quantum size, and might be considered to be the birth of nanoscience.
Faraday's greatest work was probably with electricity and magnetism. The first experiment which he recorded was the construction of a voltaic pile with seven halfpence pieces, stacked together with seven disks of sheet zinc, and six pieces of paper moistened with salt water. With this pile he decomposed sulphate of magnesia (first letter to Abbott, July 12, 1812).
[[Image:Faraday photograph ii.jpg|thumb|200px|left|Michael Faraday holding a glass bar of the type he used in 1845 to show that magnetism can affect light. Detail of an engraving by Henry Adlard, based on an earlier photograph by Maull & Polyblank ca. 1857. See National Portrait Gallery, UK ]]
In 1821, soon after the Danish physicist and chemist, Hans Christian Ãrsted discovered the phenomenon of electromagnetism, Davy and British scientist William Hyde Wollaston tried but failed to design an electric motor. Faraday, having discussed the problem with the two men, went on to build two devices to produce what he called electromagnetic rotation: a continuous circular motion from the circular magnetic force around a wire and a wire extending into a pool of mercury with a magnet placed inside would rotate around the magnet if supplied with current from a chemical battery. The latter device is known as a homopolar motor. These experiments and inventions form the foundation of modern electromagnetic technology. Faraday published his results without acknowledging his debt to Wollaston and Davy, and the resulting controversy caused Faraday to withdraw from electromagnetic research for several years.
At this stage, there is also evidence to suggest that Davy may have been trying to slow Faradayâs rise as a scientist (or natural philosopher as it was known then). In 1825, for instance, Davy set him onto optical glass experiments, which progressed for six years with no great results. It was not until Davy's death, in 1829, that Faraday stopped these fruitless tasks and moved on to endeavors that were more worthwhile. Two years later, in 1831, he began his great series of experiments in which he discovered electromagnetic induction. Joseph Henry likely discovered self-induction a few months earlier and both may have been anticipated by the work of Francesco Zantedeschi in Italy in 1829 and 1830.
Faraday's breakthrough came when he wrapped two insulated coils of wire around a massive iron ring, bolted to a chair, and found that upon passing a current through one coil, a momentary current was induced in the other coil. This phenomenon is known as mutual induction. The iron ring-coil apparatus is still on display at the Royal Institution. In subsequent experiments he found that if he moved a magnet through a loop of wire, an electric current flowed in the wire. The current also flowed if the loop was moved over a stationary magnet. His demonstrations established that a changing magnetic field produces an electric field. This relation was mathematically modelled by Faraday's law, which subsequently became one of the four Maxwell equations. These in turn have evolved into the generalization known today as field theory.
Michael Faraday - statue in Savoy Place, London.
Sculptor John Henry Foley RA
Faraday later used the principle to construct the electric dynamo, the ancestor of modern power generators.
In 1839 he completed a series of experiments aimed at investigating the fundamental nature of electricity. Faraday used "static", batteries, and "animal electricity" to produce the phenomena of electrostatic attraction, electrolysis, magnetism, etc. He concluded that, contrary to scientific opinion of the time, the divisions between the various "kinds" of electricity were illusory. Faraday instead proposed that only a single "electricity" exists, and the changing values of quantity and intensity (voltage and charge) would produce different groups of phenomena.
Near the end of his career Faraday proposed that electromagnetic forces extended into the empty space around the conductor. This idea was rejected by his fellow scientists, and Faraday did not live to see this idea eventually accepted. Faraday's concept of lines of flux emanating from charged bodies and magnets provided a way to visualize electric and magnetic fields. That mental model was crucial to the successful development of electromechanical devices which dominated engineering and industry for the remainder of the 19th century.
In 1845, he discovered the phenomenon that he named diamagnetism, and what is now called the Faraday effect: The plane of polarization of linearly polarized light propagated through a material medium can be rotated by the application of an external magnetic field aligned in the propagation direction. He wrote in his notebook, "I have at last succeeded in illuminating a magnetic curve or line of force and in magnetising a ray of light". This established that magnetic force and light were related.
In his work on static electricity, Faraday demonstrated that the charge only resided on the exterior of a charged conductor, and exterior charge had no influence on anything enclosed within a conductor. This is because the exterior charges redistribute such that the interior fields due to them cancel. This shielding effect is used in what is now known as a Faraday cage.
Faraday was an excellent experimentalist who conveyed his ideas in clear and simple language. However, his mathematical abilities did not extend as far as trigonometry or any but the simplest algebra. It was James Clerk Maxwell who took the work of Faraday, and others, and consolidated it with a set of equations that lie at the base of all modern theories of electromagnetic phenomena.
Michael Faraday meets Father Thames, from Punch (July 21, 1855)
Beyond his scientific research into areas such as chemistry, electricity, and magnetism at the Royal Institution, Faraday undertook numerous, and often time-consuming, service projects for private enterprise and the British government. This work included investigations of explosions in mines, being an expert witness in court, and the preparation of high-quality optical glass.
As a respected scientist in a nation with strong maritime interests, Faraday spent extensive amounts of time on projects such as the construction and operation of light houses and protecting the bottoms of ships from corrosion.
Faraday also was active in what would now be called environmental science, or engineering. He investigated industrial pollution at Swansea and was consulted on air pollution at the Royal Mint. In July of 1855, Faraday wrote a letter to The Times on the subject of the foul condition of the River Thames, which resulted in an oft-reprinted cartoon in Punch. (See also The Great Stink.)
Faraday assisted with planning and judging of exhibits for the Great Exhibition of 1851 in London. He also advised the National Gallery on the cleaning and protection of its art collection, and served on the National Gallery Site Commission in 1857.
Education was another area of service for Faraday. He lectured on the topic in 1854 at the Royal Institution, and in 1862 he appeared before a Public Schools Commission to give his views on education in Great Britain. Faraday also weighed in, negatively, on the public's fascination with table-turning, mesmerism, and seances, chastising both the public and the nation's educational system. See The Illustrated London News, July 1853, for Faraday's comments.
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In June of 1832, the University of Oxford granted Faraday a Doctor of Civil Law degree (honorary). During his lifetime, Faraday rejected a knighthood and twice refused to become President of the Royal Society.
In 1848, as a result of representations by the Prince Consort, Michael Faraday was awarded a grace and favour house in Hampton Court, Surrey free of all expenses or upkeep. This was the Master Mason's House, later called Faraday House, and now No.37 Hampton Court Road. In 1858 Faraday retired to live there. Twickenham Museum on Faraday and Faraday House, Accessed June 2006
Faraday died at his house at Hampton Court on August 25, 1867. He turned down burial in Westminster Abbey, but he has a memorial plaque there, near Isaac Newton's tomb. Faraday was interred in the Sandemanian plot in Highgate Cemetery.
Michael Faraday's grave at Highgate Cemetery
Faraday gave a successful series of lectures on the chemistry and physics of flames at the Royal Institution, entitled The Chemical History of a Candle. This was one of the earlier Christmas lectures for young people, which are still given each year. Between 1827 and 1860, Faraday gave the Christmas lecture a record nineteen times.
Faraday refused to participate in the production of chemical weapons for the Crimean War citing ethical reasons.
A statue of Faraday stands in Savoy Place, London, outside the Institution of Electrical Engineers.
A recently built hall of accommodation at Brunel University is named after Faraday.
A hall at Loughborough University was named after Faraday in 1960. Near the entrance to its dining hall is a bronze casting, which depicts the symbol of an electrical transformer, and inside there hangs a portrait, both in Faraday's honour.
Faraday's picture was printed on British £20 banknotes from 1991 until 2001. Bank of England, Withdrawn Notes
In the video game Chromehounds there is a ThermoVision Device named the Faraday.
The former UK Faraday Atmospheric Research Station in Antarctica was named after him.
Faraday was one of the then eight foreign members of the French Academy of Sciences.
Michael Faraday's signature
Faraday's books, with the exception of Chemical Manipulation, were collections of scientific papers or transcriptions of lectures. See page 220 of Hamilton's A Life of Discovery: Michael Faraday, Giant of the Scientific Revolution (2002) Since his death, Faraday's diary has been published, as have several large volumes of his letters and Faraday's journal from his travels with Davy in 1813 - 1815.
* Chemical Manipulation, Being Instructions to Students in Chemistry, John Murray, 1st ed. 1827, 2nd ed. 1830, 3rd ed. 1842
* Experimental Researches in Electricity, vols. i. and ii., Richard and John Edward Taylor, vols. i. and ii.. 1844 and 1847; vol. iii., 1844; vol. iii. Richard Taylor and William Francis, 1855
* Experimental Researches in Chemistry and Physics, Taylor and Francis, 1859
* A Course of Six Lectures on the Chemical History of a Candle, edited by W. Crookes, Griffin, Bohn & Co., 1861
* On the Various Forces in Nature, edited by W. Crookes, Chatto & Windus, 1873
* Faraday's Diary edited by T. Martin was published in eight volumes, 1932 - 1936
* Curiosity Perfectly Satisfyed: Faraday's Travels in Europe 1813-1815, edited by B. Bowers and L. Symons, Institution of Electrical Engineers, 1991
* The Correspondence of Michael Faraday, edited by F. A. J. L. James, INSPEC, Inc., volume 1, 1991; volume 2, 1993; volume 3, 1996; volume 4, 1999
* "Nothing is too wonderful to be true if it be consistent with the laws of nature, and in such things as these, experiment is the best test of such consistency." From the entry of 19 March 1849 in Faraday's Diary
* "Work. Finish. Publish." â his well-known advice to the young William Crookes
* "The important thing is to know how to take all things quietly."
* Regarding the hereafter, "Speculations? I have none. I am resting on certainties. I know whom I have believed and am persuaded that he is able to keep that which I have committed unto him against that day."
* "Next Sabbath day (the 22nd) I shall complete my 70th year. I can hardly think of myself so old."
*Above the doorways of the Pfahler Hall of Science at Ursinus College in Collegeville, Pennsylvania, there is a stone inscription of a quote attributed to Michael Faraday which reads "but still try, for who knows what is possible..." See
* "One day sir, you may tax it." Faraday's reply to William Gladstone, then British Minister of Finance, when asked of the practical value of electricity.
* "If you would cause your view ... to be acknowledged by scientific men; you would do a great service to science. If you would even get them to say yes or no to your conclusions it would help to clear the future progress. I believe some hesitate because they do not like their thoughts disturbed." From Life and Letters, 2:389.
* Faraday rotator
* Superconductivity
* Tyndall, John, Faraday as a Discoverer, (Longmans, 1st ed. 1868, 2nd ed. 1870).
* Bence Jones, Henry (1870). The Life and Letters of Faraday in 2 vols, Longmans.
* Gladstone, J. H. (1872). Michael Faraday, Macmillan.
* Thompson, Silvanus (1901, reprinted 2005). Michael Faraday, His Life and Work. Cassell and Company, London, 1901; reprint by Kessenger Publishing, Whitefish, MT. ISBN 1-4179-7036-7
* The British Electrical and Allied Manufacturers Association (1931). Faraday. R. & R. Clark, Ltd., Edinburgh, 1931.
* Williams, L. Pearce (1971), Faraday: A Biography, Simon and Schuster.
* Cantor, Geoffrey (1991). Michael Faraday, Sandemanian and Scientist, Macmillian, ISBN 0-333-55077
* Hamilton, James (2002). Faraday: The Life. London: Harper Collins. ISBN 0-00-716376-2
* Hamilton, James (2004). A Life of Discovery: Michael Faraday, Giant of the Scientific Revolution. New York: Random House. ISBN 1-4000-6016-8
* Agassi, Joseph (1971), Faraday as a Natural Philosopher, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
* Ames, Joseph Sweetman (Ed.), The discovery of induced electric currents Vol. 2. Memoirs, by Michael Faraday. New York, Cincinnati [etc.] American book company [c1900] LCCN 00005889
* Gooding, David (Ed.) (1985), Faraday Rediscovered: Essays on the Life and Work of Michael Faraday, 1791-1867, London/New York, Macmillan/Stockton
* Thomas, John Meurig (1991). Michael Faraday and the Royal Institution: The Genius of Man and Place Bristol: Hilger. ISBN 0-7503-0145-7
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* Biography at The Royal Institution of Great Britain
* Faraday as a Discoverer by John Tyndall, Project Gutenberg (downloads)
* The Christian Character of Michael Faraday
* Michael Faraday on the British twenty-pound banknote
* The Life and Discoveries of Michael Faraday by J. A. Crowther, London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1920
* "Faraday" at LoveToKnow 1911 Britannica Online Encyclopedia.
*
* (downloads)
* "Experimental Researches in Electricity" by Michael Faraday Original text with Biographical Introduction by Professor John Tyndall, 1914, Everyman edition.
* Video Podcast with Sir John Cadogan talking about Benzene since Faraday
* The letters of Faraday and Schoenbein 1836-1862. With notes, comments and references to contemporary letters (1899) full download PDF
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Michael_Faraday | Was Faraday born in England? | yes | data/set4/a7 | Michael_Faraday
Michael Faraday, FRS (September 22, 1791 â August 25, 1867) was an English chemist and physicist (or natural philosopher, in the terminology of that time) who contributed to the fields of electromagnetism and electrochemistry.
Faraday studied the magnetic field around a conductor carrying a DC electric current, and established the basis for the magnetic field concept in physics. He discovered electromagnetic induction, diamagnetism and electrolysis. He established that magnetism could affect rays of light and that there was an underlying relationship between the two phenomena. Michael Faraday entry at the 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica hosted by LovetoKnow Retrieved January 2007. Institution of Engineering and Technology, London Archives, Michael Faraday His inventions of electromagnetic rotary devices formed the foundation of electric motor technology, and it was largely due to his efforts that electricity became viable for use in technology.
As a chemist, Faraday discovered benzene, investigated the clathrate hydrate of chlorine, invented an early form of the bunsen burner and the system of oxidation numbers, and popularized terminology such as anode, cathode, electrode, and ion.
Although Faraday received little formal education and knew little of higher mathematics, such as calculus, he was one of the most influential scientists in history. Some historians of science refer to him as the best experimentalist in the history of science. "best experimentalist in the history of science." Quoting Dr Peter Ford, from the University of Bathâs Department of Physics. Accessed January 2007. The SI unit of capacitance, the farad, is named after him, as is the Faraday constant, the charge on a mole of electrons (about 96,485 coulombs). Faraday's law of induction states that a magnetic field changing in time creates a proportional electromotive force.
Faraday was the first and foremost Fullerian Professor of Chemistry at the Royal Institution of Great Britain, a position to which he was appointed for life.
Michael Faraday from a photograph by John Watkins, British Library
Michael Faraday was born in Newington Butts, near present-day South London, England. His family was not well off. His father, James, was a member of the Sandemanian sect of Christianity. James Faraday had come to London ca 1790 from Outhgill in Westmorland, where he had been the village blacksmith. The young Michael Faraday, one of four children, having only the most basic of school educations, had to largely educate himself. "Michael Faraday." History of Science and Technology. Houghton Mifflin Company, 2004. Answers.com 4 June 2007. /ref> At fourteen he became apprenticed to a local bookbinder and bookseller George Riebau and, during his seven-year apprenticeship, he read many books, including Isaac Watts' The Improvement of the Mind, and he enthusiastically implemented the principles and suggestions contained therein. He developed an interest in science and specifically in electricity. In particular, he was inspired by the book Conversations in Chemistry by Jane Marcet.
At the age of twenty, in 1812, at the end of his apprenticeship, Faraday attended lectures by the eminent English chemist and physicist Humphry Davy of the Royal Institution and Royal Society, and John Tatum, founder of the City Philosophical Society. Many tickets for these lectures were given to Faraday by William Dance (one of the founders of the Royal Philharmonic Society). Afterwards, Faraday sent Davy a three hundred page book based on notes taken during the lectures. Davy's reply was immediate, kind, and favorable. When Davy damaged his eyesight in an accident with nitrogen trichloride, he decided to employ Faraday as a secretary. When John Payne, one of the Royal Institution's assistants, was fired, Sir Humphry Davy was asked to find a replacement. He appointed Faraday as Chemical Assistant at the Royal Institution on March 1.
In the class-based English society of the time, Faraday was not considered a gentleman. When Davy went on a long tour to the continent in 1813-5, his valet did not wish to go. Faraday was going as Davy's scientific assistant, and was asked to act as Davy's valet until a replacement could be found in Paris. Davy failed to find a replacement, and Faraday was forced to fill the role of valet as well as assistant throughout the trip. Davy's wife, Jane Apreece, refused to treat Faraday as an equal (making him travel outside the coach, eat with the servants, etc.) and generally made Faraday so miserable that he contemplated returning to England alone and giving up science altogether. The trip did, however, give him access to the European scientific elite and a host of stimulating ideas.
His sponsor and mentor was John 'Mad Jack' Fuller, who created the Fullerian Professorship of Chemistry at the Royal Institution.
Faraday was a devout Christian and a member of the small Sandemanian denomination, an offshoot of the Church of Scotland. He later served two terms as an elder in the group's church.
Faraday married Sarah Barnard (1800-1879) on June 2, 1821, although they would never have children. They met through attending the Sandemanian church.
He was elected a member of the Royal Society in 1824, appointed director of the laboratory in 1825; and in 1833 he was appointed Fullerian professor of chemistry in the institution for life, without the obligation to deliver lectures.
The title page of The Chemical History of a Candle (1861)
Faraday's earliest chemical work was as an assistant to Davy. He made a special study of chlorine, and discovered two new chlorides of carbon. He also made the first rough experiments on the diffusion of gases, a phenomenon first pointed out by John Dalton, the physical importance of which was more fully brought to light by Thomas Graham and Joseph Loschmidt. He succeeded in liquefying several gases; he investigated the alloys of steel, and produced several new kinds of glass intended for optical purposes. A specimen of one of these heavy glasses afterwards became historically important as the substance in which Faraday detected the rotation of the plane of polarisation of light when the glass was placed in a magnetic field, and also as the substance which was first repelled by the poles of the magnet. He also endeavoured, with some success, to make the general methods of chemistry, as distinguished from its results, the subject of special study and of popular exposition.
He invented an early form of what was to become the Bunsen burner, which is used almost universally in science laboratories as a convenient source of heat. See page 127 of Faraday's Chemical Manipulation, Being Instructions to Students in Chemistry (1827)
Faraday worked extensively in the field of chemistry, discovering chemical substances such as benzene (which he called bicarburet of hydrogen), inventing the system of oxidation numbers, and liquefying gases such as chlorine. In 1820 Faraday reported on the first syntheses of compounds made from carbon and chlorine, C 2 H 6 and C 2 H 4 , and published his results the following year. Faraday also determined the composition of the chlorine clathrate hydrate, which had been discovered by Humphry Davy in 1810.
Faraday also discovered the laws of electrolysis and popularized terminology such as anode, cathode, electrode, and ion, terms largely created by William Whewell.
Faraday was the first to report what later came to be called metallic nanoparticles. In 1847 he discovered that the optical properties of gold colloids differed from those of the corresponding bulk metal. This was probably the first reported observation of the effects of quantum size, and might be considered to be the birth of nanoscience.
Faraday's greatest work was probably with electricity and magnetism. The first experiment which he recorded was the construction of a voltaic pile with seven halfpence pieces, stacked together with seven disks of sheet zinc, and six pieces of paper moistened with salt water. With this pile he decomposed sulphate of magnesia (first letter to Abbott, July 12, 1812).
[[Image:Faraday photograph ii.jpg|thumb|200px|left|Michael Faraday holding a glass bar of the type he used in 1845 to show that magnetism can affect light. Detail of an engraving by Henry Adlard, based on an earlier photograph by Maull & Polyblank ca. 1857. See National Portrait Gallery, UK ]]
In 1821, soon after the Danish physicist and chemist, Hans Christian Ãrsted discovered the phenomenon of electromagnetism, Davy and British scientist William Hyde Wollaston tried but failed to design an electric motor. Faraday, having discussed the problem with the two men, went on to build two devices to produce what he called electromagnetic rotation: a continuous circular motion from the circular magnetic force around a wire and a wire extending into a pool of mercury with a magnet placed inside would rotate around the magnet if supplied with current from a chemical battery. The latter device is known as a homopolar motor. These experiments and inventions form the foundation of modern electromagnetic technology. Faraday published his results without acknowledging his debt to Wollaston and Davy, and the resulting controversy caused Faraday to withdraw from electromagnetic research for several years.
At this stage, there is also evidence to suggest that Davy may have been trying to slow Faradayâs rise as a scientist (or natural philosopher as it was known then). In 1825, for instance, Davy set him onto optical glass experiments, which progressed for six years with no great results. It was not until Davy's death, in 1829, that Faraday stopped these fruitless tasks and moved on to endeavors that were more worthwhile. Two years later, in 1831, he began his great series of experiments in which he discovered electromagnetic induction. Joseph Henry likely discovered self-induction a few months earlier and both may have been anticipated by the work of Francesco Zantedeschi in Italy in 1829 and 1830.
Faraday's breakthrough came when he wrapped two insulated coils of wire around a massive iron ring, bolted to a chair, and found that upon passing a current through one coil, a momentary current was induced in the other coil. This phenomenon is known as mutual induction. The iron ring-coil apparatus is still on display at the Royal Institution. In subsequent experiments he found that if he moved a magnet through a loop of wire, an electric current flowed in the wire. The current also flowed if the loop was moved over a stationary magnet. His demonstrations established that a changing magnetic field produces an electric field. This relation was mathematically modelled by Faraday's law, which subsequently became one of the four Maxwell equations. These in turn have evolved into the generalization known today as field theory.
Michael Faraday - statue in Savoy Place, London.
Sculptor John Henry Foley RA
Faraday later used the principle to construct the electric dynamo, the ancestor of modern power generators.
In 1839 he completed a series of experiments aimed at investigating the fundamental nature of electricity. Faraday used "static", batteries, and "animal electricity" to produce the phenomena of electrostatic attraction, electrolysis, magnetism, etc. He concluded that, contrary to scientific opinion of the time, the divisions between the various "kinds" of electricity were illusory. Faraday instead proposed that only a single "electricity" exists, and the changing values of quantity and intensity (voltage and charge) would produce different groups of phenomena.
Near the end of his career Faraday proposed that electromagnetic forces extended into the empty space around the conductor. This idea was rejected by his fellow scientists, and Faraday did not live to see this idea eventually accepted. Faraday's concept of lines of flux emanating from charged bodies and magnets provided a way to visualize electric and magnetic fields. That mental model was crucial to the successful development of electromechanical devices which dominated engineering and industry for the remainder of the 19th century.
In 1845, he discovered the phenomenon that he named diamagnetism, and what is now called the Faraday effect: The plane of polarization of linearly polarized light propagated through a material medium can be rotated by the application of an external magnetic field aligned in the propagation direction. He wrote in his notebook, "I have at last succeeded in illuminating a magnetic curve or line of force and in magnetising a ray of light". This established that magnetic force and light were related.
In his work on static electricity, Faraday demonstrated that the charge only resided on the exterior of a charged conductor, and exterior charge had no influence on anything enclosed within a conductor. This is because the exterior charges redistribute such that the interior fields due to them cancel. This shielding effect is used in what is now known as a Faraday cage.
Faraday was an excellent experimentalist who conveyed his ideas in clear and simple language. However, his mathematical abilities did not extend as far as trigonometry or any but the simplest algebra. It was James Clerk Maxwell who took the work of Faraday, and others, and consolidated it with a set of equations that lie at the base of all modern theories of electromagnetic phenomena.
Michael Faraday meets Father Thames, from Punch (July 21, 1855)
Beyond his scientific research into areas such as chemistry, electricity, and magnetism at the Royal Institution, Faraday undertook numerous, and often time-consuming, service projects for private enterprise and the British government. This work included investigations of explosions in mines, being an expert witness in court, and the preparation of high-quality optical glass.
As a respected scientist in a nation with strong maritime interests, Faraday spent extensive amounts of time on projects such as the construction and operation of light houses and protecting the bottoms of ships from corrosion.
Faraday also was active in what would now be called environmental science, or engineering. He investigated industrial pollution at Swansea and was consulted on air pollution at the Royal Mint. In July of 1855, Faraday wrote a letter to The Times on the subject of the foul condition of the River Thames, which resulted in an oft-reprinted cartoon in Punch. (See also The Great Stink.)
Faraday assisted with planning and judging of exhibits for the Great Exhibition of 1851 in London. He also advised the National Gallery on the cleaning and protection of its art collection, and served on the National Gallery Site Commission in 1857.
Education was another area of service for Faraday. He lectured on the topic in 1854 at the Royal Institution, and in 1862 he appeared before a Public Schools Commission to give his views on education in Great Britain. Faraday also weighed in, negatively, on the public's fascination with table-turning, mesmerism, and seances, chastising both the public and the nation's educational system. See The Illustrated London News, July 1853, for Faraday's comments.
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In June of 1832, the University of Oxford granted Faraday a Doctor of Civil Law degree (honorary). During his lifetime, Faraday rejected a knighthood and twice refused to become President of the Royal Society.
In 1848, as a result of representations by the Prince Consort, Michael Faraday was awarded a grace and favour house in Hampton Court, Surrey free of all expenses or upkeep. This was the Master Mason's House, later called Faraday House, and now No.37 Hampton Court Road. In 1858 Faraday retired to live there. Twickenham Museum on Faraday and Faraday House, Accessed June 2006
Faraday died at his house at Hampton Court on August 25, 1867. He turned down burial in Westminster Abbey, but he has a memorial plaque there, near Isaac Newton's tomb. Faraday was interred in the Sandemanian plot in Highgate Cemetery.
Michael Faraday's grave at Highgate Cemetery
Faraday gave a successful series of lectures on the chemistry and physics of flames at the Royal Institution, entitled The Chemical History of a Candle. This was one of the earlier Christmas lectures for young people, which are still given each year. Between 1827 and 1860, Faraday gave the Christmas lecture a record nineteen times.
Faraday refused to participate in the production of chemical weapons for the Crimean War citing ethical reasons.
A statue of Faraday stands in Savoy Place, London, outside the Institution of Electrical Engineers.
A recently built hall of accommodation at Brunel University is named after Faraday.
A hall at Loughborough University was named after Faraday in 1960. Near the entrance to its dining hall is a bronze casting, which depicts the symbol of an electrical transformer, and inside there hangs a portrait, both in Faraday's honour.
Faraday's picture was printed on British £20 banknotes from 1991 until 2001. Bank of England, Withdrawn Notes
In the video game Chromehounds there is a ThermoVision Device named the Faraday.
The former UK Faraday Atmospheric Research Station in Antarctica was named after him.
Faraday was one of the then eight foreign members of the French Academy of Sciences.
Michael Faraday's signature
Faraday's books, with the exception of Chemical Manipulation, were collections of scientific papers or transcriptions of lectures. See page 220 of Hamilton's A Life of Discovery: Michael Faraday, Giant of the Scientific Revolution (2002) Since his death, Faraday's diary has been published, as have several large volumes of his letters and Faraday's journal from his travels with Davy in 1813 - 1815.
* Chemical Manipulation, Being Instructions to Students in Chemistry, John Murray, 1st ed. 1827, 2nd ed. 1830, 3rd ed. 1842
* Experimental Researches in Electricity, vols. i. and ii., Richard and John Edward Taylor, vols. i. and ii.. 1844 and 1847; vol. iii., 1844; vol. iii. Richard Taylor and William Francis, 1855
* Experimental Researches in Chemistry and Physics, Taylor and Francis, 1859
* A Course of Six Lectures on the Chemical History of a Candle, edited by W. Crookes, Griffin, Bohn & Co., 1861
* On the Various Forces in Nature, edited by W. Crookes, Chatto & Windus, 1873
* Faraday's Diary edited by T. Martin was published in eight volumes, 1932 - 1936
* Curiosity Perfectly Satisfyed: Faraday's Travels in Europe 1813-1815, edited by B. Bowers and L. Symons, Institution of Electrical Engineers, 1991
* The Correspondence of Michael Faraday, edited by F. A. J. L. James, INSPEC, Inc., volume 1, 1991; volume 2, 1993; volume 3, 1996; volume 4, 1999
* "Nothing is too wonderful to be true if it be consistent with the laws of nature, and in such things as these, experiment is the best test of such consistency." From the entry of 19 March 1849 in Faraday's Diary
* "Work. Finish. Publish." â his well-known advice to the young William Crookes
* "The important thing is to know how to take all things quietly."
* Regarding the hereafter, "Speculations? I have none. I am resting on certainties. I know whom I have believed and am persuaded that he is able to keep that which I have committed unto him against that day."
* "Next Sabbath day (the 22nd) I shall complete my 70th year. I can hardly think of myself so old."
*Above the doorways of the Pfahler Hall of Science at Ursinus College in Collegeville, Pennsylvania, there is a stone inscription of a quote attributed to Michael Faraday which reads "but still try, for who knows what is possible..." See
* "One day sir, you may tax it." Faraday's reply to William Gladstone, then British Minister of Finance, when asked of the practical value of electricity.
* "If you would cause your view ... to be acknowledged by scientific men; you would do a great service to science. If you would even get them to say yes or no to your conclusions it would help to clear the future progress. I believe some hesitate because they do not like their thoughts disturbed." From Life and Letters, 2:389.
* Faraday rotator
* Superconductivity
* Tyndall, John, Faraday as a Discoverer, (Longmans, 1st ed. 1868, 2nd ed. 1870).
* Bence Jones, Henry (1870). The Life and Letters of Faraday in 2 vols, Longmans.
* Gladstone, J. H. (1872). Michael Faraday, Macmillan.
* Thompson, Silvanus (1901, reprinted 2005). Michael Faraday, His Life and Work. Cassell and Company, London, 1901; reprint by Kessenger Publishing, Whitefish, MT. ISBN 1-4179-7036-7
* The British Electrical and Allied Manufacturers Association (1931). Faraday. R. & R. Clark, Ltd., Edinburgh, 1931.
* Williams, L. Pearce (1971), Faraday: A Biography, Simon and Schuster.
* Cantor, Geoffrey (1991). Michael Faraday, Sandemanian and Scientist, Macmillian, ISBN 0-333-55077
* Hamilton, James (2002). Faraday: The Life. London: Harper Collins. ISBN 0-00-716376-2
* Hamilton, James (2004). A Life of Discovery: Michael Faraday, Giant of the Scientific Revolution. New York: Random House. ISBN 1-4000-6016-8
* Agassi, Joseph (1971), Faraday as a Natural Philosopher, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
* Ames, Joseph Sweetman (Ed.), The discovery of induced electric currents Vol. 2. Memoirs, by Michael Faraday. New York, Cincinnati [etc.] American book company [c1900] LCCN 00005889
* Gooding, David (Ed.) (1985), Faraday Rediscovered: Essays on the Life and Work of Michael Faraday, 1791-1867, London/New York, Macmillan/Stockton
* Thomas, John Meurig (1991). Michael Faraday and the Royal Institution: The Genius of Man and Place Bristol: Hilger. ISBN 0-7503-0145-7
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* Biography at The Royal Institution of Great Britain
* Faraday as a Discoverer by John Tyndall, Project Gutenberg (downloads)
* The Christian Character of Michael Faraday
* Michael Faraday on the British twenty-pound banknote
* The Life and Discoveries of Michael Faraday by J. A. Crowther, London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1920
* "Faraday" at LoveToKnow 1911 Britannica Online Encyclopedia.
*
* (downloads)
* "Experimental Researches in Electricity" by Michael Faraday Original text with Biographical Introduction by Professor John Tyndall, 1914, Everyman edition.
* Video Podcast with Sir John Cadogan talking about Benzene since Faraday
* The letters of Faraday and Schoenbein 1836-1862. With notes, comments and references to contemporary letters (1899) full download PDF
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Michael_Faraday | What do some historians of science refer to Faraday as? | the best experimentalist in the history of science | data/set4/a7 | Michael_Faraday
Michael Faraday, FRS (September 22, 1791 â August 25, 1867) was an English chemist and physicist (or natural philosopher, in the terminology of that time) who contributed to the fields of electromagnetism and electrochemistry.
Faraday studied the magnetic field around a conductor carrying a DC electric current, and established the basis for the magnetic field concept in physics. He discovered electromagnetic induction, diamagnetism and electrolysis. He established that magnetism could affect rays of light and that there was an underlying relationship between the two phenomena. Michael Faraday entry at the 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica hosted by LovetoKnow Retrieved January 2007. Institution of Engineering and Technology, London Archives, Michael Faraday His inventions of electromagnetic rotary devices formed the foundation of electric motor technology, and it was largely due to his efforts that electricity became viable for use in technology.
As a chemist, Faraday discovered benzene, investigated the clathrate hydrate of chlorine, invented an early form of the bunsen burner and the system of oxidation numbers, and popularized terminology such as anode, cathode, electrode, and ion.
Although Faraday received little formal education and knew little of higher mathematics, such as calculus, he was one of the most influential scientists in history. Some historians of science refer to him as the best experimentalist in the history of science. "best experimentalist in the history of science." Quoting Dr Peter Ford, from the University of Bathâs Department of Physics. Accessed January 2007. The SI unit of capacitance, the farad, is named after him, as is the Faraday constant, the charge on a mole of electrons (about 96,485 coulombs). Faraday's law of induction states that a magnetic field changing in time creates a proportional electromotive force.
Faraday was the first and foremost Fullerian Professor of Chemistry at the Royal Institution of Great Britain, a position to which he was appointed for life.
Michael Faraday from a photograph by John Watkins, British Library
Michael Faraday was born in Newington Butts, near present-day South London, England. His family was not well off. His father, James, was a member of the Sandemanian sect of Christianity. James Faraday had come to London ca 1790 from Outhgill in Westmorland, where he had been the village blacksmith. The young Michael Faraday, one of four children, having only the most basic of school educations, had to largely educate himself. "Michael Faraday." History of Science and Technology. Houghton Mifflin Company, 2004. Answers.com 4 June 2007. /ref> At fourteen he became apprenticed to a local bookbinder and bookseller George Riebau and, during his seven-year apprenticeship, he read many books, including Isaac Watts' The Improvement of the Mind, and he enthusiastically implemented the principles and suggestions contained therein. He developed an interest in science and specifically in electricity. In particular, he was inspired by the book Conversations in Chemistry by Jane Marcet.
At the age of twenty, in 1812, at the end of his apprenticeship, Faraday attended lectures by the eminent English chemist and physicist Humphry Davy of the Royal Institution and Royal Society, and John Tatum, founder of the City Philosophical Society. Many tickets for these lectures were given to Faraday by William Dance (one of the founders of the Royal Philharmonic Society). Afterwards, Faraday sent Davy a three hundred page book based on notes taken during the lectures. Davy's reply was immediate, kind, and favorable. When Davy damaged his eyesight in an accident with nitrogen trichloride, he decided to employ Faraday as a secretary. When John Payne, one of the Royal Institution's assistants, was fired, Sir Humphry Davy was asked to find a replacement. He appointed Faraday as Chemical Assistant at the Royal Institution on March 1.
In the class-based English society of the time, Faraday was not considered a gentleman. When Davy went on a long tour to the continent in 1813-5, his valet did not wish to go. Faraday was going as Davy's scientific assistant, and was asked to act as Davy's valet until a replacement could be found in Paris. Davy failed to find a replacement, and Faraday was forced to fill the role of valet as well as assistant throughout the trip. Davy's wife, Jane Apreece, refused to treat Faraday as an equal (making him travel outside the coach, eat with the servants, etc.) and generally made Faraday so miserable that he contemplated returning to England alone and giving up science altogether. The trip did, however, give him access to the European scientific elite and a host of stimulating ideas.
His sponsor and mentor was John 'Mad Jack' Fuller, who created the Fullerian Professorship of Chemistry at the Royal Institution.
Faraday was a devout Christian and a member of the small Sandemanian denomination, an offshoot of the Church of Scotland. He later served two terms as an elder in the group's church.
Faraday married Sarah Barnard (1800-1879) on June 2, 1821, although they would never have children. They met through attending the Sandemanian church.
He was elected a member of the Royal Society in 1824, appointed director of the laboratory in 1825; and in 1833 he was appointed Fullerian professor of chemistry in the institution for life, without the obligation to deliver lectures.
The title page of The Chemical History of a Candle (1861)
Faraday's earliest chemical work was as an assistant to Davy. He made a special study of chlorine, and discovered two new chlorides of carbon. He also made the first rough experiments on the diffusion of gases, a phenomenon first pointed out by John Dalton, the physical importance of which was more fully brought to light by Thomas Graham and Joseph Loschmidt. He succeeded in liquefying several gases; he investigated the alloys of steel, and produced several new kinds of glass intended for optical purposes. A specimen of one of these heavy glasses afterwards became historically important as the substance in which Faraday detected the rotation of the plane of polarisation of light when the glass was placed in a magnetic field, and also as the substance which was first repelled by the poles of the magnet. He also endeavoured, with some success, to make the general methods of chemistry, as distinguished from its results, the subject of special study and of popular exposition.
He invented an early form of what was to become the Bunsen burner, which is used almost universally in science laboratories as a convenient source of heat. See page 127 of Faraday's Chemical Manipulation, Being Instructions to Students in Chemistry (1827)
Faraday worked extensively in the field of chemistry, discovering chemical substances such as benzene (which he called bicarburet of hydrogen), inventing the system of oxidation numbers, and liquefying gases such as chlorine. In 1820 Faraday reported on the first syntheses of compounds made from carbon and chlorine, C 2 H 6 and C 2 H 4 , and published his results the following year. Faraday also determined the composition of the chlorine clathrate hydrate, which had been discovered by Humphry Davy in 1810.
Faraday also discovered the laws of electrolysis and popularized terminology such as anode, cathode, electrode, and ion, terms largely created by William Whewell.
Faraday was the first to report what later came to be called metallic nanoparticles. In 1847 he discovered that the optical properties of gold colloids differed from those of the corresponding bulk metal. This was probably the first reported observation of the effects of quantum size, and might be considered to be the birth of nanoscience.
Faraday's greatest work was probably with electricity and magnetism. The first experiment which he recorded was the construction of a voltaic pile with seven halfpence pieces, stacked together with seven disks of sheet zinc, and six pieces of paper moistened with salt water. With this pile he decomposed sulphate of magnesia (first letter to Abbott, July 12, 1812).
[[Image:Faraday photograph ii.jpg|thumb|200px|left|Michael Faraday holding a glass bar of the type he used in 1845 to show that magnetism can affect light. Detail of an engraving by Henry Adlard, based on an earlier photograph by Maull & Polyblank ca. 1857. See National Portrait Gallery, UK ]]
In 1821, soon after the Danish physicist and chemist, Hans Christian Ãrsted discovered the phenomenon of electromagnetism, Davy and British scientist William Hyde Wollaston tried but failed to design an electric motor. Faraday, having discussed the problem with the two men, went on to build two devices to produce what he called electromagnetic rotation: a continuous circular motion from the circular magnetic force around a wire and a wire extending into a pool of mercury with a magnet placed inside would rotate around the magnet if supplied with current from a chemical battery. The latter device is known as a homopolar motor. These experiments and inventions form the foundation of modern electromagnetic technology. Faraday published his results without acknowledging his debt to Wollaston and Davy, and the resulting controversy caused Faraday to withdraw from electromagnetic research for several years.
At this stage, there is also evidence to suggest that Davy may have been trying to slow Faradayâs rise as a scientist (or natural philosopher as it was known then). In 1825, for instance, Davy set him onto optical glass experiments, which progressed for six years with no great results. It was not until Davy's death, in 1829, that Faraday stopped these fruitless tasks and moved on to endeavors that were more worthwhile. Two years later, in 1831, he began his great series of experiments in which he discovered electromagnetic induction. Joseph Henry likely discovered self-induction a few months earlier and both may have been anticipated by the work of Francesco Zantedeschi in Italy in 1829 and 1830.
Faraday's breakthrough came when he wrapped two insulated coils of wire around a massive iron ring, bolted to a chair, and found that upon passing a current through one coil, a momentary current was induced in the other coil. This phenomenon is known as mutual induction. The iron ring-coil apparatus is still on display at the Royal Institution. In subsequent experiments he found that if he moved a magnet through a loop of wire, an electric current flowed in the wire. The current also flowed if the loop was moved over a stationary magnet. His demonstrations established that a changing magnetic field produces an electric field. This relation was mathematically modelled by Faraday's law, which subsequently became one of the four Maxwell equations. These in turn have evolved into the generalization known today as field theory.
Michael Faraday - statue in Savoy Place, London.
Sculptor John Henry Foley RA
Faraday later used the principle to construct the electric dynamo, the ancestor of modern power generators.
In 1839 he completed a series of experiments aimed at investigating the fundamental nature of electricity. Faraday used "static", batteries, and "animal electricity" to produce the phenomena of electrostatic attraction, electrolysis, magnetism, etc. He concluded that, contrary to scientific opinion of the time, the divisions between the various "kinds" of electricity were illusory. Faraday instead proposed that only a single "electricity" exists, and the changing values of quantity and intensity (voltage and charge) would produce different groups of phenomena.
Near the end of his career Faraday proposed that electromagnetic forces extended into the empty space around the conductor. This idea was rejected by his fellow scientists, and Faraday did not live to see this idea eventually accepted. Faraday's concept of lines of flux emanating from charged bodies and magnets provided a way to visualize electric and magnetic fields. That mental model was crucial to the successful development of electromechanical devices which dominated engineering and industry for the remainder of the 19th century.
In 1845, he discovered the phenomenon that he named diamagnetism, and what is now called the Faraday effect: The plane of polarization of linearly polarized light propagated through a material medium can be rotated by the application of an external magnetic field aligned in the propagation direction. He wrote in his notebook, "I have at last succeeded in illuminating a magnetic curve or line of force and in magnetising a ray of light". This established that magnetic force and light were related.
In his work on static electricity, Faraday demonstrated that the charge only resided on the exterior of a charged conductor, and exterior charge had no influence on anything enclosed within a conductor. This is because the exterior charges redistribute such that the interior fields due to them cancel. This shielding effect is used in what is now known as a Faraday cage.
Faraday was an excellent experimentalist who conveyed his ideas in clear and simple language. However, his mathematical abilities did not extend as far as trigonometry or any but the simplest algebra. It was James Clerk Maxwell who took the work of Faraday, and others, and consolidated it with a set of equations that lie at the base of all modern theories of electromagnetic phenomena.
Michael Faraday meets Father Thames, from Punch (July 21, 1855)
Beyond his scientific research into areas such as chemistry, electricity, and magnetism at the Royal Institution, Faraday undertook numerous, and often time-consuming, service projects for private enterprise and the British government. This work included investigations of explosions in mines, being an expert witness in court, and the preparation of high-quality optical glass.
As a respected scientist in a nation with strong maritime interests, Faraday spent extensive amounts of time on projects such as the construction and operation of light houses and protecting the bottoms of ships from corrosion.
Faraday also was active in what would now be called environmental science, or engineering. He investigated industrial pollution at Swansea and was consulted on air pollution at the Royal Mint. In July of 1855, Faraday wrote a letter to The Times on the subject of the foul condition of the River Thames, which resulted in an oft-reprinted cartoon in Punch. (See also The Great Stink.)
Faraday assisted with planning and judging of exhibits for the Great Exhibition of 1851 in London. He also advised the National Gallery on the cleaning and protection of its art collection, and served on the National Gallery Site Commission in 1857.
Education was another area of service for Faraday. He lectured on the topic in 1854 at the Royal Institution, and in 1862 he appeared before a Public Schools Commission to give his views on education in Great Britain. Faraday also weighed in, negatively, on the public's fascination with table-turning, mesmerism, and seances, chastising both the public and the nation's educational system. See The Illustrated London News, July 1853, for Faraday's comments.
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In June of 1832, the University of Oxford granted Faraday a Doctor of Civil Law degree (honorary). During his lifetime, Faraday rejected a knighthood and twice refused to become President of the Royal Society.
In 1848, as a result of representations by the Prince Consort, Michael Faraday was awarded a grace and favour house in Hampton Court, Surrey free of all expenses or upkeep. This was the Master Mason's House, later called Faraday House, and now No.37 Hampton Court Road. In 1858 Faraday retired to live there. Twickenham Museum on Faraday and Faraday House, Accessed June 2006
Faraday died at his house at Hampton Court on August 25, 1867. He turned down burial in Westminster Abbey, but he has a memorial plaque there, near Isaac Newton's tomb. Faraday was interred in the Sandemanian plot in Highgate Cemetery.
Michael Faraday's grave at Highgate Cemetery
Faraday gave a successful series of lectures on the chemistry and physics of flames at the Royal Institution, entitled The Chemical History of a Candle. This was one of the earlier Christmas lectures for young people, which are still given each year. Between 1827 and 1860, Faraday gave the Christmas lecture a record nineteen times.
Faraday refused to participate in the production of chemical weapons for the Crimean War citing ethical reasons.
A statue of Faraday stands in Savoy Place, London, outside the Institution of Electrical Engineers.
A recently built hall of accommodation at Brunel University is named after Faraday.
A hall at Loughborough University was named after Faraday in 1960. Near the entrance to its dining hall is a bronze casting, which depicts the symbol of an electrical transformer, and inside there hangs a portrait, both in Faraday's honour.
Faraday's picture was printed on British £20 banknotes from 1991 until 2001. Bank of England, Withdrawn Notes
In the video game Chromehounds there is a ThermoVision Device named the Faraday.
The former UK Faraday Atmospheric Research Station in Antarctica was named after him.
Faraday was one of the then eight foreign members of the French Academy of Sciences.
Michael Faraday's signature
Faraday's books, with the exception of Chemical Manipulation, were collections of scientific papers or transcriptions of lectures. See page 220 of Hamilton's A Life of Discovery: Michael Faraday, Giant of the Scientific Revolution (2002) Since his death, Faraday's diary has been published, as have several large volumes of his letters and Faraday's journal from his travels with Davy in 1813 - 1815.
* Chemical Manipulation, Being Instructions to Students in Chemistry, John Murray, 1st ed. 1827, 2nd ed. 1830, 3rd ed. 1842
* Experimental Researches in Electricity, vols. i. and ii., Richard and John Edward Taylor, vols. i. and ii.. 1844 and 1847; vol. iii., 1844; vol. iii. Richard Taylor and William Francis, 1855
* Experimental Researches in Chemistry and Physics, Taylor and Francis, 1859
* A Course of Six Lectures on the Chemical History of a Candle, edited by W. Crookes, Griffin, Bohn & Co., 1861
* On the Various Forces in Nature, edited by W. Crookes, Chatto & Windus, 1873
* Faraday's Diary edited by T. Martin was published in eight volumes, 1932 - 1936
* Curiosity Perfectly Satisfyed: Faraday's Travels in Europe 1813-1815, edited by B. Bowers and L. Symons, Institution of Electrical Engineers, 1991
* The Correspondence of Michael Faraday, edited by F. A. J. L. James, INSPEC, Inc., volume 1, 1991; volume 2, 1993; volume 3, 1996; volume 4, 1999
* "Nothing is too wonderful to be true if it be consistent with the laws of nature, and in such things as these, experiment is the best test of such consistency." From the entry of 19 March 1849 in Faraday's Diary
* "Work. Finish. Publish." â his well-known advice to the young William Crookes
* "The important thing is to know how to take all things quietly."
* Regarding the hereafter, "Speculations? I have none. I am resting on certainties. I know whom I have believed and am persuaded that he is able to keep that which I have committed unto him against that day."
* "Next Sabbath day (the 22nd) I shall complete my 70th year. I can hardly think of myself so old."
*Above the doorways of the Pfahler Hall of Science at Ursinus College in Collegeville, Pennsylvania, there is a stone inscription of a quote attributed to Michael Faraday which reads "but still try, for who knows what is possible..." See
* "One day sir, you may tax it." Faraday's reply to William Gladstone, then British Minister of Finance, when asked of the practical value of electricity.
* "If you would cause your view ... to be acknowledged by scientific men; you would do a great service to science. If you would even get them to say yes or no to your conclusions it would help to clear the future progress. I believe some hesitate because they do not like their thoughts disturbed." From Life and Letters, 2:389.
* Faraday rotator
* Superconductivity
* Tyndall, John, Faraday as a Discoverer, (Longmans, 1st ed. 1868, 2nd ed. 1870).
* Bence Jones, Henry (1870). The Life and Letters of Faraday in 2 vols, Longmans.
* Gladstone, J. H. (1872). Michael Faraday, Macmillan.
* Thompson, Silvanus (1901, reprinted 2005). Michael Faraday, His Life and Work. Cassell and Company, London, 1901; reprint by Kessenger Publishing, Whitefish, MT. ISBN 1-4179-7036-7
* The British Electrical and Allied Manufacturers Association (1931). Faraday. R. & R. Clark, Ltd., Edinburgh, 1931.
* Williams, L. Pearce (1971), Faraday: A Biography, Simon and Schuster.
* Cantor, Geoffrey (1991). Michael Faraday, Sandemanian and Scientist, Macmillian, ISBN 0-333-55077
* Hamilton, James (2002). Faraday: The Life. London: Harper Collins. ISBN 0-00-716376-2
* Hamilton, James (2004). A Life of Discovery: Michael Faraday, Giant of the Scientific Revolution. New York: Random House. ISBN 1-4000-6016-8
* Agassi, Joseph (1971), Faraday as a Natural Philosopher, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
* Ames, Joseph Sweetman (Ed.), The discovery of induced electric currents Vol. 2. Memoirs, by Michael Faraday. New York, Cincinnati [etc.] American book company [c1900] LCCN 00005889
* Gooding, David (Ed.) (1985), Faraday Rediscovered: Essays on the Life and Work of Michael Faraday, 1791-1867, London/New York, Macmillan/Stockton
* Thomas, John Meurig (1991). Michael Faraday and the Royal Institution: The Genius of Man and Place Bristol: Hilger. ISBN 0-7503-0145-7
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* Biography at The Royal Institution of Great Britain
* Faraday as a Discoverer by John Tyndall, Project Gutenberg (downloads)
* The Christian Character of Michael Faraday
* Michael Faraday on the British twenty-pound banknote
* The Life and Discoveries of Michael Faraday by J. A. Crowther, London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1920
* "Faraday" at LoveToKnow 1911 Britannica Online Encyclopedia.
*
* (downloads)
* "Experimental Researches in Electricity" by Michael Faraday Original text with Biographical Introduction by Professor John Tyndall, 1914, Everyman edition.
* Video Podcast with Sir John Cadogan talking about Benzene since Faraday
* The letters of Faraday and Schoenbein 1836-1862. With notes, comments and references to contemporary letters (1899) full download PDF
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|
Michael_Faraday | What do some historians of science refer to Faraday as? | best experimentalist in the history of science | data/set4/a7 | Michael_Faraday
Michael Faraday, FRS (September 22, 1791 â August 25, 1867) was an English chemist and physicist (or natural philosopher, in the terminology of that time) who contributed to the fields of electromagnetism and electrochemistry.
Faraday studied the magnetic field around a conductor carrying a DC electric current, and established the basis for the magnetic field concept in physics. He discovered electromagnetic induction, diamagnetism and electrolysis. He established that magnetism could affect rays of light and that there was an underlying relationship between the two phenomena. Michael Faraday entry at the 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica hosted by LovetoKnow Retrieved January 2007. Institution of Engineering and Technology, London Archives, Michael Faraday His inventions of electromagnetic rotary devices formed the foundation of electric motor technology, and it was largely due to his efforts that electricity became viable for use in technology.
As a chemist, Faraday discovered benzene, investigated the clathrate hydrate of chlorine, invented an early form of the bunsen burner and the system of oxidation numbers, and popularized terminology such as anode, cathode, electrode, and ion.
Although Faraday received little formal education and knew little of higher mathematics, such as calculus, he was one of the most influential scientists in history. Some historians of science refer to him as the best experimentalist in the history of science. "best experimentalist in the history of science." Quoting Dr Peter Ford, from the University of Bathâs Department of Physics. Accessed January 2007. The SI unit of capacitance, the farad, is named after him, as is the Faraday constant, the charge on a mole of electrons (about 96,485 coulombs). Faraday's law of induction states that a magnetic field changing in time creates a proportional electromotive force.
Faraday was the first and foremost Fullerian Professor of Chemistry at the Royal Institution of Great Britain, a position to which he was appointed for life.
Michael Faraday from a photograph by John Watkins, British Library
Michael Faraday was born in Newington Butts, near present-day South London, England. His family was not well off. His father, James, was a member of the Sandemanian sect of Christianity. James Faraday had come to London ca 1790 from Outhgill in Westmorland, where he had been the village blacksmith. The young Michael Faraday, one of four children, having only the most basic of school educations, had to largely educate himself. "Michael Faraday." History of Science and Technology. Houghton Mifflin Company, 2004. Answers.com 4 June 2007. /ref> At fourteen he became apprenticed to a local bookbinder and bookseller George Riebau and, during his seven-year apprenticeship, he read many books, including Isaac Watts' The Improvement of the Mind, and he enthusiastically implemented the principles and suggestions contained therein. He developed an interest in science and specifically in electricity. In particular, he was inspired by the book Conversations in Chemistry by Jane Marcet.
At the age of twenty, in 1812, at the end of his apprenticeship, Faraday attended lectures by the eminent English chemist and physicist Humphry Davy of the Royal Institution and Royal Society, and John Tatum, founder of the City Philosophical Society. Many tickets for these lectures were given to Faraday by William Dance (one of the founders of the Royal Philharmonic Society). Afterwards, Faraday sent Davy a three hundred page book based on notes taken during the lectures. Davy's reply was immediate, kind, and favorable. When Davy damaged his eyesight in an accident with nitrogen trichloride, he decided to employ Faraday as a secretary. When John Payne, one of the Royal Institution's assistants, was fired, Sir Humphry Davy was asked to find a replacement. He appointed Faraday as Chemical Assistant at the Royal Institution on March 1.
In the class-based English society of the time, Faraday was not considered a gentleman. When Davy went on a long tour to the continent in 1813-5, his valet did not wish to go. Faraday was going as Davy's scientific assistant, and was asked to act as Davy's valet until a replacement could be found in Paris. Davy failed to find a replacement, and Faraday was forced to fill the role of valet as well as assistant throughout the trip. Davy's wife, Jane Apreece, refused to treat Faraday as an equal (making him travel outside the coach, eat with the servants, etc.) and generally made Faraday so miserable that he contemplated returning to England alone and giving up science altogether. The trip did, however, give him access to the European scientific elite and a host of stimulating ideas.
His sponsor and mentor was John 'Mad Jack' Fuller, who created the Fullerian Professorship of Chemistry at the Royal Institution.
Faraday was a devout Christian and a member of the small Sandemanian denomination, an offshoot of the Church of Scotland. He later served two terms as an elder in the group's church.
Faraday married Sarah Barnard (1800-1879) on June 2, 1821, although they would never have children. They met through attending the Sandemanian church.
He was elected a member of the Royal Society in 1824, appointed director of the laboratory in 1825; and in 1833 he was appointed Fullerian professor of chemistry in the institution for life, without the obligation to deliver lectures.
The title page of The Chemical History of a Candle (1861)
Faraday's earliest chemical work was as an assistant to Davy. He made a special study of chlorine, and discovered two new chlorides of carbon. He also made the first rough experiments on the diffusion of gases, a phenomenon first pointed out by John Dalton, the physical importance of which was more fully brought to light by Thomas Graham and Joseph Loschmidt. He succeeded in liquefying several gases; he investigated the alloys of steel, and produced several new kinds of glass intended for optical purposes. A specimen of one of these heavy glasses afterwards became historically important as the substance in which Faraday detected the rotation of the plane of polarisation of light when the glass was placed in a magnetic field, and also as the substance which was first repelled by the poles of the magnet. He also endeavoured, with some success, to make the general methods of chemistry, as distinguished from its results, the subject of special study and of popular exposition.
He invented an early form of what was to become the Bunsen burner, which is used almost universally in science laboratories as a convenient source of heat. See page 127 of Faraday's Chemical Manipulation, Being Instructions to Students in Chemistry (1827)
Faraday worked extensively in the field of chemistry, discovering chemical substances such as benzene (which he called bicarburet of hydrogen), inventing the system of oxidation numbers, and liquefying gases such as chlorine. In 1820 Faraday reported on the first syntheses of compounds made from carbon and chlorine, C 2 H 6 and C 2 H 4 , and published his results the following year. Faraday also determined the composition of the chlorine clathrate hydrate, which had been discovered by Humphry Davy in 1810.
Faraday also discovered the laws of electrolysis and popularized terminology such as anode, cathode, electrode, and ion, terms largely created by William Whewell.
Faraday was the first to report what later came to be called metallic nanoparticles. In 1847 he discovered that the optical properties of gold colloids differed from those of the corresponding bulk metal. This was probably the first reported observation of the effects of quantum size, and might be considered to be the birth of nanoscience.
Faraday's greatest work was probably with electricity and magnetism. The first experiment which he recorded was the construction of a voltaic pile with seven halfpence pieces, stacked together with seven disks of sheet zinc, and six pieces of paper moistened with salt water. With this pile he decomposed sulphate of magnesia (first letter to Abbott, July 12, 1812).
[[Image:Faraday photograph ii.jpg|thumb|200px|left|Michael Faraday holding a glass bar of the type he used in 1845 to show that magnetism can affect light. Detail of an engraving by Henry Adlard, based on an earlier photograph by Maull & Polyblank ca. 1857. See National Portrait Gallery, UK ]]
In 1821, soon after the Danish physicist and chemist, Hans Christian Ãrsted discovered the phenomenon of electromagnetism, Davy and British scientist William Hyde Wollaston tried but failed to design an electric motor. Faraday, having discussed the problem with the two men, went on to build two devices to produce what he called electromagnetic rotation: a continuous circular motion from the circular magnetic force around a wire and a wire extending into a pool of mercury with a magnet placed inside would rotate around the magnet if supplied with current from a chemical battery. The latter device is known as a homopolar motor. These experiments and inventions form the foundation of modern electromagnetic technology. Faraday published his results without acknowledging his debt to Wollaston and Davy, and the resulting controversy caused Faraday to withdraw from electromagnetic research for several years.
At this stage, there is also evidence to suggest that Davy may have been trying to slow Faradayâs rise as a scientist (or natural philosopher as it was known then). In 1825, for instance, Davy set him onto optical glass experiments, which progressed for six years with no great results. It was not until Davy's death, in 1829, that Faraday stopped these fruitless tasks and moved on to endeavors that were more worthwhile. Two years later, in 1831, he began his great series of experiments in which he discovered electromagnetic induction. Joseph Henry likely discovered self-induction a few months earlier and both may have been anticipated by the work of Francesco Zantedeschi in Italy in 1829 and 1830.
Faraday's breakthrough came when he wrapped two insulated coils of wire around a massive iron ring, bolted to a chair, and found that upon passing a current through one coil, a momentary current was induced in the other coil. This phenomenon is known as mutual induction. The iron ring-coil apparatus is still on display at the Royal Institution. In subsequent experiments he found that if he moved a magnet through a loop of wire, an electric current flowed in the wire. The current also flowed if the loop was moved over a stationary magnet. His demonstrations established that a changing magnetic field produces an electric field. This relation was mathematically modelled by Faraday's law, which subsequently became one of the four Maxwell equations. These in turn have evolved into the generalization known today as field theory.
Michael Faraday - statue in Savoy Place, London.
Sculptor John Henry Foley RA
Faraday later used the principle to construct the electric dynamo, the ancestor of modern power generators.
In 1839 he completed a series of experiments aimed at investigating the fundamental nature of electricity. Faraday used "static", batteries, and "animal electricity" to produce the phenomena of electrostatic attraction, electrolysis, magnetism, etc. He concluded that, contrary to scientific opinion of the time, the divisions between the various "kinds" of electricity were illusory. Faraday instead proposed that only a single "electricity" exists, and the changing values of quantity and intensity (voltage and charge) would produce different groups of phenomena.
Near the end of his career Faraday proposed that electromagnetic forces extended into the empty space around the conductor. This idea was rejected by his fellow scientists, and Faraday did not live to see this idea eventually accepted. Faraday's concept of lines of flux emanating from charged bodies and magnets provided a way to visualize electric and magnetic fields. That mental model was crucial to the successful development of electromechanical devices which dominated engineering and industry for the remainder of the 19th century.
In 1845, he discovered the phenomenon that he named diamagnetism, and what is now called the Faraday effect: The plane of polarization of linearly polarized light propagated through a material medium can be rotated by the application of an external magnetic field aligned in the propagation direction. He wrote in his notebook, "I have at last succeeded in illuminating a magnetic curve or line of force and in magnetising a ray of light". This established that magnetic force and light were related.
In his work on static electricity, Faraday demonstrated that the charge only resided on the exterior of a charged conductor, and exterior charge had no influence on anything enclosed within a conductor. This is because the exterior charges redistribute such that the interior fields due to them cancel. This shielding effect is used in what is now known as a Faraday cage.
Faraday was an excellent experimentalist who conveyed his ideas in clear and simple language. However, his mathematical abilities did not extend as far as trigonometry or any but the simplest algebra. It was James Clerk Maxwell who took the work of Faraday, and others, and consolidated it with a set of equations that lie at the base of all modern theories of electromagnetic phenomena.
Michael Faraday meets Father Thames, from Punch (July 21, 1855)
Beyond his scientific research into areas such as chemistry, electricity, and magnetism at the Royal Institution, Faraday undertook numerous, and often time-consuming, service projects for private enterprise and the British government. This work included investigations of explosions in mines, being an expert witness in court, and the preparation of high-quality optical glass.
As a respected scientist in a nation with strong maritime interests, Faraday spent extensive amounts of time on projects such as the construction and operation of light houses and protecting the bottoms of ships from corrosion.
Faraday also was active in what would now be called environmental science, or engineering. He investigated industrial pollution at Swansea and was consulted on air pollution at the Royal Mint. In July of 1855, Faraday wrote a letter to The Times on the subject of the foul condition of the River Thames, which resulted in an oft-reprinted cartoon in Punch. (See also The Great Stink.)
Faraday assisted with planning and judging of exhibits for the Great Exhibition of 1851 in London. He also advised the National Gallery on the cleaning and protection of its art collection, and served on the National Gallery Site Commission in 1857.
Education was another area of service for Faraday. He lectured on the topic in 1854 at the Royal Institution, and in 1862 he appeared before a Public Schools Commission to give his views on education in Great Britain. Faraday also weighed in, negatively, on the public's fascination with table-turning, mesmerism, and seances, chastising both the public and the nation's educational system. See The Illustrated London News, July 1853, for Faraday's comments.
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In June of 1832, the University of Oxford granted Faraday a Doctor of Civil Law degree (honorary). During his lifetime, Faraday rejected a knighthood and twice refused to become President of the Royal Society.
In 1848, as a result of representations by the Prince Consort, Michael Faraday was awarded a grace and favour house in Hampton Court, Surrey free of all expenses or upkeep. This was the Master Mason's House, later called Faraday House, and now No.37 Hampton Court Road. In 1858 Faraday retired to live there. Twickenham Museum on Faraday and Faraday House, Accessed June 2006
Faraday died at his house at Hampton Court on August 25, 1867. He turned down burial in Westminster Abbey, but he has a memorial plaque there, near Isaac Newton's tomb. Faraday was interred in the Sandemanian plot in Highgate Cemetery.
Michael Faraday's grave at Highgate Cemetery
Faraday gave a successful series of lectures on the chemistry and physics of flames at the Royal Institution, entitled The Chemical History of a Candle. This was one of the earlier Christmas lectures for young people, which are still given each year. Between 1827 and 1860, Faraday gave the Christmas lecture a record nineteen times.
Faraday refused to participate in the production of chemical weapons for the Crimean War citing ethical reasons.
A statue of Faraday stands in Savoy Place, London, outside the Institution of Electrical Engineers.
A recently built hall of accommodation at Brunel University is named after Faraday.
A hall at Loughborough University was named after Faraday in 1960. Near the entrance to its dining hall is a bronze casting, which depicts the symbol of an electrical transformer, and inside there hangs a portrait, both in Faraday's honour.
Faraday's picture was printed on British £20 banknotes from 1991 until 2001. Bank of England, Withdrawn Notes
In the video game Chromehounds there is a ThermoVision Device named the Faraday.
The former UK Faraday Atmospheric Research Station in Antarctica was named after him.
Faraday was one of the then eight foreign members of the French Academy of Sciences.
Michael Faraday's signature
Faraday's books, with the exception of Chemical Manipulation, were collections of scientific papers or transcriptions of lectures. See page 220 of Hamilton's A Life of Discovery: Michael Faraday, Giant of the Scientific Revolution (2002) Since his death, Faraday's diary has been published, as have several large volumes of his letters and Faraday's journal from his travels with Davy in 1813 - 1815.
* Chemical Manipulation, Being Instructions to Students in Chemistry, John Murray, 1st ed. 1827, 2nd ed. 1830, 3rd ed. 1842
* Experimental Researches in Electricity, vols. i. and ii., Richard and John Edward Taylor, vols. i. and ii.. 1844 and 1847; vol. iii., 1844; vol. iii. Richard Taylor and William Francis, 1855
* Experimental Researches in Chemistry and Physics, Taylor and Francis, 1859
* A Course of Six Lectures on the Chemical History of a Candle, edited by W. Crookes, Griffin, Bohn & Co., 1861
* On the Various Forces in Nature, edited by W. Crookes, Chatto & Windus, 1873
* Faraday's Diary edited by T. Martin was published in eight volumes, 1932 - 1936
* Curiosity Perfectly Satisfyed: Faraday's Travels in Europe 1813-1815, edited by B. Bowers and L. Symons, Institution of Electrical Engineers, 1991
* The Correspondence of Michael Faraday, edited by F. A. J. L. James, INSPEC, Inc., volume 1, 1991; volume 2, 1993; volume 3, 1996; volume 4, 1999
* "Nothing is too wonderful to be true if it be consistent with the laws of nature, and in such things as these, experiment is the best test of such consistency." From the entry of 19 March 1849 in Faraday's Diary
* "Work. Finish. Publish." â his well-known advice to the young William Crookes
* "The important thing is to know how to take all things quietly."
* Regarding the hereafter, "Speculations? I have none. I am resting on certainties. I know whom I have believed and am persuaded that he is able to keep that which I have committed unto him against that day."
* "Next Sabbath day (the 22nd) I shall complete my 70th year. I can hardly think of myself so old."
*Above the doorways of the Pfahler Hall of Science at Ursinus College in Collegeville, Pennsylvania, there is a stone inscription of a quote attributed to Michael Faraday which reads "but still try, for who knows what is possible..." See
* "One day sir, you may tax it." Faraday's reply to William Gladstone, then British Minister of Finance, when asked of the practical value of electricity.
* "If you would cause your view ... to be acknowledged by scientific men; you would do a great service to science. If you would even get them to say yes or no to your conclusions it would help to clear the future progress. I believe some hesitate because they do not like their thoughts disturbed." From Life and Letters, 2:389.
* Faraday rotator
* Superconductivity
* Tyndall, John, Faraday as a Discoverer, (Longmans, 1st ed. 1868, 2nd ed. 1870).
* Bence Jones, Henry (1870). The Life and Letters of Faraday in 2 vols, Longmans.
* Gladstone, J. H. (1872). Michael Faraday, Macmillan.
* Thompson, Silvanus (1901, reprinted 2005). Michael Faraday, His Life and Work. Cassell and Company, London, 1901; reprint by Kessenger Publishing, Whitefish, MT. ISBN 1-4179-7036-7
* The British Electrical and Allied Manufacturers Association (1931). Faraday. R. & R. Clark, Ltd., Edinburgh, 1931.
* Williams, L. Pearce (1971), Faraday: A Biography, Simon and Schuster.
* Cantor, Geoffrey (1991). Michael Faraday, Sandemanian and Scientist, Macmillian, ISBN 0-333-55077
* Hamilton, James (2002). Faraday: The Life. London: Harper Collins. ISBN 0-00-716376-2
* Hamilton, James (2004). A Life of Discovery: Michael Faraday, Giant of the Scientific Revolution. New York: Random House. ISBN 1-4000-6016-8
* Agassi, Joseph (1971), Faraday as a Natural Philosopher, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
* Ames, Joseph Sweetman (Ed.), The discovery of induced electric currents Vol. 2. Memoirs, by Michael Faraday. New York, Cincinnati [etc.] American book company [c1900] LCCN 00005889
* Gooding, David (Ed.) (1985), Faraday Rediscovered: Essays on the Life and Work of Michael Faraday, 1791-1867, London/New York, Macmillan/Stockton
* Thomas, John Meurig (1991). Michael Faraday and the Royal Institution: The Genius of Man and Place Bristol: Hilger. ISBN 0-7503-0145-7
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* Biography at The Royal Institution of Great Britain
* Faraday as a Discoverer by John Tyndall, Project Gutenberg (downloads)
* The Christian Character of Michael Faraday
* Michael Faraday on the British twenty-pound banknote
* The Life and Discoveries of Michael Faraday by J. A. Crowther, London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1920
* "Faraday" at LoveToKnow 1911 Britannica Online Encyclopedia.
*
* (downloads)
* "Experimental Researches in Electricity" by Michael Faraday Original text with Biographical Introduction by Professor John Tyndall, 1914, Everyman edition.
* Video Podcast with Sir John Cadogan talking about Benzene since Faraday
* The letters of Faraday and Schoenbein 1836-1862. With notes, comments and references to contemporary letters (1899) full download PDF
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Michael_Faraday | Who was the sponsor and mentor of Faraday? | John 'Mad Jack' Fuller | data/set4/a7 | Michael_Faraday
Michael Faraday, FRS (September 22, 1791 â August 25, 1867) was an English chemist and physicist (or natural philosopher, in the terminology of that time) who contributed to the fields of electromagnetism and electrochemistry.
Faraday studied the magnetic field around a conductor carrying a DC electric current, and established the basis for the magnetic field concept in physics. He discovered electromagnetic induction, diamagnetism and electrolysis. He established that magnetism could affect rays of light and that there was an underlying relationship between the two phenomena. Michael Faraday entry at the 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica hosted by LovetoKnow Retrieved January 2007. Institution of Engineering and Technology, London Archives, Michael Faraday His inventions of electromagnetic rotary devices formed the foundation of electric motor technology, and it was largely due to his efforts that electricity became viable for use in technology.
As a chemist, Faraday discovered benzene, investigated the clathrate hydrate of chlorine, invented an early form of the bunsen burner and the system of oxidation numbers, and popularized terminology such as anode, cathode, electrode, and ion.
Although Faraday received little formal education and knew little of higher mathematics, such as calculus, he was one of the most influential scientists in history. Some historians of science refer to him as the best experimentalist in the history of science. "best experimentalist in the history of science." Quoting Dr Peter Ford, from the University of Bathâs Department of Physics. Accessed January 2007. The SI unit of capacitance, the farad, is named after him, as is the Faraday constant, the charge on a mole of electrons (about 96,485 coulombs). Faraday's law of induction states that a magnetic field changing in time creates a proportional electromotive force.
Faraday was the first and foremost Fullerian Professor of Chemistry at the Royal Institution of Great Britain, a position to which he was appointed for life.
Michael Faraday from a photograph by John Watkins, British Library
Michael Faraday was born in Newington Butts, near present-day South London, England. His family was not well off. His father, James, was a member of the Sandemanian sect of Christianity. James Faraday had come to London ca 1790 from Outhgill in Westmorland, where he had been the village blacksmith. The young Michael Faraday, one of four children, having only the most basic of school educations, had to largely educate himself. "Michael Faraday." History of Science and Technology. Houghton Mifflin Company, 2004. Answers.com 4 June 2007. /ref> At fourteen he became apprenticed to a local bookbinder and bookseller George Riebau and, during his seven-year apprenticeship, he read many books, including Isaac Watts' The Improvement of the Mind, and he enthusiastically implemented the principles and suggestions contained therein. He developed an interest in science and specifically in electricity. In particular, he was inspired by the book Conversations in Chemistry by Jane Marcet.
At the age of twenty, in 1812, at the end of his apprenticeship, Faraday attended lectures by the eminent English chemist and physicist Humphry Davy of the Royal Institution and Royal Society, and John Tatum, founder of the City Philosophical Society. Many tickets for these lectures were given to Faraday by William Dance (one of the founders of the Royal Philharmonic Society). Afterwards, Faraday sent Davy a three hundred page book based on notes taken during the lectures. Davy's reply was immediate, kind, and favorable. When Davy damaged his eyesight in an accident with nitrogen trichloride, he decided to employ Faraday as a secretary. When John Payne, one of the Royal Institution's assistants, was fired, Sir Humphry Davy was asked to find a replacement. He appointed Faraday as Chemical Assistant at the Royal Institution on March 1.
In the class-based English society of the time, Faraday was not considered a gentleman. When Davy went on a long tour to the continent in 1813-5, his valet did not wish to go. Faraday was going as Davy's scientific assistant, and was asked to act as Davy's valet until a replacement could be found in Paris. Davy failed to find a replacement, and Faraday was forced to fill the role of valet as well as assistant throughout the trip. Davy's wife, Jane Apreece, refused to treat Faraday as an equal (making him travel outside the coach, eat with the servants, etc.) and generally made Faraday so miserable that he contemplated returning to England alone and giving up science altogether. The trip did, however, give him access to the European scientific elite and a host of stimulating ideas.
His sponsor and mentor was John 'Mad Jack' Fuller, who created the Fullerian Professorship of Chemistry at the Royal Institution.
Faraday was a devout Christian and a member of the small Sandemanian denomination, an offshoot of the Church of Scotland. He later served two terms as an elder in the group's church.
Faraday married Sarah Barnard (1800-1879) on June 2, 1821, although they would never have children. They met through attending the Sandemanian church.
He was elected a member of the Royal Society in 1824, appointed director of the laboratory in 1825; and in 1833 he was appointed Fullerian professor of chemistry in the institution for life, without the obligation to deliver lectures.
The title page of The Chemical History of a Candle (1861)
Faraday's earliest chemical work was as an assistant to Davy. He made a special study of chlorine, and discovered two new chlorides of carbon. He also made the first rough experiments on the diffusion of gases, a phenomenon first pointed out by John Dalton, the physical importance of which was more fully brought to light by Thomas Graham and Joseph Loschmidt. He succeeded in liquefying several gases; he investigated the alloys of steel, and produced several new kinds of glass intended for optical purposes. A specimen of one of these heavy glasses afterwards became historically important as the substance in which Faraday detected the rotation of the plane of polarisation of light when the glass was placed in a magnetic field, and also as the substance which was first repelled by the poles of the magnet. He also endeavoured, with some success, to make the general methods of chemistry, as distinguished from its results, the subject of special study and of popular exposition.
He invented an early form of what was to become the Bunsen burner, which is used almost universally in science laboratories as a convenient source of heat. See page 127 of Faraday's Chemical Manipulation, Being Instructions to Students in Chemistry (1827)
Faraday worked extensively in the field of chemistry, discovering chemical substances such as benzene (which he called bicarburet of hydrogen), inventing the system of oxidation numbers, and liquefying gases such as chlorine. In 1820 Faraday reported on the first syntheses of compounds made from carbon and chlorine, C 2 H 6 and C 2 H 4 , and published his results the following year. Faraday also determined the composition of the chlorine clathrate hydrate, which had been discovered by Humphry Davy in 1810.
Faraday also discovered the laws of electrolysis and popularized terminology such as anode, cathode, electrode, and ion, terms largely created by William Whewell.
Faraday was the first to report what later came to be called metallic nanoparticles. In 1847 he discovered that the optical properties of gold colloids differed from those of the corresponding bulk metal. This was probably the first reported observation of the effects of quantum size, and might be considered to be the birth of nanoscience.
Faraday's greatest work was probably with electricity and magnetism. The first experiment which he recorded was the construction of a voltaic pile with seven halfpence pieces, stacked together with seven disks of sheet zinc, and six pieces of paper moistened with salt water. With this pile he decomposed sulphate of magnesia (first letter to Abbott, July 12, 1812).
[[Image:Faraday photograph ii.jpg|thumb|200px|left|Michael Faraday holding a glass bar of the type he used in 1845 to show that magnetism can affect light. Detail of an engraving by Henry Adlard, based on an earlier photograph by Maull & Polyblank ca. 1857. See National Portrait Gallery, UK ]]
In 1821, soon after the Danish physicist and chemist, Hans Christian Ãrsted discovered the phenomenon of electromagnetism, Davy and British scientist William Hyde Wollaston tried but failed to design an electric motor. Faraday, having discussed the problem with the two men, went on to build two devices to produce what he called electromagnetic rotation: a continuous circular motion from the circular magnetic force around a wire and a wire extending into a pool of mercury with a magnet placed inside would rotate around the magnet if supplied with current from a chemical battery. The latter device is known as a homopolar motor. These experiments and inventions form the foundation of modern electromagnetic technology. Faraday published his results without acknowledging his debt to Wollaston and Davy, and the resulting controversy caused Faraday to withdraw from electromagnetic research for several years.
At this stage, there is also evidence to suggest that Davy may have been trying to slow Faradayâs rise as a scientist (or natural philosopher as it was known then). In 1825, for instance, Davy set him onto optical glass experiments, which progressed for six years with no great results. It was not until Davy's death, in 1829, that Faraday stopped these fruitless tasks and moved on to endeavors that were more worthwhile. Two years later, in 1831, he began his great series of experiments in which he discovered electromagnetic induction. Joseph Henry likely discovered self-induction a few months earlier and both may have been anticipated by the work of Francesco Zantedeschi in Italy in 1829 and 1830.
Faraday's breakthrough came when he wrapped two insulated coils of wire around a massive iron ring, bolted to a chair, and found that upon passing a current through one coil, a momentary current was induced in the other coil. This phenomenon is known as mutual induction. The iron ring-coil apparatus is still on display at the Royal Institution. In subsequent experiments he found that if he moved a magnet through a loop of wire, an electric current flowed in the wire. The current also flowed if the loop was moved over a stationary magnet. His demonstrations established that a changing magnetic field produces an electric field. This relation was mathematically modelled by Faraday's law, which subsequently became one of the four Maxwell equations. These in turn have evolved into the generalization known today as field theory.
Michael Faraday - statue in Savoy Place, London.
Sculptor John Henry Foley RA
Faraday later used the principle to construct the electric dynamo, the ancestor of modern power generators.
In 1839 he completed a series of experiments aimed at investigating the fundamental nature of electricity. Faraday used "static", batteries, and "animal electricity" to produce the phenomena of electrostatic attraction, electrolysis, magnetism, etc. He concluded that, contrary to scientific opinion of the time, the divisions between the various "kinds" of electricity were illusory. Faraday instead proposed that only a single "electricity" exists, and the changing values of quantity and intensity (voltage and charge) would produce different groups of phenomena.
Near the end of his career Faraday proposed that electromagnetic forces extended into the empty space around the conductor. This idea was rejected by his fellow scientists, and Faraday did not live to see this idea eventually accepted. Faraday's concept of lines of flux emanating from charged bodies and magnets provided a way to visualize electric and magnetic fields. That mental model was crucial to the successful development of electromechanical devices which dominated engineering and industry for the remainder of the 19th century.
In 1845, he discovered the phenomenon that he named diamagnetism, and what is now called the Faraday effect: The plane of polarization of linearly polarized light propagated through a material medium can be rotated by the application of an external magnetic field aligned in the propagation direction. He wrote in his notebook, "I have at last succeeded in illuminating a magnetic curve or line of force and in magnetising a ray of light". This established that magnetic force and light were related.
In his work on static electricity, Faraday demonstrated that the charge only resided on the exterior of a charged conductor, and exterior charge had no influence on anything enclosed within a conductor. This is because the exterior charges redistribute such that the interior fields due to them cancel. This shielding effect is used in what is now known as a Faraday cage.
Faraday was an excellent experimentalist who conveyed his ideas in clear and simple language. However, his mathematical abilities did not extend as far as trigonometry or any but the simplest algebra. It was James Clerk Maxwell who took the work of Faraday, and others, and consolidated it with a set of equations that lie at the base of all modern theories of electromagnetic phenomena.
Michael Faraday meets Father Thames, from Punch (July 21, 1855)
Beyond his scientific research into areas such as chemistry, electricity, and magnetism at the Royal Institution, Faraday undertook numerous, and often time-consuming, service projects for private enterprise and the British government. This work included investigations of explosions in mines, being an expert witness in court, and the preparation of high-quality optical glass.
As a respected scientist in a nation with strong maritime interests, Faraday spent extensive amounts of time on projects such as the construction and operation of light houses and protecting the bottoms of ships from corrosion.
Faraday also was active in what would now be called environmental science, or engineering. He investigated industrial pollution at Swansea and was consulted on air pollution at the Royal Mint. In July of 1855, Faraday wrote a letter to The Times on the subject of the foul condition of the River Thames, which resulted in an oft-reprinted cartoon in Punch. (See also The Great Stink.)
Faraday assisted with planning and judging of exhibits for the Great Exhibition of 1851 in London. He also advised the National Gallery on the cleaning and protection of its art collection, and served on the National Gallery Site Commission in 1857.
Education was another area of service for Faraday. He lectured on the topic in 1854 at the Royal Institution, and in 1862 he appeared before a Public Schools Commission to give his views on education in Great Britain. Faraday also weighed in, negatively, on the public's fascination with table-turning, mesmerism, and seances, chastising both the public and the nation's educational system. See The Illustrated London News, July 1853, for Faraday's comments.
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In June of 1832, the University of Oxford granted Faraday a Doctor of Civil Law degree (honorary). During his lifetime, Faraday rejected a knighthood and twice refused to become President of the Royal Society.
In 1848, as a result of representations by the Prince Consort, Michael Faraday was awarded a grace and favour house in Hampton Court, Surrey free of all expenses or upkeep. This was the Master Mason's House, later called Faraday House, and now No.37 Hampton Court Road. In 1858 Faraday retired to live there. Twickenham Museum on Faraday and Faraday House, Accessed June 2006
Faraday died at his house at Hampton Court on August 25, 1867. He turned down burial in Westminster Abbey, but he has a memorial plaque there, near Isaac Newton's tomb. Faraday was interred in the Sandemanian plot in Highgate Cemetery.
Michael Faraday's grave at Highgate Cemetery
Faraday gave a successful series of lectures on the chemistry and physics of flames at the Royal Institution, entitled The Chemical History of a Candle. This was one of the earlier Christmas lectures for young people, which are still given each year. Between 1827 and 1860, Faraday gave the Christmas lecture a record nineteen times.
Faraday refused to participate in the production of chemical weapons for the Crimean War citing ethical reasons.
A statue of Faraday stands in Savoy Place, London, outside the Institution of Electrical Engineers.
A recently built hall of accommodation at Brunel University is named after Faraday.
A hall at Loughborough University was named after Faraday in 1960. Near the entrance to its dining hall is a bronze casting, which depicts the symbol of an electrical transformer, and inside there hangs a portrait, both in Faraday's honour.
Faraday's picture was printed on British £20 banknotes from 1991 until 2001. Bank of England, Withdrawn Notes
In the video game Chromehounds there is a ThermoVision Device named the Faraday.
The former UK Faraday Atmospheric Research Station in Antarctica was named after him.
Faraday was one of the then eight foreign members of the French Academy of Sciences.
Michael Faraday's signature
Faraday's books, with the exception of Chemical Manipulation, were collections of scientific papers or transcriptions of lectures. See page 220 of Hamilton's A Life of Discovery: Michael Faraday, Giant of the Scientific Revolution (2002) Since his death, Faraday's diary has been published, as have several large volumes of his letters and Faraday's journal from his travels with Davy in 1813 - 1815.
* Chemical Manipulation, Being Instructions to Students in Chemistry, John Murray, 1st ed. 1827, 2nd ed. 1830, 3rd ed. 1842
* Experimental Researches in Electricity, vols. i. and ii., Richard and John Edward Taylor, vols. i. and ii.. 1844 and 1847; vol. iii., 1844; vol. iii. Richard Taylor and William Francis, 1855
* Experimental Researches in Chemistry and Physics, Taylor and Francis, 1859
* A Course of Six Lectures on the Chemical History of a Candle, edited by W. Crookes, Griffin, Bohn & Co., 1861
* On the Various Forces in Nature, edited by W. Crookes, Chatto & Windus, 1873
* Faraday's Diary edited by T. Martin was published in eight volumes, 1932 - 1936
* Curiosity Perfectly Satisfyed: Faraday's Travels in Europe 1813-1815, edited by B. Bowers and L. Symons, Institution of Electrical Engineers, 1991
* The Correspondence of Michael Faraday, edited by F. A. J. L. James, INSPEC, Inc., volume 1, 1991; volume 2, 1993; volume 3, 1996; volume 4, 1999
* "Nothing is too wonderful to be true if it be consistent with the laws of nature, and in such things as these, experiment is the best test of such consistency." From the entry of 19 March 1849 in Faraday's Diary
* "Work. Finish. Publish." â his well-known advice to the young William Crookes
* "The important thing is to know how to take all things quietly."
* Regarding the hereafter, "Speculations? I have none. I am resting on certainties. I know whom I have believed and am persuaded that he is able to keep that which I have committed unto him against that day."
* "Next Sabbath day (the 22nd) I shall complete my 70th year. I can hardly think of myself so old."
*Above the doorways of the Pfahler Hall of Science at Ursinus College in Collegeville, Pennsylvania, there is a stone inscription of a quote attributed to Michael Faraday which reads "but still try, for who knows what is possible..." See
* "One day sir, you may tax it." Faraday's reply to William Gladstone, then British Minister of Finance, when asked of the practical value of electricity.
* "If you would cause your view ... to be acknowledged by scientific men; you would do a great service to science. If you would even get them to say yes or no to your conclusions it would help to clear the future progress. I believe some hesitate because they do not like their thoughts disturbed." From Life and Letters, 2:389.
* Faraday rotator
* Superconductivity
* Tyndall, John, Faraday as a Discoverer, (Longmans, 1st ed. 1868, 2nd ed. 1870).
* Bence Jones, Henry (1870). The Life and Letters of Faraday in 2 vols, Longmans.
* Gladstone, J. H. (1872). Michael Faraday, Macmillan.
* Thompson, Silvanus (1901, reprinted 2005). Michael Faraday, His Life and Work. Cassell and Company, London, 1901; reprint by Kessenger Publishing, Whitefish, MT. ISBN 1-4179-7036-7
* The British Electrical and Allied Manufacturers Association (1931). Faraday. R. & R. Clark, Ltd., Edinburgh, 1931.
* Williams, L. Pearce (1971), Faraday: A Biography, Simon and Schuster.
* Cantor, Geoffrey (1991). Michael Faraday, Sandemanian and Scientist, Macmillian, ISBN 0-333-55077
* Hamilton, James (2002). Faraday: The Life. London: Harper Collins. ISBN 0-00-716376-2
* Hamilton, James (2004). A Life of Discovery: Michael Faraday, Giant of the Scientific Revolution. New York: Random House. ISBN 1-4000-6016-8
* Agassi, Joseph (1971), Faraday as a Natural Philosopher, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
* Ames, Joseph Sweetman (Ed.), The discovery of induced electric currents Vol. 2. Memoirs, by Michael Faraday. New York, Cincinnati [etc.] American book company [c1900] LCCN 00005889
* Gooding, David (Ed.) (1985), Faraday Rediscovered: Essays on the Life and Work of Michael Faraday, 1791-1867, London/New York, Macmillan/Stockton
* Thomas, John Meurig (1991). Michael Faraday and the Royal Institution: The Genius of Man and Place Bristol: Hilger. ISBN 0-7503-0145-7
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* Biography at The Royal Institution of Great Britain
* Faraday as a Discoverer by John Tyndall, Project Gutenberg (downloads)
* The Christian Character of Michael Faraday
* Michael Faraday on the British twenty-pound banknote
* The Life and Discoveries of Michael Faraday by J. A. Crowther, London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1920
* "Faraday" at LoveToKnow 1911 Britannica Online Encyclopedia.
*
* (downloads)
* "Experimental Researches in Electricity" by Michael Faraday Original text with Biographical Introduction by Professor John Tyndall, 1914, Everyman edition.
* Video Podcast with Sir John Cadogan talking about Benzene since Faraday
* The letters of Faraday and Schoenbein 1836-1862. With notes, comments and references to contemporary letters (1899) full download PDF
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Michael_Faraday | Who was the sponsor and mentor of Faraday? | John 'Mad Jack' Fuller | data/set4/a7 | Michael_Faraday
Michael Faraday, FRS (September 22, 1791 â August 25, 1867) was an English chemist and physicist (or natural philosopher, in the terminology of that time) who contributed to the fields of electromagnetism and electrochemistry.
Faraday studied the magnetic field around a conductor carrying a DC electric current, and established the basis for the magnetic field concept in physics. He discovered electromagnetic induction, diamagnetism and electrolysis. He established that magnetism could affect rays of light and that there was an underlying relationship between the two phenomena. Michael Faraday entry at the 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica hosted by LovetoKnow Retrieved January 2007. Institution of Engineering and Technology, London Archives, Michael Faraday His inventions of electromagnetic rotary devices formed the foundation of electric motor technology, and it was largely due to his efforts that electricity became viable for use in technology.
As a chemist, Faraday discovered benzene, investigated the clathrate hydrate of chlorine, invented an early form of the bunsen burner and the system of oxidation numbers, and popularized terminology such as anode, cathode, electrode, and ion.
Although Faraday received little formal education and knew little of higher mathematics, such as calculus, he was one of the most influential scientists in history. Some historians of science refer to him as the best experimentalist in the history of science. "best experimentalist in the history of science." Quoting Dr Peter Ford, from the University of Bathâs Department of Physics. Accessed January 2007. The SI unit of capacitance, the farad, is named after him, as is the Faraday constant, the charge on a mole of electrons (about 96,485 coulombs). Faraday's law of induction states that a magnetic field changing in time creates a proportional electromotive force.
Faraday was the first and foremost Fullerian Professor of Chemistry at the Royal Institution of Great Britain, a position to which he was appointed for life.
Michael Faraday from a photograph by John Watkins, British Library
Michael Faraday was born in Newington Butts, near present-day South London, England. His family was not well off. His father, James, was a member of the Sandemanian sect of Christianity. James Faraday had come to London ca 1790 from Outhgill in Westmorland, where he had been the village blacksmith. The young Michael Faraday, one of four children, having only the most basic of school educations, had to largely educate himself. "Michael Faraday." History of Science and Technology. Houghton Mifflin Company, 2004. Answers.com 4 June 2007. /ref> At fourteen he became apprenticed to a local bookbinder and bookseller George Riebau and, during his seven-year apprenticeship, he read many books, including Isaac Watts' The Improvement of the Mind, and he enthusiastically implemented the principles and suggestions contained therein. He developed an interest in science and specifically in electricity. In particular, he was inspired by the book Conversations in Chemistry by Jane Marcet.
At the age of twenty, in 1812, at the end of his apprenticeship, Faraday attended lectures by the eminent English chemist and physicist Humphry Davy of the Royal Institution and Royal Society, and John Tatum, founder of the City Philosophical Society. Many tickets for these lectures were given to Faraday by William Dance (one of the founders of the Royal Philharmonic Society). Afterwards, Faraday sent Davy a three hundred page book based on notes taken during the lectures. Davy's reply was immediate, kind, and favorable. When Davy damaged his eyesight in an accident with nitrogen trichloride, he decided to employ Faraday as a secretary. When John Payne, one of the Royal Institution's assistants, was fired, Sir Humphry Davy was asked to find a replacement. He appointed Faraday as Chemical Assistant at the Royal Institution on March 1.
In the class-based English society of the time, Faraday was not considered a gentleman. When Davy went on a long tour to the continent in 1813-5, his valet did not wish to go. Faraday was going as Davy's scientific assistant, and was asked to act as Davy's valet until a replacement could be found in Paris. Davy failed to find a replacement, and Faraday was forced to fill the role of valet as well as assistant throughout the trip. Davy's wife, Jane Apreece, refused to treat Faraday as an equal (making him travel outside the coach, eat with the servants, etc.) and generally made Faraday so miserable that he contemplated returning to England alone and giving up science altogether. The trip did, however, give him access to the European scientific elite and a host of stimulating ideas.
His sponsor and mentor was John 'Mad Jack' Fuller, who created the Fullerian Professorship of Chemistry at the Royal Institution.
Faraday was a devout Christian and a member of the small Sandemanian denomination, an offshoot of the Church of Scotland. He later served two terms as an elder in the group's church.
Faraday married Sarah Barnard (1800-1879) on June 2, 1821, although they would never have children. They met through attending the Sandemanian church.
He was elected a member of the Royal Society in 1824, appointed director of the laboratory in 1825; and in 1833 he was appointed Fullerian professor of chemistry in the institution for life, without the obligation to deliver lectures.
The title page of The Chemical History of a Candle (1861)
Faraday's earliest chemical work was as an assistant to Davy. He made a special study of chlorine, and discovered two new chlorides of carbon. He also made the first rough experiments on the diffusion of gases, a phenomenon first pointed out by John Dalton, the physical importance of which was more fully brought to light by Thomas Graham and Joseph Loschmidt. He succeeded in liquefying several gases; he investigated the alloys of steel, and produced several new kinds of glass intended for optical purposes. A specimen of one of these heavy glasses afterwards became historically important as the substance in which Faraday detected the rotation of the plane of polarisation of light when the glass was placed in a magnetic field, and also as the substance which was first repelled by the poles of the magnet. He also endeavoured, with some success, to make the general methods of chemistry, as distinguished from its results, the subject of special study and of popular exposition.
He invented an early form of what was to become the Bunsen burner, which is used almost universally in science laboratories as a convenient source of heat. See page 127 of Faraday's Chemical Manipulation, Being Instructions to Students in Chemistry (1827)
Faraday worked extensively in the field of chemistry, discovering chemical substances such as benzene (which he called bicarburet of hydrogen), inventing the system of oxidation numbers, and liquefying gases such as chlorine. In 1820 Faraday reported on the first syntheses of compounds made from carbon and chlorine, C 2 H 6 and C 2 H 4 , and published his results the following year. Faraday also determined the composition of the chlorine clathrate hydrate, which had been discovered by Humphry Davy in 1810.
Faraday also discovered the laws of electrolysis and popularized terminology such as anode, cathode, electrode, and ion, terms largely created by William Whewell.
Faraday was the first to report what later came to be called metallic nanoparticles. In 1847 he discovered that the optical properties of gold colloids differed from those of the corresponding bulk metal. This was probably the first reported observation of the effects of quantum size, and might be considered to be the birth of nanoscience.
Faraday's greatest work was probably with electricity and magnetism. The first experiment which he recorded was the construction of a voltaic pile with seven halfpence pieces, stacked together with seven disks of sheet zinc, and six pieces of paper moistened with salt water. With this pile he decomposed sulphate of magnesia (first letter to Abbott, July 12, 1812).
[[Image:Faraday photograph ii.jpg|thumb|200px|left|Michael Faraday holding a glass bar of the type he used in 1845 to show that magnetism can affect light. Detail of an engraving by Henry Adlard, based on an earlier photograph by Maull & Polyblank ca. 1857. See National Portrait Gallery, UK ]]
In 1821, soon after the Danish physicist and chemist, Hans Christian Ãrsted discovered the phenomenon of electromagnetism, Davy and British scientist William Hyde Wollaston tried but failed to design an electric motor. Faraday, having discussed the problem with the two men, went on to build two devices to produce what he called electromagnetic rotation: a continuous circular motion from the circular magnetic force around a wire and a wire extending into a pool of mercury with a magnet placed inside would rotate around the magnet if supplied with current from a chemical battery. The latter device is known as a homopolar motor. These experiments and inventions form the foundation of modern electromagnetic technology. Faraday published his results without acknowledging his debt to Wollaston and Davy, and the resulting controversy caused Faraday to withdraw from electromagnetic research for several years.
At this stage, there is also evidence to suggest that Davy may have been trying to slow Faradayâs rise as a scientist (or natural philosopher as it was known then). In 1825, for instance, Davy set him onto optical glass experiments, which progressed for six years with no great results. It was not until Davy's death, in 1829, that Faraday stopped these fruitless tasks and moved on to endeavors that were more worthwhile. Two years later, in 1831, he began his great series of experiments in which he discovered electromagnetic induction. Joseph Henry likely discovered self-induction a few months earlier and both may have been anticipated by the work of Francesco Zantedeschi in Italy in 1829 and 1830.
Faraday's breakthrough came when he wrapped two insulated coils of wire around a massive iron ring, bolted to a chair, and found that upon passing a current through one coil, a momentary current was induced in the other coil. This phenomenon is known as mutual induction. The iron ring-coil apparatus is still on display at the Royal Institution. In subsequent experiments he found that if he moved a magnet through a loop of wire, an electric current flowed in the wire. The current also flowed if the loop was moved over a stationary magnet. His demonstrations established that a changing magnetic field produces an electric field. This relation was mathematically modelled by Faraday's law, which subsequently became one of the four Maxwell equations. These in turn have evolved into the generalization known today as field theory.
Michael Faraday - statue in Savoy Place, London.
Sculptor John Henry Foley RA
Faraday later used the principle to construct the electric dynamo, the ancestor of modern power generators.
In 1839 he completed a series of experiments aimed at investigating the fundamental nature of electricity. Faraday used "static", batteries, and "animal electricity" to produce the phenomena of electrostatic attraction, electrolysis, magnetism, etc. He concluded that, contrary to scientific opinion of the time, the divisions between the various "kinds" of electricity were illusory. Faraday instead proposed that only a single "electricity" exists, and the changing values of quantity and intensity (voltage and charge) would produce different groups of phenomena.
Near the end of his career Faraday proposed that electromagnetic forces extended into the empty space around the conductor. This idea was rejected by his fellow scientists, and Faraday did not live to see this idea eventually accepted. Faraday's concept of lines of flux emanating from charged bodies and magnets provided a way to visualize electric and magnetic fields. That mental model was crucial to the successful development of electromechanical devices which dominated engineering and industry for the remainder of the 19th century.
In 1845, he discovered the phenomenon that he named diamagnetism, and what is now called the Faraday effect: The plane of polarization of linearly polarized light propagated through a material medium can be rotated by the application of an external magnetic field aligned in the propagation direction. He wrote in his notebook, "I have at last succeeded in illuminating a magnetic curve or line of force and in magnetising a ray of light". This established that magnetic force and light were related.
In his work on static electricity, Faraday demonstrated that the charge only resided on the exterior of a charged conductor, and exterior charge had no influence on anything enclosed within a conductor. This is because the exterior charges redistribute such that the interior fields due to them cancel. This shielding effect is used in what is now known as a Faraday cage.
Faraday was an excellent experimentalist who conveyed his ideas in clear and simple language. However, his mathematical abilities did not extend as far as trigonometry or any but the simplest algebra. It was James Clerk Maxwell who took the work of Faraday, and others, and consolidated it with a set of equations that lie at the base of all modern theories of electromagnetic phenomena.
Michael Faraday meets Father Thames, from Punch (July 21, 1855)
Beyond his scientific research into areas such as chemistry, electricity, and magnetism at the Royal Institution, Faraday undertook numerous, and often time-consuming, service projects for private enterprise and the British government. This work included investigations of explosions in mines, being an expert witness in court, and the preparation of high-quality optical glass.
As a respected scientist in a nation with strong maritime interests, Faraday spent extensive amounts of time on projects such as the construction and operation of light houses and protecting the bottoms of ships from corrosion.
Faraday also was active in what would now be called environmental science, or engineering. He investigated industrial pollution at Swansea and was consulted on air pollution at the Royal Mint. In July of 1855, Faraday wrote a letter to The Times on the subject of the foul condition of the River Thames, which resulted in an oft-reprinted cartoon in Punch. (See also The Great Stink.)
Faraday assisted with planning and judging of exhibits for the Great Exhibition of 1851 in London. He also advised the National Gallery on the cleaning and protection of its art collection, and served on the National Gallery Site Commission in 1857.
Education was another area of service for Faraday. He lectured on the topic in 1854 at the Royal Institution, and in 1862 he appeared before a Public Schools Commission to give his views on education in Great Britain. Faraday also weighed in, negatively, on the public's fascination with table-turning, mesmerism, and seances, chastising both the public and the nation's educational system. See The Illustrated London News, July 1853, for Faraday's comments.
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In June of 1832, the University of Oxford granted Faraday a Doctor of Civil Law degree (honorary). During his lifetime, Faraday rejected a knighthood and twice refused to become President of the Royal Society.
In 1848, as a result of representations by the Prince Consort, Michael Faraday was awarded a grace and favour house in Hampton Court, Surrey free of all expenses or upkeep. This was the Master Mason's House, later called Faraday House, and now No.37 Hampton Court Road. In 1858 Faraday retired to live there. Twickenham Museum on Faraday and Faraday House, Accessed June 2006
Faraday died at his house at Hampton Court on August 25, 1867. He turned down burial in Westminster Abbey, but he has a memorial plaque there, near Isaac Newton's tomb. Faraday was interred in the Sandemanian plot in Highgate Cemetery.
Michael Faraday's grave at Highgate Cemetery
Faraday gave a successful series of lectures on the chemistry and physics of flames at the Royal Institution, entitled The Chemical History of a Candle. This was one of the earlier Christmas lectures for young people, which are still given each year. Between 1827 and 1860, Faraday gave the Christmas lecture a record nineteen times.
Faraday refused to participate in the production of chemical weapons for the Crimean War citing ethical reasons.
A statue of Faraday stands in Savoy Place, London, outside the Institution of Electrical Engineers.
A recently built hall of accommodation at Brunel University is named after Faraday.
A hall at Loughborough University was named after Faraday in 1960. Near the entrance to its dining hall is a bronze casting, which depicts the symbol of an electrical transformer, and inside there hangs a portrait, both in Faraday's honour.
Faraday's picture was printed on British £20 banknotes from 1991 until 2001. Bank of England, Withdrawn Notes
In the video game Chromehounds there is a ThermoVision Device named the Faraday.
The former UK Faraday Atmospheric Research Station in Antarctica was named after him.
Faraday was one of the then eight foreign members of the French Academy of Sciences.
Michael Faraday's signature
Faraday's books, with the exception of Chemical Manipulation, were collections of scientific papers or transcriptions of lectures. See page 220 of Hamilton's A Life of Discovery: Michael Faraday, Giant of the Scientific Revolution (2002) Since his death, Faraday's diary has been published, as have several large volumes of his letters and Faraday's journal from his travels with Davy in 1813 - 1815.
* Chemical Manipulation, Being Instructions to Students in Chemistry, John Murray, 1st ed. 1827, 2nd ed. 1830, 3rd ed. 1842
* Experimental Researches in Electricity, vols. i. and ii., Richard and John Edward Taylor, vols. i. and ii.. 1844 and 1847; vol. iii., 1844; vol. iii. Richard Taylor and William Francis, 1855
* Experimental Researches in Chemistry and Physics, Taylor and Francis, 1859
* A Course of Six Lectures on the Chemical History of a Candle, edited by W. Crookes, Griffin, Bohn & Co., 1861
* On the Various Forces in Nature, edited by W. Crookes, Chatto & Windus, 1873
* Faraday's Diary edited by T. Martin was published in eight volumes, 1932 - 1936
* Curiosity Perfectly Satisfyed: Faraday's Travels in Europe 1813-1815, edited by B. Bowers and L. Symons, Institution of Electrical Engineers, 1991
* The Correspondence of Michael Faraday, edited by F. A. J. L. James, INSPEC, Inc., volume 1, 1991; volume 2, 1993; volume 3, 1996; volume 4, 1999
* "Nothing is too wonderful to be true if it be consistent with the laws of nature, and in such things as these, experiment is the best test of such consistency." From the entry of 19 March 1849 in Faraday's Diary
* "Work. Finish. Publish." â his well-known advice to the young William Crookes
* "The important thing is to know how to take all things quietly."
* Regarding the hereafter, "Speculations? I have none. I am resting on certainties. I know whom I have believed and am persuaded that he is able to keep that which I have committed unto him against that day."
* "Next Sabbath day (the 22nd) I shall complete my 70th year. I can hardly think of myself so old."
*Above the doorways of the Pfahler Hall of Science at Ursinus College in Collegeville, Pennsylvania, there is a stone inscription of a quote attributed to Michael Faraday which reads "but still try, for who knows what is possible..." See
* "One day sir, you may tax it." Faraday's reply to William Gladstone, then British Minister of Finance, when asked of the practical value of electricity.
* "If you would cause your view ... to be acknowledged by scientific men; you would do a great service to science. If you would even get them to say yes or no to your conclusions it would help to clear the future progress. I believe some hesitate because they do not like their thoughts disturbed." From Life and Letters, 2:389.
* Faraday rotator
* Superconductivity
* Tyndall, John, Faraday as a Discoverer, (Longmans, 1st ed. 1868, 2nd ed. 1870).
* Bence Jones, Henry (1870). The Life and Letters of Faraday in 2 vols, Longmans.
* Gladstone, J. H. (1872). Michael Faraday, Macmillan.
* Thompson, Silvanus (1901, reprinted 2005). Michael Faraday, His Life and Work. Cassell and Company, London, 1901; reprint by Kessenger Publishing, Whitefish, MT. ISBN 1-4179-7036-7
* The British Electrical and Allied Manufacturers Association (1931). Faraday. R. & R. Clark, Ltd., Edinburgh, 1931.
* Williams, L. Pearce (1971), Faraday: A Biography, Simon and Schuster.
* Cantor, Geoffrey (1991). Michael Faraday, Sandemanian and Scientist, Macmillian, ISBN 0-333-55077
* Hamilton, James (2002). Faraday: The Life. London: Harper Collins. ISBN 0-00-716376-2
* Hamilton, James (2004). A Life of Discovery: Michael Faraday, Giant of the Scientific Revolution. New York: Random House. ISBN 1-4000-6016-8
* Agassi, Joseph (1971), Faraday as a Natural Philosopher, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
* Ames, Joseph Sweetman (Ed.), The discovery of induced electric currents Vol. 2. Memoirs, by Michael Faraday. New York, Cincinnati [etc.] American book company [c1900] LCCN 00005889
* Gooding, David (Ed.) (1985), Faraday Rediscovered: Essays on the Life and Work of Michael Faraday, 1791-1867, London/New York, Macmillan/Stockton
* Thomas, John Meurig (1991). Michael Faraday and the Royal Institution: The Genius of Man and Place Bristol: Hilger. ISBN 0-7503-0145-7
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* Biography at The Royal Institution of Great Britain
* Faraday as a Discoverer by John Tyndall, Project Gutenberg (downloads)
* The Christian Character of Michael Faraday
* Michael Faraday on the British twenty-pound banknote
* The Life and Discoveries of Michael Faraday by J. A. Crowther, London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1920
* "Faraday" at LoveToKnow 1911 Britannica Online Encyclopedia.
*
* (downloads)
* "Experimental Researches in Electricity" by Michael Faraday Original text with Biographical Introduction by Professor John Tyndall, 1914, Everyman edition.
* Video Podcast with Sir John Cadogan talking about Benzene since Faraday
* The letters of Faraday and Schoenbein 1836-1862. With notes, comments and references to contemporary letters (1899) full download PDF
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Michael_Faraday | What did Faraday invent that is used almost universally in science laboratories? | the Bunsen burner | data/set4/a7 | Michael_Faraday
Michael Faraday, FRS (September 22, 1791 â August 25, 1867) was an English chemist and physicist (or natural philosopher, in the terminology of that time) who contributed to the fields of electromagnetism and electrochemistry.
Faraday studied the magnetic field around a conductor carrying a DC electric current, and established the basis for the magnetic field concept in physics. He discovered electromagnetic induction, diamagnetism and electrolysis. He established that magnetism could affect rays of light and that there was an underlying relationship between the two phenomena. Michael Faraday entry at the 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica hosted by LovetoKnow Retrieved January 2007. Institution of Engineering and Technology, London Archives, Michael Faraday His inventions of electromagnetic rotary devices formed the foundation of electric motor technology, and it was largely due to his efforts that electricity became viable for use in technology.
As a chemist, Faraday discovered benzene, investigated the clathrate hydrate of chlorine, invented an early form of the bunsen burner and the system of oxidation numbers, and popularized terminology such as anode, cathode, electrode, and ion.
Although Faraday received little formal education and knew little of higher mathematics, such as calculus, he was one of the most influential scientists in history. Some historians of science refer to him as the best experimentalist in the history of science. "best experimentalist in the history of science." Quoting Dr Peter Ford, from the University of Bathâs Department of Physics. Accessed January 2007. The SI unit of capacitance, the farad, is named after him, as is the Faraday constant, the charge on a mole of electrons (about 96,485 coulombs). Faraday's law of induction states that a magnetic field changing in time creates a proportional electromotive force.
Faraday was the first and foremost Fullerian Professor of Chemistry at the Royal Institution of Great Britain, a position to which he was appointed for life.
Michael Faraday from a photograph by John Watkins, British Library
Michael Faraday was born in Newington Butts, near present-day South London, England. His family was not well off. His father, James, was a member of the Sandemanian sect of Christianity. James Faraday had come to London ca 1790 from Outhgill in Westmorland, where he had been the village blacksmith. The young Michael Faraday, one of four children, having only the most basic of school educations, had to largely educate himself. "Michael Faraday." History of Science and Technology. Houghton Mifflin Company, 2004. Answers.com 4 June 2007. /ref> At fourteen he became apprenticed to a local bookbinder and bookseller George Riebau and, during his seven-year apprenticeship, he read many books, including Isaac Watts' The Improvement of the Mind, and he enthusiastically implemented the principles and suggestions contained therein. He developed an interest in science and specifically in electricity. In particular, he was inspired by the book Conversations in Chemistry by Jane Marcet.
At the age of twenty, in 1812, at the end of his apprenticeship, Faraday attended lectures by the eminent English chemist and physicist Humphry Davy of the Royal Institution and Royal Society, and John Tatum, founder of the City Philosophical Society. Many tickets for these lectures were given to Faraday by William Dance (one of the founders of the Royal Philharmonic Society). Afterwards, Faraday sent Davy a three hundred page book based on notes taken during the lectures. Davy's reply was immediate, kind, and favorable. When Davy damaged his eyesight in an accident with nitrogen trichloride, he decided to employ Faraday as a secretary. When John Payne, one of the Royal Institution's assistants, was fired, Sir Humphry Davy was asked to find a replacement. He appointed Faraday as Chemical Assistant at the Royal Institution on March 1.
In the class-based English society of the time, Faraday was not considered a gentleman. When Davy went on a long tour to the continent in 1813-5, his valet did not wish to go. Faraday was going as Davy's scientific assistant, and was asked to act as Davy's valet until a replacement could be found in Paris. Davy failed to find a replacement, and Faraday was forced to fill the role of valet as well as assistant throughout the trip. Davy's wife, Jane Apreece, refused to treat Faraday as an equal (making him travel outside the coach, eat with the servants, etc.) and generally made Faraday so miserable that he contemplated returning to England alone and giving up science altogether. The trip did, however, give him access to the European scientific elite and a host of stimulating ideas.
His sponsor and mentor was John 'Mad Jack' Fuller, who created the Fullerian Professorship of Chemistry at the Royal Institution.
Faraday was a devout Christian and a member of the small Sandemanian denomination, an offshoot of the Church of Scotland. He later served two terms as an elder in the group's church.
Faraday married Sarah Barnard (1800-1879) on June 2, 1821, although they would never have children. They met through attending the Sandemanian church.
He was elected a member of the Royal Society in 1824, appointed director of the laboratory in 1825; and in 1833 he was appointed Fullerian professor of chemistry in the institution for life, without the obligation to deliver lectures.
The title page of The Chemical History of a Candle (1861)
Faraday's earliest chemical work was as an assistant to Davy. He made a special study of chlorine, and discovered two new chlorides of carbon. He also made the first rough experiments on the diffusion of gases, a phenomenon first pointed out by John Dalton, the physical importance of which was more fully brought to light by Thomas Graham and Joseph Loschmidt. He succeeded in liquefying several gases; he investigated the alloys of steel, and produced several new kinds of glass intended for optical purposes. A specimen of one of these heavy glasses afterwards became historically important as the substance in which Faraday detected the rotation of the plane of polarisation of light when the glass was placed in a magnetic field, and also as the substance which was first repelled by the poles of the magnet. He also endeavoured, with some success, to make the general methods of chemistry, as distinguished from its results, the subject of special study and of popular exposition.
He invented an early form of what was to become the Bunsen burner, which is used almost universally in science laboratories as a convenient source of heat. See page 127 of Faraday's Chemical Manipulation, Being Instructions to Students in Chemistry (1827)
Faraday worked extensively in the field of chemistry, discovering chemical substances such as benzene (which he called bicarburet of hydrogen), inventing the system of oxidation numbers, and liquefying gases such as chlorine. In 1820 Faraday reported on the first syntheses of compounds made from carbon and chlorine, C 2 H 6 and C 2 H 4 , and published his results the following year. Faraday also determined the composition of the chlorine clathrate hydrate, which had been discovered by Humphry Davy in 1810.
Faraday also discovered the laws of electrolysis and popularized terminology such as anode, cathode, electrode, and ion, terms largely created by William Whewell.
Faraday was the first to report what later came to be called metallic nanoparticles. In 1847 he discovered that the optical properties of gold colloids differed from those of the corresponding bulk metal. This was probably the first reported observation of the effects of quantum size, and might be considered to be the birth of nanoscience.
Faraday's greatest work was probably with electricity and magnetism. The first experiment which he recorded was the construction of a voltaic pile with seven halfpence pieces, stacked together with seven disks of sheet zinc, and six pieces of paper moistened with salt water. With this pile he decomposed sulphate of magnesia (first letter to Abbott, July 12, 1812).
[[Image:Faraday photograph ii.jpg|thumb|200px|left|Michael Faraday holding a glass bar of the type he used in 1845 to show that magnetism can affect light. Detail of an engraving by Henry Adlard, based on an earlier photograph by Maull & Polyblank ca. 1857. See National Portrait Gallery, UK ]]
In 1821, soon after the Danish physicist and chemist, Hans Christian Ãrsted discovered the phenomenon of electromagnetism, Davy and British scientist William Hyde Wollaston tried but failed to design an electric motor. Faraday, having discussed the problem with the two men, went on to build two devices to produce what he called electromagnetic rotation: a continuous circular motion from the circular magnetic force around a wire and a wire extending into a pool of mercury with a magnet placed inside would rotate around the magnet if supplied with current from a chemical battery. The latter device is known as a homopolar motor. These experiments and inventions form the foundation of modern electromagnetic technology. Faraday published his results without acknowledging his debt to Wollaston and Davy, and the resulting controversy caused Faraday to withdraw from electromagnetic research for several years.
At this stage, there is also evidence to suggest that Davy may have been trying to slow Faradayâs rise as a scientist (or natural philosopher as it was known then). In 1825, for instance, Davy set him onto optical glass experiments, which progressed for six years with no great results. It was not until Davy's death, in 1829, that Faraday stopped these fruitless tasks and moved on to endeavors that were more worthwhile. Two years later, in 1831, he began his great series of experiments in which he discovered electromagnetic induction. Joseph Henry likely discovered self-induction a few months earlier and both may have been anticipated by the work of Francesco Zantedeschi in Italy in 1829 and 1830.
Faraday's breakthrough came when he wrapped two insulated coils of wire around a massive iron ring, bolted to a chair, and found that upon passing a current through one coil, a momentary current was induced in the other coil. This phenomenon is known as mutual induction. The iron ring-coil apparatus is still on display at the Royal Institution. In subsequent experiments he found that if he moved a magnet through a loop of wire, an electric current flowed in the wire. The current also flowed if the loop was moved over a stationary magnet. His demonstrations established that a changing magnetic field produces an electric field. This relation was mathematically modelled by Faraday's law, which subsequently became one of the four Maxwell equations. These in turn have evolved into the generalization known today as field theory.
Michael Faraday - statue in Savoy Place, London.
Sculptor John Henry Foley RA
Faraday later used the principle to construct the electric dynamo, the ancestor of modern power generators.
In 1839 he completed a series of experiments aimed at investigating the fundamental nature of electricity. Faraday used "static", batteries, and "animal electricity" to produce the phenomena of electrostatic attraction, electrolysis, magnetism, etc. He concluded that, contrary to scientific opinion of the time, the divisions between the various "kinds" of electricity were illusory. Faraday instead proposed that only a single "electricity" exists, and the changing values of quantity and intensity (voltage and charge) would produce different groups of phenomena.
Near the end of his career Faraday proposed that electromagnetic forces extended into the empty space around the conductor. This idea was rejected by his fellow scientists, and Faraday did not live to see this idea eventually accepted. Faraday's concept of lines of flux emanating from charged bodies and magnets provided a way to visualize electric and magnetic fields. That mental model was crucial to the successful development of electromechanical devices which dominated engineering and industry for the remainder of the 19th century.
In 1845, he discovered the phenomenon that he named diamagnetism, and what is now called the Faraday effect: The plane of polarization of linearly polarized light propagated through a material medium can be rotated by the application of an external magnetic field aligned in the propagation direction. He wrote in his notebook, "I have at last succeeded in illuminating a magnetic curve or line of force and in magnetising a ray of light". This established that magnetic force and light were related.
In his work on static electricity, Faraday demonstrated that the charge only resided on the exterior of a charged conductor, and exterior charge had no influence on anything enclosed within a conductor. This is because the exterior charges redistribute such that the interior fields due to them cancel. This shielding effect is used in what is now known as a Faraday cage.
Faraday was an excellent experimentalist who conveyed his ideas in clear and simple language. However, his mathematical abilities did not extend as far as trigonometry or any but the simplest algebra. It was James Clerk Maxwell who took the work of Faraday, and others, and consolidated it with a set of equations that lie at the base of all modern theories of electromagnetic phenomena.
Michael Faraday meets Father Thames, from Punch (July 21, 1855)
Beyond his scientific research into areas such as chemistry, electricity, and magnetism at the Royal Institution, Faraday undertook numerous, and often time-consuming, service projects for private enterprise and the British government. This work included investigations of explosions in mines, being an expert witness in court, and the preparation of high-quality optical glass.
As a respected scientist in a nation with strong maritime interests, Faraday spent extensive amounts of time on projects such as the construction and operation of light houses and protecting the bottoms of ships from corrosion.
Faraday also was active in what would now be called environmental science, or engineering. He investigated industrial pollution at Swansea and was consulted on air pollution at the Royal Mint. In July of 1855, Faraday wrote a letter to The Times on the subject of the foul condition of the River Thames, which resulted in an oft-reprinted cartoon in Punch. (See also The Great Stink.)
Faraday assisted with planning and judging of exhibits for the Great Exhibition of 1851 in London. He also advised the National Gallery on the cleaning and protection of its art collection, and served on the National Gallery Site Commission in 1857.
Education was another area of service for Faraday. He lectured on the topic in 1854 at the Royal Institution, and in 1862 he appeared before a Public Schools Commission to give his views on education in Great Britain. Faraday also weighed in, negatively, on the public's fascination with table-turning, mesmerism, and seances, chastising both the public and the nation's educational system. See The Illustrated London News, July 1853, for Faraday's comments.
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In June of 1832, the University of Oxford granted Faraday a Doctor of Civil Law degree (honorary). During his lifetime, Faraday rejected a knighthood and twice refused to become President of the Royal Society.
In 1848, as a result of representations by the Prince Consort, Michael Faraday was awarded a grace and favour house in Hampton Court, Surrey free of all expenses or upkeep. This was the Master Mason's House, later called Faraday House, and now No.37 Hampton Court Road. In 1858 Faraday retired to live there. Twickenham Museum on Faraday and Faraday House, Accessed June 2006
Faraday died at his house at Hampton Court on August 25, 1867. He turned down burial in Westminster Abbey, but he has a memorial plaque there, near Isaac Newton's tomb. Faraday was interred in the Sandemanian plot in Highgate Cemetery.
Michael Faraday's grave at Highgate Cemetery
Faraday gave a successful series of lectures on the chemistry and physics of flames at the Royal Institution, entitled The Chemical History of a Candle. This was one of the earlier Christmas lectures for young people, which are still given each year. Between 1827 and 1860, Faraday gave the Christmas lecture a record nineteen times.
Faraday refused to participate in the production of chemical weapons for the Crimean War citing ethical reasons.
A statue of Faraday stands in Savoy Place, London, outside the Institution of Electrical Engineers.
A recently built hall of accommodation at Brunel University is named after Faraday.
A hall at Loughborough University was named after Faraday in 1960. Near the entrance to its dining hall is a bronze casting, which depicts the symbol of an electrical transformer, and inside there hangs a portrait, both in Faraday's honour.
Faraday's picture was printed on British £20 banknotes from 1991 until 2001. Bank of England, Withdrawn Notes
In the video game Chromehounds there is a ThermoVision Device named the Faraday.
The former UK Faraday Atmospheric Research Station in Antarctica was named after him.
Faraday was one of the then eight foreign members of the French Academy of Sciences.
Michael Faraday's signature
Faraday's books, with the exception of Chemical Manipulation, were collections of scientific papers or transcriptions of lectures. See page 220 of Hamilton's A Life of Discovery: Michael Faraday, Giant of the Scientific Revolution (2002) Since his death, Faraday's diary has been published, as have several large volumes of his letters and Faraday's journal from his travels with Davy in 1813 - 1815.
* Chemical Manipulation, Being Instructions to Students in Chemistry, John Murray, 1st ed. 1827, 2nd ed. 1830, 3rd ed. 1842
* Experimental Researches in Electricity, vols. i. and ii., Richard and John Edward Taylor, vols. i. and ii.. 1844 and 1847; vol. iii., 1844; vol. iii. Richard Taylor and William Francis, 1855
* Experimental Researches in Chemistry and Physics, Taylor and Francis, 1859
* A Course of Six Lectures on the Chemical History of a Candle, edited by W. Crookes, Griffin, Bohn & Co., 1861
* On the Various Forces in Nature, edited by W. Crookes, Chatto & Windus, 1873
* Faraday's Diary edited by T. Martin was published in eight volumes, 1932 - 1936
* Curiosity Perfectly Satisfyed: Faraday's Travels in Europe 1813-1815, edited by B. Bowers and L. Symons, Institution of Electrical Engineers, 1991
* The Correspondence of Michael Faraday, edited by F. A. J. L. James, INSPEC, Inc., volume 1, 1991; volume 2, 1993; volume 3, 1996; volume 4, 1999
* "Nothing is too wonderful to be true if it be consistent with the laws of nature, and in such things as these, experiment is the best test of such consistency." From the entry of 19 March 1849 in Faraday's Diary
* "Work. Finish. Publish." â his well-known advice to the young William Crookes
* "The important thing is to know how to take all things quietly."
* Regarding the hereafter, "Speculations? I have none. I am resting on certainties. I know whom I have believed and am persuaded that he is able to keep that which I have committed unto him against that day."
* "Next Sabbath day (the 22nd) I shall complete my 70th year. I can hardly think of myself so old."
*Above the doorways of the Pfahler Hall of Science at Ursinus College in Collegeville, Pennsylvania, there is a stone inscription of a quote attributed to Michael Faraday which reads "but still try, for who knows what is possible..." See
* "One day sir, you may tax it." Faraday's reply to William Gladstone, then British Minister of Finance, when asked of the practical value of electricity.
* "If you would cause your view ... to be acknowledged by scientific men; you would do a great service to science. If you would even get them to say yes or no to your conclusions it would help to clear the future progress. I believe some hesitate because they do not like their thoughts disturbed." From Life and Letters, 2:389.
* Faraday rotator
* Superconductivity
* Tyndall, John, Faraday as a Discoverer, (Longmans, 1st ed. 1868, 2nd ed. 1870).
* Bence Jones, Henry (1870). The Life and Letters of Faraday in 2 vols, Longmans.
* Gladstone, J. H. (1872). Michael Faraday, Macmillan.
* Thompson, Silvanus (1901, reprinted 2005). Michael Faraday, His Life and Work. Cassell and Company, London, 1901; reprint by Kessenger Publishing, Whitefish, MT. ISBN 1-4179-7036-7
* The British Electrical and Allied Manufacturers Association (1931). Faraday. R. & R. Clark, Ltd., Edinburgh, 1931.
* Williams, L. Pearce (1971), Faraday: A Biography, Simon and Schuster.
* Cantor, Geoffrey (1991). Michael Faraday, Sandemanian and Scientist, Macmillian, ISBN 0-333-55077
* Hamilton, James (2002). Faraday: The Life. London: Harper Collins. ISBN 0-00-716376-2
* Hamilton, James (2004). A Life of Discovery: Michael Faraday, Giant of the Scientific Revolution. New York: Random House. ISBN 1-4000-6016-8
* Agassi, Joseph (1971), Faraday as a Natural Philosopher, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
* Ames, Joseph Sweetman (Ed.), The discovery of induced electric currents Vol. 2. Memoirs, by Michael Faraday. New York, Cincinnati [etc.] American book company [c1900] LCCN 00005889
* Gooding, David (Ed.) (1985), Faraday Rediscovered: Essays on the Life and Work of Michael Faraday, 1791-1867, London/New York, Macmillan/Stockton
* Thomas, John Meurig (1991). Michael Faraday and the Royal Institution: The Genius of Man and Place Bristol: Hilger. ISBN 0-7503-0145-7
150px
* Biography at The Royal Institution of Great Britain
* Faraday as a Discoverer by John Tyndall, Project Gutenberg (downloads)
* The Christian Character of Michael Faraday
* Michael Faraday on the British twenty-pound banknote
* The Life and Discoveries of Michael Faraday by J. A. Crowther, London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1920
* "Faraday" at LoveToKnow 1911 Britannica Online Encyclopedia.
*
* (downloads)
* "Experimental Researches in Electricity" by Michael Faraday Original text with Biographical Introduction by Professor John Tyndall, 1914, Everyman edition.
* Video Podcast with Sir John Cadogan talking about Benzene since Faraday
* The letters of Faraday and Schoenbein 1836-1862. With notes, comments and references to contemporary letters (1899) full download PDF
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|
Michael_Faraday | What did Faraday invent that is used almost universally in science laboratories? | Bunsen burner | data/set4/a7 | Michael_Faraday
Michael Faraday, FRS (September 22, 1791 â August 25, 1867) was an English chemist and physicist (or natural philosopher, in the terminology of that time) who contributed to the fields of electromagnetism and electrochemistry.
Faraday studied the magnetic field around a conductor carrying a DC electric current, and established the basis for the magnetic field concept in physics. He discovered electromagnetic induction, diamagnetism and electrolysis. He established that magnetism could affect rays of light and that there was an underlying relationship between the two phenomena. Michael Faraday entry at the 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica hosted by LovetoKnow Retrieved January 2007. Institution of Engineering and Technology, London Archives, Michael Faraday His inventions of electromagnetic rotary devices formed the foundation of electric motor technology, and it was largely due to his efforts that electricity became viable for use in technology.
As a chemist, Faraday discovered benzene, investigated the clathrate hydrate of chlorine, invented an early form of the bunsen burner and the system of oxidation numbers, and popularized terminology such as anode, cathode, electrode, and ion.
Although Faraday received little formal education and knew little of higher mathematics, such as calculus, he was one of the most influential scientists in history. Some historians of science refer to him as the best experimentalist in the history of science. "best experimentalist in the history of science." Quoting Dr Peter Ford, from the University of Bathâs Department of Physics. Accessed January 2007. The SI unit of capacitance, the farad, is named after him, as is the Faraday constant, the charge on a mole of electrons (about 96,485 coulombs). Faraday's law of induction states that a magnetic field changing in time creates a proportional electromotive force.
Faraday was the first and foremost Fullerian Professor of Chemistry at the Royal Institution of Great Britain, a position to which he was appointed for life.
Michael Faraday from a photograph by John Watkins, British Library
Michael Faraday was born in Newington Butts, near present-day South London, England. His family was not well off. His father, James, was a member of the Sandemanian sect of Christianity. James Faraday had come to London ca 1790 from Outhgill in Westmorland, where he had been the village blacksmith. The young Michael Faraday, one of four children, having only the most basic of school educations, had to largely educate himself. "Michael Faraday." History of Science and Technology. Houghton Mifflin Company, 2004. Answers.com 4 June 2007. /ref> At fourteen he became apprenticed to a local bookbinder and bookseller George Riebau and, during his seven-year apprenticeship, he read many books, including Isaac Watts' The Improvement of the Mind, and he enthusiastically implemented the principles and suggestions contained therein. He developed an interest in science and specifically in electricity. In particular, he was inspired by the book Conversations in Chemistry by Jane Marcet.
At the age of twenty, in 1812, at the end of his apprenticeship, Faraday attended lectures by the eminent English chemist and physicist Humphry Davy of the Royal Institution and Royal Society, and John Tatum, founder of the City Philosophical Society. Many tickets for these lectures were given to Faraday by William Dance (one of the founders of the Royal Philharmonic Society). Afterwards, Faraday sent Davy a three hundred page book based on notes taken during the lectures. Davy's reply was immediate, kind, and favorable. When Davy damaged his eyesight in an accident with nitrogen trichloride, he decided to employ Faraday as a secretary. When John Payne, one of the Royal Institution's assistants, was fired, Sir Humphry Davy was asked to find a replacement. He appointed Faraday as Chemical Assistant at the Royal Institution on March 1.
In the class-based English society of the time, Faraday was not considered a gentleman. When Davy went on a long tour to the continent in 1813-5, his valet did not wish to go. Faraday was going as Davy's scientific assistant, and was asked to act as Davy's valet until a replacement could be found in Paris. Davy failed to find a replacement, and Faraday was forced to fill the role of valet as well as assistant throughout the trip. Davy's wife, Jane Apreece, refused to treat Faraday as an equal (making him travel outside the coach, eat with the servants, etc.) and generally made Faraday so miserable that he contemplated returning to England alone and giving up science altogether. The trip did, however, give him access to the European scientific elite and a host of stimulating ideas.
His sponsor and mentor was John 'Mad Jack' Fuller, who created the Fullerian Professorship of Chemistry at the Royal Institution.
Faraday was a devout Christian and a member of the small Sandemanian denomination, an offshoot of the Church of Scotland. He later served two terms as an elder in the group's church.
Faraday married Sarah Barnard (1800-1879) on June 2, 1821, although they would never have children. They met through attending the Sandemanian church.
He was elected a member of the Royal Society in 1824, appointed director of the laboratory in 1825; and in 1833 he was appointed Fullerian professor of chemistry in the institution for life, without the obligation to deliver lectures.
The title page of The Chemical History of a Candle (1861)
Faraday's earliest chemical work was as an assistant to Davy. He made a special study of chlorine, and discovered two new chlorides of carbon. He also made the first rough experiments on the diffusion of gases, a phenomenon first pointed out by John Dalton, the physical importance of which was more fully brought to light by Thomas Graham and Joseph Loschmidt. He succeeded in liquefying several gases; he investigated the alloys of steel, and produced several new kinds of glass intended for optical purposes. A specimen of one of these heavy glasses afterwards became historically important as the substance in which Faraday detected the rotation of the plane of polarisation of light when the glass was placed in a magnetic field, and also as the substance which was first repelled by the poles of the magnet. He also endeavoured, with some success, to make the general methods of chemistry, as distinguished from its results, the subject of special study and of popular exposition.
He invented an early form of what was to become the Bunsen burner, which is used almost universally in science laboratories as a convenient source of heat. See page 127 of Faraday's Chemical Manipulation, Being Instructions to Students in Chemistry (1827)
Faraday worked extensively in the field of chemistry, discovering chemical substances such as benzene (which he called bicarburet of hydrogen), inventing the system of oxidation numbers, and liquefying gases such as chlorine. In 1820 Faraday reported on the first syntheses of compounds made from carbon and chlorine, C 2 H 6 and C 2 H 4 , and published his results the following year. Faraday also determined the composition of the chlorine clathrate hydrate, which had been discovered by Humphry Davy in 1810.
Faraday also discovered the laws of electrolysis and popularized terminology such as anode, cathode, electrode, and ion, terms largely created by William Whewell.
Faraday was the first to report what later came to be called metallic nanoparticles. In 1847 he discovered that the optical properties of gold colloids differed from those of the corresponding bulk metal. This was probably the first reported observation of the effects of quantum size, and might be considered to be the birth of nanoscience.
Faraday's greatest work was probably with electricity and magnetism. The first experiment which he recorded was the construction of a voltaic pile with seven halfpence pieces, stacked together with seven disks of sheet zinc, and six pieces of paper moistened with salt water. With this pile he decomposed sulphate of magnesia (first letter to Abbott, July 12, 1812).
[[Image:Faraday photograph ii.jpg|thumb|200px|left|Michael Faraday holding a glass bar of the type he used in 1845 to show that magnetism can affect light. Detail of an engraving by Henry Adlard, based on an earlier photograph by Maull & Polyblank ca. 1857. See National Portrait Gallery, UK ]]
In 1821, soon after the Danish physicist and chemist, Hans Christian Ãrsted discovered the phenomenon of electromagnetism, Davy and British scientist William Hyde Wollaston tried but failed to design an electric motor. Faraday, having discussed the problem with the two men, went on to build two devices to produce what he called electromagnetic rotation: a continuous circular motion from the circular magnetic force around a wire and a wire extending into a pool of mercury with a magnet placed inside would rotate around the magnet if supplied with current from a chemical battery. The latter device is known as a homopolar motor. These experiments and inventions form the foundation of modern electromagnetic technology. Faraday published his results without acknowledging his debt to Wollaston and Davy, and the resulting controversy caused Faraday to withdraw from electromagnetic research for several years.
At this stage, there is also evidence to suggest that Davy may have been trying to slow Faradayâs rise as a scientist (or natural philosopher as it was known then). In 1825, for instance, Davy set him onto optical glass experiments, which progressed for six years with no great results. It was not until Davy's death, in 1829, that Faraday stopped these fruitless tasks and moved on to endeavors that were more worthwhile. Two years later, in 1831, he began his great series of experiments in which he discovered electromagnetic induction. Joseph Henry likely discovered self-induction a few months earlier and both may have been anticipated by the work of Francesco Zantedeschi in Italy in 1829 and 1830.
Faraday's breakthrough came when he wrapped two insulated coils of wire around a massive iron ring, bolted to a chair, and found that upon passing a current through one coil, a momentary current was induced in the other coil. This phenomenon is known as mutual induction. The iron ring-coil apparatus is still on display at the Royal Institution. In subsequent experiments he found that if he moved a magnet through a loop of wire, an electric current flowed in the wire. The current also flowed if the loop was moved over a stationary magnet. His demonstrations established that a changing magnetic field produces an electric field. This relation was mathematically modelled by Faraday's law, which subsequently became one of the four Maxwell equations. These in turn have evolved into the generalization known today as field theory.
Michael Faraday - statue in Savoy Place, London.
Sculptor John Henry Foley RA
Faraday later used the principle to construct the electric dynamo, the ancestor of modern power generators.
In 1839 he completed a series of experiments aimed at investigating the fundamental nature of electricity. Faraday used "static", batteries, and "animal electricity" to produce the phenomena of electrostatic attraction, electrolysis, magnetism, etc. He concluded that, contrary to scientific opinion of the time, the divisions between the various "kinds" of electricity were illusory. Faraday instead proposed that only a single "electricity" exists, and the changing values of quantity and intensity (voltage and charge) would produce different groups of phenomena.
Near the end of his career Faraday proposed that electromagnetic forces extended into the empty space around the conductor. This idea was rejected by his fellow scientists, and Faraday did not live to see this idea eventually accepted. Faraday's concept of lines of flux emanating from charged bodies and magnets provided a way to visualize electric and magnetic fields. That mental model was crucial to the successful development of electromechanical devices which dominated engineering and industry for the remainder of the 19th century.
In 1845, he discovered the phenomenon that he named diamagnetism, and what is now called the Faraday effect: The plane of polarization of linearly polarized light propagated through a material medium can be rotated by the application of an external magnetic field aligned in the propagation direction. He wrote in his notebook, "I have at last succeeded in illuminating a magnetic curve or line of force and in magnetising a ray of light". This established that magnetic force and light were related.
In his work on static electricity, Faraday demonstrated that the charge only resided on the exterior of a charged conductor, and exterior charge had no influence on anything enclosed within a conductor. This is because the exterior charges redistribute such that the interior fields due to them cancel. This shielding effect is used in what is now known as a Faraday cage.
Faraday was an excellent experimentalist who conveyed his ideas in clear and simple language. However, his mathematical abilities did not extend as far as trigonometry or any but the simplest algebra. It was James Clerk Maxwell who took the work of Faraday, and others, and consolidated it with a set of equations that lie at the base of all modern theories of electromagnetic phenomena.
Michael Faraday meets Father Thames, from Punch (July 21, 1855)
Beyond his scientific research into areas such as chemistry, electricity, and magnetism at the Royal Institution, Faraday undertook numerous, and often time-consuming, service projects for private enterprise and the British government. This work included investigations of explosions in mines, being an expert witness in court, and the preparation of high-quality optical glass.
As a respected scientist in a nation with strong maritime interests, Faraday spent extensive amounts of time on projects such as the construction and operation of light houses and protecting the bottoms of ships from corrosion.
Faraday also was active in what would now be called environmental science, or engineering. He investigated industrial pollution at Swansea and was consulted on air pollution at the Royal Mint. In July of 1855, Faraday wrote a letter to The Times on the subject of the foul condition of the River Thames, which resulted in an oft-reprinted cartoon in Punch. (See also The Great Stink.)
Faraday assisted with planning and judging of exhibits for the Great Exhibition of 1851 in London. He also advised the National Gallery on the cleaning and protection of its art collection, and served on the National Gallery Site Commission in 1857.
Education was another area of service for Faraday. He lectured on the topic in 1854 at the Royal Institution, and in 1862 he appeared before a Public Schools Commission to give his views on education in Great Britain. Faraday also weighed in, negatively, on the public's fascination with table-turning, mesmerism, and seances, chastising both the public and the nation's educational system. See The Illustrated London News, July 1853, for Faraday's comments.
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In June of 1832, the University of Oxford granted Faraday a Doctor of Civil Law degree (honorary). During his lifetime, Faraday rejected a knighthood and twice refused to become President of the Royal Society.
In 1848, as a result of representations by the Prince Consort, Michael Faraday was awarded a grace and favour house in Hampton Court, Surrey free of all expenses or upkeep. This was the Master Mason's House, later called Faraday House, and now No.37 Hampton Court Road. In 1858 Faraday retired to live there. Twickenham Museum on Faraday and Faraday House, Accessed June 2006
Faraday died at his house at Hampton Court on August 25, 1867. He turned down burial in Westminster Abbey, but he has a memorial plaque there, near Isaac Newton's tomb. Faraday was interred in the Sandemanian plot in Highgate Cemetery.
Michael Faraday's grave at Highgate Cemetery
Faraday gave a successful series of lectures on the chemistry and physics of flames at the Royal Institution, entitled The Chemical History of a Candle. This was one of the earlier Christmas lectures for young people, which are still given each year. Between 1827 and 1860, Faraday gave the Christmas lecture a record nineteen times.
Faraday refused to participate in the production of chemical weapons for the Crimean War citing ethical reasons.
A statue of Faraday stands in Savoy Place, London, outside the Institution of Electrical Engineers.
A recently built hall of accommodation at Brunel University is named after Faraday.
A hall at Loughborough University was named after Faraday in 1960. Near the entrance to its dining hall is a bronze casting, which depicts the symbol of an electrical transformer, and inside there hangs a portrait, both in Faraday's honour.
Faraday's picture was printed on British £20 banknotes from 1991 until 2001. Bank of England, Withdrawn Notes
In the video game Chromehounds there is a ThermoVision Device named the Faraday.
The former UK Faraday Atmospheric Research Station in Antarctica was named after him.
Faraday was one of the then eight foreign members of the French Academy of Sciences.
Michael Faraday's signature
Faraday's books, with the exception of Chemical Manipulation, were collections of scientific papers or transcriptions of lectures. See page 220 of Hamilton's A Life of Discovery: Michael Faraday, Giant of the Scientific Revolution (2002) Since his death, Faraday's diary has been published, as have several large volumes of his letters and Faraday's journal from his travels with Davy in 1813 - 1815.
* Chemical Manipulation, Being Instructions to Students in Chemistry, John Murray, 1st ed. 1827, 2nd ed. 1830, 3rd ed. 1842
* Experimental Researches in Electricity, vols. i. and ii., Richard and John Edward Taylor, vols. i. and ii.. 1844 and 1847; vol. iii., 1844; vol. iii. Richard Taylor and William Francis, 1855
* Experimental Researches in Chemistry and Physics, Taylor and Francis, 1859
* A Course of Six Lectures on the Chemical History of a Candle, edited by W. Crookes, Griffin, Bohn & Co., 1861
* On the Various Forces in Nature, edited by W. Crookes, Chatto & Windus, 1873
* Faraday's Diary edited by T. Martin was published in eight volumes, 1932 - 1936
* Curiosity Perfectly Satisfyed: Faraday's Travels in Europe 1813-1815, edited by B. Bowers and L. Symons, Institution of Electrical Engineers, 1991
* The Correspondence of Michael Faraday, edited by F. A. J. L. James, INSPEC, Inc., volume 1, 1991; volume 2, 1993; volume 3, 1996; volume 4, 1999
* "Nothing is too wonderful to be true if it be consistent with the laws of nature, and in such things as these, experiment is the best test of such consistency." From the entry of 19 March 1849 in Faraday's Diary
* "Work. Finish. Publish." â his well-known advice to the young William Crookes
* "The important thing is to know how to take all things quietly."
* Regarding the hereafter, "Speculations? I have none. I am resting on certainties. I know whom I have believed and am persuaded that he is able to keep that which I have committed unto him against that day."
* "Next Sabbath day (the 22nd) I shall complete my 70th year. I can hardly think of myself so old."
*Above the doorways of the Pfahler Hall of Science at Ursinus College in Collegeville, Pennsylvania, there is a stone inscription of a quote attributed to Michael Faraday which reads "but still try, for who knows what is possible..." See
* "One day sir, you may tax it." Faraday's reply to William Gladstone, then British Minister of Finance, when asked of the practical value of electricity.
* "If you would cause your view ... to be acknowledged by scientific men; you would do a great service to science. If you would even get them to say yes or no to your conclusions it would help to clear the future progress. I believe some hesitate because they do not like their thoughts disturbed." From Life and Letters, 2:389.
* Faraday rotator
* Superconductivity
* Tyndall, John, Faraday as a Discoverer, (Longmans, 1st ed. 1868, 2nd ed. 1870).
* Bence Jones, Henry (1870). The Life and Letters of Faraday in 2 vols, Longmans.
* Gladstone, J. H. (1872). Michael Faraday, Macmillan.
* Thompson, Silvanus (1901, reprinted 2005). Michael Faraday, His Life and Work. Cassell and Company, London, 1901; reprint by Kessenger Publishing, Whitefish, MT. ISBN 1-4179-7036-7
* The British Electrical and Allied Manufacturers Association (1931). Faraday. R. & R. Clark, Ltd., Edinburgh, 1931.
* Williams, L. Pearce (1971), Faraday: A Biography, Simon and Schuster.
* Cantor, Geoffrey (1991). Michael Faraday, Sandemanian and Scientist, Macmillian, ISBN 0-333-55077
* Hamilton, James (2002). Faraday: The Life. London: Harper Collins. ISBN 0-00-716376-2
* Hamilton, James (2004). A Life of Discovery: Michael Faraday, Giant of the Scientific Revolution. New York: Random House. ISBN 1-4000-6016-8
* Agassi, Joseph (1971), Faraday as a Natural Philosopher, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
* Ames, Joseph Sweetman (Ed.), The discovery of induced electric currents Vol. 2. Memoirs, by Michael Faraday. New York, Cincinnati [etc.] American book company [c1900] LCCN 00005889
* Gooding, David (Ed.) (1985), Faraday Rediscovered: Essays on the Life and Work of Michael Faraday, 1791-1867, London/New York, Macmillan/Stockton
* Thomas, John Meurig (1991). Michael Faraday and the Royal Institution: The Genius of Man and Place Bristol: Hilger. ISBN 0-7503-0145-7
150px
* Biography at The Royal Institution of Great Britain
* Faraday as a Discoverer by John Tyndall, Project Gutenberg (downloads)
* The Christian Character of Michael Faraday
* Michael Faraday on the British twenty-pound banknote
* The Life and Discoveries of Michael Faraday by J. A. Crowther, London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1920
* "Faraday" at LoveToKnow 1911 Britannica Online Encyclopedia.
*
* (downloads)
* "Experimental Researches in Electricity" by Michael Faraday Original text with Biographical Introduction by Professor John Tyndall, 1914, Everyman edition.
* Video Podcast with Sir John Cadogan talking about Benzene since Faraday
* The letters of Faraday and Schoenbein 1836-1862. With notes, comments and references to contemporary letters (1899) full download PDF
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mole (unit)
electron
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1791
Newington Butts
England
August 25
1867
Hampton Court
London
England
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Michael_Faraday | Does the production of chemical weapons raise an ethical issue? | yes | data/set4/a7 | Michael_Faraday
Michael Faraday, FRS (September 22, 1791 â August 25, 1867) was an English chemist and physicist (or natural philosopher, in the terminology of that time) who contributed to the fields of electromagnetism and electrochemistry.
Faraday studied the magnetic field around a conductor carrying a DC electric current, and established the basis for the magnetic field concept in physics. He discovered electromagnetic induction, diamagnetism and electrolysis. He established that magnetism could affect rays of light and that there was an underlying relationship between the two phenomena. Michael Faraday entry at the 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica hosted by LovetoKnow Retrieved January 2007. Institution of Engineering and Technology, London Archives, Michael Faraday His inventions of electromagnetic rotary devices formed the foundation of electric motor technology, and it was largely due to his efforts that electricity became viable for use in technology.
As a chemist, Faraday discovered benzene, investigated the clathrate hydrate of chlorine, invented an early form of the bunsen burner and the system of oxidation numbers, and popularized terminology such as anode, cathode, electrode, and ion.
Although Faraday received little formal education and knew little of higher mathematics, such as calculus, he was one of the most influential scientists in history. Some historians of science refer to him as the best experimentalist in the history of science. "best experimentalist in the history of science." Quoting Dr Peter Ford, from the University of Bathâs Department of Physics. Accessed January 2007. The SI unit of capacitance, the farad, is named after him, as is the Faraday constant, the charge on a mole of electrons (about 96,485 coulombs). Faraday's law of induction states that a magnetic field changing in time creates a proportional electromotive force.
Faraday was the first and foremost Fullerian Professor of Chemistry at the Royal Institution of Great Britain, a position to which he was appointed for life.
Michael Faraday from a photograph by John Watkins, British Library
Michael Faraday was born in Newington Butts, near present-day South London, England. His family was not well off. His father, James, was a member of the Sandemanian sect of Christianity. James Faraday had come to London ca 1790 from Outhgill in Westmorland, where he had been the village blacksmith. The young Michael Faraday, one of four children, having only the most basic of school educations, had to largely educate himself. "Michael Faraday." History of Science and Technology. Houghton Mifflin Company, 2004. Answers.com 4 June 2007. /ref> At fourteen he became apprenticed to a local bookbinder and bookseller George Riebau and, during his seven-year apprenticeship, he read many books, including Isaac Watts' The Improvement of the Mind, and he enthusiastically implemented the principles and suggestions contained therein. He developed an interest in science and specifically in electricity. In particular, he was inspired by the book Conversations in Chemistry by Jane Marcet.
At the age of twenty, in 1812, at the end of his apprenticeship, Faraday attended lectures by the eminent English chemist and physicist Humphry Davy of the Royal Institution and Royal Society, and John Tatum, founder of the City Philosophical Society. Many tickets for these lectures were given to Faraday by William Dance (one of the founders of the Royal Philharmonic Society). Afterwards, Faraday sent Davy a three hundred page book based on notes taken during the lectures. Davy's reply was immediate, kind, and favorable. When Davy damaged his eyesight in an accident with nitrogen trichloride, he decided to employ Faraday as a secretary. When John Payne, one of the Royal Institution's assistants, was fired, Sir Humphry Davy was asked to find a replacement. He appointed Faraday as Chemical Assistant at the Royal Institution on March 1.
In the class-based English society of the time, Faraday was not considered a gentleman. When Davy went on a long tour to the continent in 1813-5, his valet did not wish to go. Faraday was going as Davy's scientific assistant, and was asked to act as Davy's valet until a replacement could be found in Paris. Davy failed to find a replacement, and Faraday was forced to fill the role of valet as well as assistant throughout the trip. Davy's wife, Jane Apreece, refused to treat Faraday as an equal (making him travel outside the coach, eat with the servants, etc.) and generally made Faraday so miserable that he contemplated returning to England alone and giving up science altogether. The trip did, however, give him access to the European scientific elite and a host of stimulating ideas.
His sponsor and mentor was John 'Mad Jack' Fuller, who created the Fullerian Professorship of Chemistry at the Royal Institution.
Faraday was a devout Christian and a member of the small Sandemanian denomination, an offshoot of the Church of Scotland. He later served two terms as an elder in the group's church.
Faraday married Sarah Barnard (1800-1879) on June 2, 1821, although they would never have children. They met through attending the Sandemanian church.
He was elected a member of the Royal Society in 1824, appointed director of the laboratory in 1825; and in 1833 he was appointed Fullerian professor of chemistry in the institution for life, without the obligation to deliver lectures.
The title page of The Chemical History of a Candle (1861)
Faraday's earliest chemical work was as an assistant to Davy. He made a special study of chlorine, and discovered two new chlorides of carbon. He also made the first rough experiments on the diffusion of gases, a phenomenon first pointed out by John Dalton, the physical importance of which was more fully brought to light by Thomas Graham and Joseph Loschmidt. He succeeded in liquefying several gases; he investigated the alloys of steel, and produced several new kinds of glass intended for optical purposes. A specimen of one of these heavy glasses afterwards became historically important as the substance in which Faraday detected the rotation of the plane of polarisation of light when the glass was placed in a magnetic field, and also as the substance which was first repelled by the poles of the magnet. He also endeavoured, with some success, to make the general methods of chemistry, as distinguished from its results, the subject of special study and of popular exposition.
He invented an early form of what was to become the Bunsen burner, which is used almost universally in science laboratories as a convenient source of heat. See page 127 of Faraday's Chemical Manipulation, Being Instructions to Students in Chemistry (1827)
Faraday worked extensively in the field of chemistry, discovering chemical substances such as benzene (which he called bicarburet of hydrogen), inventing the system of oxidation numbers, and liquefying gases such as chlorine. In 1820 Faraday reported on the first syntheses of compounds made from carbon and chlorine, C 2 H 6 and C 2 H 4 , and published his results the following year. Faraday also determined the composition of the chlorine clathrate hydrate, which had been discovered by Humphry Davy in 1810.
Faraday also discovered the laws of electrolysis and popularized terminology such as anode, cathode, electrode, and ion, terms largely created by William Whewell.
Faraday was the first to report what later came to be called metallic nanoparticles. In 1847 he discovered that the optical properties of gold colloids differed from those of the corresponding bulk metal. This was probably the first reported observation of the effects of quantum size, and might be considered to be the birth of nanoscience.
Faraday's greatest work was probably with electricity and magnetism. The first experiment which he recorded was the construction of a voltaic pile with seven halfpence pieces, stacked together with seven disks of sheet zinc, and six pieces of paper moistened with salt water. With this pile he decomposed sulphate of magnesia (first letter to Abbott, July 12, 1812).
[[Image:Faraday photograph ii.jpg|thumb|200px|left|Michael Faraday holding a glass bar of the type he used in 1845 to show that magnetism can affect light. Detail of an engraving by Henry Adlard, based on an earlier photograph by Maull & Polyblank ca. 1857. See National Portrait Gallery, UK ]]
In 1821, soon after the Danish physicist and chemist, Hans Christian Ãrsted discovered the phenomenon of electromagnetism, Davy and British scientist William Hyde Wollaston tried but failed to design an electric motor. Faraday, having discussed the problem with the two men, went on to build two devices to produce what he called electromagnetic rotation: a continuous circular motion from the circular magnetic force around a wire and a wire extending into a pool of mercury with a magnet placed inside would rotate around the magnet if supplied with current from a chemical battery. The latter device is known as a homopolar motor. These experiments and inventions form the foundation of modern electromagnetic technology. Faraday published his results without acknowledging his debt to Wollaston and Davy, and the resulting controversy caused Faraday to withdraw from electromagnetic research for several years.
At this stage, there is also evidence to suggest that Davy may have been trying to slow Faradayâs rise as a scientist (or natural philosopher as it was known then). In 1825, for instance, Davy set him onto optical glass experiments, which progressed for six years with no great results. It was not until Davy's death, in 1829, that Faraday stopped these fruitless tasks and moved on to endeavors that were more worthwhile. Two years later, in 1831, he began his great series of experiments in which he discovered electromagnetic induction. Joseph Henry likely discovered self-induction a few months earlier and both may have been anticipated by the work of Francesco Zantedeschi in Italy in 1829 and 1830.
Faraday's breakthrough came when he wrapped two insulated coils of wire around a massive iron ring, bolted to a chair, and found that upon passing a current through one coil, a momentary current was induced in the other coil. This phenomenon is known as mutual induction. The iron ring-coil apparatus is still on display at the Royal Institution. In subsequent experiments he found that if he moved a magnet through a loop of wire, an electric current flowed in the wire. The current also flowed if the loop was moved over a stationary magnet. His demonstrations established that a changing magnetic field produces an electric field. This relation was mathematically modelled by Faraday's law, which subsequently became one of the four Maxwell equations. These in turn have evolved into the generalization known today as field theory.
Michael Faraday - statue in Savoy Place, London.
Sculptor John Henry Foley RA
Faraday later used the principle to construct the electric dynamo, the ancestor of modern power generators.
In 1839 he completed a series of experiments aimed at investigating the fundamental nature of electricity. Faraday used "static", batteries, and "animal electricity" to produce the phenomena of electrostatic attraction, electrolysis, magnetism, etc. He concluded that, contrary to scientific opinion of the time, the divisions between the various "kinds" of electricity were illusory. Faraday instead proposed that only a single "electricity" exists, and the changing values of quantity and intensity (voltage and charge) would produce different groups of phenomena.
Near the end of his career Faraday proposed that electromagnetic forces extended into the empty space around the conductor. This idea was rejected by his fellow scientists, and Faraday did not live to see this idea eventually accepted. Faraday's concept of lines of flux emanating from charged bodies and magnets provided a way to visualize electric and magnetic fields. That mental model was crucial to the successful development of electromechanical devices which dominated engineering and industry for the remainder of the 19th century.
In 1845, he discovered the phenomenon that he named diamagnetism, and what is now called the Faraday effect: The plane of polarization of linearly polarized light propagated through a material medium can be rotated by the application of an external magnetic field aligned in the propagation direction. He wrote in his notebook, "I have at last succeeded in illuminating a magnetic curve or line of force and in magnetising a ray of light". This established that magnetic force and light were related.
In his work on static electricity, Faraday demonstrated that the charge only resided on the exterior of a charged conductor, and exterior charge had no influence on anything enclosed within a conductor. This is because the exterior charges redistribute such that the interior fields due to them cancel. This shielding effect is used in what is now known as a Faraday cage.
Faraday was an excellent experimentalist who conveyed his ideas in clear and simple language. However, his mathematical abilities did not extend as far as trigonometry or any but the simplest algebra. It was James Clerk Maxwell who took the work of Faraday, and others, and consolidated it with a set of equations that lie at the base of all modern theories of electromagnetic phenomena.
Michael Faraday meets Father Thames, from Punch (July 21, 1855)
Beyond his scientific research into areas such as chemistry, electricity, and magnetism at the Royal Institution, Faraday undertook numerous, and often time-consuming, service projects for private enterprise and the British government. This work included investigations of explosions in mines, being an expert witness in court, and the preparation of high-quality optical glass.
As a respected scientist in a nation with strong maritime interests, Faraday spent extensive amounts of time on projects such as the construction and operation of light houses and protecting the bottoms of ships from corrosion.
Faraday also was active in what would now be called environmental science, or engineering. He investigated industrial pollution at Swansea and was consulted on air pollution at the Royal Mint. In July of 1855, Faraday wrote a letter to The Times on the subject of the foul condition of the River Thames, which resulted in an oft-reprinted cartoon in Punch. (See also The Great Stink.)
Faraday assisted with planning and judging of exhibits for the Great Exhibition of 1851 in London. He also advised the National Gallery on the cleaning and protection of its art collection, and served on the National Gallery Site Commission in 1857.
Education was another area of service for Faraday. He lectured on the topic in 1854 at the Royal Institution, and in 1862 he appeared before a Public Schools Commission to give his views on education in Great Britain. Faraday also weighed in, negatively, on the public's fascination with table-turning, mesmerism, and seances, chastising both the public and the nation's educational system. See The Illustrated London News, July 1853, for Faraday's comments.
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In June of 1832, the University of Oxford granted Faraday a Doctor of Civil Law degree (honorary). During his lifetime, Faraday rejected a knighthood and twice refused to become President of the Royal Society.
In 1848, as a result of representations by the Prince Consort, Michael Faraday was awarded a grace and favour house in Hampton Court, Surrey free of all expenses or upkeep. This was the Master Mason's House, later called Faraday House, and now No.37 Hampton Court Road. In 1858 Faraday retired to live there. Twickenham Museum on Faraday and Faraday House, Accessed June 2006
Faraday died at his house at Hampton Court on August 25, 1867. He turned down burial in Westminster Abbey, but he has a memorial plaque there, near Isaac Newton's tomb. Faraday was interred in the Sandemanian plot in Highgate Cemetery.
Michael Faraday's grave at Highgate Cemetery
Faraday gave a successful series of lectures on the chemistry and physics of flames at the Royal Institution, entitled The Chemical History of a Candle. This was one of the earlier Christmas lectures for young people, which are still given each year. Between 1827 and 1860, Faraday gave the Christmas lecture a record nineteen times.
Faraday refused to participate in the production of chemical weapons for the Crimean War citing ethical reasons.
A statue of Faraday stands in Savoy Place, London, outside the Institution of Electrical Engineers.
A recently built hall of accommodation at Brunel University is named after Faraday.
A hall at Loughborough University was named after Faraday in 1960. Near the entrance to its dining hall is a bronze casting, which depicts the symbol of an electrical transformer, and inside there hangs a portrait, both in Faraday's honour.
Faraday's picture was printed on British £20 banknotes from 1991 until 2001. Bank of England, Withdrawn Notes
In the video game Chromehounds there is a ThermoVision Device named the Faraday.
The former UK Faraday Atmospheric Research Station in Antarctica was named after him.
Faraday was one of the then eight foreign members of the French Academy of Sciences.
Michael Faraday's signature
Faraday's books, with the exception of Chemical Manipulation, were collections of scientific papers or transcriptions of lectures. See page 220 of Hamilton's A Life of Discovery: Michael Faraday, Giant of the Scientific Revolution (2002) Since his death, Faraday's diary has been published, as have several large volumes of his letters and Faraday's journal from his travels with Davy in 1813 - 1815.
* Chemical Manipulation, Being Instructions to Students in Chemistry, John Murray, 1st ed. 1827, 2nd ed. 1830, 3rd ed. 1842
* Experimental Researches in Electricity, vols. i. and ii., Richard and John Edward Taylor, vols. i. and ii.. 1844 and 1847; vol. iii., 1844; vol. iii. Richard Taylor and William Francis, 1855
* Experimental Researches in Chemistry and Physics, Taylor and Francis, 1859
* A Course of Six Lectures on the Chemical History of a Candle, edited by W. Crookes, Griffin, Bohn & Co., 1861
* On the Various Forces in Nature, edited by W. Crookes, Chatto & Windus, 1873
* Faraday's Diary edited by T. Martin was published in eight volumes, 1932 - 1936
* Curiosity Perfectly Satisfyed: Faraday's Travels in Europe 1813-1815, edited by B. Bowers and L. Symons, Institution of Electrical Engineers, 1991
* The Correspondence of Michael Faraday, edited by F. A. J. L. James, INSPEC, Inc., volume 1, 1991; volume 2, 1993; volume 3, 1996; volume 4, 1999
* "Nothing is too wonderful to be true if it be consistent with the laws of nature, and in such things as these, experiment is the best test of such consistency." From the entry of 19 March 1849 in Faraday's Diary
* "Work. Finish. Publish." â his well-known advice to the young William Crookes
* "The important thing is to know how to take all things quietly."
* Regarding the hereafter, "Speculations? I have none. I am resting on certainties. I know whom I have believed and am persuaded that he is able to keep that which I have committed unto him against that day."
* "Next Sabbath day (the 22nd) I shall complete my 70th year. I can hardly think of myself so old."
*Above the doorways of the Pfahler Hall of Science at Ursinus College in Collegeville, Pennsylvania, there is a stone inscription of a quote attributed to Michael Faraday which reads "but still try, for who knows what is possible..." See
* "One day sir, you may tax it." Faraday's reply to William Gladstone, then British Minister of Finance, when asked of the practical value of electricity.
* "If you would cause your view ... to be acknowledged by scientific men; you would do a great service to science. If you would even get them to say yes or no to your conclusions it would help to clear the future progress. I believe some hesitate because they do not like their thoughts disturbed." From Life and Letters, 2:389.
* Faraday rotator
* Superconductivity
* Tyndall, John, Faraday as a Discoverer, (Longmans, 1st ed. 1868, 2nd ed. 1870).
* Bence Jones, Henry (1870). The Life and Letters of Faraday in 2 vols, Longmans.
* Gladstone, J. H. (1872). Michael Faraday, Macmillan.
* Thompson, Silvanus (1901, reprinted 2005). Michael Faraday, His Life and Work. Cassell and Company, London, 1901; reprint by Kessenger Publishing, Whitefish, MT. ISBN 1-4179-7036-7
* The British Electrical and Allied Manufacturers Association (1931). Faraday. R. & R. Clark, Ltd., Edinburgh, 1931.
* Williams, L. Pearce (1971), Faraday: A Biography, Simon and Schuster.
* Cantor, Geoffrey (1991). Michael Faraday, Sandemanian and Scientist, Macmillian, ISBN 0-333-55077
* Hamilton, James (2002). Faraday: The Life. London: Harper Collins. ISBN 0-00-716376-2
* Hamilton, James (2004). A Life of Discovery: Michael Faraday, Giant of the Scientific Revolution. New York: Random House. ISBN 1-4000-6016-8
* Agassi, Joseph (1971), Faraday as a Natural Philosopher, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
* Ames, Joseph Sweetman (Ed.), The discovery of induced electric currents Vol. 2. Memoirs, by Michael Faraday. New York, Cincinnati [etc.] American book company [c1900] LCCN 00005889
* Gooding, David (Ed.) (1985), Faraday Rediscovered: Essays on the Life and Work of Michael Faraday, 1791-1867, London/New York, Macmillan/Stockton
* Thomas, John Meurig (1991). Michael Faraday and the Royal Institution: The Genius of Man and Place Bristol: Hilger. ISBN 0-7503-0145-7
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* Biography at The Royal Institution of Great Britain
* Faraday as a Discoverer by John Tyndall, Project Gutenberg (downloads)
* The Christian Character of Michael Faraday
* Michael Faraday on the British twenty-pound banknote
* The Life and Discoveries of Michael Faraday by J. A. Crowther, London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1920
* "Faraday" at LoveToKnow 1911 Britannica Online Encyclopedia.
*
* (downloads)
* "Experimental Researches in Electricity" by Michael Faraday Original text with Biographical Introduction by Professor John Tyndall, 1914, Everyman edition.
* Video Podcast with Sir John Cadogan talking about Benzene since Faraday
* The letters of Faraday and Schoenbein 1836-1862. With notes, comments and references to contemporary letters (1899) full download PDF
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Michael_Faraday | What was the Faraday effect first called? | diamagnetism | data/set4/a7 | Michael_Faraday
Michael Faraday, FRS (September 22, 1791 â August 25, 1867) was an English chemist and physicist (or natural philosopher, in the terminology of that time) who contributed to the fields of electromagnetism and electrochemistry.
Faraday studied the magnetic field around a conductor carrying a DC electric current, and established the basis for the magnetic field concept in physics. He discovered electromagnetic induction, diamagnetism and electrolysis. He established that magnetism could affect rays of light and that there was an underlying relationship between the two phenomena. Michael Faraday entry at the 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica hosted by LovetoKnow Retrieved January 2007. Institution of Engineering and Technology, London Archives, Michael Faraday His inventions of electromagnetic rotary devices formed the foundation of electric motor technology, and it was largely due to his efforts that electricity became viable for use in technology.
As a chemist, Faraday discovered benzene, investigated the clathrate hydrate of chlorine, invented an early form of the bunsen burner and the system of oxidation numbers, and popularized terminology such as anode, cathode, electrode, and ion.
Although Faraday received little formal education and knew little of higher mathematics, such as calculus, he was one of the most influential scientists in history. Some historians of science refer to him as the best experimentalist in the history of science. "best experimentalist in the history of science." Quoting Dr Peter Ford, from the University of Bathâs Department of Physics. Accessed January 2007. The SI unit of capacitance, the farad, is named after him, as is the Faraday constant, the charge on a mole of electrons (about 96,485 coulombs). Faraday's law of induction states that a magnetic field changing in time creates a proportional electromotive force.
Faraday was the first and foremost Fullerian Professor of Chemistry at the Royal Institution of Great Britain, a position to which he was appointed for life.
Michael Faraday from a photograph by John Watkins, British Library
Michael Faraday was born in Newington Butts, near present-day South London, England. His family was not well off. His father, James, was a member of the Sandemanian sect of Christianity. James Faraday had come to London ca 1790 from Outhgill in Westmorland, where he had been the village blacksmith. The young Michael Faraday, one of four children, having only the most basic of school educations, had to largely educate himself. "Michael Faraday." History of Science and Technology. Houghton Mifflin Company, 2004. Answers.com 4 June 2007. /ref> At fourteen he became apprenticed to a local bookbinder and bookseller George Riebau and, during his seven-year apprenticeship, he read many books, including Isaac Watts' The Improvement of the Mind, and he enthusiastically implemented the principles and suggestions contained therein. He developed an interest in science and specifically in electricity. In particular, he was inspired by the book Conversations in Chemistry by Jane Marcet.
At the age of twenty, in 1812, at the end of his apprenticeship, Faraday attended lectures by the eminent English chemist and physicist Humphry Davy of the Royal Institution and Royal Society, and John Tatum, founder of the City Philosophical Society. Many tickets for these lectures were given to Faraday by William Dance (one of the founders of the Royal Philharmonic Society). Afterwards, Faraday sent Davy a three hundred page book based on notes taken during the lectures. Davy's reply was immediate, kind, and favorable. When Davy damaged his eyesight in an accident with nitrogen trichloride, he decided to employ Faraday as a secretary. When John Payne, one of the Royal Institution's assistants, was fired, Sir Humphry Davy was asked to find a replacement. He appointed Faraday as Chemical Assistant at the Royal Institution on March 1.
In the class-based English society of the time, Faraday was not considered a gentleman. When Davy went on a long tour to the continent in 1813-5, his valet did not wish to go. Faraday was going as Davy's scientific assistant, and was asked to act as Davy's valet until a replacement could be found in Paris. Davy failed to find a replacement, and Faraday was forced to fill the role of valet as well as assistant throughout the trip. Davy's wife, Jane Apreece, refused to treat Faraday as an equal (making him travel outside the coach, eat with the servants, etc.) and generally made Faraday so miserable that he contemplated returning to England alone and giving up science altogether. The trip did, however, give him access to the European scientific elite and a host of stimulating ideas.
His sponsor and mentor was John 'Mad Jack' Fuller, who created the Fullerian Professorship of Chemistry at the Royal Institution.
Faraday was a devout Christian and a member of the small Sandemanian denomination, an offshoot of the Church of Scotland. He later served two terms as an elder in the group's church.
Faraday married Sarah Barnard (1800-1879) on June 2, 1821, although they would never have children. They met through attending the Sandemanian church.
He was elected a member of the Royal Society in 1824, appointed director of the laboratory in 1825; and in 1833 he was appointed Fullerian professor of chemistry in the institution for life, without the obligation to deliver lectures.
The title page of The Chemical History of a Candle (1861)
Faraday's earliest chemical work was as an assistant to Davy. He made a special study of chlorine, and discovered two new chlorides of carbon. He also made the first rough experiments on the diffusion of gases, a phenomenon first pointed out by John Dalton, the physical importance of which was more fully brought to light by Thomas Graham and Joseph Loschmidt. He succeeded in liquefying several gases; he investigated the alloys of steel, and produced several new kinds of glass intended for optical purposes. A specimen of one of these heavy glasses afterwards became historically important as the substance in which Faraday detected the rotation of the plane of polarisation of light when the glass was placed in a magnetic field, and also as the substance which was first repelled by the poles of the magnet. He also endeavoured, with some success, to make the general methods of chemistry, as distinguished from its results, the subject of special study and of popular exposition.
He invented an early form of what was to become the Bunsen burner, which is used almost universally in science laboratories as a convenient source of heat. See page 127 of Faraday's Chemical Manipulation, Being Instructions to Students in Chemistry (1827)
Faraday worked extensively in the field of chemistry, discovering chemical substances such as benzene (which he called bicarburet of hydrogen), inventing the system of oxidation numbers, and liquefying gases such as chlorine. In 1820 Faraday reported on the first syntheses of compounds made from carbon and chlorine, C 2 H 6 and C 2 H 4 , and published his results the following year. Faraday also determined the composition of the chlorine clathrate hydrate, which had been discovered by Humphry Davy in 1810.
Faraday also discovered the laws of electrolysis and popularized terminology such as anode, cathode, electrode, and ion, terms largely created by William Whewell.
Faraday was the first to report what later came to be called metallic nanoparticles. In 1847 he discovered that the optical properties of gold colloids differed from those of the corresponding bulk metal. This was probably the first reported observation of the effects of quantum size, and might be considered to be the birth of nanoscience.
Faraday's greatest work was probably with electricity and magnetism. The first experiment which he recorded was the construction of a voltaic pile with seven halfpence pieces, stacked together with seven disks of sheet zinc, and six pieces of paper moistened with salt water. With this pile he decomposed sulphate of magnesia (first letter to Abbott, July 12, 1812).
[[Image:Faraday photograph ii.jpg|thumb|200px|left|Michael Faraday holding a glass bar of the type he used in 1845 to show that magnetism can affect light. Detail of an engraving by Henry Adlard, based on an earlier photograph by Maull & Polyblank ca. 1857. See National Portrait Gallery, UK ]]
In 1821, soon after the Danish physicist and chemist, Hans Christian Ãrsted discovered the phenomenon of electromagnetism, Davy and British scientist William Hyde Wollaston tried but failed to design an electric motor. Faraday, having discussed the problem with the two men, went on to build two devices to produce what he called electromagnetic rotation: a continuous circular motion from the circular magnetic force around a wire and a wire extending into a pool of mercury with a magnet placed inside would rotate around the magnet if supplied with current from a chemical battery. The latter device is known as a homopolar motor. These experiments and inventions form the foundation of modern electromagnetic technology. Faraday published his results without acknowledging his debt to Wollaston and Davy, and the resulting controversy caused Faraday to withdraw from electromagnetic research for several years.
At this stage, there is also evidence to suggest that Davy may have been trying to slow Faradayâs rise as a scientist (or natural philosopher as it was known then). In 1825, for instance, Davy set him onto optical glass experiments, which progressed for six years with no great results. It was not until Davy's death, in 1829, that Faraday stopped these fruitless tasks and moved on to endeavors that were more worthwhile. Two years later, in 1831, he began his great series of experiments in which he discovered electromagnetic induction. Joseph Henry likely discovered self-induction a few months earlier and both may have been anticipated by the work of Francesco Zantedeschi in Italy in 1829 and 1830.
Faraday's breakthrough came when he wrapped two insulated coils of wire around a massive iron ring, bolted to a chair, and found that upon passing a current through one coil, a momentary current was induced in the other coil. This phenomenon is known as mutual induction. The iron ring-coil apparatus is still on display at the Royal Institution. In subsequent experiments he found that if he moved a magnet through a loop of wire, an electric current flowed in the wire. The current also flowed if the loop was moved over a stationary magnet. His demonstrations established that a changing magnetic field produces an electric field. This relation was mathematically modelled by Faraday's law, which subsequently became one of the four Maxwell equations. These in turn have evolved into the generalization known today as field theory.
Michael Faraday - statue in Savoy Place, London.
Sculptor John Henry Foley RA
Faraday later used the principle to construct the electric dynamo, the ancestor of modern power generators.
In 1839 he completed a series of experiments aimed at investigating the fundamental nature of electricity. Faraday used "static", batteries, and "animal electricity" to produce the phenomena of electrostatic attraction, electrolysis, magnetism, etc. He concluded that, contrary to scientific opinion of the time, the divisions between the various "kinds" of electricity were illusory. Faraday instead proposed that only a single "electricity" exists, and the changing values of quantity and intensity (voltage and charge) would produce different groups of phenomena.
Near the end of his career Faraday proposed that electromagnetic forces extended into the empty space around the conductor. This idea was rejected by his fellow scientists, and Faraday did not live to see this idea eventually accepted. Faraday's concept of lines of flux emanating from charged bodies and magnets provided a way to visualize electric and magnetic fields. That mental model was crucial to the successful development of electromechanical devices which dominated engineering and industry for the remainder of the 19th century.
In 1845, he discovered the phenomenon that he named diamagnetism, and what is now called the Faraday effect: The plane of polarization of linearly polarized light propagated through a material medium can be rotated by the application of an external magnetic field aligned in the propagation direction. He wrote in his notebook, "I have at last succeeded in illuminating a magnetic curve or line of force and in magnetising a ray of light". This established that magnetic force and light were related.
In his work on static electricity, Faraday demonstrated that the charge only resided on the exterior of a charged conductor, and exterior charge had no influence on anything enclosed within a conductor. This is because the exterior charges redistribute such that the interior fields due to them cancel. This shielding effect is used in what is now known as a Faraday cage.
Faraday was an excellent experimentalist who conveyed his ideas in clear and simple language. However, his mathematical abilities did not extend as far as trigonometry or any but the simplest algebra. It was James Clerk Maxwell who took the work of Faraday, and others, and consolidated it with a set of equations that lie at the base of all modern theories of electromagnetic phenomena.
Michael Faraday meets Father Thames, from Punch (July 21, 1855)
Beyond his scientific research into areas such as chemistry, electricity, and magnetism at the Royal Institution, Faraday undertook numerous, and often time-consuming, service projects for private enterprise and the British government. This work included investigations of explosions in mines, being an expert witness in court, and the preparation of high-quality optical glass.
As a respected scientist in a nation with strong maritime interests, Faraday spent extensive amounts of time on projects such as the construction and operation of light houses and protecting the bottoms of ships from corrosion.
Faraday also was active in what would now be called environmental science, or engineering. He investigated industrial pollution at Swansea and was consulted on air pollution at the Royal Mint. In July of 1855, Faraday wrote a letter to The Times on the subject of the foul condition of the River Thames, which resulted in an oft-reprinted cartoon in Punch. (See also The Great Stink.)
Faraday assisted with planning and judging of exhibits for the Great Exhibition of 1851 in London. He also advised the National Gallery on the cleaning and protection of its art collection, and served on the National Gallery Site Commission in 1857.
Education was another area of service for Faraday. He lectured on the topic in 1854 at the Royal Institution, and in 1862 he appeared before a Public Schools Commission to give his views on education in Great Britain. Faraday also weighed in, negatively, on the public's fascination with table-turning, mesmerism, and seances, chastising both the public and the nation's educational system. See The Illustrated London News, July 1853, for Faraday's comments.
125px
In June of 1832, the University of Oxford granted Faraday a Doctor of Civil Law degree (honorary). During his lifetime, Faraday rejected a knighthood and twice refused to become President of the Royal Society.
In 1848, as a result of representations by the Prince Consort, Michael Faraday was awarded a grace and favour house in Hampton Court, Surrey free of all expenses or upkeep. This was the Master Mason's House, later called Faraday House, and now No.37 Hampton Court Road. In 1858 Faraday retired to live there. Twickenham Museum on Faraday and Faraday House, Accessed June 2006
Faraday died at his house at Hampton Court on August 25, 1867. He turned down burial in Westminster Abbey, but he has a memorial plaque there, near Isaac Newton's tomb. Faraday was interred in the Sandemanian plot in Highgate Cemetery.
Michael Faraday's grave at Highgate Cemetery
Faraday gave a successful series of lectures on the chemistry and physics of flames at the Royal Institution, entitled The Chemical History of a Candle. This was one of the earlier Christmas lectures for young people, which are still given each year. Between 1827 and 1860, Faraday gave the Christmas lecture a record nineteen times.
Faraday refused to participate in the production of chemical weapons for the Crimean War citing ethical reasons.
A statue of Faraday stands in Savoy Place, London, outside the Institution of Electrical Engineers.
A recently built hall of accommodation at Brunel University is named after Faraday.
A hall at Loughborough University was named after Faraday in 1960. Near the entrance to its dining hall is a bronze casting, which depicts the symbol of an electrical transformer, and inside there hangs a portrait, both in Faraday's honour.
Faraday's picture was printed on British £20 banknotes from 1991 until 2001. Bank of England, Withdrawn Notes
In the video game Chromehounds there is a ThermoVision Device named the Faraday.
The former UK Faraday Atmospheric Research Station in Antarctica was named after him.
Faraday was one of the then eight foreign members of the French Academy of Sciences.
Michael Faraday's signature
Faraday's books, with the exception of Chemical Manipulation, were collections of scientific papers or transcriptions of lectures. See page 220 of Hamilton's A Life of Discovery: Michael Faraday, Giant of the Scientific Revolution (2002) Since his death, Faraday's diary has been published, as have several large volumes of his letters and Faraday's journal from his travels with Davy in 1813 - 1815.
* Chemical Manipulation, Being Instructions to Students in Chemistry, John Murray, 1st ed. 1827, 2nd ed. 1830, 3rd ed. 1842
* Experimental Researches in Electricity, vols. i. and ii., Richard and John Edward Taylor, vols. i. and ii.. 1844 and 1847; vol. iii., 1844; vol. iii. Richard Taylor and William Francis, 1855
* Experimental Researches in Chemistry and Physics, Taylor and Francis, 1859
* A Course of Six Lectures on the Chemical History of a Candle, edited by W. Crookes, Griffin, Bohn & Co., 1861
* On the Various Forces in Nature, edited by W. Crookes, Chatto & Windus, 1873
* Faraday's Diary edited by T. Martin was published in eight volumes, 1932 - 1936
* Curiosity Perfectly Satisfyed: Faraday's Travels in Europe 1813-1815, edited by B. Bowers and L. Symons, Institution of Electrical Engineers, 1991
* The Correspondence of Michael Faraday, edited by F. A. J. L. James, INSPEC, Inc., volume 1, 1991; volume 2, 1993; volume 3, 1996; volume 4, 1999
* "Nothing is too wonderful to be true if it be consistent with the laws of nature, and in such things as these, experiment is the best test of such consistency." From the entry of 19 March 1849 in Faraday's Diary
* "Work. Finish. Publish." â his well-known advice to the young William Crookes
* "The important thing is to know how to take all things quietly."
* Regarding the hereafter, "Speculations? I have none. I am resting on certainties. I know whom I have believed and am persuaded that he is able to keep that which I have committed unto him against that day."
* "Next Sabbath day (the 22nd) I shall complete my 70th year. I can hardly think of myself so old."
*Above the doorways of the Pfahler Hall of Science at Ursinus College in Collegeville, Pennsylvania, there is a stone inscription of a quote attributed to Michael Faraday which reads "but still try, for who knows what is possible..." See
* "One day sir, you may tax it." Faraday's reply to William Gladstone, then British Minister of Finance, when asked of the practical value of electricity.
* "If you would cause your view ... to be acknowledged by scientific men; you would do a great service to science. If you would even get them to say yes or no to your conclusions it would help to clear the future progress. I believe some hesitate because they do not like their thoughts disturbed." From Life and Letters, 2:389.
* Faraday rotator
* Superconductivity
* Tyndall, John, Faraday as a Discoverer, (Longmans, 1st ed. 1868, 2nd ed. 1870).
* Bence Jones, Henry (1870). The Life and Letters of Faraday in 2 vols, Longmans.
* Gladstone, J. H. (1872). Michael Faraday, Macmillan.
* Thompson, Silvanus (1901, reprinted 2005). Michael Faraday, His Life and Work. Cassell and Company, London, 1901; reprint by Kessenger Publishing, Whitefish, MT. ISBN 1-4179-7036-7
* The British Electrical and Allied Manufacturers Association (1931). Faraday. R. & R. Clark, Ltd., Edinburgh, 1931.
* Williams, L. Pearce (1971), Faraday: A Biography, Simon and Schuster.
* Cantor, Geoffrey (1991). Michael Faraday, Sandemanian and Scientist, Macmillian, ISBN 0-333-55077
* Hamilton, James (2002). Faraday: The Life. London: Harper Collins. ISBN 0-00-716376-2
* Hamilton, James (2004). A Life of Discovery: Michael Faraday, Giant of the Scientific Revolution. New York: Random House. ISBN 1-4000-6016-8
* Agassi, Joseph (1971), Faraday as a Natural Philosopher, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
* Ames, Joseph Sweetman (Ed.), The discovery of induced electric currents Vol. 2. Memoirs, by Michael Faraday. New York, Cincinnati [etc.] American book company [c1900] LCCN 00005889
* Gooding, David (Ed.) (1985), Faraday Rediscovered: Essays on the Life and Work of Michael Faraday, 1791-1867, London/New York, Macmillan/Stockton
* Thomas, John Meurig (1991). Michael Faraday and the Royal Institution: The Genius of Man and Place Bristol: Hilger. ISBN 0-7503-0145-7
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* Biography at The Royal Institution of Great Britain
* Faraday as a Discoverer by John Tyndall, Project Gutenberg (downloads)
* The Christian Character of Michael Faraday
* Michael Faraday on the British twenty-pound banknote
* The Life and Discoveries of Michael Faraday by J. A. Crowther, London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1920
* "Faraday" at LoveToKnow 1911 Britannica Online Encyclopedia.
*
* (downloads)
* "Experimental Researches in Electricity" by Michael Faraday Original text with Biographical Introduction by Professor John Tyndall, 1914, Everyman edition.
* Video Podcast with Sir John Cadogan talking about Benzene since Faraday
* The letters of Faraday and Schoenbein 1836-1862. With notes, comments and references to contemporary letters (1899) full download PDF
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Michael_Faraday | What was the Faraday effect first called? | diamagnetism | data/set4/a7 | Michael_Faraday
Michael Faraday, FRS (September 22, 1791 â August 25, 1867) was an English chemist and physicist (or natural philosopher, in the terminology of that time) who contributed to the fields of electromagnetism and electrochemistry.
Faraday studied the magnetic field around a conductor carrying a DC electric current, and established the basis for the magnetic field concept in physics. He discovered electromagnetic induction, diamagnetism and electrolysis. He established that magnetism could affect rays of light and that there was an underlying relationship between the two phenomena. Michael Faraday entry at the 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica hosted by LovetoKnow Retrieved January 2007. Institution of Engineering and Technology, London Archives, Michael Faraday His inventions of electromagnetic rotary devices formed the foundation of electric motor technology, and it was largely due to his efforts that electricity became viable for use in technology.
As a chemist, Faraday discovered benzene, investigated the clathrate hydrate of chlorine, invented an early form of the bunsen burner and the system of oxidation numbers, and popularized terminology such as anode, cathode, electrode, and ion.
Although Faraday received little formal education and knew little of higher mathematics, such as calculus, he was one of the most influential scientists in history. Some historians of science refer to him as the best experimentalist in the history of science. "best experimentalist in the history of science." Quoting Dr Peter Ford, from the University of Bathâs Department of Physics. Accessed January 2007. The SI unit of capacitance, the farad, is named after him, as is the Faraday constant, the charge on a mole of electrons (about 96,485 coulombs). Faraday's law of induction states that a magnetic field changing in time creates a proportional electromotive force.
Faraday was the first and foremost Fullerian Professor of Chemistry at the Royal Institution of Great Britain, a position to which he was appointed for life.
Michael Faraday from a photograph by John Watkins, British Library
Michael Faraday was born in Newington Butts, near present-day South London, England. His family was not well off. His father, James, was a member of the Sandemanian sect of Christianity. James Faraday had come to London ca 1790 from Outhgill in Westmorland, where he had been the village blacksmith. The young Michael Faraday, one of four children, having only the most basic of school educations, had to largely educate himself. "Michael Faraday." History of Science and Technology. Houghton Mifflin Company, 2004. Answers.com 4 June 2007. /ref> At fourteen he became apprenticed to a local bookbinder and bookseller George Riebau and, during his seven-year apprenticeship, he read many books, including Isaac Watts' The Improvement of the Mind, and he enthusiastically implemented the principles and suggestions contained therein. He developed an interest in science and specifically in electricity. In particular, he was inspired by the book Conversations in Chemistry by Jane Marcet.
At the age of twenty, in 1812, at the end of his apprenticeship, Faraday attended lectures by the eminent English chemist and physicist Humphry Davy of the Royal Institution and Royal Society, and John Tatum, founder of the City Philosophical Society. Many tickets for these lectures were given to Faraday by William Dance (one of the founders of the Royal Philharmonic Society). Afterwards, Faraday sent Davy a three hundred page book based on notes taken during the lectures. Davy's reply was immediate, kind, and favorable. When Davy damaged his eyesight in an accident with nitrogen trichloride, he decided to employ Faraday as a secretary. When John Payne, one of the Royal Institution's assistants, was fired, Sir Humphry Davy was asked to find a replacement. He appointed Faraday as Chemical Assistant at the Royal Institution on March 1.
In the class-based English society of the time, Faraday was not considered a gentleman. When Davy went on a long tour to the continent in 1813-5, his valet did not wish to go. Faraday was going as Davy's scientific assistant, and was asked to act as Davy's valet until a replacement could be found in Paris. Davy failed to find a replacement, and Faraday was forced to fill the role of valet as well as assistant throughout the trip. Davy's wife, Jane Apreece, refused to treat Faraday as an equal (making him travel outside the coach, eat with the servants, etc.) and generally made Faraday so miserable that he contemplated returning to England alone and giving up science altogether. The trip did, however, give him access to the European scientific elite and a host of stimulating ideas.
His sponsor and mentor was John 'Mad Jack' Fuller, who created the Fullerian Professorship of Chemistry at the Royal Institution.
Faraday was a devout Christian and a member of the small Sandemanian denomination, an offshoot of the Church of Scotland. He later served two terms as an elder in the group's church.
Faraday married Sarah Barnard (1800-1879) on June 2, 1821, although they would never have children. They met through attending the Sandemanian church.
He was elected a member of the Royal Society in 1824, appointed director of the laboratory in 1825; and in 1833 he was appointed Fullerian professor of chemistry in the institution for life, without the obligation to deliver lectures.
The title page of The Chemical History of a Candle (1861)
Faraday's earliest chemical work was as an assistant to Davy. He made a special study of chlorine, and discovered two new chlorides of carbon. He also made the first rough experiments on the diffusion of gases, a phenomenon first pointed out by John Dalton, the physical importance of which was more fully brought to light by Thomas Graham and Joseph Loschmidt. He succeeded in liquefying several gases; he investigated the alloys of steel, and produced several new kinds of glass intended for optical purposes. A specimen of one of these heavy glasses afterwards became historically important as the substance in which Faraday detected the rotation of the plane of polarisation of light when the glass was placed in a magnetic field, and also as the substance which was first repelled by the poles of the magnet. He also endeavoured, with some success, to make the general methods of chemistry, as distinguished from its results, the subject of special study and of popular exposition.
He invented an early form of what was to become the Bunsen burner, which is used almost universally in science laboratories as a convenient source of heat. See page 127 of Faraday's Chemical Manipulation, Being Instructions to Students in Chemistry (1827)
Faraday worked extensively in the field of chemistry, discovering chemical substances such as benzene (which he called bicarburet of hydrogen), inventing the system of oxidation numbers, and liquefying gases such as chlorine. In 1820 Faraday reported on the first syntheses of compounds made from carbon and chlorine, C 2 H 6 and C 2 H 4 , and published his results the following year. Faraday also determined the composition of the chlorine clathrate hydrate, which had been discovered by Humphry Davy in 1810.
Faraday also discovered the laws of electrolysis and popularized terminology such as anode, cathode, electrode, and ion, terms largely created by William Whewell.
Faraday was the first to report what later came to be called metallic nanoparticles. In 1847 he discovered that the optical properties of gold colloids differed from those of the corresponding bulk metal. This was probably the first reported observation of the effects of quantum size, and might be considered to be the birth of nanoscience.
Faraday's greatest work was probably with electricity and magnetism. The first experiment which he recorded was the construction of a voltaic pile with seven halfpence pieces, stacked together with seven disks of sheet zinc, and six pieces of paper moistened with salt water. With this pile he decomposed sulphate of magnesia (first letter to Abbott, July 12, 1812).
[[Image:Faraday photograph ii.jpg|thumb|200px|left|Michael Faraday holding a glass bar of the type he used in 1845 to show that magnetism can affect light. Detail of an engraving by Henry Adlard, based on an earlier photograph by Maull & Polyblank ca. 1857. See National Portrait Gallery, UK ]]
In 1821, soon after the Danish physicist and chemist, Hans Christian Ãrsted discovered the phenomenon of electromagnetism, Davy and British scientist William Hyde Wollaston tried but failed to design an electric motor. Faraday, having discussed the problem with the two men, went on to build two devices to produce what he called electromagnetic rotation: a continuous circular motion from the circular magnetic force around a wire and a wire extending into a pool of mercury with a magnet placed inside would rotate around the magnet if supplied with current from a chemical battery. The latter device is known as a homopolar motor. These experiments and inventions form the foundation of modern electromagnetic technology. Faraday published his results without acknowledging his debt to Wollaston and Davy, and the resulting controversy caused Faraday to withdraw from electromagnetic research for several years.
At this stage, there is also evidence to suggest that Davy may have been trying to slow Faradayâs rise as a scientist (or natural philosopher as it was known then). In 1825, for instance, Davy set him onto optical glass experiments, which progressed for six years with no great results. It was not until Davy's death, in 1829, that Faraday stopped these fruitless tasks and moved on to endeavors that were more worthwhile. Two years later, in 1831, he began his great series of experiments in which he discovered electromagnetic induction. Joseph Henry likely discovered self-induction a few months earlier and both may have been anticipated by the work of Francesco Zantedeschi in Italy in 1829 and 1830.
Faraday's breakthrough came when he wrapped two insulated coils of wire around a massive iron ring, bolted to a chair, and found that upon passing a current through one coil, a momentary current was induced in the other coil. This phenomenon is known as mutual induction. The iron ring-coil apparatus is still on display at the Royal Institution. In subsequent experiments he found that if he moved a magnet through a loop of wire, an electric current flowed in the wire. The current also flowed if the loop was moved over a stationary magnet. His demonstrations established that a changing magnetic field produces an electric field. This relation was mathematically modelled by Faraday's law, which subsequently became one of the four Maxwell equations. These in turn have evolved into the generalization known today as field theory.
Michael Faraday - statue in Savoy Place, London.
Sculptor John Henry Foley RA
Faraday later used the principle to construct the electric dynamo, the ancestor of modern power generators.
In 1839 he completed a series of experiments aimed at investigating the fundamental nature of electricity. Faraday used "static", batteries, and "animal electricity" to produce the phenomena of electrostatic attraction, electrolysis, magnetism, etc. He concluded that, contrary to scientific opinion of the time, the divisions between the various "kinds" of electricity were illusory. Faraday instead proposed that only a single "electricity" exists, and the changing values of quantity and intensity (voltage and charge) would produce different groups of phenomena.
Near the end of his career Faraday proposed that electromagnetic forces extended into the empty space around the conductor. This idea was rejected by his fellow scientists, and Faraday did not live to see this idea eventually accepted. Faraday's concept of lines of flux emanating from charged bodies and magnets provided a way to visualize electric and magnetic fields. That mental model was crucial to the successful development of electromechanical devices which dominated engineering and industry for the remainder of the 19th century.
In 1845, he discovered the phenomenon that he named diamagnetism, and what is now called the Faraday effect: The plane of polarization of linearly polarized light propagated through a material medium can be rotated by the application of an external magnetic field aligned in the propagation direction. He wrote in his notebook, "I have at last succeeded in illuminating a magnetic curve or line of force and in magnetising a ray of light". This established that magnetic force and light were related.
In his work on static electricity, Faraday demonstrated that the charge only resided on the exterior of a charged conductor, and exterior charge had no influence on anything enclosed within a conductor. This is because the exterior charges redistribute such that the interior fields due to them cancel. This shielding effect is used in what is now known as a Faraday cage.
Faraday was an excellent experimentalist who conveyed his ideas in clear and simple language. However, his mathematical abilities did not extend as far as trigonometry or any but the simplest algebra. It was James Clerk Maxwell who took the work of Faraday, and others, and consolidated it with a set of equations that lie at the base of all modern theories of electromagnetic phenomena.
Michael Faraday meets Father Thames, from Punch (July 21, 1855)
Beyond his scientific research into areas such as chemistry, electricity, and magnetism at the Royal Institution, Faraday undertook numerous, and often time-consuming, service projects for private enterprise and the British government. This work included investigations of explosions in mines, being an expert witness in court, and the preparation of high-quality optical glass.
As a respected scientist in a nation with strong maritime interests, Faraday spent extensive amounts of time on projects such as the construction and operation of light houses and protecting the bottoms of ships from corrosion.
Faraday also was active in what would now be called environmental science, or engineering. He investigated industrial pollution at Swansea and was consulted on air pollution at the Royal Mint. In July of 1855, Faraday wrote a letter to The Times on the subject of the foul condition of the River Thames, which resulted in an oft-reprinted cartoon in Punch. (See also The Great Stink.)
Faraday assisted with planning and judging of exhibits for the Great Exhibition of 1851 in London. He also advised the National Gallery on the cleaning and protection of its art collection, and served on the National Gallery Site Commission in 1857.
Education was another area of service for Faraday. He lectured on the topic in 1854 at the Royal Institution, and in 1862 he appeared before a Public Schools Commission to give his views on education in Great Britain. Faraday also weighed in, negatively, on the public's fascination with table-turning, mesmerism, and seances, chastising both the public and the nation's educational system. See The Illustrated London News, July 1853, for Faraday's comments.
125px
In June of 1832, the University of Oxford granted Faraday a Doctor of Civil Law degree (honorary). During his lifetime, Faraday rejected a knighthood and twice refused to become President of the Royal Society.
In 1848, as a result of representations by the Prince Consort, Michael Faraday was awarded a grace and favour house in Hampton Court, Surrey free of all expenses or upkeep. This was the Master Mason's House, later called Faraday House, and now No.37 Hampton Court Road. In 1858 Faraday retired to live there. Twickenham Museum on Faraday and Faraday House, Accessed June 2006
Faraday died at his house at Hampton Court on August 25, 1867. He turned down burial in Westminster Abbey, but he has a memorial plaque there, near Isaac Newton's tomb. Faraday was interred in the Sandemanian plot in Highgate Cemetery.
Michael Faraday's grave at Highgate Cemetery
Faraday gave a successful series of lectures on the chemistry and physics of flames at the Royal Institution, entitled The Chemical History of a Candle. This was one of the earlier Christmas lectures for young people, which are still given each year. Between 1827 and 1860, Faraday gave the Christmas lecture a record nineteen times.
Faraday refused to participate in the production of chemical weapons for the Crimean War citing ethical reasons.
A statue of Faraday stands in Savoy Place, London, outside the Institution of Electrical Engineers.
A recently built hall of accommodation at Brunel University is named after Faraday.
A hall at Loughborough University was named after Faraday in 1960. Near the entrance to its dining hall is a bronze casting, which depicts the symbol of an electrical transformer, and inside there hangs a portrait, both in Faraday's honour.
Faraday's picture was printed on British £20 banknotes from 1991 until 2001. Bank of England, Withdrawn Notes
In the video game Chromehounds there is a ThermoVision Device named the Faraday.
The former UK Faraday Atmospheric Research Station in Antarctica was named after him.
Faraday was one of the then eight foreign members of the French Academy of Sciences.
Michael Faraday's signature
Faraday's books, with the exception of Chemical Manipulation, were collections of scientific papers or transcriptions of lectures. See page 220 of Hamilton's A Life of Discovery: Michael Faraday, Giant of the Scientific Revolution (2002) Since his death, Faraday's diary has been published, as have several large volumes of his letters and Faraday's journal from his travels with Davy in 1813 - 1815.
* Chemical Manipulation, Being Instructions to Students in Chemistry, John Murray, 1st ed. 1827, 2nd ed. 1830, 3rd ed. 1842
* Experimental Researches in Electricity, vols. i. and ii., Richard and John Edward Taylor, vols. i. and ii.. 1844 and 1847; vol. iii., 1844; vol. iii. Richard Taylor and William Francis, 1855
* Experimental Researches in Chemistry and Physics, Taylor and Francis, 1859
* A Course of Six Lectures on the Chemical History of a Candle, edited by W. Crookes, Griffin, Bohn & Co., 1861
* On the Various Forces in Nature, edited by W. Crookes, Chatto & Windus, 1873
* Faraday's Diary edited by T. Martin was published in eight volumes, 1932 - 1936
* Curiosity Perfectly Satisfyed: Faraday's Travels in Europe 1813-1815, edited by B. Bowers and L. Symons, Institution of Electrical Engineers, 1991
* The Correspondence of Michael Faraday, edited by F. A. J. L. James, INSPEC, Inc., volume 1, 1991; volume 2, 1993; volume 3, 1996; volume 4, 1999
* "Nothing is too wonderful to be true if it be consistent with the laws of nature, and in such things as these, experiment is the best test of such consistency." From the entry of 19 March 1849 in Faraday's Diary
* "Work. Finish. Publish." â his well-known advice to the young William Crookes
* "The important thing is to know how to take all things quietly."
* Regarding the hereafter, "Speculations? I have none. I am resting on certainties. I know whom I have believed and am persuaded that he is able to keep that which I have committed unto him against that day."
* "Next Sabbath day (the 22nd) I shall complete my 70th year. I can hardly think of myself so old."
*Above the doorways of the Pfahler Hall of Science at Ursinus College in Collegeville, Pennsylvania, there is a stone inscription of a quote attributed to Michael Faraday which reads "but still try, for who knows what is possible..." See
* "One day sir, you may tax it." Faraday's reply to William Gladstone, then British Minister of Finance, when asked of the practical value of electricity.
* "If you would cause your view ... to be acknowledged by scientific men; you would do a great service to science. If you would even get them to say yes or no to your conclusions it would help to clear the future progress. I believe some hesitate because they do not like their thoughts disturbed." From Life and Letters, 2:389.
* Faraday rotator
* Superconductivity
* Tyndall, John, Faraday as a Discoverer, (Longmans, 1st ed. 1868, 2nd ed. 1870).
* Bence Jones, Henry (1870). The Life and Letters of Faraday in 2 vols, Longmans.
* Gladstone, J. H. (1872). Michael Faraday, Macmillan.
* Thompson, Silvanus (1901, reprinted 2005). Michael Faraday, His Life and Work. Cassell and Company, London, 1901; reprint by Kessenger Publishing, Whitefish, MT. ISBN 1-4179-7036-7
* The British Electrical and Allied Manufacturers Association (1931). Faraday. R. & R. Clark, Ltd., Edinburgh, 1931.
* Williams, L. Pearce (1971), Faraday: A Biography, Simon and Schuster.
* Cantor, Geoffrey (1991). Michael Faraday, Sandemanian and Scientist, Macmillian, ISBN 0-333-55077
* Hamilton, James (2002). Faraday: The Life. London: Harper Collins. ISBN 0-00-716376-2
* Hamilton, James (2004). A Life of Discovery: Michael Faraday, Giant of the Scientific Revolution. New York: Random House. ISBN 1-4000-6016-8
* Agassi, Joseph (1971), Faraday as a Natural Philosopher, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
* Ames, Joseph Sweetman (Ed.), The discovery of induced electric currents Vol. 2. Memoirs, by Michael Faraday. New York, Cincinnati [etc.] American book company [c1900] LCCN 00005889
* Gooding, David (Ed.) (1985), Faraday Rediscovered: Essays on the Life and Work of Michael Faraday, 1791-1867, London/New York, Macmillan/Stockton
* Thomas, John Meurig (1991). Michael Faraday and the Royal Institution: The Genius of Man and Place Bristol: Hilger. ISBN 0-7503-0145-7
150px
* Biography at The Royal Institution of Great Britain
* Faraday as a Discoverer by John Tyndall, Project Gutenberg (downloads)
* The Christian Character of Michael Faraday
* Michael Faraday on the British twenty-pound banknote
* The Life and Discoveries of Michael Faraday by J. A. Crowther, London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1920
* "Faraday" at LoveToKnow 1911 Britannica Online Encyclopedia.
*
* (downloads)
* "Experimental Researches in Electricity" by Michael Faraday Original text with Biographical Introduction by Professor John Tyndall, 1914, Everyman edition.
* Video Podcast with Sir John Cadogan talking about Benzene since Faraday
* The letters of Faraday and Schoenbein 1836-1862. With notes, comments and references to contemporary letters (1899) full download PDF
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Michael_Faraday | Can you meet someone through attending a church? | yes | data/set4/a7 | Michael_Faraday
Michael Faraday, FRS (September 22, 1791 â August 25, 1867) was an English chemist and physicist (or natural philosopher, in the terminology of that time) who contributed to the fields of electromagnetism and electrochemistry.
Faraday studied the magnetic field around a conductor carrying a DC electric current, and established the basis for the magnetic field concept in physics. He discovered electromagnetic induction, diamagnetism and electrolysis. He established that magnetism could affect rays of light and that there was an underlying relationship between the two phenomena. Michael Faraday entry at the 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica hosted by LovetoKnow Retrieved January 2007. Institution of Engineering and Technology, London Archives, Michael Faraday His inventions of electromagnetic rotary devices formed the foundation of electric motor technology, and it was largely due to his efforts that electricity became viable for use in technology.
As a chemist, Faraday discovered benzene, investigated the clathrate hydrate of chlorine, invented an early form of the bunsen burner and the system of oxidation numbers, and popularized terminology such as anode, cathode, electrode, and ion.
Although Faraday received little formal education and knew little of higher mathematics, such as calculus, he was one of the most influential scientists in history. Some historians of science refer to him as the best experimentalist in the history of science. "best experimentalist in the history of science." Quoting Dr Peter Ford, from the University of Bathâs Department of Physics. Accessed January 2007. The SI unit of capacitance, the farad, is named after him, as is the Faraday constant, the charge on a mole of electrons (about 96,485 coulombs). Faraday's law of induction states that a magnetic field changing in time creates a proportional electromotive force.
Faraday was the first and foremost Fullerian Professor of Chemistry at the Royal Institution of Great Britain, a position to which he was appointed for life.
Michael Faraday from a photograph by John Watkins, British Library
Michael Faraday was born in Newington Butts, near present-day South London, England. His family was not well off. His father, James, was a member of the Sandemanian sect of Christianity. James Faraday had come to London ca 1790 from Outhgill in Westmorland, where he had been the village blacksmith. The young Michael Faraday, one of four children, having only the most basic of school educations, had to largely educate himself. "Michael Faraday." History of Science and Technology. Houghton Mifflin Company, 2004. Answers.com 4 June 2007. /ref> At fourteen he became apprenticed to a local bookbinder and bookseller George Riebau and, during his seven-year apprenticeship, he read many books, including Isaac Watts' The Improvement of the Mind, and he enthusiastically implemented the principles and suggestions contained therein. He developed an interest in science and specifically in electricity. In particular, he was inspired by the book Conversations in Chemistry by Jane Marcet.
At the age of twenty, in 1812, at the end of his apprenticeship, Faraday attended lectures by the eminent English chemist and physicist Humphry Davy of the Royal Institution and Royal Society, and John Tatum, founder of the City Philosophical Society. Many tickets for these lectures were given to Faraday by William Dance (one of the founders of the Royal Philharmonic Society). Afterwards, Faraday sent Davy a three hundred page book based on notes taken during the lectures. Davy's reply was immediate, kind, and favorable. When Davy damaged his eyesight in an accident with nitrogen trichloride, he decided to employ Faraday as a secretary. When John Payne, one of the Royal Institution's assistants, was fired, Sir Humphry Davy was asked to find a replacement. He appointed Faraday as Chemical Assistant at the Royal Institution on March 1.
In the class-based English society of the time, Faraday was not considered a gentleman. When Davy went on a long tour to the continent in 1813-5, his valet did not wish to go. Faraday was going as Davy's scientific assistant, and was asked to act as Davy's valet until a replacement could be found in Paris. Davy failed to find a replacement, and Faraday was forced to fill the role of valet as well as assistant throughout the trip. Davy's wife, Jane Apreece, refused to treat Faraday as an equal (making him travel outside the coach, eat with the servants, etc.) and generally made Faraday so miserable that he contemplated returning to England alone and giving up science altogether. The trip did, however, give him access to the European scientific elite and a host of stimulating ideas.
His sponsor and mentor was John 'Mad Jack' Fuller, who created the Fullerian Professorship of Chemistry at the Royal Institution.
Faraday was a devout Christian and a member of the small Sandemanian denomination, an offshoot of the Church of Scotland. He later served two terms as an elder in the group's church.
Faraday married Sarah Barnard (1800-1879) on June 2, 1821, although they would never have children. They met through attending the Sandemanian church.
He was elected a member of the Royal Society in 1824, appointed director of the laboratory in 1825; and in 1833 he was appointed Fullerian professor of chemistry in the institution for life, without the obligation to deliver lectures.
The title page of The Chemical History of a Candle (1861)
Faraday's earliest chemical work was as an assistant to Davy. He made a special study of chlorine, and discovered two new chlorides of carbon. He also made the first rough experiments on the diffusion of gases, a phenomenon first pointed out by John Dalton, the physical importance of which was more fully brought to light by Thomas Graham and Joseph Loschmidt. He succeeded in liquefying several gases; he investigated the alloys of steel, and produced several new kinds of glass intended for optical purposes. A specimen of one of these heavy glasses afterwards became historically important as the substance in which Faraday detected the rotation of the plane of polarisation of light when the glass was placed in a magnetic field, and also as the substance which was first repelled by the poles of the magnet. He also endeavoured, with some success, to make the general methods of chemistry, as distinguished from its results, the subject of special study and of popular exposition.
He invented an early form of what was to become the Bunsen burner, which is used almost universally in science laboratories as a convenient source of heat. See page 127 of Faraday's Chemical Manipulation, Being Instructions to Students in Chemistry (1827)
Faraday worked extensively in the field of chemistry, discovering chemical substances such as benzene (which he called bicarburet of hydrogen), inventing the system of oxidation numbers, and liquefying gases such as chlorine. In 1820 Faraday reported on the first syntheses of compounds made from carbon and chlorine, C 2 H 6 and C 2 H 4 , and published his results the following year. Faraday also determined the composition of the chlorine clathrate hydrate, which had been discovered by Humphry Davy in 1810.
Faraday also discovered the laws of electrolysis and popularized terminology such as anode, cathode, electrode, and ion, terms largely created by William Whewell.
Faraday was the first to report what later came to be called metallic nanoparticles. In 1847 he discovered that the optical properties of gold colloids differed from those of the corresponding bulk metal. This was probably the first reported observation of the effects of quantum size, and might be considered to be the birth of nanoscience.
Faraday's greatest work was probably with electricity and magnetism. The first experiment which he recorded was the construction of a voltaic pile with seven halfpence pieces, stacked together with seven disks of sheet zinc, and six pieces of paper moistened with salt water. With this pile he decomposed sulphate of magnesia (first letter to Abbott, July 12, 1812).
[[Image:Faraday photograph ii.jpg|thumb|200px|left|Michael Faraday holding a glass bar of the type he used in 1845 to show that magnetism can affect light. Detail of an engraving by Henry Adlard, based on an earlier photograph by Maull & Polyblank ca. 1857. See National Portrait Gallery, UK ]]
In 1821, soon after the Danish physicist and chemist, Hans Christian Ãrsted discovered the phenomenon of electromagnetism, Davy and British scientist William Hyde Wollaston tried but failed to design an electric motor. Faraday, having discussed the problem with the two men, went on to build two devices to produce what he called electromagnetic rotation: a continuous circular motion from the circular magnetic force around a wire and a wire extending into a pool of mercury with a magnet placed inside would rotate around the magnet if supplied with current from a chemical battery. The latter device is known as a homopolar motor. These experiments and inventions form the foundation of modern electromagnetic technology. Faraday published his results without acknowledging his debt to Wollaston and Davy, and the resulting controversy caused Faraday to withdraw from electromagnetic research for several years.
At this stage, there is also evidence to suggest that Davy may have been trying to slow Faradayâs rise as a scientist (or natural philosopher as it was known then). In 1825, for instance, Davy set him onto optical glass experiments, which progressed for six years with no great results. It was not until Davy's death, in 1829, that Faraday stopped these fruitless tasks and moved on to endeavors that were more worthwhile. Two years later, in 1831, he began his great series of experiments in which he discovered electromagnetic induction. Joseph Henry likely discovered self-induction a few months earlier and both may have been anticipated by the work of Francesco Zantedeschi in Italy in 1829 and 1830.
Faraday's breakthrough came when he wrapped two insulated coils of wire around a massive iron ring, bolted to a chair, and found that upon passing a current through one coil, a momentary current was induced in the other coil. This phenomenon is known as mutual induction. The iron ring-coil apparatus is still on display at the Royal Institution. In subsequent experiments he found that if he moved a magnet through a loop of wire, an electric current flowed in the wire. The current also flowed if the loop was moved over a stationary magnet. His demonstrations established that a changing magnetic field produces an electric field. This relation was mathematically modelled by Faraday's law, which subsequently became one of the four Maxwell equations. These in turn have evolved into the generalization known today as field theory.
Michael Faraday - statue in Savoy Place, London.
Sculptor John Henry Foley RA
Faraday later used the principle to construct the electric dynamo, the ancestor of modern power generators.
In 1839 he completed a series of experiments aimed at investigating the fundamental nature of electricity. Faraday used "static", batteries, and "animal electricity" to produce the phenomena of electrostatic attraction, electrolysis, magnetism, etc. He concluded that, contrary to scientific opinion of the time, the divisions between the various "kinds" of electricity were illusory. Faraday instead proposed that only a single "electricity" exists, and the changing values of quantity and intensity (voltage and charge) would produce different groups of phenomena.
Near the end of his career Faraday proposed that electromagnetic forces extended into the empty space around the conductor. This idea was rejected by his fellow scientists, and Faraday did not live to see this idea eventually accepted. Faraday's concept of lines of flux emanating from charged bodies and magnets provided a way to visualize electric and magnetic fields. That mental model was crucial to the successful development of electromechanical devices which dominated engineering and industry for the remainder of the 19th century.
In 1845, he discovered the phenomenon that he named diamagnetism, and what is now called the Faraday effect: The plane of polarization of linearly polarized light propagated through a material medium can be rotated by the application of an external magnetic field aligned in the propagation direction. He wrote in his notebook, "I have at last succeeded in illuminating a magnetic curve or line of force and in magnetising a ray of light". This established that magnetic force and light were related.
In his work on static electricity, Faraday demonstrated that the charge only resided on the exterior of a charged conductor, and exterior charge had no influence on anything enclosed within a conductor. This is because the exterior charges redistribute such that the interior fields due to them cancel. This shielding effect is used in what is now known as a Faraday cage.
Faraday was an excellent experimentalist who conveyed his ideas in clear and simple language. However, his mathematical abilities did not extend as far as trigonometry or any but the simplest algebra. It was James Clerk Maxwell who took the work of Faraday, and others, and consolidated it with a set of equations that lie at the base of all modern theories of electromagnetic phenomena.
Michael Faraday meets Father Thames, from Punch (July 21, 1855)
Beyond his scientific research into areas such as chemistry, electricity, and magnetism at the Royal Institution, Faraday undertook numerous, and often time-consuming, service projects for private enterprise and the British government. This work included investigations of explosions in mines, being an expert witness in court, and the preparation of high-quality optical glass.
As a respected scientist in a nation with strong maritime interests, Faraday spent extensive amounts of time on projects such as the construction and operation of light houses and protecting the bottoms of ships from corrosion.
Faraday also was active in what would now be called environmental science, or engineering. He investigated industrial pollution at Swansea and was consulted on air pollution at the Royal Mint. In July of 1855, Faraday wrote a letter to The Times on the subject of the foul condition of the River Thames, which resulted in an oft-reprinted cartoon in Punch. (See also The Great Stink.)
Faraday assisted with planning and judging of exhibits for the Great Exhibition of 1851 in London. He also advised the National Gallery on the cleaning and protection of its art collection, and served on the National Gallery Site Commission in 1857.
Education was another area of service for Faraday. He lectured on the topic in 1854 at the Royal Institution, and in 1862 he appeared before a Public Schools Commission to give his views on education in Great Britain. Faraday also weighed in, negatively, on the public's fascination with table-turning, mesmerism, and seances, chastising both the public and the nation's educational system. See The Illustrated London News, July 1853, for Faraday's comments.
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In June of 1832, the University of Oxford granted Faraday a Doctor of Civil Law degree (honorary). During his lifetime, Faraday rejected a knighthood and twice refused to become President of the Royal Society.
In 1848, as a result of representations by the Prince Consort, Michael Faraday was awarded a grace and favour house in Hampton Court, Surrey free of all expenses or upkeep. This was the Master Mason's House, later called Faraday House, and now No.37 Hampton Court Road. In 1858 Faraday retired to live there. Twickenham Museum on Faraday and Faraday House, Accessed June 2006
Faraday died at his house at Hampton Court on August 25, 1867. He turned down burial in Westminster Abbey, but he has a memorial plaque there, near Isaac Newton's tomb. Faraday was interred in the Sandemanian plot in Highgate Cemetery.
Michael Faraday's grave at Highgate Cemetery
Faraday gave a successful series of lectures on the chemistry and physics of flames at the Royal Institution, entitled The Chemical History of a Candle. This was one of the earlier Christmas lectures for young people, which are still given each year. Between 1827 and 1860, Faraday gave the Christmas lecture a record nineteen times.
Faraday refused to participate in the production of chemical weapons for the Crimean War citing ethical reasons.
A statue of Faraday stands in Savoy Place, London, outside the Institution of Electrical Engineers.
A recently built hall of accommodation at Brunel University is named after Faraday.
A hall at Loughborough University was named after Faraday in 1960. Near the entrance to its dining hall is a bronze casting, which depicts the symbol of an electrical transformer, and inside there hangs a portrait, both in Faraday's honour.
Faraday's picture was printed on British £20 banknotes from 1991 until 2001. Bank of England, Withdrawn Notes
In the video game Chromehounds there is a ThermoVision Device named the Faraday.
The former UK Faraday Atmospheric Research Station in Antarctica was named after him.
Faraday was one of the then eight foreign members of the French Academy of Sciences.
Michael Faraday's signature
Faraday's books, with the exception of Chemical Manipulation, were collections of scientific papers or transcriptions of lectures. See page 220 of Hamilton's A Life of Discovery: Michael Faraday, Giant of the Scientific Revolution (2002) Since his death, Faraday's diary has been published, as have several large volumes of his letters and Faraday's journal from his travels with Davy in 1813 - 1815.
* Chemical Manipulation, Being Instructions to Students in Chemistry, John Murray, 1st ed. 1827, 2nd ed. 1830, 3rd ed. 1842
* Experimental Researches in Electricity, vols. i. and ii., Richard and John Edward Taylor, vols. i. and ii.. 1844 and 1847; vol. iii., 1844; vol. iii. Richard Taylor and William Francis, 1855
* Experimental Researches in Chemistry and Physics, Taylor and Francis, 1859
* A Course of Six Lectures on the Chemical History of a Candle, edited by W. Crookes, Griffin, Bohn & Co., 1861
* On the Various Forces in Nature, edited by W. Crookes, Chatto & Windus, 1873
* Faraday's Diary edited by T. Martin was published in eight volumes, 1932 - 1936
* Curiosity Perfectly Satisfyed: Faraday's Travels in Europe 1813-1815, edited by B. Bowers and L. Symons, Institution of Electrical Engineers, 1991
* The Correspondence of Michael Faraday, edited by F. A. J. L. James, INSPEC, Inc., volume 1, 1991; volume 2, 1993; volume 3, 1996; volume 4, 1999
* "Nothing is too wonderful to be true if it be consistent with the laws of nature, and in such things as these, experiment is the best test of such consistency." From the entry of 19 March 1849 in Faraday's Diary
* "Work. Finish. Publish." â his well-known advice to the young William Crookes
* "The important thing is to know how to take all things quietly."
* Regarding the hereafter, "Speculations? I have none. I am resting on certainties. I know whom I have believed and am persuaded that he is able to keep that which I have committed unto him against that day."
* "Next Sabbath day (the 22nd) I shall complete my 70th year. I can hardly think of myself so old."
*Above the doorways of the Pfahler Hall of Science at Ursinus College in Collegeville, Pennsylvania, there is a stone inscription of a quote attributed to Michael Faraday which reads "but still try, for who knows what is possible..." See
* "One day sir, you may tax it." Faraday's reply to William Gladstone, then British Minister of Finance, when asked of the practical value of electricity.
* "If you would cause your view ... to be acknowledged by scientific men; you would do a great service to science. If you would even get them to say yes or no to your conclusions it would help to clear the future progress. I believe some hesitate because they do not like their thoughts disturbed." From Life and Letters, 2:389.
* Faraday rotator
* Superconductivity
* Tyndall, John, Faraday as a Discoverer, (Longmans, 1st ed. 1868, 2nd ed. 1870).
* Bence Jones, Henry (1870). The Life and Letters of Faraday in 2 vols, Longmans.
* Gladstone, J. H. (1872). Michael Faraday, Macmillan.
* Thompson, Silvanus (1901, reprinted 2005). Michael Faraday, His Life and Work. Cassell and Company, London, 1901; reprint by Kessenger Publishing, Whitefish, MT. ISBN 1-4179-7036-7
* The British Electrical and Allied Manufacturers Association (1931). Faraday. R. & R. Clark, Ltd., Edinburgh, 1931.
* Williams, L. Pearce (1971), Faraday: A Biography, Simon and Schuster.
* Cantor, Geoffrey (1991). Michael Faraday, Sandemanian and Scientist, Macmillian, ISBN 0-333-55077
* Hamilton, James (2002). Faraday: The Life. London: Harper Collins. ISBN 0-00-716376-2
* Hamilton, James (2004). A Life of Discovery: Michael Faraday, Giant of the Scientific Revolution. New York: Random House. ISBN 1-4000-6016-8
* Agassi, Joseph (1971), Faraday as a Natural Philosopher, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
* Ames, Joseph Sweetman (Ed.), The discovery of induced electric currents Vol. 2. Memoirs, by Michael Faraday. New York, Cincinnati [etc.] American book company [c1900] LCCN 00005889
* Gooding, David (Ed.) (1985), Faraday Rediscovered: Essays on the Life and Work of Michael Faraday, 1791-1867, London/New York, Macmillan/Stockton
* Thomas, John Meurig (1991). Michael Faraday and the Royal Institution: The Genius of Man and Place Bristol: Hilger. ISBN 0-7503-0145-7
150px
* Biography at The Royal Institution of Great Britain
* Faraday as a Discoverer by John Tyndall, Project Gutenberg (downloads)
* The Christian Character of Michael Faraday
* Michael Faraday on the British twenty-pound banknote
* The Life and Discoveries of Michael Faraday by J. A. Crowther, London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1920
* "Faraday" at LoveToKnow 1911 Britannica Online Encyclopedia.
*
* (downloads)
* "Experimental Researches in Electricity" by Michael Faraday Original text with Biographical Introduction by Professor John Tyndall, 1914, Everyman edition.
* Video Podcast with Sir John Cadogan talking about Benzene since Faraday
* The letters of Faraday and Schoenbein 1836-1862. With notes, comments and references to contemporary letters (1899) full download PDF
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Thomas Phillips
South London
England
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England
United Kingdom
Physicist
Chemist
Royal Institution
Humphry Davy
Electromagnetic induction
Electrochemistry
Faraday effect
Royal Medal
Sandemanian
Humphry Davy
Fellow of the Royal Society
September 22
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August 25
1867
England
chemist
physicist
natural philosopher
terminology
electromagnetism
electrochemistry
magnetism
field (physics)
Electrical conductor
electric current
electromagnetic induction
diamagnetism
electrolysis
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Ray (optics)
light
invention
electric motor
electricity
benzene
clathrate hydrate
bunsen burner
oxidation number
anode
cathode
electrode
ion
mathematics
scientist
experimentalist
experimentalist
SI
capacitance
farad
Faraday constant
mole (unit)
electron
coulomb
Faraday's law of induction
magnetic field
electromotive force
Royal Institution of Great Britain
Newington Butts
South London
England
Sandemanian
Outhgill
Westmorland
blacksmith
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Isaac Watts
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steel
Bunsen burner
chemistry
benzene
oxidation number
hexachloroethane
tetrachloroethylene
clathrate hydrate
electrolysis
anode
cathode
electrode
ion
William Whewell
nanoparticles
quantum
nanoscience
voltaic pile
July 12
1812
Henry Adlard
1821
Hans Christian Ãrsted
electromagnetism
William Hyde Wollaston
electric motor
mercury (element)
homopolar motor
1831
electromagnetic induction
Joseph Henry
Electromagnetic induction
Francesco Zantedeschi
mutual induction
Faraday's law of induction
Maxwell's equations
field theory
John Henry Foley
Electrical generator#Dynamo
1839
Electrostatics
Battery (electricity)
Bioelectromagnetism
electrolysis
Electromagnetism
diamagnetism
Faraday effect
polarization
Faraday cage
James Clerk Maxwell
July 21
1855
Swansea
Royal Mint
The Times
River Thames
Punch
The Great Stink
Great Exhibition
University of Oxford
knighthood
President of the Royal Society
Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha
grace and favour
Hampton Court
Surrey
Hampton Court
August 25
1867
Westminster Abbey
Isaac Newton
Highgate Cemetery
Highgate Cemetery
Royal Institution
The Chemical History of a Candle
Royal Institution Christmas Lectures
Crimean War
Institution of Electrical Engineers
Brunel University
Loughborough University
1960
transformer
British banknotes
video game
Chromehounds
Faraday Atmospheric Research Station in Antarctica (GALINDEZ ISLAND - 65.15S/64.16W)
French Academy of Sciences
William Crookes
Ursinus College
Faraday rotator
Superconductivity
George Biddell Airy
Copley Medal
Siméon Denis Poisson
Giovanni Antonio Amedeo Plana
Antoine César Becquerel
John Frederic Daniell
Copley Medal
Carl Friedrich Gauss
Robert Brown (botanist)
Physicist
Chemist
September 22
1791
Newington Butts
England
August 25
1867
Hampton Court
London
England
|
Michael_Faraday | What was Michael Faraday`s birthplace? | Newington Butts | data/set4/a7 | Michael_Faraday
Michael Faraday, FRS (September 22, 1791 â August 25, 1867) was an English chemist and physicist (or natural philosopher, in the terminology of that time) who contributed to the fields of electromagnetism and electrochemistry.
Faraday studied the magnetic field around a conductor carrying a DC electric current, and established the basis for the magnetic field concept in physics. He discovered electromagnetic induction, diamagnetism and electrolysis. He established that magnetism could affect rays of light and that there was an underlying relationship between the two phenomena. Michael Faraday entry at the 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica hosted by LovetoKnow Retrieved January 2007. Institution of Engineering and Technology, London Archives, Michael Faraday His inventions of electromagnetic rotary devices formed the foundation of electric motor technology, and it was largely due to his efforts that electricity became viable for use in technology.
As a chemist, Faraday discovered benzene, investigated the clathrate hydrate of chlorine, invented an early form of the bunsen burner and the system of oxidation numbers, and popularized terminology such as anode, cathode, electrode, and ion.
Although Faraday received little formal education and knew little of higher mathematics, such as calculus, he was one of the most influential scientists in history. Some historians of science refer to him as the best experimentalist in the history of science. "best experimentalist in the history of science." Quoting Dr Peter Ford, from the University of Bathâs Department of Physics. Accessed January 2007. The SI unit of capacitance, the farad, is named after him, as is the Faraday constant, the charge on a mole of electrons (about 96,485 coulombs). Faraday's law of induction states that a magnetic field changing in time creates a proportional electromotive force.
Faraday was the first and foremost Fullerian Professor of Chemistry at the Royal Institution of Great Britain, a position to which he was appointed for life.
Michael Faraday from a photograph by John Watkins, British Library
Michael Faraday was born in Newington Butts, near present-day South London, England. His family was not well off. His father, James, was a member of the Sandemanian sect of Christianity. James Faraday had come to London ca 1790 from Outhgill in Westmorland, where he had been the village blacksmith. The young Michael Faraday, one of four children, having only the most basic of school educations, had to largely educate himself. "Michael Faraday." History of Science and Technology. Houghton Mifflin Company, 2004. Answers.com 4 June 2007. /ref> At fourteen he became apprenticed to a local bookbinder and bookseller George Riebau and, during his seven-year apprenticeship, he read many books, including Isaac Watts' The Improvement of the Mind, and he enthusiastically implemented the principles and suggestions contained therein. He developed an interest in science and specifically in electricity. In particular, he was inspired by the book Conversations in Chemistry by Jane Marcet.
At the age of twenty, in 1812, at the end of his apprenticeship, Faraday attended lectures by the eminent English chemist and physicist Humphry Davy of the Royal Institution and Royal Society, and John Tatum, founder of the City Philosophical Society. Many tickets for these lectures were given to Faraday by William Dance (one of the founders of the Royal Philharmonic Society). Afterwards, Faraday sent Davy a three hundred page book based on notes taken during the lectures. Davy's reply was immediate, kind, and favorable. When Davy damaged his eyesight in an accident with nitrogen trichloride, he decided to employ Faraday as a secretary. When John Payne, one of the Royal Institution's assistants, was fired, Sir Humphry Davy was asked to find a replacement. He appointed Faraday as Chemical Assistant at the Royal Institution on March 1.
In the class-based English society of the time, Faraday was not considered a gentleman. When Davy went on a long tour to the continent in 1813-5, his valet did not wish to go. Faraday was going as Davy's scientific assistant, and was asked to act as Davy's valet until a replacement could be found in Paris. Davy failed to find a replacement, and Faraday was forced to fill the role of valet as well as assistant throughout the trip. Davy's wife, Jane Apreece, refused to treat Faraday as an equal (making him travel outside the coach, eat with the servants, etc.) and generally made Faraday so miserable that he contemplated returning to England alone and giving up science altogether. The trip did, however, give him access to the European scientific elite and a host of stimulating ideas.
His sponsor and mentor was John 'Mad Jack' Fuller, who created the Fullerian Professorship of Chemistry at the Royal Institution.
Faraday was a devout Christian and a member of the small Sandemanian denomination, an offshoot of the Church of Scotland. He later served two terms as an elder in the group's church.
Faraday married Sarah Barnard (1800-1879) on June 2, 1821, although they would never have children. They met through attending the Sandemanian church.
He was elected a member of the Royal Society in 1824, appointed director of the laboratory in 1825; and in 1833 he was appointed Fullerian professor of chemistry in the institution for life, without the obligation to deliver lectures.
The title page of The Chemical History of a Candle (1861)
Faraday's earliest chemical work was as an assistant to Davy. He made a special study of chlorine, and discovered two new chlorides of carbon. He also made the first rough experiments on the diffusion of gases, a phenomenon first pointed out by John Dalton, the physical importance of which was more fully brought to light by Thomas Graham and Joseph Loschmidt. He succeeded in liquefying several gases; he investigated the alloys of steel, and produced several new kinds of glass intended for optical purposes. A specimen of one of these heavy glasses afterwards became historically important as the substance in which Faraday detected the rotation of the plane of polarisation of light when the glass was placed in a magnetic field, and also as the substance which was first repelled by the poles of the magnet. He also endeavoured, with some success, to make the general methods of chemistry, as distinguished from its results, the subject of special study and of popular exposition.
He invented an early form of what was to become the Bunsen burner, which is used almost universally in science laboratories as a convenient source of heat. See page 127 of Faraday's Chemical Manipulation, Being Instructions to Students in Chemistry (1827)
Faraday worked extensively in the field of chemistry, discovering chemical substances such as benzene (which he called bicarburet of hydrogen), inventing the system of oxidation numbers, and liquefying gases such as chlorine. In 1820 Faraday reported on the first syntheses of compounds made from carbon and chlorine, C 2 H 6 and C 2 H 4 , and published his results the following year. Faraday also determined the composition of the chlorine clathrate hydrate, which had been discovered by Humphry Davy in 1810.
Faraday also discovered the laws of electrolysis and popularized terminology such as anode, cathode, electrode, and ion, terms largely created by William Whewell.
Faraday was the first to report what later came to be called metallic nanoparticles. In 1847 he discovered that the optical properties of gold colloids differed from those of the corresponding bulk metal. This was probably the first reported observation of the effects of quantum size, and might be considered to be the birth of nanoscience.
Faraday's greatest work was probably with electricity and magnetism. The first experiment which he recorded was the construction of a voltaic pile with seven halfpence pieces, stacked together with seven disks of sheet zinc, and six pieces of paper moistened with salt water. With this pile he decomposed sulphate of magnesia (first letter to Abbott, July 12, 1812).
[[Image:Faraday photograph ii.jpg|thumb|200px|left|Michael Faraday holding a glass bar of the type he used in 1845 to show that magnetism can affect light. Detail of an engraving by Henry Adlard, based on an earlier photograph by Maull & Polyblank ca. 1857. See National Portrait Gallery, UK ]]
In 1821, soon after the Danish physicist and chemist, Hans Christian Ãrsted discovered the phenomenon of electromagnetism, Davy and British scientist William Hyde Wollaston tried but failed to design an electric motor. Faraday, having discussed the problem with the two men, went on to build two devices to produce what he called electromagnetic rotation: a continuous circular motion from the circular magnetic force around a wire and a wire extending into a pool of mercury with a magnet placed inside would rotate around the magnet if supplied with current from a chemical battery. The latter device is known as a homopolar motor. These experiments and inventions form the foundation of modern electromagnetic technology. Faraday published his results without acknowledging his debt to Wollaston and Davy, and the resulting controversy caused Faraday to withdraw from electromagnetic research for several years.
At this stage, there is also evidence to suggest that Davy may have been trying to slow Faradayâs rise as a scientist (or natural philosopher as it was known then). In 1825, for instance, Davy set him onto optical glass experiments, which progressed for six years with no great results. It was not until Davy's death, in 1829, that Faraday stopped these fruitless tasks and moved on to endeavors that were more worthwhile. Two years later, in 1831, he began his great series of experiments in which he discovered electromagnetic induction. Joseph Henry likely discovered self-induction a few months earlier and both may have been anticipated by the work of Francesco Zantedeschi in Italy in 1829 and 1830.
Faraday's breakthrough came when he wrapped two insulated coils of wire around a massive iron ring, bolted to a chair, and found that upon passing a current through one coil, a momentary current was induced in the other coil. This phenomenon is known as mutual induction. The iron ring-coil apparatus is still on display at the Royal Institution. In subsequent experiments he found that if he moved a magnet through a loop of wire, an electric current flowed in the wire. The current also flowed if the loop was moved over a stationary magnet. His demonstrations established that a changing magnetic field produces an electric field. This relation was mathematically modelled by Faraday's law, which subsequently became one of the four Maxwell equations. These in turn have evolved into the generalization known today as field theory.
Michael Faraday - statue in Savoy Place, London.
Sculptor John Henry Foley RA
Faraday later used the principle to construct the electric dynamo, the ancestor of modern power generators.
In 1839 he completed a series of experiments aimed at investigating the fundamental nature of electricity. Faraday used "static", batteries, and "animal electricity" to produce the phenomena of electrostatic attraction, electrolysis, magnetism, etc. He concluded that, contrary to scientific opinion of the time, the divisions between the various "kinds" of electricity were illusory. Faraday instead proposed that only a single "electricity" exists, and the changing values of quantity and intensity (voltage and charge) would produce different groups of phenomena.
Near the end of his career Faraday proposed that electromagnetic forces extended into the empty space around the conductor. This idea was rejected by his fellow scientists, and Faraday did not live to see this idea eventually accepted. Faraday's concept of lines of flux emanating from charged bodies and magnets provided a way to visualize electric and magnetic fields. That mental model was crucial to the successful development of electromechanical devices which dominated engineering and industry for the remainder of the 19th century.
In 1845, he discovered the phenomenon that he named diamagnetism, and what is now called the Faraday effect: The plane of polarization of linearly polarized light propagated through a material medium can be rotated by the application of an external magnetic field aligned in the propagation direction. He wrote in his notebook, "I have at last succeeded in illuminating a magnetic curve or line of force and in magnetising a ray of light". This established that magnetic force and light were related.
In his work on static electricity, Faraday demonstrated that the charge only resided on the exterior of a charged conductor, and exterior charge had no influence on anything enclosed within a conductor. This is because the exterior charges redistribute such that the interior fields due to them cancel. This shielding effect is used in what is now known as a Faraday cage.
Faraday was an excellent experimentalist who conveyed his ideas in clear and simple language. However, his mathematical abilities did not extend as far as trigonometry or any but the simplest algebra. It was James Clerk Maxwell who took the work of Faraday, and others, and consolidated it with a set of equations that lie at the base of all modern theories of electromagnetic phenomena.
Michael Faraday meets Father Thames, from Punch (July 21, 1855)
Beyond his scientific research into areas such as chemistry, electricity, and magnetism at the Royal Institution, Faraday undertook numerous, and often time-consuming, service projects for private enterprise and the British government. This work included investigations of explosions in mines, being an expert witness in court, and the preparation of high-quality optical glass.
As a respected scientist in a nation with strong maritime interests, Faraday spent extensive amounts of time on projects such as the construction and operation of light houses and protecting the bottoms of ships from corrosion.
Faraday also was active in what would now be called environmental science, or engineering. He investigated industrial pollution at Swansea and was consulted on air pollution at the Royal Mint. In July of 1855, Faraday wrote a letter to The Times on the subject of the foul condition of the River Thames, which resulted in an oft-reprinted cartoon in Punch. (See also The Great Stink.)
Faraday assisted with planning and judging of exhibits for the Great Exhibition of 1851 in London. He also advised the National Gallery on the cleaning and protection of its art collection, and served on the National Gallery Site Commission in 1857.
Education was another area of service for Faraday. He lectured on the topic in 1854 at the Royal Institution, and in 1862 he appeared before a Public Schools Commission to give his views on education in Great Britain. Faraday also weighed in, negatively, on the public's fascination with table-turning, mesmerism, and seances, chastising both the public and the nation's educational system. See The Illustrated London News, July 1853, for Faraday's comments.
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In June of 1832, the University of Oxford granted Faraday a Doctor of Civil Law degree (honorary). During his lifetime, Faraday rejected a knighthood and twice refused to become President of the Royal Society.
In 1848, as a result of representations by the Prince Consort, Michael Faraday was awarded a grace and favour house in Hampton Court, Surrey free of all expenses or upkeep. This was the Master Mason's House, later called Faraday House, and now No.37 Hampton Court Road. In 1858 Faraday retired to live there. Twickenham Museum on Faraday and Faraday House, Accessed June 2006
Faraday died at his house at Hampton Court on August 25, 1867. He turned down burial in Westminster Abbey, but he has a memorial plaque there, near Isaac Newton's tomb. Faraday was interred in the Sandemanian plot in Highgate Cemetery.
Michael Faraday's grave at Highgate Cemetery
Faraday gave a successful series of lectures on the chemistry and physics of flames at the Royal Institution, entitled The Chemical History of a Candle. This was one of the earlier Christmas lectures for young people, which are still given each year. Between 1827 and 1860, Faraday gave the Christmas lecture a record nineteen times.
Faraday refused to participate in the production of chemical weapons for the Crimean War citing ethical reasons.
A statue of Faraday stands in Savoy Place, London, outside the Institution of Electrical Engineers.
A recently built hall of accommodation at Brunel University is named after Faraday.
A hall at Loughborough University was named after Faraday in 1960. Near the entrance to its dining hall is a bronze casting, which depicts the symbol of an electrical transformer, and inside there hangs a portrait, both in Faraday's honour.
Faraday's picture was printed on British £20 banknotes from 1991 until 2001. Bank of England, Withdrawn Notes
In the video game Chromehounds there is a ThermoVision Device named the Faraday.
The former UK Faraday Atmospheric Research Station in Antarctica was named after him.
Faraday was one of the then eight foreign members of the French Academy of Sciences.
Michael Faraday's signature
Faraday's books, with the exception of Chemical Manipulation, were collections of scientific papers or transcriptions of lectures. See page 220 of Hamilton's A Life of Discovery: Michael Faraday, Giant of the Scientific Revolution (2002) Since his death, Faraday's diary has been published, as have several large volumes of his letters and Faraday's journal from his travels with Davy in 1813 - 1815.
* Chemical Manipulation, Being Instructions to Students in Chemistry, John Murray, 1st ed. 1827, 2nd ed. 1830, 3rd ed. 1842
* Experimental Researches in Electricity, vols. i. and ii., Richard and John Edward Taylor, vols. i. and ii.. 1844 and 1847; vol. iii., 1844; vol. iii. Richard Taylor and William Francis, 1855
* Experimental Researches in Chemistry and Physics, Taylor and Francis, 1859
* A Course of Six Lectures on the Chemical History of a Candle, edited by W. Crookes, Griffin, Bohn & Co., 1861
* On the Various Forces in Nature, edited by W. Crookes, Chatto & Windus, 1873
* Faraday's Diary edited by T. Martin was published in eight volumes, 1932 - 1936
* Curiosity Perfectly Satisfyed: Faraday's Travels in Europe 1813-1815, edited by B. Bowers and L. Symons, Institution of Electrical Engineers, 1991
* The Correspondence of Michael Faraday, edited by F. A. J. L. James, INSPEC, Inc., volume 1, 1991; volume 2, 1993; volume 3, 1996; volume 4, 1999
* "Nothing is too wonderful to be true if it be consistent with the laws of nature, and in such things as these, experiment is the best test of such consistency." From the entry of 19 March 1849 in Faraday's Diary
* "Work. Finish. Publish." â his well-known advice to the young William Crookes
* "The important thing is to know how to take all things quietly."
* Regarding the hereafter, "Speculations? I have none. I am resting on certainties. I know whom I have believed and am persuaded that he is able to keep that which I have committed unto him against that day."
* "Next Sabbath day (the 22nd) I shall complete my 70th year. I can hardly think of myself so old."
*Above the doorways of the Pfahler Hall of Science at Ursinus College in Collegeville, Pennsylvania, there is a stone inscription of a quote attributed to Michael Faraday which reads "but still try, for who knows what is possible..." See
* "One day sir, you may tax it." Faraday's reply to William Gladstone, then British Minister of Finance, when asked of the practical value of electricity.
* "If you would cause your view ... to be acknowledged by scientific men; you would do a great service to science. If you would even get them to say yes or no to your conclusions it would help to clear the future progress. I believe some hesitate because they do not like their thoughts disturbed." From Life and Letters, 2:389.
* Faraday rotator
* Superconductivity
* Tyndall, John, Faraday as a Discoverer, (Longmans, 1st ed. 1868, 2nd ed. 1870).
* Bence Jones, Henry (1870). The Life and Letters of Faraday in 2 vols, Longmans.
* Gladstone, J. H. (1872). Michael Faraday, Macmillan.
* Thompson, Silvanus (1901, reprinted 2005). Michael Faraday, His Life and Work. Cassell and Company, London, 1901; reprint by Kessenger Publishing, Whitefish, MT. ISBN 1-4179-7036-7
* The British Electrical and Allied Manufacturers Association (1931). Faraday. R. & R. Clark, Ltd., Edinburgh, 1931.
* Williams, L. Pearce (1971), Faraday: A Biography, Simon and Schuster.
* Cantor, Geoffrey (1991). Michael Faraday, Sandemanian and Scientist, Macmillian, ISBN 0-333-55077
* Hamilton, James (2002). Faraday: The Life. London: Harper Collins. ISBN 0-00-716376-2
* Hamilton, James (2004). A Life of Discovery: Michael Faraday, Giant of the Scientific Revolution. New York: Random House. ISBN 1-4000-6016-8
* Agassi, Joseph (1971), Faraday as a Natural Philosopher, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
* Ames, Joseph Sweetman (Ed.), The discovery of induced electric currents Vol. 2. Memoirs, by Michael Faraday. New York, Cincinnati [etc.] American book company [c1900] LCCN 00005889
* Gooding, David (Ed.) (1985), Faraday Rediscovered: Essays on the Life and Work of Michael Faraday, 1791-1867, London/New York, Macmillan/Stockton
* Thomas, John Meurig (1991). Michael Faraday and the Royal Institution: The Genius of Man and Place Bristol: Hilger. ISBN 0-7503-0145-7
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* Biography at The Royal Institution of Great Britain
* Faraday as a Discoverer by John Tyndall, Project Gutenberg (downloads)
* The Christian Character of Michael Faraday
* Michael Faraday on the British twenty-pound banknote
* The Life and Discoveries of Michael Faraday by J. A. Crowther, London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1920
* "Faraday" at LoveToKnow 1911 Britannica Online Encyclopedia.
*
* (downloads)
* "Experimental Researches in Electricity" by Michael Faraday Original text with Biographical Introduction by Professor John Tyndall, 1914, Everyman edition.
* Video Podcast with Sir John Cadogan talking about Benzene since Faraday
* The letters of Faraday and Schoenbein 1836-1862. With notes, comments and references to contemporary letters (1899) full download PDF
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Michael_Faraday | What was Michael Faraday`s profession? | chemist and physicist | data/set4/a7 | Michael_Faraday
Michael Faraday, FRS (September 22, 1791 â August 25, 1867) was an English chemist and physicist (or natural philosopher, in the terminology of that time) who contributed to the fields of electromagnetism and electrochemistry.
Faraday studied the magnetic field around a conductor carrying a DC electric current, and established the basis for the magnetic field concept in physics. He discovered electromagnetic induction, diamagnetism and electrolysis. He established that magnetism could affect rays of light and that there was an underlying relationship between the two phenomena. Michael Faraday entry at the 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica hosted by LovetoKnow Retrieved January 2007. Institution of Engineering and Technology, London Archives, Michael Faraday His inventions of electromagnetic rotary devices formed the foundation of electric motor technology, and it was largely due to his efforts that electricity became viable for use in technology.
As a chemist, Faraday discovered benzene, investigated the clathrate hydrate of chlorine, invented an early form of the bunsen burner and the system of oxidation numbers, and popularized terminology such as anode, cathode, electrode, and ion.
Although Faraday received little formal education and knew little of higher mathematics, such as calculus, he was one of the most influential scientists in history. Some historians of science refer to him as the best experimentalist in the history of science. "best experimentalist in the history of science." Quoting Dr Peter Ford, from the University of Bathâs Department of Physics. Accessed January 2007. The SI unit of capacitance, the farad, is named after him, as is the Faraday constant, the charge on a mole of electrons (about 96,485 coulombs). Faraday's law of induction states that a magnetic field changing in time creates a proportional electromotive force.
Faraday was the first and foremost Fullerian Professor of Chemistry at the Royal Institution of Great Britain, a position to which he was appointed for life.
Michael Faraday from a photograph by John Watkins, British Library
Michael Faraday was born in Newington Butts, near present-day South London, England. His family was not well off. His father, James, was a member of the Sandemanian sect of Christianity. James Faraday had come to London ca 1790 from Outhgill in Westmorland, where he had been the village blacksmith. The young Michael Faraday, one of four children, having only the most basic of school educations, had to largely educate himself. "Michael Faraday." History of Science and Technology. Houghton Mifflin Company, 2004. Answers.com 4 June 2007. /ref> At fourteen he became apprenticed to a local bookbinder and bookseller George Riebau and, during his seven-year apprenticeship, he read many books, including Isaac Watts' The Improvement of the Mind, and he enthusiastically implemented the principles and suggestions contained therein. He developed an interest in science and specifically in electricity. In particular, he was inspired by the book Conversations in Chemistry by Jane Marcet.
At the age of twenty, in 1812, at the end of his apprenticeship, Faraday attended lectures by the eminent English chemist and physicist Humphry Davy of the Royal Institution and Royal Society, and John Tatum, founder of the City Philosophical Society. Many tickets for these lectures were given to Faraday by William Dance (one of the founders of the Royal Philharmonic Society). Afterwards, Faraday sent Davy a three hundred page book based on notes taken during the lectures. Davy's reply was immediate, kind, and favorable. When Davy damaged his eyesight in an accident with nitrogen trichloride, he decided to employ Faraday as a secretary. When John Payne, one of the Royal Institution's assistants, was fired, Sir Humphry Davy was asked to find a replacement. He appointed Faraday as Chemical Assistant at the Royal Institution on March 1.
In the class-based English society of the time, Faraday was not considered a gentleman. When Davy went on a long tour to the continent in 1813-5, his valet did not wish to go. Faraday was going as Davy's scientific assistant, and was asked to act as Davy's valet until a replacement could be found in Paris. Davy failed to find a replacement, and Faraday was forced to fill the role of valet as well as assistant throughout the trip. Davy's wife, Jane Apreece, refused to treat Faraday as an equal (making him travel outside the coach, eat with the servants, etc.) and generally made Faraday so miserable that he contemplated returning to England alone and giving up science altogether. The trip did, however, give him access to the European scientific elite and a host of stimulating ideas.
His sponsor and mentor was John 'Mad Jack' Fuller, who created the Fullerian Professorship of Chemistry at the Royal Institution.
Faraday was a devout Christian and a member of the small Sandemanian denomination, an offshoot of the Church of Scotland. He later served two terms as an elder in the group's church.
Faraday married Sarah Barnard (1800-1879) on June 2, 1821, although they would never have children. They met through attending the Sandemanian church.
He was elected a member of the Royal Society in 1824, appointed director of the laboratory in 1825; and in 1833 he was appointed Fullerian professor of chemistry in the institution for life, without the obligation to deliver lectures.
The title page of The Chemical History of a Candle (1861)
Faraday's earliest chemical work was as an assistant to Davy. He made a special study of chlorine, and discovered two new chlorides of carbon. He also made the first rough experiments on the diffusion of gases, a phenomenon first pointed out by John Dalton, the physical importance of which was more fully brought to light by Thomas Graham and Joseph Loschmidt. He succeeded in liquefying several gases; he investigated the alloys of steel, and produced several new kinds of glass intended for optical purposes. A specimen of one of these heavy glasses afterwards became historically important as the substance in which Faraday detected the rotation of the plane of polarisation of light when the glass was placed in a magnetic field, and also as the substance which was first repelled by the poles of the magnet. He also endeavoured, with some success, to make the general methods of chemistry, as distinguished from its results, the subject of special study and of popular exposition.
He invented an early form of what was to become the Bunsen burner, which is used almost universally in science laboratories as a convenient source of heat. See page 127 of Faraday's Chemical Manipulation, Being Instructions to Students in Chemistry (1827)
Faraday worked extensively in the field of chemistry, discovering chemical substances such as benzene (which he called bicarburet of hydrogen), inventing the system of oxidation numbers, and liquefying gases such as chlorine. In 1820 Faraday reported on the first syntheses of compounds made from carbon and chlorine, C 2 H 6 and C 2 H 4 , and published his results the following year. Faraday also determined the composition of the chlorine clathrate hydrate, which had been discovered by Humphry Davy in 1810.
Faraday also discovered the laws of electrolysis and popularized terminology such as anode, cathode, electrode, and ion, terms largely created by William Whewell.
Faraday was the first to report what later came to be called metallic nanoparticles. In 1847 he discovered that the optical properties of gold colloids differed from those of the corresponding bulk metal. This was probably the first reported observation of the effects of quantum size, and might be considered to be the birth of nanoscience.
Faraday's greatest work was probably with electricity and magnetism. The first experiment which he recorded was the construction of a voltaic pile with seven halfpence pieces, stacked together with seven disks of sheet zinc, and six pieces of paper moistened with salt water. With this pile he decomposed sulphate of magnesia (first letter to Abbott, July 12, 1812).
[[Image:Faraday photograph ii.jpg|thumb|200px|left|Michael Faraday holding a glass bar of the type he used in 1845 to show that magnetism can affect light. Detail of an engraving by Henry Adlard, based on an earlier photograph by Maull & Polyblank ca. 1857. See National Portrait Gallery, UK ]]
In 1821, soon after the Danish physicist and chemist, Hans Christian Ãrsted discovered the phenomenon of electromagnetism, Davy and British scientist William Hyde Wollaston tried but failed to design an electric motor. Faraday, having discussed the problem with the two men, went on to build two devices to produce what he called electromagnetic rotation: a continuous circular motion from the circular magnetic force around a wire and a wire extending into a pool of mercury with a magnet placed inside would rotate around the magnet if supplied with current from a chemical battery. The latter device is known as a homopolar motor. These experiments and inventions form the foundation of modern electromagnetic technology. Faraday published his results without acknowledging his debt to Wollaston and Davy, and the resulting controversy caused Faraday to withdraw from electromagnetic research for several years.
At this stage, there is also evidence to suggest that Davy may have been trying to slow Faradayâs rise as a scientist (or natural philosopher as it was known then). In 1825, for instance, Davy set him onto optical glass experiments, which progressed for six years with no great results. It was not until Davy's death, in 1829, that Faraday stopped these fruitless tasks and moved on to endeavors that were more worthwhile. Two years later, in 1831, he began his great series of experiments in which he discovered electromagnetic induction. Joseph Henry likely discovered self-induction a few months earlier and both may have been anticipated by the work of Francesco Zantedeschi in Italy in 1829 and 1830.
Faraday's breakthrough came when he wrapped two insulated coils of wire around a massive iron ring, bolted to a chair, and found that upon passing a current through one coil, a momentary current was induced in the other coil. This phenomenon is known as mutual induction. The iron ring-coil apparatus is still on display at the Royal Institution. In subsequent experiments he found that if he moved a magnet through a loop of wire, an electric current flowed in the wire. The current also flowed if the loop was moved over a stationary magnet. His demonstrations established that a changing magnetic field produces an electric field. This relation was mathematically modelled by Faraday's law, which subsequently became one of the four Maxwell equations. These in turn have evolved into the generalization known today as field theory.
Michael Faraday - statue in Savoy Place, London.
Sculptor John Henry Foley RA
Faraday later used the principle to construct the electric dynamo, the ancestor of modern power generators.
In 1839 he completed a series of experiments aimed at investigating the fundamental nature of electricity. Faraday used "static", batteries, and "animal electricity" to produce the phenomena of electrostatic attraction, electrolysis, magnetism, etc. He concluded that, contrary to scientific opinion of the time, the divisions between the various "kinds" of electricity were illusory. Faraday instead proposed that only a single "electricity" exists, and the changing values of quantity and intensity (voltage and charge) would produce different groups of phenomena.
Near the end of his career Faraday proposed that electromagnetic forces extended into the empty space around the conductor. This idea was rejected by his fellow scientists, and Faraday did not live to see this idea eventually accepted. Faraday's concept of lines of flux emanating from charged bodies and magnets provided a way to visualize electric and magnetic fields. That mental model was crucial to the successful development of electromechanical devices which dominated engineering and industry for the remainder of the 19th century.
In 1845, he discovered the phenomenon that he named diamagnetism, and what is now called the Faraday effect: The plane of polarization of linearly polarized light propagated through a material medium can be rotated by the application of an external magnetic field aligned in the propagation direction. He wrote in his notebook, "I have at last succeeded in illuminating a magnetic curve or line of force and in magnetising a ray of light". This established that magnetic force and light were related.
In his work on static electricity, Faraday demonstrated that the charge only resided on the exterior of a charged conductor, and exterior charge had no influence on anything enclosed within a conductor. This is because the exterior charges redistribute such that the interior fields due to them cancel. This shielding effect is used in what is now known as a Faraday cage.
Faraday was an excellent experimentalist who conveyed his ideas in clear and simple language. However, his mathematical abilities did not extend as far as trigonometry or any but the simplest algebra. It was James Clerk Maxwell who took the work of Faraday, and others, and consolidated it with a set of equations that lie at the base of all modern theories of electromagnetic phenomena.
Michael Faraday meets Father Thames, from Punch (July 21, 1855)
Beyond his scientific research into areas such as chemistry, electricity, and magnetism at the Royal Institution, Faraday undertook numerous, and often time-consuming, service projects for private enterprise and the British government. This work included investigations of explosions in mines, being an expert witness in court, and the preparation of high-quality optical glass.
As a respected scientist in a nation with strong maritime interests, Faraday spent extensive amounts of time on projects such as the construction and operation of light houses and protecting the bottoms of ships from corrosion.
Faraday also was active in what would now be called environmental science, or engineering. He investigated industrial pollution at Swansea and was consulted on air pollution at the Royal Mint. In July of 1855, Faraday wrote a letter to The Times on the subject of the foul condition of the River Thames, which resulted in an oft-reprinted cartoon in Punch. (See also The Great Stink.)
Faraday assisted with planning and judging of exhibits for the Great Exhibition of 1851 in London. He also advised the National Gallery on the cleaning and protection of its art collection, and served on the National Gallery Site Commission in 1857.
Education was another area of service for Faraday. He lectured on the topic in 1854 at the Royal Institution, and in 1862 he appeared before a Public Schools Commission to give his views on education in Great Britain. Faraday also weighed in, negatively, on the public's fascination with table-turning, mesmerism, and seances, chastising both the public and the nation's educational system. See The Illustrated London News, July 1853, for Faraday's comments.
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In June of 1832, the University of Oxford granted Faraday a Doctor of Civil Law degree (honorary). During his lifetime, Faraday rejected a knighthood and twice refused to become President of the Royal Society.
In 1848, as a result of representations by the Prince Consort, Michael Faraday was awarded a grace and favour house in Hampton Court, Surrey free of all expenses or upkeep. This was the Master Mason's House, later called Faraday House, and now No.37 Hampton Court Road. In 1858 Faraday retired to live there. Twickenham Museum on Faraday and Faraday House, Accessed June 2006
Faraday died at his house at Hampton Court on August 25, 1867. He turned down burial in Westminster Abbey, but he has a memorial plaque there, near Isaac Newton's tomb. Faraday was interred in the Sandemanian plot in Highgate Cemetery.
Michael Faraday's grave at Highgate Cemetery
Faraday gave a successful series of lectures on the chemistry and physics of flames at the Royal Institution, entitled The Chemical History of a Candle. This was one of the earlier Christmas lectures for young people, which are still given each year. Between 1827 and 1860, Faraday gave the Christmas lecture a record nineteen times.
Faraday refused to participate in the production of chemical weapons for the Crimean War citing ethical reasons.
A statue of Faraday stands in Savoy Place, London, outside the Institution of Electrical Engineers.
A recently built hall of accommodation at Brunel University is named after Faraday.
A hall at Loughborough University was named after Faraday in 1960. Near the entrance to its dining hall is a bronze casting, which depicts the symbol of an electrical transformer, and inside there hangs a portrait, both in Faraday's honour.
Faraday's picture was printed on British £20 banknotes from 1991 until 2001. Bank of England, Withdrawn Notes
In the video game Chromehounds there is a ThermoVision Device named the Faraday.
The former UK Faraday Atmospheric Research Station in Antarctica was named after him.
Faraday was one of the then eight foreign members of the French Academy of Sciences.
Michael Faraday's signature
Faraday's books, with the exception of Chemical Manipulation, were collections of scientific papers or transcriptions of lectures. See page 220 of Hamilton's A Life of Discovery: Michael Faraday, Giant of the Scientific Revolution (2002) Since his death, Faraday's diary has been published, as have several large volumes of his letters and Faraday's journal from his travels with Davy in 1813 - 1815.
* Chemical Manipulation, Being Instructions to Students in Chemistry, John Murray, 1st ed. 1827, 2nd ed. 1830, 3rd ed. 1842
* Experimental Researches in Electricity, vols. i. and ii., Richard and John Edward Taylor, vols. i. and ii.. 1844 and 1847; vol. iii., 1844; vol. iii. Richard Taylor and William Francis, 1855
* Experimental Researches in Chemistry and Physics, Taylor and Francis, 1859
* A Course of Six Lectures on the Chemical History of a Candle, edited by W. Crookes, Griffin, Bohn & Co., 1861
* On the Various Forces in Nature, edited by W. Crookes, Chatto & Windus, 1873
* Faraday's Diary edited by T. Martin was published in eight volumes, 1932 - 1936
* Curiosity Perfectly Satisfyed: Faraday's Travels in Europe 1813-1815, edited by B. Bowers and L. Symons, Institution of Electrical Engineers, 1991
* The Correspondence of Michael Faraday, edited by F. A. J. L. James, INSPEC, Inc., volume 1, 1991; volume 2, 1993; volume 3, 1996; volume 4, 1999
* "Nothing is too wonderful to be true if it be consistent with the laws of nature, and in such things as these, experiment is the best test of such consistency." From the entry of 19 March 1849 in Faraday's Diary
* "Work. Finish. Publish." â his well-known advice to the young William Crookes
* "The important thing is to know how to take all things quietly."
* Regarding the hereafter, "Speculations? I have none. I am resting on certainties. I know whom I have believed and am persuaded that he is able to keep that which I have committed unto him against that day."
* "Next Sabbath day (the 22nd) I shall complete my 70th year. I can hardly think of myself so old."
*Above the doorways of the Pfahler Hall of Science at Ursinus College in Collegeville, Pennsylvania, there is a stone inscription of a quote attributed to Michael Faraday which reads "but still try, for who knows what is possible..." See
* "One day sir, you may tax it." Faraday's reply to William Gladstone, then British Minister of Finance, when asked of the practical value of electricity.
* "If you would cause your view ... to be acknowledged by scientific men; you would do a great service to science. If you would even get them to say yes or no to your conclusions it would help to clear the future progress. I believe some hesitate because they do not like their thoughts disturbed." From Life and Letters, 2:389.
* Faraday rotator
* Superconductivity
* Tyndall, John, Faraday as a Discoverer, (Longmans, 1st ed. 1868, 2nd ed. 1870).
* Bence Jones, Henry (1870). The Life and Letters of Faraday in 2 vols, Longmans.
* Gladstone, J. H. (1872). Michael Faraday, Macmillan.
* Thompson, Silvanus (1901, reprinted 2005). Michael Faraday, His Life and Work. Cassell and Company, London, 1901; reprint by Kessenger Publishing, Whitefish, MT. ISBN 1-4179-7036-7
* The British Electrical and Allied Manufacturers Association (1931). Faraday. R. & R. Clark, Ltd., Edinburgh, 1931.
* Williams, L. Pearce (1971), Faraday: A Biography, Simon and Schuster.
* Cantor, Geoffrey (1991). Michael Faraday, Sandemanian and Scientist, Macmillian, ISBN 0-333-55077
* Hamilton, James (2002). Faraday: The Life. London: Harper Collins. ISBN 0-00-716376-2
* Hamilton, James (2004). A Life of Discovery: Michael Faraday, Giant of the Scientific Revolution. New York: Random House. ISBN 1-4000-6016-8
* Agassi, Joseph (1971), Faraday as a Natural Philosopher, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
* Ames, Joseph Sweetman (Ed.), The discovery of induced electric currents Vol. 2. Memoirs, by Michael Faraday. New York, Cincinnati [etc.] American book company [c1900] LCCN 00005889
* Gooding, David (Ed.) (1985), Faraday Rediscovered: Essays on the Life and Work of Michael Faraday, 1791-1867, London/New York, Macmillan/Stockton
* Thomas, John Meurig (1991). Michael Faraday and the Royal Institution: The Genius of Man and Place Bristol: Hilger. ISBN 0-7503-0145-7
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* Biography at The Royal Institution of Great Britain
* Faraday as a Discoverer by John Tyndall, Project Gutenberg (downloads)
* The Christian Character of Michael Faraday
* Michael Faraday on the British twenty-pound banknote
* The Life and Discoveries of Michael Faraday by J. A. Crowther, London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1920
* "Faraday" at LoveToKnow 1911 Britannica Online Encyclopedia.
*
* (downloads)
* "Experimental Researches in Electricity" by Michael Faraday Original text with Biographical Introduction by Professor John Tyndall, 1914, Everyman edition.
* Video Podcast with Sir John Cadogan talking about Benzene since Faraday
* The letters of Faraday and Schoenbein 1836-1862. With notes, comments and references to contemporary letters (1899) full download PDF
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Michael_Faraday | How many years ago did Faraday report on the first synthesis of compound make from carbon and chlorine , c 2 h 6 and c 2 h 4 ? | 189 | data/set4/a7 | Michael_Faraday
Michael Faraday, FRS (September 22, 1791 â August 25, 1867) was an English chemist and physicist (or natural philosopher, in the terminology of that time) who contributed to the fields of electromagnetism and electrochemistry.
Faraday studied the magnetic field around a conductor carrying a DC electric current, and established the basis for the magnetic field concept in physics. He discovered electromagnetic induction, diamagnetism and electrolysis. He established that magnetism could affect rays of light and that there was an underlying relationship between the two phenomena. Michael Faraday entry at the 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica hosted by LovetoKnow Retrieved January 2007. Institution of Engineering and Technology, London Archives, Michael Faraday His inventions of electromagnetic rotary devices formed the foundation of electric motor technology, and it was largely due to his efforts that electricity became viable for use in technology.
As a chemist, Faraday discovered benzene, investigated the clathrate hydrate of chlorine, invented an early form of the bunsen burner and the system of oxidation numbers, and popularized terminology such as anode, cathode, electrode, and ion.
Although Faraday received little formal education and knew little of higher mathematics, such as calculus, he was one of the most influential scientists in history. Some historians of science refer to him as the best experimentalist in the history of science. "best experimentalist in the history of science." Quoting Dr Peter Ford, from the University of Bathâs Department of Physics. Accessed January 2007. The SI unit of capacitance, the farad, is named after him, as is the Faraday constant, the charge on a mole of electrons (about 96,485 coulombs). Faraday's law of induction states that a magnetic field changing in time creates a proportional electromotive force.
Faraday was the first and foremost Fullerian Professor of Chemistry at the Royal Institution of Great Britain, a position to which he was appointed for life.
Michael Faraday from a photograph by John Watkins, British Library
Michael Faraday was born in Newington Butts, near present-day South London, England. His family was not well off. His father, James, was a member of the Sandemanian sect of Christianity. James Faraday had come to London ca 1790 from Outhgill in Westmorland, where he had been the village blacksmith. The young Michael Faraday, one of four children, having only the most basic of school educations, had to largely educate himself. "Michael Faraday." History of Science and Technology. Houghton Mifflin Company, 2004. Answers.com 4 June 2007. /ref> At fourteen he became apprenticed to a local bookbinder and bookseller George Riebau and, during his seven-year apprenticeship, he read many books, including Isaac Watts' The Improvement of the Mind, and he enthusiastically implemented the principles and suggestions contained therein. He developed an interest in science and specifically in electricity. In particular, he was inspired by the book Conversations in Chemistry by Jane Marcet.
At the age of twenty, in 1812, at the end of his apprenticeship, Faraday attended lectures by the eminent English chemist and physicist Humphry Davy of the Royal Institution and Royal Society, and John Tatum, founder of the City Philosophical Society. Many tickets for these lectures were given to Faraday by William Dance (one of the founders of the Royal Philharmonic Society). Afterwards, Faraday sent Davy a three hundred page book based on notes taken during the lectures. Davy's reply was immediate, kind, and favorable. When Davy damaged his eyesight in an accident with nitrogen trichloride, he decided to employ Faraday as a secretary. When John Payne, one of the Royal Institution's assistants, was fired, Sir Humphry Davy was asked to find a replacement. He appointed Faraday as Chemical Assistant at the Royal Institution on March 1.
In the class-based English society of the time, Faraday was not considered a gentleman. When Davy went on a long tour to the continent in 1813-5, his valet did not wish to go. Faraday was going as Davy's scientific assistant, and was asked to act as Davy's valet until a replacement could be found in Paris. Davy failed to find a replacement, and Faraday was forced to fill the role of valet as well as assistant throughout the trip. Davy's wife, Jane Apreece, refused to treat Faraday as an equal (making him travel outside the coach, eat with the servants, etc.) and generally made Faraday so miserable that he contemplated returning to England alone and giving up science altogether. The trip did, however, give him access to the European scientific elite and a host of stimulating ideas.
His sponsor and mentor was John 'Mad Jack' Fuller, who created the Fullerian Professorship of Chemistry at the Royal Institution.
Faraday was a devout Christian and a member of the small Sandemanian denomination, an offshoot of the Church of Scotland. He later served two terms as an elder in the group's church.
Faraday married Sarah Barnard (1800-1879) on June 2, 1821, although they would never have children. They met through attending the Sandemanian church.
He was elected a member of the Royal Society in 1824, appointed director of the laboratory in 1825; and in 1833 he was appointed Fullerian professor of chemistry in the institution for life, without the obligation to deliver lectures.
The title page of The Chemical History of a Candle (1861)
Faraday's earliest chemical work was as an assistant to Davy. He made a special study of chlorine, and discovered two new chlorides of carbon. He also made the first rough experiments on the diffusion of gases, a phenomenon first pointed out by John Dalton, the physical importance of which was more fully brought to light by Thomas Graham and Joseph Loschmidt. He succeeded in liquefying several gases; he investigated the alloys of steel, and produced several new kinds of glass intended for optical purposes. A specimen of one of these heavy glasses afterwards became historically important as the substance in which Faraday detected the rotation of the plane of polarisation of light when the glass was placed in a magnetic field, and also as the substance which was first repelled by the poles of the magnet. He also endeavoured, with some success, to make the general methods of chemistry, as distinguished from its results, the subject of special study and of popular exposition.
He invented an early form of what was to become the Bunsen burner, which is used almost universally in science laboratories as a convenient source of heat. See page 127 of Faraday's Chemical Manipulation, Being Instructions to Students in Chemistry (1827)
Faraday worked extensively in the field of chemistry, discovering chemical substances such as benzene (which he called bicarburet of hydrogen), inventing the system of oxidation numbers, and liquefying gases such as chlorine. In 1820 Faraday reported on the first syntheses of compounds made from carbon and chlorine, C 2 H 6 and C 2 H 4 , and published his results the following year. Faraday also determined the composition of the chlorine clathrate hydrate, which had been discovered by Humphry Davy in 1810.
Faraday also discovered the laws of electrolysis and popularized terminology such as anode, cathode, electrode, and ion, terms largely created by William Whewell.
Faraday was the first to report what later came to be called metallic nanoparticles. In 1847 he discovered that the optical properties of gold colloids differed from those of the corresponding bulk metal. This was probably the first reported observation of the effects of quantum size, and might be considered to be the birth of nanoscience.
Faraday's greatest work was probably with electricity and magnetism. The first experiment which he recorded was the construction of a voltaic pile with seven halfpence pieces, stacked together with seven disks of sheet zinc, and six pieces of paper moistened with salt water. With this pile he decomposed sulphate of magnesia (first letter to Abbott, July 12, 1812).
[[Image:Faraday photograph ii.jpg|thumb|200px|left|Michael Faraday holding a glass bar of the type he used in 1845 to show that magnetism can affect light. Detail of an engraving by Henry Adlard, based on an earlier photograph by Maull & Polyblank ca. 1857. See National Portrait Gallery, UK ]]
In 1821, soon after the Danish physicist and chemist, Hans Christian Ãrsted discovered the phenomenon of electromagnetism, Davy and British scientist William Hyde Wollaston tried but failed to design an electric motor. Faraday, having discussed the problem with the two men, went on to build two devices to produce what he called electromagnetic rotation: a continuous circular motion from the circular magnetic force around a wire and a wire extending into a pool of mercury with a magnet placed inside would rotate around the magnet if supplied with current from a chemical battery. The latter device is known as a homopolar motor. These experiments and inventions form the foundation of modern electromagnetic technology. Faraday published his results without acknowledging his debt to Wollaston and Davy, and the resulting controversy caused Faraday to withdraw from electromagnetic research for several years.
At this stage, there is also evidence to suggest that Davy may have been trying to slow Faradayâs rise as a scientist (or natural philosopher as it was known then). In 1825, for instance, Davy set him onto optical glass experiments, which progressed for six years with no great results. It was not until Davy's death, in 1829, that Faraday stopped these fruitless tasks and moved on to endeavors that were more worthwhile. Two years later, in 1831, he began his great series of experiments in which he discovered electromagnetic induction. Joseph Henry likely discovered self-induction a few months earlier and both may have been anticipated by the work of Francesco Zantedeschi in Italy in 1829 and 1830.
Faraday's breakthrough came when he wrapped two insulated coils of wire around a massive iron ring, bolted to a chair, and found that upon passing a current through one coil, a momentary current was induced in the other coil. This phenomenon is known as mutual induction. The iron ring-coil apparatus is still on display at the Royal Institution. In subsequent experiments he found that if he moved a magnet through a loop of wire, an electric current flowed in the wire. The current also flowed if the loop was moved over a stationary magnet. His demonstrations established that a changing magnetic field produces an electric field. This relation was mathematically modelled by Faraday's law, which subsequently became one of the four Maxwell equations. These in turn have evolved into the generalization known today as field theory.
Michael Faraday - statue in Savoy Place, London.
Sculptor John Henry Foley RA
Faraday later used the principle to construct the electric dynamo, the ancestor of modern power generators.
In 1839 he completed a series of experiments aimed at investigating the fundamental nature of electricity. Faraday used "static", batteries, and "animal electricity" to produce the phenomena of electrostatic attraction, electrolysis, magnetism, etc. He concluded that, contrary to scientific opinion of the time, the divisions between the various "kinds" of electricity were illusory. Faraday instead proposed that only a single "electricity" exists, and the changing values of quantity and intensity (voltage and charge) would produce different groups of phenomena.
Near the end of his career Faraday proposed that electromagnetic forces extended into the empty space around the conductor. This idea was rejected by his fellow scientists, and Faraday did not live to see this idea eventually accepted. Faraday's concept of lines of flux emanating from charged bodies and magnets provided a way to visualize electric and magnetic fields. That mental model was crucial to the successful development of electromechanical devices which dominated engineering and industry for the remainder of the 19th century.
In 1845, he discovered the phenomenon that he named diamagnetism, and what is now called the Faraday effect: The plane of polarization of linearly polarized light propagated through a material medium can be rotated by the application of an external magnetic field aligned in the propagation direction. He wrote in his notebook, "I have at last succeeded in illuminating a magnetic curve or line of force and in magnetising a ray of light". This established that magnetic force and light were related.
In his work on static electricity, Faraday demonstrated that the charge only resided on the exterior of a charged conductor, and exterior charge had no influence on anything enclosed within a conductor. This is because the exterior charges redistribute such that the interior fields due to them cancel. This shielding effect is used in what is now known as a Faraday cage.
Faraday was an excellent experimentalist who conveyed his ideas in clear and simple language. However, his mathematical abilities did not extend as far as trigonometry or any but the simplest algebra. It was James Clerk Maxwell who took the work of Faraday, and others, and consolidated it with a set of equations that lie at the base of all modern theories of electromagnetic phenomena.
Michael Faraday meets Father Thames, from Punch (July 21, 1855)
Beyond his scientific research into areas such as chemistry, electricity, and magnetism at the Royal Institution, Faraday undertook numerous, and often time-consuming, service projects for private enterprise and the British government. This work included investigations of explosions in mines, being an expert witness in court, and the preparation of high-quality optical glass.
As a respected scientist in a nation with strong maritime interests, Faraday spent extensive amounts of time on projects such as the construction and operation of light houses and protecting the bottoms of ships from corrosion.
Faraday also was active in what would now be called environmental science, or engineering. He investigated industrial pollution at Swansea and was consulted on air pollution at the Royal Mint. In July of 1855, Faraday wrote a letter to The Times on the subject of the foul condition of the River Thames, which resulted in an oft-reprinted cartoon in Punch. (See also The Great Stink.)
Faraday assisted with planning and judging of exhibits for the Great Exhibition of 1851 in London. He also advised the National Gallery on the cleaning and protection of its art collection, and served on the National Gallery Site Commission in 1857.
Education was another area of service for Faraday. He lectured on the topic in 1854 at the Royal Institution, and in 1862 he appeared before a Public Schools Commission to give his views on education in Great Britain. Faraday also weighed in, negatively, on the public's fascination with table-turning, mesmerism, and seances, chastising both the public and the nation's educational system. See The Illustrated London News, July 1853, for Faraday's comments.
125px
In June of 1832, the University of Oxford granted Faraday a Doctor of Civil Law degree (honorary). During his lifetime, Faraday rejected a knighthood and twice refused to become President of the Royal Society.
In 1848, as a result of representations by the Prince Consort, Michael Faraday was awarded a grace and favour house in Hampton Court, Surrey free of all expenses or upkeep. This was the Master Mason's House, later called Faraday House, and now No.37 Hampton Court Road. In 1858 Faraday retired to live there. Twickenham Museum on Faraday and Faraday House, Accessed June 2006
Faraday died at his house at Hampton Court on August 25, 1867. He turned down burial in Westminster Abbey, but he has a memorial plaque there, near Isaac Newton's tomb. Faraday was interred in the Sandemanian plot in Highgate Cemetery.
Michael Faraday's grave at Highgate Cemetery
Faraday gave a successful series of lectures on the chemistry and physics of flames at the Royal Institution, entitled The Chemical History of a Candle. This was one of the earlier Christmas lectures for young people, which are still given each year. Between 1827 and 1860, Faraday gave the Christmas lecture a record nineteen times.
Faraday refused to participate in the production of chemical weapons for the Crimean War citing ethical reasons.
A statue of Faraday stands in Savoy Place, London, outside the Institution of Electrical Engineers.
A recently built hall of accommodation at Brunel University is named after Faraday.
A hall at Loughborough University was named after Faraday in 1960. Near the entrance to its dining hall is a bronze casting, which depicts the symbol of an electrical transformer, and inside there hangs a portrait, both in Faraday's honour.
Faraday's picture was printed on British £20 banknotes from 1991 until 2001. Bank of England, Withdrawn Notes
In the video game Chromehounds there is a ThermoVision Device named the Faraday.
The former UK Faraday Atmospheric Research Station in Antarctica was named after him.
Faraday was one of the then eight foreign members of the French Academy of Sciences.
Michael Faraday's signature
Faraday's books, with the exception of Chemical Manipulation, were collections of scientific papers or transcriptions of lectures. See page 220 of Hamilton's A Life of Discovery: Michael Faraday, Giant of the Scientific Revolution (2002) Since his death, Faraday's diary has been published, as have several large volumes of his letters and Faraday's journal from his travels with Davy in 1813 - 1815.
* Chemical Manipulation, Being Instructions to Students in Chemistry, John Murray, 1st ed. 1827, 2nd ed. 1830, 3rd ed. 1842
* Experimental Researches in Electricity, vols. i. and ii., Richard and John Edward Taylor, vols. i. and ii.. 1844 and 1847; vol. iii., 1844; vol. iii. Richard Taylor and William Francis, 1855
* Experimental Researches in Chemistry and Physics, Taylor and Francis, 1859
* A Course of Six Lectures on the Chemical History of a Candle, edited by W. Crookes, Griffin, Bohn & Co., 1861
* On the Various Forces in Nature, edited by W. Crookes, Chatto & Windus, 1873
* Faraday's Diary edited by T. Martin was published in eight volumes, 1932 - 1936
* Curiosity Perfectly Satisfyed: Faraday's Travels in Europe 1813-1815, edited by B. Bowers and L. Symons, Institution of Electrical Engineers, 1991
* The Correspondence of Michael Faraday, edited by F. A. J. L. James, INSPEC, Inc., volume 1, 1991; volume 2, 1993; volume 3, 1996; volume 4, 1999
* "Nothing is too wonderful to be true if it be consistent with the laws of nature, and in such things as these, experiment is the best test of such consistency." From the entry of 19 March 1849 in Faraday's Diary
* "Work. Finish. Publish." â his well-known advice to the young William Crookes
* "The important thing is to know how to take all things quietly."
* Regarding the hereafter, "Speculations? I have none. I am resting on certainties. I know whom I have believed and am persuaded that he is able to keep that which I have committed unto him against that day."
* "Next Sabbath day (the 22nd) I shall complete my 70th year. I can hardly think of myself so old."
*Above the doorways of the Pfahler Hall of Science at Ursinus College in Collegeville, Pennsylvania, there is a stone inscription of a quote attributed to Michael Faraday which reads "but still try, for who knows what is possible..." See
* "One day sir, you may tax it." Faraday's reply to William Gladstone, then British Minister of Finance, when asked of the practical value of electricity.
* "If you would cause your view ... to be acknowledged by scientific men; you would do a great service to science. If you would even get them to say yes or no to your conclusions it would help to clear the future progress. I believe some hesitate because they do not like their thoughts disturbed." From Life and Letters, 2:389.
* Faraday rotator
* Superconductivity
* Tyndall, John, Faraday as a Discoverer, (Longmans, 1st ed. 1868, 2nd ed. 1870).
* Bence Jones, Henry (1870). The Life and Letters of Faraday in 2 vols, Longmans.
* Gladstone, J. H. (1872). Michael Faraday, Macmillan.
* Thompson, Silvanus (1901, reprinted 2005). Michael Faraday, His Life and Work. Cassell and Company, London, 1901; reprint by Kessenger Publishing, Whitefish, MT. ISBN 1-4179-7036-7
* The British Electrical and Allied Manufacturers Association (1931). Faraday. R. & R. Clark, Ltd., Edinburgh, 1931.
* Williams, L. Pearce (1971), Faraday: A Biography, Simon and Schuster.
* Cantor, Geoffrey (1991). Michael Faraday, Sandemanian and Scientist, Macmillian, ISBN 0-333-55077
* Hamilton, James (2002). Faraday: The Life. London: Harper Collins. ISBN 0-00-716376-2
* Hamilton, James (2004). A Life of Discovery: Michael Faraday, Giant of the Scientific Revolution. New York: Random House. ISBN 1-4000-6016-8
* Agassi, Joseph (1971), Faraday as a Natural Philosopher, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
* Ames, Joseph Sweetman (Ed.), The discovery of induced electric currents Vol. 2. Memoirs, by Michael Faraday. New York, Cincinnati [etc.] American book company [c1900] LCCN 00005889
* Gooding, David (Ed.) (1985), Faraday Rediscovered: Essays on the Life and Work of Michael Faraday, 1791-1867, London/New York, Macmillan/Stockton
* Thomas, John Meurig (1991). Michael Faraday and the Royal Institution: The Genius of Man and Place Bristol: Hilger. ISBN 0-7503-0145-7
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* Biography at The Royal Institution of Great Britain
* Faraday as a Discoverer by John Tyndall, Project Gutenberg (downloads)
* The Christian Character of Michael Faraday
* Michael Faraday on the British twenty-pound banknote
* The Life and Discoveries of Michael Faraday by J. A. Crowther, London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1920
* "Faraday" at LoveToKnow 1911 Britannica Online Encyclopedia.
*
* (downloads)
* "Experimental Researches in Electricity" by Michael Faraday Original text with Biographical Introduction by Professor John Tyndall, 1914, Everyman edition.
* Video Podcast with Sir John Cadogan talking about Benzene since Faraday
* The letters of Faraday and Schoenbein 1836-1862. With notes, comments and references to contemporary letters (1899) full download PDF
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Michael_Faraday | How many years ago was it when he discovered the phenomenon that he named diamagnetism , and what is now called the Faraday effect? | 164 | data/set4/a7 | Michael_Faraday
Michael Faraday, FRS (September 22, 1791 â August 25, 1867) was an English chemist and physicist (or natural philosopher, in the terminology of that time) who contributed to the fields of electromagnetism and electrochemistry.
Faraday studied the magnetic field around a conductor carrying a DC electric current, and established the basis for the magnetic field concept in physics. He discovered electromagnetic induction, diamagnetism and electrolysis. He established that magnetism could affect rays of light and that there was an underlying relationship between the two phenomena. Michael Faraday entry at the 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica hosted by LovetoKnow Retrieved January 2007. Institution of Engineering and Technology, London Archives, Michael Faraday His inventions of electromagnetic rotary devices formed the foundation of electric motor technology, and it was largely due to his efforts that electricity became viable for use in technology.
As a chemist, Faraday discovered benzene, investigated the clathrate hydrate of chlorine, invented an early form of the bunsen burner and the system of oxidation numbers, and popularized terminology such as anode, cathode, electrode, and ion.
Although Faraday received little formal education and knew little of higher mathematics, such as calculus, he was one of the most influential scientists in history. Some historians of science refer to him as the best experimentalist in the history of science. "best experimentalist in the history of science." Quoting Dr Peter Ford, from the University of Bathâs Department of Physics. Accessed January 2007. The SI unit of capacitance, the farad, is named after him, as is the Faraday constant, the charge on a mole of electrons (about 96,485 coulombs). Faraday's law of induction states that a magnetic field changing in time creates a proportional electromotive force.
Faraday was the first and foremost Fullerian Professor of Chemistry at the Royal Institution of Great Britain, a position to which he was appointed for life.
Michael Faraday from a photograph by John Watkins, British Library
Michael Faraday was born in Newington Butts, near present-day South London, England. His family was not well off. His father, James, was a member of the Sandemanian sect of Christianity. James Faraday had come to London ca 1790 from Outhgill in Westmorland, where he had been the village blacksmith. The young Michael Faraday, one of four children, having only the most basic of school educations, had to largely educate himself. "Michael Faraday." History of Science and Technology. Houghton Mifflin Company, 2004. Answers.com 4 June 2007. /ref> At fourteen he became apprenticed to a local bookbinder and bookseller George Riebau and, during his seven-year apprenticeship, he read many books, including Isaac Watts' The Improvement of the Mind, and he enthusiastically implemented the principles and suggestions contained therein. He developed an interest in science and specifically in electricity. In particular, he was inspired by the book Conversations in Chemistry by Jane Marcet.
At the age of twenty, in 1812, at the end of his apprenticeship, Faraday attended lectures by the eminent English chemist and physicist Humphry Davy of the Royal Institution and Royal Society, and John Tatum, founder of the City Philosophical Society. Many tickets for these lectures were given to Faraday by William Dance (one of the founders of the Royal Philharmonic Society). Afterwards, Faraday sent Davy a three hundred page book based on notes taken during the lectures. Davy's reply was immediate, kind, and favorable. When Davy damaged his eyesight in an accident with nitrogen trichloride, he decided to employ Faraday as a secretary. When John Payne, one of the Royal Institution's assistants, was fired, Sir Humphry Davy was asked to find a replacement. He appointed Faraday as Chemical Assistant at the Royal Institution on March 1.
In the class-based English society of the time, Faraday was not considered a gentleman. When Davy went on a long tour to the continent in 1813-5, his valet did not wish to go. Faraday was going as Davy's scientific assistant, and was asked to act as Davy's valet until a replacement could be found in Paris. Davy failed to find a replacement, and Faraday was forced to fill the role of valet as well as assistant throughout the trip. Davy's wife, Jane Apreece, refused to treat Faraday as an equal (making him travel outside the coach, eat with the servants, etc.) and generally made Faraday so miserable that he contemplated returning to England alone and giving up science altogether. The trip did, however, give him access to the European scientific elite and a host of stimulating ideas.
His sponsor and mentor was John 'Mad Jack' Fuller, who created the Fullerian Professorship of Chemistry at the Royal Institution.
Faraday was a devout Christian and a member of the small Sandemanian denomination, an offshoot of the Church of Scotland. He later served two terms as an elder in the group's church.
Faraday married Sarah Barnard (1800-1879) on June 2, 1821, although they would never have children. They met through attending the Sandemanian church.
He was elected a member of the Royal Society in 1824, appointed director of the laboratory in 1825; and in 1833 he was appointed Fullerian professor of chemistry in the institution for life, without the obligation to deliver lectures.
The title page of The Chemical History of a Candle (1861)
Faraday's earliest chemical work was as an assistant to Davy. He made a special study of chlorine, and discovered two new chlorides of carbon. He also made the first rough experiments on the diffusion of gases, a phenomenon first pointed out by John Dalton, the physical importance of which was more fully brought to light by Thomas Graham and Joseph Loschmidt. He succeeded in liquefying several gases; he investigated the alloys of steel, and produced several new kinds of glass intended for optical purposes. A specimen of one of these heavy glasses afterwards became historically important as the substance in which Faraday detected the rotation of the plane of polarisation of light when the glass was placed in a magnetic field, and also as the substance which was first repelled by the poles of the magnet. He also endeavoured, with some success, to make the general methods of chemistry, as distinguished from its results, the subject of special study and of popular exposition.
He invented an early form of what was to become the Bunsen burner, which is used almost universally in science laboratories as a convenient source of heat. See page 127 of Faraday's Chemical Manipulation, Being Instructions to Students in Chemistry (1827)
Faraday worked extensively in the field of chemistry, discovering chemical substances such as benzene (which he called bicarburet of hydrogen), inventing the system of oxidation numbers, and liquefying gases such as chlorine. In 1820 Faraday reported on the first syntheses of compounds made from carbon and chlorine, C 2 H 6 and C 2 H 4 , and published his results the following year. Faraday also determined the composition of the chlorine clathrate hydrate, which had been discovered by Humphry Davy in 1810.
Faraday also discovered the laws of electrolysis and popularized terminology such as anode, cathode, electrode, and ion, terms largely created by William Whewell.
Faraday was the first to report what later came to be called metallic nanoparticles. In 1847 he discovered that the optical properties of gold colloids differed from those of the corresponding bulk metal. This was probably the first reported observation of the effects of quantum size, and might be considered to be the birth of nanoscience.
Faraday's greatest work was probably with electricity and magnetism. The first experiment which he recorded was the construction of a voltaic pile with seven halfpence pieces, stacked together with seven disks of sheet zinc, and six pieces of paper moistened with salt water. With this pile he decomposed sulphate of magnesia (first letter to Abbott, July 12, 1812).
[[Image:Faraday photograph ii.jpg|thumb|200px|left|Michael Faraday holding a glass bar of the type he used in 1845 to show that magnetism can affect light. Detail of an engraving by Henry Adlard, based on an earlier photograph by Maull & Polyblank ca. 1857. See National Portrait Gallery, UK ]]
In 1821, soon after the Danish physicist and chemist, Hans Christian Ãrsted discovered the phenomenon of electromagnetism, Davy and British scientist William Hyde Wollaston tried but failed to design an electric motor. Faraday, having discussed the problem with the two men, went on to build two devices to produce what he called electromagnetic rotation: a continuous circular motion from the circular magnetic force around a wire and a wire extending into a pool of mercury with a magnet placed inside would rotate around the magnet if supplied with current from a chemical battery. The latter device is known as a homopolar motor. These experiments and inventions form the foundation of modern electromagnetic technology. Faraday published his results without acknowledging his debt to Wollaston and Davy, and the resulting controversy caused Faraday to withdraw from electromagnetic research for several years.
At this stage, there is also evidence to suggest that Davy may have been trying to slow Faradayâs rise as a scientist (or natural philosopher as it was known then). In 1825, for instance, Davy set him onto optical glass experiments, which progressed for six years with no great results. It was not until Davy's death, in 1829, that Faraday stopped these fruitless tasks and moved on to endeavors that were more worthwhile. Two years later, in 1831, he began his great series of experiments in which he discovered electromagnetic induction. Joseph Henry likely discovered self-induction a few months earlier and both may have been anticipated by the work of Francesco Zantedeschi in Italy in 1829 and 1830.
Faraday's breakthrough came when he wrapped two insulated coils of wire around a massive iron ring, bolted to a chair, and found that upon passing a current through one coil, a momentary current was induced in the other coil. This phenomenon is known as mutual induction. The iron ring-coil apparatus is still on display at the Royal Institution. In subsequent experiments he found that if he moved a magnet through a loop of wire, an electric current flowed in the wire. The current also flowed if the loop was moved over a stationary magnet. His demonstrations established that a changing magnetic field produces an electric field. This relation was mathematically modelled by Faraday's law, which subsequently became one of the four Maxwell equations. These in turn have evolved into the generalization known today as field theory.
Michael Faraday - statue in Savoy Place, London.
Sculptor John Henry Foley RA
Faraday later used the principle to construct the electric dynamo, the ancestor of modern power generators.
In 1839 he completed a series of experiments aimed at investigating the fundamental nature of electricity. Faraday used "static", batteries, and "animal electricity" to produce the phenomena of electrostatic attraction, electrolysis, magnetism, etc. He concluded that, contrary to scientific opinion of the time, the divisions between the various "kinds" of electricity were illusory. Faraday instead proposed that only a single "electricity" exists, and the changing values of quantity and intensity (voltage and charge) would produce different groups of phenomena.
Near the end of his career Faraday proposed that electromagnetic forces extended into the empty space around the conductor. This idea was rejected by his fellow scientists, and Faraday did not live to see this idea eventually accepted. Faraday's concept of lines of flux emanating from charged bodies and magnets provided a way to visualize electric and magnetic fields. That mental model was crucial to the successful development of electromechanical devices which dominated engineering and industry for the remainder of the 19th century.
In 1845, he discovered the phenomenon that he named diamagnetism, and what is now called the Faraday effect: The plane of polarization of linearly polarized light propagated through a material medium can be rotated by the application of an external magnetic field aligned in the propagation direction. He wrote in his notebook, "I have at last succeeded in illuminating a magnetic curve or line of force and in magnetising a ray of light". This established that magnetic force and light were related.
In his work on static electricity, Faraday demonstrated that the charge only resided on the exterior of a charged conductor, and exterior charge had no influence on anything enclosed within a conductor. This is because the exterior charges redistribute such that the interior fields due to them cancel. This shielding effect is used in what is now known as a Faraday cage.
Faraday was an excellent experimentalist who conveyed his ideas in clear and simple language. However, his mathematical abilities did not extend as far as trigonometry or any but the simplest algebra. It was James Clerk Maxwell who took the work of Faraday, and others, and consolidated it with a set of equations that lie at the base of all modern theories of electromagnetic phenomena.
Michael Faraday meets Father Thames, from Punch (July 21, 1855)
Beyond his scientific research into areas such as chemistry, electricity, and magnetism at the Royal Institution, Faraday undertook numerous, and often time-consuming, service projects for private enterprise and the British government. This work included investigations of explosions in mines, being an expert witness in court, and the preparation of high-quality optical glass.
As a respected scientist in a nation with strong maritime interests, Faraday spent extensive amounts of time on projects such as the construction and operation of light houses and protecting the bottoms of ships from corrosion.
Faraday also was active in what would now be called environmental science, or engineering. He investigated industrial pollution at Swansea and was consulted on air pollution at the Royal Mint. In July of 1855, Faraday wrote a letter to The Times on the subject of the foul condition of the River Thames, which resulted in an oft-reprinted cartoon in Punch. (See also The Great Stink.)
Faraday assisted with planning and judging of exhibits for the Great Exhibition of 1851 in London. He also advised the National Gallery on the cleaning and protection of its art collection, and served on the National Gallery Site Commission in 1857.
Education was another area of service for Faraday. He lectured on the topic in 1854 at the Royal Institution, and in 1862 he appeared before a Public Schools Commission to give his views on education in Great Britain. Faraday also weighed in, negatively, on the public's fascination with table-turning, mesmerism, and seances, chastising both the public and the nation's educational system. See The Illustrated London News, July 1853, for Faraday's comments.
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In June of 1832, the University of Oxford granted Faraday a Doctor of Civil Law degree (honorary). During his lifetime, Faraday rejected a knighthood and twice refused to become President of the Royal Society.
In 1848, as a result of representations by the Prince Consort, Michael Faraday was awarded a grace and favour house in Hampton Court, Surrey free of all expenses or upkeep. This was the Master Mason's House, later called Faraday House, and now No.37 Hampton Court Road. In 1858 Faraday retired to live there. Twickenham Museum on Faraday and Faraday House, Accessed June 2006
Faraday died at his house at Hampton Court on August 25, 1867. He turned down burial in Westminster Abbey, but he has a memorial plaque there, near Isaac Newton's tomb. Faraday was interred in the Sandemanian plot in Highgate Cemetery.
Michael Faraday's grave at Highgate Cemetery
Faraday gave a successful series of lectures on the chemistry and physics of flames at the Royal Institution, entitled The Chemical History of a Candle. This was one of the earlier Christmas lectures for young people, which are still given each year. Between 1827 and 1860, Faraday gave the Christmas lecture a record nineteen times.
Faraday refused to participate in the production of chemical weapons for the Crimean War citing ethical reasons.
A statue of Faraday stands in Savoy Place, London, outside the Institution of Electrical Engineers.
A recently built hall of accommodation at Brunel University is named after Faraday.
A hall at Loughborough University was named after Faraday in 1960. Near the entrance to its dining hall is a bronze casting, which depicts the symbol of an electrical transformer, and inside there hangs a portrait, both in Faraday's honour.
Faraday's picture was printed on British £20 banknotes from 1991 until 2001. Bank of England, Withdrawn Notes
In the video game Chromehounds there is a ThermoVision Device named the Faraday.
The former UK Faraday Atmospheric Research Station in Antarctica was named after him.
Faraday was one of the then eight foreign members of the French Academy of Sciences.
Michael Faraday's signature
Faraday's books, with the exception of Chemical Manipulation, were collections of scientific papers or transcriptions of lectures. See page 220 of Hamilton's A Life of Discovery: Michael Faraday, Giant of the Scientific Revolution (2002) Since his death, Faraday's diary has been published, as have several large volumes of his letters and Faraday's journal from his travels with Davy in 1813 - 1815.
* Chemical Manipulation, Being Instructions to Students in Chemistry, John Murray, 1st ed. 1827, 2nd ed. 1830, 3rd ed. 1842
* Experimental Researches in Electricity, vols. i. and ii., Richard and John Edward Taylor, vols. i. and ii.. 1844 and 1847; vol. iii., 1844; vol. iii. Richard Taylor and William Francis, 1855
* Experimental Researches in Chemistry and Physics, Taylor and Francis, 1859
* A Course of Six Lectures on the Chemical History of a Candle, edited by W. Crookes, Griffin, Bohn & Co., 1861
* On the Various Forces in Nature, edited by W. Crookes, Chatto & Windus, 1873
* Faraday's Diary edited by T. Martin was published in eight volumes, 1932 - 1936
* Curiosity Perfectly Satisfyed: Faraday's Travels in Europe 1813-1815, edited by B. Bowers and L. Symons, Institution of Electrical Engineers, 1991
* The Correspondence of Michael Faraday, edited by F. A. J. L. James, INSPEC, Inc., volume 1, 1991; volume 2, 1993; volume 3, 1996; volume 4, 1999
* "Nothing is too wonderful to be true if it be consistent with the laws of nature, and in such things as these, experiment is the best test of such consistency." From the entry of 19 March 1849 in Faraday's Diary
* "Work. Finish. Publish." â his well-known advice to the young William Crookes
* "The important thing is to know how to take all things quietly."
* Regarding the hereafter, "Speculations? I have none. I am resting on certainties. I know whom I have believed and am persuaded that he is able to keep that which I have committed unto him against that day."
* "Next Sabbath day (the 22nd) I shall complete my 70th year. I can hardly think of myself so old."
*Above the doorways of the Pfahler Hall of Science at Ursinus College in Collegeville, Pennsylvania, there is a stone inscription of a quote attributed to Michael Faraday which reads "but still try, for who knows what is possible..." See
* "One day sir, you may tax it." Faraday's reply to William Gladstone, then British Minister of Finance, when asked of the practical value of electricity.
* "If you would cause your view ... to be acknowledged by scientific men; you would do a great service to science. If you would even get them to say yes or no to your conclusions it would help to clear the future progress. I believe some hesitate because they do not like their thoughts disturbed." From Life and Letters, 2:389.
* Faraday rotator
* Superconductivity
* Tyndall, John, Faraday as a Discoverer, (Longmans, 1st ed. 1868, 2nd ed. 1870).
* Bence Jones, Henry (1870). The Life and Letters of Faraday in 2 vols, Longmans.
* Gladstone, J. H. (1872). Michael Faraday, Macmillan.
* Thompson, Silvanus (1901, reprinted 2005). Michael Faraday, His Life and Work. Cassell and Company, London, 1901; reprint by Kessenger Publishing, Whitefish, MT. ISBN 1-4179-7036-7
* The British Electrical and Allied Manufacturers Association (1931). Faraday. R. & R. Clark, Ltd., Edinburgh, 1931.
* Williams, L. Pearce (1971), Faraday: A Biography, Simon and Schuster.
* Cantor, Geoffrey (1991). Michael Faraday, Sandemanian and Scientist, Macmillian, ISBN 0-333-55077
* Hamilton, James (2002). Faraday: The Life. London: Harper Collins. ISBN 0-00-716376-2
* Hamilton, James (2004). A Life of Discovery: Michael Faraday, Giant of the Scientific Revolution. New York: Random House. ISBN 1-4000-6016-8
* Agassi, Joseph (1971), Faraday as a Natural Philosopher, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
* Ames, Joseph Sweetman (Ed.), The discovery of induced electric currents Vol. 2. Memoirs, by Michael Faraday. New York, Cincinnati [etc.] American book company [c1900] LCCN 00005889
* Gooding, David (Ed.) (1985), Faraday Rediscovered: Essays on the Life and Work of Michael Faraday, 1791-1867, London/New York, Macmillan/Stockton
* Thomas, John Meurig (1991). Michael Faraday and the Royal Institution: The Genius of Man and Place Bristol: Hilger. ISBN 0-7503-0145-7
150px
* Biography at The Royal Institution of Great Britain
* Faraday as a Discoverer by John Tyndall, Project Gutenberg (downloads)
* The Christian Character of Michael Faraday
* Michael Faraday on the British twenty-pound banknote
* The Life and Discoveries of Michael Faraday by J. A. Crowther, London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1920
* "Faraday" at LoveToKnow 1911 Britannica Online Encyclopedia.
*
* (downloads)
* "Experimental Researches in Electricity" by Michael Faraday Original text with Biographical Introduction by Professor John Tyndall, 1914, Everyman edition.
* Video Podcast with Sir John Cadogan talking about Benzene since Faraday
* The letters of Faraday and Schoenbein 1836-1862. With notes, comments and references to contemporary letters (1899) full download PDF
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|
Michael_Faraday | How many years ago was it when Faraday wrote a letter to The Times on the subject of the foul condition of the River Thames , which resulted in an oft-reprinted cartoon in Punch? | 154 | data/set4/a7 | Michael_Faraday
Michael Faraday, FRS (September 22, 1791 â August 25, 1867) was an English chemist and physicist (or natural philosopher, in the terminology of that time) who contributed to the fields of electromagnetism and electrochemistry.
Faraday studied the magnetic field around a conductor carrying a DC electric current, and established the basis for the magnetic field concept in physics. He discovered electromagnetic induction, diamagnetism and electrolysis. He established that magnetism could affect rays of light and that there was an underlying relationship between the two phenomena. Michael Faraday entry at the 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica hosted by LovetoKnow Retrieved January 2007. Institution of Engineering and Technology, London Archives, Michael Faraday His inventions of electromagnetic rotary devices formed the foundation of electric motor technology, and it was largely due to his efforts that electricity became viable for use in technology.
As a chemist, Faraday discovered benzene, investigated the clathrate hydrate of chlorine, invented an early form of the bunsen burner and the system of oxidation numbers, and popularized terminology such as anode, cathode, electrode, and ion.
Although Faraday received little formal education and knew little of higher mathematics, such as calculus, he was one of the most influential scientists in history. Some historians of science refer to him as the best experimentalist in the history of science. "best experimentalist in the history of science." Quoting Dr Peter Ford, from the University of Bathâs Department of Physics. Accessed January 2007. The SI unit of capacitance, the farad, is named after him, as is the Faraday constant, the charge on a mole of electrons (about 96,485 coulombs). Faraday's law of induction states that a magnetic field changing in time creates a proportional electromotive force.
Faraday was the first and foremost Fullerian Professor of Chemistry at the Royal Institution of Great Britain, a position to which he was appointed for life.
Michael Faraday from a photograph by John Watkins, British Library
Michael Faraday was born in Newington Butts, near present-day South London, England. His family was not well off. His father, James, was a member of the Sandemanian sect of Christianity. James Faraday had come to London ca 1790 from Outhgill in Westmorland, where he had been the village blacksmith. The young Michael Faraday, one of four children, having only the most basic of school educations, had to largely educate himself. "Michael Faraday." History of Science and Technology. Houghton Mifflin Company, 2004. Answers.com 4 June 2007. /ref> At fourteen he became apprenticed to a local bookbinder and bookseller George Riebau and, during his seven-year apprenticeship, he read many books, including Isaac Watts' The Improvement of the Mind, and he enthusiastically implemented the principles and suggestions contained therein. He developed an interest in science and specifically in electricity. In particular, he was inspired by the book Conversations in Chemistry by Jane Marcet.
At the age of twenty, in 1812, at the end of his apprenticeship, Faraday attended lectures by the eminent English chemist and physicist Humphry Davy of the Royal Institution and Royal Society, and John Tatum, founder of the City Philosophical Society. Many tickets for these lectures were given to Faraday by William Dance (one of the founders of the Royal Philharmonic Society). Afterwards, Faraday sent Davy a three hundred page book based on notes taken during the lectures. Davy's reply was immediate, kind, and favorable. When Davy damaged his eyesight in an accident with nitrogen trichloride, he decided to employ Faraday as a secretary. When John Payne, one of the Royal Institution's assistants, was fired, Sir Humphry Davy was asked to find a replacement. He appointed Faraday as Chemical Assistant at the Royal Institution on March 1.
In the class-based English society of the time, Faraday was not considered a gentleman. When Davy went on a long tour to the continent in 1813-5, his valet did not wish to go. Faraday was going as Davy's scientific assistant, and was asked to act as Davy's valet until a replacement could be found in Paris. Davy failed to find a replacement, and Faraday was forced to fill the role of valet as well as assistant throughout the trip. Davy's wife, Jane Apreece, refused to treat Faraday as an equal (making him travel outside the coach, eat with the servants, etc.) and generally made Faraday so miserable that he contemplated returning to England alone and giving up science altogether. The trip did, however, give him access to the European scientific elite and a host of stimulating ideas.
His sponsor and mentor was John 'Mad Jack' Fuller, who created the Fullerian Professorship of Chemistry at the Royal Institution.
Faraday was a devout Christian and a member of the small Sandemanian denomination, an offshoot of the Church of Scotland. He later served two terms as an elder in the group's church.
Faraday married Sarah Barnard (1800-1879) on June 2, 1821, although they would never have children. They met through attending the Sandemanian church.
He was elected a member of the Royal Society in 1824, appointed director of the laboratory in 1825; and in 1833 he was appointed Fullerian professor of chemistry in the institution for life, without the obligation to deliver lectures.
The title page of The Chemical History of a Candle (1861)
Faraday's earliest chemical work was as an assistant to Davy. He made a special study of chlorine, and discovered two new chlorides of carbon. He also made the first rough experiments on the diffusion of gases, a phenomenon first pointed out by John Dalton, the physical importance of which was more fully brought to light by Thomas Graham and Joseph Loschmidt. He succeeded in liquefying several gases; he investigated the alloys of steel, and produced several new kinds of glass intended for optical purposes. A specimen of one of these heavy glasses afterwards became historically important as the substance in which Faraday detected the rotation of the plane of polarisation of light when the glass was placed in a magnetic field, and also as the substance which was first repelled by the poles of the magnet. He also endeavoured, with some success, to make the general methods of chemistry, as distinguished from its results, the subject of special study and of popular exposition.
He invented an early form of what was to become the Bunsen burner, which is used almost universally in science laboratories as a convenient source of heat. See page 127 of Faraday's Chemical Manipulation, Being Instructions to Students in Chemistry (1827)
Faraday worked extensively in the field of chemistry, discovering chemical substances such as benzene (which he called bicarburet of hydrogen), inventing the system of oxidation numbers, and liquefying gases such as chlorine. In 1820 Faraday reported on the first syntheses of compounds made from carbon and chlorine, C 2 H 6 and C 2 H 4 , and published his results the following year. Faraday also determined the composition of the chlorine clathrate hydrate, which had been discovered by Humphry Davy in 1810.
Faraday also discovered the laws of electrolysis and popularized terminology such as anode, cathode, electrode, and ion, terms largely created by William Whewell.
Faraday was the first to report what later came to be called metallic nanoparticles. In 1847 he discovered that the optical properties of gold colloids differed from those of the corresponding bulk metal. This was probably the first reported observation of the effects of quantum size, and might be considered to be the birth of nanoscience.
Faraday's greatest work was probably with electricity and magnetism. The first experiment which he recorded was the construction of a voltaic pile with seven halfpence pieces, stacked together with seven disks of sheet zinc, and six pieces of paper moistened with salt water. With this pile he decomposed sulphate of magnesia (first letter to Abbott, July 12, 1812).
[[Image:Faraday photograph ii.jpg|thumb|200px|left|Michael Faraday holding a glass bar of the type he used in 1845 to show that magnetism can affect light. Detail of an engraving by Henry Adlard, based on an earlier photograph by Maull & Polyblank ca. 1857. See National Portrait Gallery, UK ]]
In 1821, soon after the Danish physicist and chemist, Hans Christian Ãrsted discovered the phenomenon of electromagnetism, Davy and British scientist William Hyde Wollaston tried but failed to design an electric motor. Faraday, having discussed the problem with the two men, went on to build two devices to produce what he called electromagnetic rotation: a continuous circular motion from the circular magnetic force around a wire and a wire extending into a pool of mercury with a magnet placed inside would rotate around the magnet if supplied with current from a chemical battery. The latter device is known as a homopolar motor. These experiments and inventions form the foundation of modern electromagnetic technology. Faraday published his results without acknowledging his debt to Wollaston and Davy, and the resulting controversy caused Faraday to withdraw from electromagnetic research for several years.
At this stage, there is also evidence to suggest that Davy may have been trying to slow Faradayâs rise as a scientist (or natural philosopher as it was known then). In 1825, for instance, Davy set him onto optical glass experiments, which progressed for six years with no great results. It was not until Davy's death, in 1829, that Faraday stopped these fruitless tasks and moved on to endeavors that were more worthwhile. Two years later, in 1831, he began his great series of experiments in which he discovered electromagnetic induction. Joseph Henry likely discovered self-induction a few months earlier and both may have been anticipated by the work of Francesco Zantedeschi in Italy in 1829 and 1830.
Faraday's breakthrough came when he wrapped two insulated coils of wire around a massive iron ring, bolted to a chair, and found that upon passing a current through one coil, a momentary current was induced in the other coil. This phenomenon is known as mutual induction. The iron ring-coil apparatus is still on display at the Royal Institution. In subsequent experiments he found that if he moved a magnet through a loop of wire, an electric current flowed in the wire. The current also flowed if the loop was moved over a stationary magnet. His demonstrations established that a changing magnetic field produces an electric field. This relation was mathematically modelled by Faraday's law, which subsequently became one of the four Maxwell equations. These in turn have evolved into the generalization known today as field theory.
Michael Faraday - statue in Savoy Place, London.
Sculptor John Henry Foley RA
Faraday later used the principle to construct the electric dynamo, the ancestor of modern power generators.
In 1839 he completed a series of experiments aimed at investigating the fundamental nature of electricity. Faraday used "static", batteries, and "animal electricity" to produce the phenomena of electrostatic attraction, electrolysis, magnetism, etc. He concluded that, contrary to scientific opinion of the time, the divisions between the various "kinds" of electricity were illusory. Faraday instead proposed that only a single "electricity" exists, and the changing values of quantity and intensity (voltage and charge) would produce different groups of phenomena.
Near the end of his career Faraday proposed that electromagnetic forces extended into the empty space around the conductor. This idea was rejected by his fellow scientists, and Faraday did not live to see this idea eventually accepted. Faraday's concept of lines of flux emanating from charged bodies and magnets provided a way to visualize electric and magnetic fields. That mental model was crucial to the successful development of electromechanical devices which dominated engineering and industry for the remainder of the 19th century.
In 1845, he discovered the phenomenon that he named diamagnetism, and what is now called the Faraday effect: The plane of polarization of linearly polarized light propagated through a material medium can be rotated by the application of an external magnetic field aligned in the propagation direction. He wrote in his notebook, "I have at last succeeded in illuminating a magnetic curve or line of force and in magnetising a ray of light". This established that magnetic force and light were related.
In his work on static electricity, Faraday demonstrated that the charge only resided on the exterior of a charged conductor, and exterior charge had no influence on anything enclosed within a conductor. This is because the exterior charges redistribute such that the interior fields due to them cancel. This shielding effect is used in what is now known as a Faraday cage.
Faraday was an excellent experimentalist who conveyed his ideas in clear and simple language. However, his mathematical abilities did not extend as far as trigonometry or any but the simplest algebra. It was James Clerk Maxwell who took the work of Faraday, and others, and consolidated it with a set of equations that lie at the base of all modern theories of electromagnetic phenomena.
Michael Faraday meets Father Thames, from Punch (July 21, 1855)
Beyond his scientific research into areas such as chemistry, electricity, and magnetism at the Royal Institution, Faraday undertook numerous, and often time-consuming, service projects for private enterprise and the British government. This work included investigations of explosions in mines, being an expert witness in court, and the preparation of high-quality optical glass.
As a respected scientist in a nation with strong maritime interests, Faraday spent extensive amounts of time on projects such as the construction and operation of light houses and protecting the bottoms of ships from corrosion.
Faraday also was active in what would now be called environmental science, or engineering. He investigated industrial pollution at Swansea and was consulted on air pollution at the Royal Mint. In July of 1855, Faraday wrote a letter to The Times on the subject of the foul condition of the River Thames, which resulted in an oft-reprinted cartoon in Punch. (See also The Great Stink.)
Faraday assisted with planning and judging of exhibits for the Great Exhibition of 1851 in London. He also advised the National Gallery on the cleaning and protection of its art collection, and served on the National Gallery Site Commission in 1857.
Education was another area of service for Faraday. He lectured on the topic in 1854 at the Royal Institution, and in 1862 he appeared before a Public Schools Commission to give his views on education in Great Britain. Faraday also weighed in, negatively, on the public's fascination with table-turning, mesmerism, and seances, chastising both the public and the nation's educational system. See The Illustrated London News, July 1853, for Faraday's comments.
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In June of 1832, the University of Oxford granted Faraday a Doctor of Civil Law degree (honorary). During his lifetime, Faraday rejected a knighthood and twice refused to become President of the Royal Society.
In 1848, as a result of representations by the Prince Consort, Michael Faraday was awarded a grace and favour house in Hampton Court, Surrey free of all expenses or upkeep. This was the Master Mason's House, later called Faraday House, and now No.37 Hampton Court Road. In 1858 Faraday retired to live there. Twickenham Museum on Faraday and Faraday House, Accessed June 2006
Faraday died at his house at Hampton Court on August 25, 1867. He turned down burial in Westminster Abbey, but he has a memorial plaque there, near Isaac Newton's tomb. Faraday was interred in the Sandemanian plot in Highgate Cemetery.
Michael Faraday's grave at Highgate Cemetery
Faraday gave a successful series of lectures on the chemistry and physics of flames at the Royal Institution, entitled The Chemical History of a Candle. This was one of the earlier Christmas lectures for young people, which are still given each year. Between 1827 and 1860, Faraday gave the Christmas lecture a record nineteen times.
Faraday refused to participate in the production of chemical weapons for the Crimean War citing ethical reasons.
A statue of Faraday stands in Savoy Place, London, outside the Institution of Electrical Engineers.
A recently built hall of accommodation at Brunel University is named after Faraday.
A hall at Loughborough University was named after Faraday in 1960. Near the entrance to its dining hall is a bronze casting, which depicts the symbol of an electrical transformer, and inside there hangs a portrait, both in Faraday's honour.
Faraday's picture was printed on British £20 banknotes from 1991 until 2001. Bank of England, Withdrawn Notes
In the video game Chromehounds there is a ThermoVision Device named the Faraday.
The former UK Faraday Atmospheric Research Station in Antarctica was named after him.
Faraday was one of the then eight foreign members of the French Academy of Sciences.
Michael Faraday's signature
Faraday's books, with the exception of Chemical Manipulation, were collections of scientific papers or transcriptions of lectures. See page 220 of Hamilton's A Life of Discovery: Michael Faraday, Giant of the Scientific Revolution (2002) Since his death, Faraday's diary has been published, as have several large volumes of his letters and Faraday's journal from his travels with Davy in 1813 - 1815.
* Chemical Manipulation, Being Instructions to Students in Chemistry, John Murray, 1st ed. 1827, 2nd ed. 1830, 3rd ed. 1842
* Experimental Researches in Electricity, vols. i. and ii., Richard and John Edward Taylor, vols. i. and ii.. 1844 and 1847; vol. iii., 1844; vol. iii. Richard Taylor and William Francis, 1855
* Experimental Researches in Chemistry and Physics, Taylor and Francis, 1859
* A Course of Six Lectures on the Chemical History of a Candle, edited by W. Crookes, Griffin, Bohn & Co., 1861
* On the Various Forces in Nature, edited by W. Crookes, Chatto & Windus, 1873
* Faraday's Diary edited by T. Martin was published in eight volumes, 1932 - 1936
* Curiosity Perfectly Satisfyed: Faraday's Travels in Europe 1813-1815, edited by B. Bowers and L. Symons, Institution of Electrical Engineers, 1991
* The Correspondence of Michael Faraday, edited by F. A. J. L. James, INSPEC, Inc., volume 1, 1991; volume 2, 1993; volume 3, 1996; volume 4, 1999
* "Nothing is too wonderful to be true if it be consistent with the laws of nature, and in such things as these, experiment is the best test of such consistency." From the entry of 19 March 1849 in Faraday's Diary
* "Work. Finish. Publish." â his well-known advice to the young William Crookes
* "The important thing is to know how to take all things quietly."
* Regarding the hereafter, "Speculations? I have none. I am resting on certainties. I know whom I have believed and am persuaded that he is able to keep that which I have committed unto him against that day."
* "Next Sabbath day (the 22nd) I shall complete my 70th year. I can hardly think of myself so old."
*Above the doorways of the Pfahler Hall of Science at Ursinus College in Collegeville, Pennsylvania, there is a stone inscription of a quote attributed to Michael Faraday which reads "but still try, for who knows what is possible..." See
* "One day sir, you may tax it." Faraday's reply to William Gladstone, then British Minister of Finance, when asked of the practical value of electricity.
* "If you would cause your view ... to be acknowledged by scientific men; you would do a great service to science. If you would even get them to say yes or no to your conclusions it would help to clear the future progress. I believe some hesitate because they do not like their thoughts disturbed." From Life and Letters, 2:389.
* Faraday rotator
* Superconductivity
* Tyndall, John, Faraday as a Discoverer, (Longmans, 1st ed. 1868, 2nd ed. 1870).
* Bence Jones, Henry (1870). The Life and Letters of Faraday in 2 vols, Longmans.
* Gladstone, J. H. (1872). Michael Faraday, Macmillan.
* Thompson, Silvanus (1901, reprinted 2005). Michael Faraday, His Life and Work. Cassell and Company, London, 1901; reprint by Kessenger Publishing, Whitefish, MT. ISBN 1-4179-7036-7
* The British Electrical and Allied Manufacturers Association (1931). Faraday. R. & R. Clark, Ltd., Edinburgh, 1931.
* Williams, L. Pearce (1971), Faraday: A Biography, Simon and Schuster.
* Cantor, Geoffrey (1991). Michael Faraday, Sandemanian and Scientist, Macmillian, ISBN 0-333-55077
* Hamilton, James (2002). Faraday: The Life. London: Harper Collins. ISBN 0-00-716376-2
* Hamilton, James (2004). A Life of Discovery: Michael Faraday, Giant of the Scientific Revolution. New York: Random House. ISBN 1-4000-6016-8
* Agassi, Joseph (1971), Faraday as a Natural Philosopher, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
* Ames, Joseph Sweetman (Ed.), The discovery of induced electric currents Vol. 2. Memoirs, by Michael Faraday. New York, Cincinnati [etc.] American book company [c1900] LCCN 00005889
* Gooding, David (Ed.) (1985), Faraday Rediscovered: Essays on the Life and Work of Michael Faraday, 1791-1867, London/New York, Macmillan/Stockton
* Thomas, John Meurig (1991). Michael Faraday and the Royal Institution: The Genius of Man and Place Bristol: Hilger. ISBN 0-7503-0145-7
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* Biography at The Royal Institution of Great Britain
* Faraday as a Discoverer by John Tyndall, Project Gutenberg (downloads)
* The Christian Character of Michael Faraday
* Michael Faraday on the British twenty-pound banknote
* The Life and Discoveries of Michael Faraday by J. A. Crowther, London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1920
* "Faraday" at LoveToKnow 1911 Britannica Online Encyclopedia.
*
* (downloads)
* "Experimental Researches in Electricity" by Michael Faraday Original text with Biographical Introduction by Professor John Tyndall, 1914, Everyman edition.
* Video Podcast with Sir John Cadogan talking about Benzene since Faraday
* The letters of Faraday and Schoenbein 1836-1862. With notes, comments and references to contemporary letters (1899) full download PDF
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Humphry Davy
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chemist
physicist
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electromagnetism
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diamagnetism
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mathematics
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experimentalist
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capacitance
farad
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mole (unit)
electron
coulomb
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magnetic field
electromotive force
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chlorine
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Michael_Faraday | How many years ago was it when he discovered that the optical properties of gold colloids differed from those of the corresponding bulk metal? | 162 | data/set4/a7 | Michael_Faraday
Michael Faraday, FRS (September 22, 1791 â August 25, 1867) was an English chemist and physicist (or natural philosopher, in the terminology of that time) who contributed to the fields of electromagnetism and electrochemistry.
Faraday studied the magnetic field around a conductor carrying a DC electric current, and established the basis for the magnetic field concept in physics. He discovered electromagnetic induction, diamagnetism and electrolysis. He established that magnetism could affect rays of light and that there was an underlying relationship between the two phenomena. Michael Faraday entry at the 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica hosted by LovetoKnow Retrieved January 2007. Institution of Engineering and Technology, London Archives, Michael Faraday His inventions of electromagnetic rotary devices formed the foundation of electric motor technology, and it was largely due to his efforts that electricity became viable for use in technology.
As a chemist, Faraday discovered benzene, investigated the clathrate hydrate of chlorine, invented an early form of the bunsen burner and the system of oxidation numbers, and popularized terminology such as anode, cathode, electrode, and ion.
Although Faraday received little formal education and knew little of higher mathematics, such as calculus, he was one of the most influential scientists in history. Some historians of science refer to him as the best experimentalist in the history of science. "best experimentalist in the history of science." Quoting Dr Peter Ford, from the University of Bathâs Department of Physics. Accessed January 2007. The SI unit of capacitance, the farad, is named after him, as is the Faraday constant, the charge on a mole of electrons (about 96,485 coulombs). Faraday's law of induction states that a magnetic field changing in time creates a proportional electromotive force.
Faraday was the first and foremost Fullerian Professor of Chemistry at the Royal Institution of Great Britain, a position to which he was appointed for life.
Michael Faraday from a photograph by John Watkins, British Library
Michael Faraday was born in Newington Butts, near present-day South London, England. His family was not well off. His father, James, was a member of the Sandemanian sect of Christianity. James Faraday had come to London ca 1790 from Outhgill in Westmorland, where he had been the village blacksmith. The young Michael Faraday, one of four children, having only the most basic of school educations, had to largely educate himself. "Michael Faraday." History of Science and Technology. Houghton Mifflin Company, 2004. Answers.com 4 June 2007. /ref> At fourteen he became apprenticed to a local bookbinder and bookseller George Riebau and, during his seven-year apprenticeship, he read many books, including Isaac Watts' The Improvement of the Mind, and he enthusiastically implemented the principles and suggestions contained therein. He developed an interest in science and specifically in electricity. In particular, he was inspired by the book Conversations in Chemistry by Jane Marcet.
At the age of twenty, in 1812, at the end of his apprenticeship, Faraday attended lectures by the eminent English chemist and physicist Humphry Davy of the Royal Institution and Royal Society, and John Tatum, founder of the City Philosophical Society. Many tickets for these lectures were given to Faraday by William Dance (one of the founders of the Royal Philharmonic Society). Afterwards, Faraday sent Davy a three hundred page book based on notes taken during the lectures. Davy's reply was immediate, kind, and favorable. When Davy damaged his eyesight in an accident with nitrogen trichloride, he decided to employ Faraday as a secretary. When John Payne, one of the Royal Institution's assistants, was fired, Sir Humphry Davy was asked to find a replacement. He appointed Faraday as Chemical Assistant at the Royal Institution on March 1.
In the class-based English society of the time, Faraday was not considered a gentleman. When Davy went on a long tour to the continent in 1813-5, his valet did not wish to go. Faraday was going as Davy's scientific assistant, and was asked to act as Davy's valet until a replacement could be found in Paris. Davy failed to find a replacement, and Faraday was forced to fill the role of valet as well as assistant throughout the trip. Davy's wife, Jane Apreece, refused to treat Faraday as an equal (making him travel outside the coach, eat with the servants, etc.) and generally made Faraday so miserable that he contemplated returning to England alone and giving up science altogether. The trip did, however, give him access to the European scientific elite and a host of stimulating ideas.
His sponsor and mentor was John 'Mad Jack' Fuller, who created the Fullerian Professorship of Chemistry at the Royal Institution.
Faraday was a devout Christian and a member of the small Sandemanian denomination, an offshoot of the Church of Scotland. He later served two terms as an elder in the group's church.
Faraday married Sarah Barnard (1800-1879) on June 2, 1821, although they would never have children. They met through attending the Sandemanian church.
He was elected a member of the Royal Society in 1824, appointed director of the laboratory in 1825; and in 1833 he was appointed Fullerian professor of chemistry in the institution for life, without the obligation to deliver lectures.
The title page of The Chemical History of a Candle (1861)
Faraday's earliest chemical work was as an assistant to Davy. He made a special study of chlorine, and discovered two new chlorides of carbon. He also made the first rough experiments on the diffusion of gases, a phenomenon first pointed out by John Dalton, the physical importance of which was more fully brought to light by Thomas Graham and Joseph Loschmidt. He succeeded in liquefying several gases; he investigated the alloys of steel, and produced several new kinds of glass intended for optical purposes. A specimen of one of these heavy glasses afterwards became historically important as the substance in which Faraday detected the rotation of the plane of polarisation of light when the glass was placed in a magnetic field, and also as the substance which was first repelled by the poles of the magnet. He also endeavoured, with some success, to make the general methods of chemistry, as distinguished from its results, the subject of special study and of popular exposition.
He invented an early form of what was to become the Bunsen burner, which is used almost universally in science laboratories as a convenient source of heat. See page 127 of Faraday's Chemical Manipulation, Being Instructions to Students in Chemistry (1827)
Faraday worked extensively in the field of chemistry, discovering chemical substances such as benzene (which he called bicarburet of hydrogen), inventing the system of oxidation numbers, and liquefying gases such as chlorine. In 1820 Faraday reported on the first syntheses of compounds made from carbon and chlorine, C 2 H 6 and C 2 H 4 , and published his results the following year. Faraday also determined the composition of the chlorine clathrate hydrate, which had been discovered by Humphry Davy in 1810.
Faraday also discovered the laws of electrolysis and popularized terminology such as anode, cathode, electrode, and ion, terms largely created by William Whewell.
Faraday was the first to report what later came to be called metallic nanoparticles. In 1847 he discovered that the optical properties of gold colloids differed from those of the corresponding bulk metal. This was probably the first reported observation of the effects of quantum size, and might be considered to be the birth of nanoscience.
Faraday's greatest work was probably with electricity and magnetism. The first experiment which he recorded was the construction of a voltaic pile with seven halfpence pieces, stacked together with seven disks of sheet zinc, and six pieces of paper moistened with salt water. With this pile he decomposed sulphate of magnesia (first letter to Abbott, July 12, 1812).
[[Image:Faraday photograph ii.jpg|thumb|200px|left|Michael Faraday holding a glass bar of the type he used in 1845 to show that magnetism can affect light. Detail of an engraving by Henry Adlard, based on an earlier photograph by Maull & Polyblank ca. 1857. See National Portrait Gallery, UK ]]
In 1821, soon after the Danish physicist and chemist, Hans Christian Ãrsted discovered the phenomenon of electromagnetism, Davy and British scientist William Hyde Wollaston tried but failed to design an electric motor. Faraday, having discussed the problem with the two men, went on to build two devices to produce what he called electromagnetic rotation: a continuous circular motion from the circular magnetic force around a wire and a wire extending into a pool of mercury with a magnet placed inside would rotate around the magnet if supplied with current from a chemical battery. The latter device is known as a homopolar motor. These experiments and inventions form the foundation of modern electromagnetic technology. Faraday published his results without acknowledging his debt to Wollaston and Davy, and the resulting controversy caused Faraday to withdraw from electromagnetic research for several years.
At this stage, there is also evidence to suggest that Davy may have been trying to slow Faradayâs rise as a scientist (or natural philosopher as it was known then). In 1825, for instance, Davy set him onto optical glass experiments, which progressed for six years with no great results. It was not until Davy's death, in 1829, that Faraday stopped these fruitless tasks and moved on to endeavors that were more worthwhile. Two years later, in 1831, he began his great series of experiments in which he discovered electromagnetic induction. Joseph Henry likely discovered self-induction a few months earlier and both may have been anticipated by the work of Francesco Zantedeschi in Italy in 1829 and 1830.
Faraday's breakthrough came when he wrapped two insulated coils of wire around a massive iron ring, bolted to a chair, and found that upon passing a current through one coil, a momentary current was induced in the other coil. This phenomenon is known as mutual induction. The iron ring-coil apparatus is still on display at the Royal Institution. In subsequent experiments he found that if he moved a magnet through a loop of wire, an electric current flowed in the wire. The current also flowed if the loop was moved over a stationary magnet. His demonstrations established that a changing magnetic field produces an electric field. This relation was mathematically modelled by Faraday's law, which subsequently became one of the four Maxwell equations. These in turn have evolved into the generalization known today as field theory.
Michael Faraday - statue in Savoy Place, London.
Sculptor John Henry Foley RA
Faraday later used the principle to construct the electric dynamo, the ancestor of modern power generators.
In 1839 he completed a series of experiments aimed at investigating the fundamental nature of electricity. Faraday used "static", batteries, and "animal electricity" to produce the phenomena of electrostatic attraction, electrolysis, magnetism, etc. He concluded that, contrary to scientific opinion of the time, the divisions between the various "kinds" of electricity were illusory. Faraday instead proposed that only a single "electricity" exists, and the changing values of quantity and intensity (voltage and charge) would produce different groups of phenomena.
Near the end of his career Faraday proposed that electromagnetic forces extended into the empty space around the conductor. This idea was rejected by his fellow scientists, and Faraday did not live to see this idea eventually accepted. Faraday's concept of lines of flux emanating from charged bodies and magnets provided a way to visualize electric and magnetic fields. That mental model was crucial to the successful development of electromechanical devices which dominated engineering and industry for the remainder of the 19th century.
In 1845, he discovered the phenomenon that he named diamagnetism, and what is now called the Faraday effect: The plane of polarization of linearly polarized light propagated through a material medium can be rotated by the application of an external magnetic field aligned in the propagation direction. He wrote in his notebook, "I have at last succeeded in illuminating a magnetic curve or line of force and in magnetising a ray of light". This established that magnetic force and light were related.
In his work on static electricity, Faraday demonstrated that the charge only resided on the exterior of a charged conductor, and exterior charge had no influence on anything enclosed within a conductor. This is because the exterior charges redistribute such that the interior fields due to them cancel. This shielding effect is used in what is now known as a Faraday cage.
Faraday was an excellent experimentalist who conveyed his ideas in clear and simple language. However, his mathematical abilities did not extend as far as trigonometry or any but the simplest algebra. It was James Clerk Maxwell who took the work of Faraday, and others, and consolidated it with a set of equations that lie at the base of all modern theories of electromagnetic phenomena.
Michael Faraday meets Father Thames, from Punch (July 21, 1855)
Beyond his scientific research into areas such as chemistry, electricity, and magnetism at the Royal Institution, Faraday undertook numerous, and often time-consuming, service projects for private enterprise and the British government. This work included investigations of explosions in mines, being an expert witness in court, and the preparation of high-quality optical glass.
As a respected scientist in a nation with strong maritime interests, Faraday spent extensive amounts of time on projects such as the construction and operation of light houses and protecting the bottoms of ships from corrosion.
Faraday also was active in what would now be called environmental science, or engineering. He investigated industrial pollution at Swansea and was consulted on air pollution at the Royal Mint. In July of 1855, Faraday wrote a letter to The Times on the subject of the foul condition of the River Thames, which resulted in an oft-reprinted cartoon in Punch. (See also The Great Stink.)
Faraday assisted with planning and judging of exhibits for the Great Exhibition of 1851 in London. He also advised the National Gallery on the cleaning and protection of its art collection, and served on the National Gallery Site Commission in 1857.
Education was another area of service for Faraday. He lectured on the topic in 1854 at the Royal Institution, and in 1862 he appeared before a Public Schools Commission to give his views on education in Great Britain. Faraday also weighed in, negatively, on the public's fascination with table-turning, mesmerism, and seances, chastising both the public and the nation's educational system. See The Illustrated London News, July 1853, for Faraday's comments.
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In June of 1832, the University of Oxford granted Faraday a Doctor of Civil Law degree (honorary). During his lifetime, Faraday rejected a knighthood and twice refused to become President of the Royal Society.
In 1848, as a result of representations by the Prince Consort, Michael Faraday was awarded a grace and favour house in Hampton Court, Surrey free of all expenses or upkeep. This was the Master Mason's House, later called Faraday House, and now No.37 Hampton Court Road. In 1858 Faraday retired to live there. Twickenham Museum on Faraday and Faraday House, Accessed June 2006
Faraday died at his house at Hampton Court on August 25, 1867. He turned down burial in Westminster Abbey, but he has a memorial plaque there, near Isaac Newton's tomb. Faraday was interred in the Sandemanian plot in Highgate Cemetery.
Michael Faraday's grave at Highgate Cemetery
Faraday gave a successful series of lectures on the chemistry and physics of flames at the Royal Institution, entitled The Chemical History of a Candle. This was one of the earlier Christmas lectures for young people, which are still given each year. Between 1827 and 1860, Faraday gave the Christmas lecture a record nineteen times.
Faraday refused to participate in the production of chemical weapons for the Crimean War citing ethical reasons.
A statue of Faraday stands in Savoy Place, London, outside the Institution of Electrical Engineers.
A recently built hall of accommodation at Brunel University is named after Faraday.
A hall at Loughborough University was named after Faraday in 1960. Near the entrance to its dining hall is a bronze casting, which depicts the symbol of an electrical transformer, and inside there hangs a portrait, both in Faraday's honour.
Faraday's picture was printed on British £20 banknotes from 1991 until 2001. Bank of England, Withdrawn Notes
In the video game Chromehounds there is a ThermoVision Device named the Faraday.
The former UK Faraday Atmospheric Research Station in Antarctica was named after him.
Faraday was one of the then eight foreign members of the French Academy of Sciences.
Michael Faraday's signature
Faraday's books, with the exception of Chemical Manipulation, were collections of scientific papers or transcriptions of lectures. See page 220 of Hamilton's A Life of Discovery: Michael Faraday, Giant of the Scientific Revolution (2002) Since his death, Faraday's diary has been published, as have several large volumes of his letters and Faraday's journal from his travels with Davy in 1813 - 1815.
* Chemical Manipulation, Being Instructions to Students in Chemistry, John Murray, 1st ed. 1827, 2nd ed. 1830, 3rd ed. 1842
* Experimental Researches in Electricity, vols. i. and ii., Richard and John Edward Taylor, vols. i. and ii.. 1844 and 1847; vol. iii., 1844; vol. iii. Richard Taylor and William Francis, 1855
* Experimental Researches in Chemistry and Physics, Taylor and Francis, 1859
* A Course of Six Lectures on the Chemical History of a Candle, edited by W. Crookes, Griffin, Bohn & Co., 1861
* On the Various Forces in Nature, edited by W. Crookes, Chatto & Windus, 1873
* Faraday's Diary edited by T. Martin was published in eight volumes, 1932 - 1936
* Curiosity Perfectly Satisfyed: Faraday's Travels in Europe 1813-1815, edited by B. Bowers and L. Symons, Institution of Electrical Engineers, 1991
* The Correspondence of Michael Faraday, edited by F. A. J. L. James, INSPEC, Inc., volume 1, 1991; volume 2, 1993; volume 3, 1996; volume 4, 1999
* "Nothing is too wonderful to be true if it be consistent with the laws of nature, and in such things as these, experiment is the best test of such consistency." From the entry of 19 March 1849 in Faraday's Diary
* "Work. Finish. Publish." â his well-known advice to the young William Crookes
* "The important thing is to know how to take all things quietly."
* Regarding the hereafter, "Speculations? I have none. I am resting on certainties. I know whom I have believed and am persuaded that he is able to keep that which I have committed unto him against that day."
* "Next Sabbath day (the 22nd) I shall complete my 70th year. I can hardly think of myself so old."
*Above the doorways of the Pfahler Hall of Science at Ursinus College in Collegeville, Pennsylvania, there is a stone inscription of a quote attributed to Michael Faraday which reads "but still try, for who knows what is possible..." See
* "One day sir, you may tax it." Faraday's reply to William Gladstone, then British Minister of Finance, when asked of the practical value of electricity.
* "If you would cause your view ... to be acknowledged by scientific men; you would do a great service to science. If you would even get them to say yes or no to your conclusions it would help to clear the future progress. I believe some hesitate because they do not like their thoughts disturbed." From Life and Letters, 2:389.
* Faraday rotator
* Superconductivity
* Tyndall, John, Faraday as a Discoverer, (Longmans, 1st ed. 1868, 2nd ed. 1870).
* Bence Jones, Henry (1870). The Life and Letters of Faraday in 2 vols, Longmans.
* Gladstone, J. H. (1872). Michael Faraday, Macmillan.
* Thompson, Silvanus (1901, reprinted 2005). Michael Faraday, His Life and Work. Cassell and Company, London, 1901; reprint by Kessenger Publishing, Whitefish, MT. ISBN 1-4179-7036-7
* The British Electrical and Allied Manufacturers Association (1931). Faraday. R. & R. Clark, Ltd., Edinburgh, 1931.
* Williams, L. Pearce (1971), Faraday: A Biography, Simon and Schuster.
* Cantor, Geoffrey (1991). Michael Faraday, Sandemanian and Scientist, Macmillian, ISBN 0-333-55077
* Hamilton, James (2002). Faraday: The Life. London: Harper Collins. ISBN 0-00-716376-2
* Hamilton, James (2004). A Life of Discovery: Michael Faraday, Giant of the Scientific Revolution. New York: Random House. ISBN 1-4000-6016-8
* Agassi, Joseph (1971), Faraday as a Natural Philosopher, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
* Ames, Joseph Sweetman (Ed.), The discovery of induced electric currents Vol. 2. Memoirs, by Michael Faraday. New York, Cincinnati [etc.] American book company [c1900] LCCN 00005889
* Gooding, David (Ed.) (1985), Faraday Rediscovered: Essays on the Life and Work of Michael Faraday, 1791-1867, London/New York, Macmillan/Stockton
* Thomas, John Meurig (1991). Michael Faraday and the Royal Institution: The Genius of Man and Place Bristol: Hilger. ISBN 0-7503-0145-7
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* Biography at The Royal Institution of Great Britain
* Faraday as a Discoverer by John Tyndall, Project Gutenberg (downloads)
* The Christian Character of Michael Faraday
* Michael Faraday on the British twenty-pound banknote
* The Life and Discoveries of Michael Faraday by J. A. Crowther, London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1920
* "Faraday" at LoveToKnow 1911 Britannica Online Encyclopedia.
*
* (downloads)
* "Experimental Researches in Electricity" by Michael Faraday Original text with Biographical Introduction by Professor John Tyndall, 1914, Everyman edition.
* Video Podcast with Sir John Cadogan talking about Benzene since Faraday
* The letters of Faraday and Schoenbein 1836-1862. With notes, comments and references to contemporary letters (1899) full download PDF
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Michael_Faraday | Was education another area of service for Faraday? | yes | data/set4/a7 | Michael_Faraday
Michael Faraday, FRS (September 22, 1791 â August 25, 1867) was an English chemist and physicist (or natural philosopher, in the terminology of that time) who contributed to the fields of electromagnetism and electrochemistry.
Faraday studied the magnetic field around a conductor carrying a DC electric current, and established the basis for the magnetic field concept in physics. He discovered electromagnetic induction, diamagnetism and electrolysis. He established that magnetism could affect rays of light and that there was an underlying relationship between the two phenomena. Michael Faraday entry at the 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica hosted by LovetoKnow Retrieved January 2007. Institution of Engineering and Technology, London Archives, Michael Faraday His inventions of electromagnetic rotary devices formed the foundation of electric motor technology, and it was largely due to his efforts that electricity became viable for use in technology.
As a chemist, Faraday discovered benzene, investigated the clathrate hydrate of chlorine, invented an early form of the bunsen burner and the system of oxidation numbers, and popularized terminology such as anode, cathode, electrode, and ion.
Although Faraday received little formal education and knew little of higher mathematics, such as calculus, he was one of the most influential scientists in history. Some historians of science refer to him as the best experimentalist in the history of science. "best experimentalist in the history of science." Quoting Dr Peter Ford, from the University of Bathâs Department of Physics. Accessed January 2007. The SI unit of capacitance, the farad, is named after him, as is the Faraday constant, the charge on a mole of electrons (about 96,485 coulombs). Faraday's law of induction states that a magnetic field changing in time creates a proportional electromotive force.
Faraday was the first and foremost Fullerian Professor of Chemistry at the Royal Institution of Great Britain, a position to which he was appointed for life.
Michael Faraday from a photograph by John Watkins, British Library
Michael Faraday was born in Newington Butts, near present-day South London, England. His family was not well off. His father, James, was a member of the Sandemanian sect of Christianity. James Faraday had come to London ca 1790 from Outhgill in Westmorland, where he had been the village blacksmith. The young Michael Faraday, one of four children, having only the most basic of school educations, had to largely educate himself. "Michael Faraday." History of Science and Technology. Houghton Mifflin Company, 2004. Answers.com 4 June 2007. /ref> At fourteen he became apprenticed to a local bookbinder and bookseller George Riebau and, during his seven-year apprenticeship, he read many books, including Isaac Watts' The Improvement of the Mind, and he enthusiastically implemented the principles and suggestions contained therein. He developed an interest in science and specifically in electricity. In particular, he was inspired by the book Conversations in Chemistry by Jane Marcet.
At the age of twenty, in 1812, at the end of his apprenticeship, Faraday attended lectures by the eminent English chemist and physicist Humphry Davy of the Royal Institution and Royal Society, and John Tatum, founder of the City Philosophical Society. Many tickets for these lectures were given to Faraday by William Dance (one of the founders of the Royal Philharmonic Society). Afterwards, Faraday sent Davy a three hundred page book based on notes taken during the lectures. Davy's reply was immediate, kind, and favorable. When Davy damaged his eyesight in an accident with nitrogen trichloride, he decided to employ Faraday as a secretary. When John Payne, one of the Royal Institution's assistants, was fired, Sir Humphry Davy was asked to find a replacement. He appointed Faraday as Chemical Assistant at the Royal Institution on March 1.
In the class-based English society of the time, Faraday was not considered a gentleman. When Davy went on a long tour to the continent in 1813-5, his valet did not wish to go. Faraday was going as Davy's scientific assistant, and was asked to act as Davy's valet until a replacement could be found in Paris. Davy failed to find a replacement, and Faraday was forced to fill the role of valet as well as assistant throughout the trip. Davy's wife, Jane Apreece, refused to treat Faraday as an equal (making him travel outside the coach, eat with the servants, etc.) and generally made Faraday so miserable that he contemplated returning to England alone and giving up science altogether. The trip did, however, give him access to the European scientific elite and a host of stimulating ideas.
His sponsor and mentor was John 'Mad Jack' Fuller, who created the Fullerian Professorship of Chemistry at the Royal Institution.
Faraday was a devout Christian and a member of the small Sandemanian denomination, an offshoot of the Church of Scotland. He later served two terms as an elder in the group's church.
Faraday married Sarah Barnard (1800-1879) on June 2, 1821, although they would never have children. They met through attending the Sandemanian church.
He was elected a member of the Royal Society in 1824, appointed director of the laboratory in 1825; and in 1833 he was appointed Fullerian professor of chemistry in the institution for life, without the obligation to deliver lectures.
The title page of The Chemical History of a Candle (1861)
Faraday's earliest chemical work was as an assistant to Davy. He made a special study of chlorine, and discovered two new chlorides of carbon. He also made the first rough experiments on the diffusion of gases, a phenomenon first pointed out by John Dalton, the physical importance of which was more fully brought to light by Thomas Graham and Joseph Loschmidt. He succeeded in liquefying several gases; he investigated the alloys of steel, and produced several new kinds of glass intended for optical purposes. A specimen of one of these heavy glasses afterwards became historically important as the substance in which Faraday detected the rotation of the plane of polarisation of light when the glass was placed in a magnetic field, and also as the substance which was first repelled by the poles of the magnet. He also endeavoured, with some success, to make the general methods of chemistry, as distinguished from its results, the subject of special study and of popular exposition.
He invented an early form of what was to become the Bunsen burner, which is used almost universally in science laboratories as a convenient source of heat. See page 127 of Faraday's Chemical Manipulation, Being Instructions to Students in Chemistry (1827)
Faraday worked extensively in the field of chemistry, discovering chemical substances such as benzene (which he called bicarburet of hydrogen), inventing the system of oxidation numbers, and liquefying gases such as chlorine. In 1820 Faraday reported on the first syntheses of compounds made from carbon and chlorine, C 2 H 6 and C 2 H 4 , and published his results the following year. Faraday also determined the composition of the chlorine clathrate hydrate, which had been discovered by Humphry Davy in 1810.
Faraday also discovered the laws of electrolysis and popularized terminology such as anode, cathode, electrode, and ion, terms largely created by William Whewell.
Faraday was the first to report what later came to be called metallic nanoparticles. In 1847 he discovered that the optical properties of gold colloids differed from those of the corresponding bulk metal. This was probably the first reported observation of the effects of quantum size, and might be considered to be the birth of nanoscience.
Faraday's greatest work was probably with electricity and magnetism. The first experiment which he recorded was the construction of a voltaic pile with seven halfpence pieces, stacked together with seven disks of sheet zinc, and six pieces of paper moistened with salt water. With this pile he decomposed sulphate of magnesia (first letter to Abbott, July 12, 1812).
[[Image:Faraday photograph ii.jpg|thumb|200px|left|Michael Faraday holding a glass bar of the type he used in 1845 to show that magnetism can affect light. Detail of an engraving by Henry Adlard, based on an earlier photograph by Maull & Polyblank ca. 1857. See National Portrait Gallery, UK ]]
In 1821, soon after the Danish physicist and chemist, Hans Christian Ãrsted discovered the phenomenon of electromagnetism, Davy and British scientist William Hyde Wollaston tried but failed to design an electric motor. Faraday, having discussed the problem with the two men, went on to build two devices to produce what he called electromagnetic rotation: a continuous circular motion from the circular magnetic force around a wire and a wire extending into a pool of mercury with a magnet placed inside would rotate around the magnet if supplied with current from a chemical battery. The latter device is known as a homopolar motor. These experiments and inventions form the foundation of modern electromagnetic technology. Faraday published his results without acknowledging his debt to Wollaston and Davy, and the resulting controversy caused Faraday to withdraw from electromagnetic research for several years.
At this stage, there is also evidence to suggest that Davy may have been trying to slow Faradayâs rise as a scientist (or natural philosopher as it was known then). In 1825, for instance, Davy set him onto optical glass experiments, which progressed for six years with no great results. It was not until Davy's death, in 1829, that Faraday stopped these fruitless tasks and moved on to endeavors that were more worthwhile. Two years later, in 1831, he began his great series of experiments in which he discovered electromagnetic induction. Joseph Henry likely discovered self-induction a few months earlier and both may have been anticipated by the work of Francesco Zantedeschi in Italy in 1829 and 1830.
Faraday's breakthrough came when he wrapped two insulated coils of wire around a massive iron ring, bolted to a chair, and found that upon passing a current through one coil, a momentary current was induced in the other coil. This phenomenon is known as mutual induction. The iron ring-coil apparatus is still on display at the Royal Institution. In subsequent experiments he found that if he moved a magnet through a loop of wire, an electric current flowed in the wire. The current also flowed if the loop was moved over a stationary magnet. His demonstrations established that a changing magnetic field produces an electric field. This relation was mathematically modelled by Faraday's law, which subsequently became one of the four Maxwell equations. These in turn have evolved into the generalization known today as field theory.
Michael Faraday - statue in Savoy Place, London.
Sculptor John Henry Foley RA
Faraday later used the principle to construct the electric dynamo, the ancestor of modern power generators.
In 1839 he completed a series of experiments aimed at investigating the fundamental nature of electricity. Faraday used "static", batteries, and "animal electricity" to produce the phenomena of electrostatic attraction, electrolysis, magnetism, etc. He concluded that, contrary to scientific opinion of the time, the divisions between the various "kinds" of electricity were illusory. Faraday instead proposed that only a single "electricity" exists, and the changing values of quantity and intensity (voltage and charge) would produce different groups of phenomena.
Near the end of his career Faraday proposed that electromagnetic forces extended into the empty space around the conductor. This idea was rejected by his fellow scientists, and Faraday did not live to see this idea eventually accepted. Faraday's concept of lines of flux emanating from charged bodies and magnets provided a way to visualize electric and magnetic fields. That mental model was crucial to the successful development of electromechanical devices which dominated engineering and industry for the remainder of the 19th century.
In 1845, he discovered the phenomenon that he named diamagnetism, and what is now called the Faraday effect: The plane of polarization of linearly polarized light propagated through a material medium can be rotated by the application of an external magnetic field aligned in the propagation direction. He wrote in his notebook, "I have at last succeeded in illuminating a magnetic curve or line of force and in magnetising a ray of light". This established that magnetic force and light were related.
In his work on static electricity, Faraday demonstrated that the charge only resided on the exterior of a charged conductor, and exterior charge had no influence on anything enclosed within a conductor. This is because the exterior charges redistribute such that the interior fields due to them cancel. This shielding effect is used in what is now known as a Faraday cage.
Faraday was an excellent experimentalist who conveyed his ideas in clear and simple language. However, his mathematical abilities did not extend as far as trigonometry or any but the simplest algebra. It was James Clerk Maxwell who took the work of Faraday, and others, and consolidated it with a set of equations that lie at the base of all modern theories of electromagnetic phenomena.
Michael Faraday meets Father Thames, from Punch (July 21, 1855)
Beyond his scientific research into areas such as chemistry, electricity, and magnetism at the Royal Institution, Faraday undertook numerous, and often time-consuming, service projects for private enterprise and the British government. This work included investigations of explosions in mines, being an expert witness in court, and the preparation of high-quality optical glass.
As a respected scientist in a nation with strong maritime interests, Faraday spent extensive amounts of time on projects such as the construction and operation of light houses and protecting the bottoms of ships from corrosion.
Faraday also was active in what would now be called environmental science, or engineering. He investigated industrial pollution at Swansea and was consulted on air pollution at the Royal Mint. In July of 1855, Faraday wrote a letter to The Times on the subject of the foul condition of the River Thames, which resulted in an oft-reprinted cartoon in Punch. (See also The Great Stink.)
Faraday assisted with planning and judging of exhibits for the Great Exhibition of 1851 in London. He also advised the National Gallery on the cleaning and protection of its art collection, and served on the National Gallery Site Commission in 1857.
Education was another area of service for Faraday. He lectured on the topic in 1854 at the Royal Institution, and in 1862 he appeared before a Public Schools Commission to give his views on education in Great Britain. Faraday also weighed in, negatively, on the public's fascination with table-turning, mesmerism, and seances, chastising both the public and the nation's educational system. See The Illustrated London News, July 1853, for Faraday's comments.
125px
In June of 1832, the University of Oxford granted Faraday a Doctor of Civil Law degree (honorary). During his lifetime, Faraday rejected a knighthood and twice refused to become President of the Royal Society.
In 1848, as a result of representations by the Prince Consort, Michael Faraday was awarded a grace and favour house in Hampton Court, Surrey free of all expenses or upkeep. This was the Master Mason's House, later called Faraday House, and now No.37 Hampton Court Road. In 1858 Faraday retired to live there. Twickenham Museum on Faraday and Faraday House, Accessed June 2006
Faraday died at his house at Hampton Court on August 25, 1867. He turned down burial in Westminster Abbey, but he has a memorial plaque there, near Isaac Newton's tomb. Faraday was interred in the Sandemanian plot in Highgate Cemetery.
Michael Faraday's grave at Highgate Cemetery
Faraday gave a successful series of lectures on the chemistry and physics of flames at the Royal Institution, entitled The Chemical History of a Candle. This was one of the earlier Christmas lectures for young people, which are still given each year. Between 1827 and 1860, Faraday gave the Christmas lecture a record nineteen times.
Faraday refused to participate in the production of chemical weapons for the Crimean War citing ethical reasons.
A statue of Faraday stands in Savoy Place, London, outside the Institution of Electrical Engineers.
A recently built hall of accommodation at Brunel University is named after Faraday.
A hall at Loughborough University was named after Faraday in 1960. Near the entrance to its dining hall is a bronze casting, which depicts the symbol of an electrical transformer, and inside there hangs a portrait, both in Faraday's honour.
Faraday's picture was printed on British £20 banknotes from 1991 until 2001. Bank of England, Withdrawn Notes
In the video game Chromehounds there is a ThermoVision Device named the Faraday.
The former UK Faraday Atmospheric Research Station in Antarctica was named after him.
Faraday was one of the then eight foreign members of the French Academy of Sciences.
Michael Faraday's signature
Faraday's books, with the exception of Chemical Manipulation, were collections of scientific papers or transcriptions of lectures. See page 220 of Hamilton's A Life of Discovery: Michael Faraday, Giant of the Scientific Revolution (2002) Since his death, Faraday's diary has been published, as have several large volumes of his letters and Faraday's journal from his travels with Davy in 1813 - 1815.
* Chemical Manipulation, Being Instructions to Students in Chemistry, John Murray, 1st ed. 1827, 2nd ed. 1830, 3rd ed. 1842
* Experimental Researches in Electricity, vols. i. and ii., Richard and John Edward Taylor, vols. i. and ii.. 1844 and 1847; vol. iii., 1844; vol. iii. Richard Taylor and William Francis, 1855
* Experimental Researches in Chemistry and Physics, Taylor and Francis, 1859
* A Course of Six Lectures on the Chemical History of a Candle, edited by W. Crookes, Griffin, Bohn & Co., 1861
* On the Various Forces in Nature, edited by W. Crookes, Chatto & Windus, 1873
* Faraday's Diary edited by T. Martin was published in eight volumes, 1932 - 1936
* Curiosity Perfectly Satisfyed: Faraday's Travels in Europe 1813-1815, edited by B. Bowers and L. Symons, Institution of Electrical Engineers, 1991
* The Correspondence of Michael Faraday, edited by F. A. J. L. James, INSPEC, Inc., volume 1, 1991; volume 2, 1993; volume 3, 1996; volume 4, 1999
* "Nothing is too wonderful to be true if it be consistent with the laws of nature, and in such things as these, experiment is the best test of such consistency." From the entry of 19 March 1849 in Faraday's Diary
* "Work. Finish. Publish." â his well-known advice to the young William Crookes
* "The important thing is to know how to take all things quietly."
* Regarding the hereafter, "Speculations? I have none. I am resting on certainties. I know whom I have believed and am persuaded that he is able to keep that which I have committed unto him against that day."
* "Next Sabbath day (the 22nd) I shall complete my 70th year. I can hardly think of myself so old."
*Above the doorways of the Pfahler Hall of Science at Ursinus College in Collegeville, Pennsylvania, there is a stone inscription of a quote attributed to Michael Faraday which reads "but still try, for who knows what is possible..." See
* "One day sir, you may tax it." Faraday's reply to William Gladstone, then British Minister of Finance, when asked of the practical value of electricity.
* "If you would cause your view ... to be acknowledged by scientific men; you would do a great service to science. If you would even get them to say yes or no to your conclusions it would help to clear the future progress. I believe some hesitate because they do not like their thoughts disturbed." From Life and Letters, 2:389.
* Faraday rotator
* Superconductivity
* Tyndall, John, Faraday as a Discoverer, (Longmans, 1st ed. 1868, 2nd ed. 1870).
* Bence Jones, Henry (1870). The Life and Letters of Faraday in 2 vols, Longmans.
* Gladstone, J. H. (1872). Michael Faraday, Macmillan.
* Thompson, Silvanus (1901, reprinted 2005). Michael Faraday, His Life and Work. Cassell and Company, London, 1901; reprint by Kessenger Publishing, Whitefish, MT. ISBN 1-4179-7036-7
* The British Electrical and Allied Manufacturers Association (1931). Faraday. R. & R. Clark, Ltd., Edinburgh, 1931.
* Williams, L. Pearce (1971), Faraday: A Biography, Simon and Schuster.
* Cantor, Geoffrey (1991). Michael Faraday, Sandemanian and Scientist, Macmillian, ISBN 0-333-55077
* Hamilton, James (2002). Faraday: The Life. London: Harper Collins. ISBN 0-00-716376-2
* Hamilton, James (2004). A Life of Discovery: Michael Faraday, Giant of the Scientific Revolution. New York: Random House. ISBN 1-4000-6016-8
* Agassi, Joseph (1971), Faraday as a Natural Philosopher, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
* Ames, Joseph Sweetman (Ed.), The discovery of induced electric currents Vol. 2. Memoirs, by Michael Faraday. New York, Cincinnati [etc.] American book company [c1900] LCCN 00005889
* Gooding, David (Ed.) (1985), Faraday Rediscovered: Essays on the Life and Work of Michael Faraday, 1791-1867, London/New York, Macmillan/Stockton
* Thomas, John Meurig (1991). Michael Faraday and the Royal Institution: The Genius of Man and Place Bristol: Hilger. ISBN 0-7503-0145-7
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* Biography at The Royal Institution of Great Britain
* Faraday as a Discoverer by John Tyndall, Project Gutenberg (downloads)
* The Christian Character of Michael Faraday
* Michael Faraday on the British twenty-pound banknote
* The Life and Discoveries of Michael Faraday by J. A. Crowther, London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1920
* "Faraday" at LoveToKnow 1911 Britannica Online Encyclopedia.
*
* (downloads)
* "Experimental Researches in Electricity" by Michael Faraday Original text with Biographical Introduction by Professor John Tyndall, 1914, Everyman edition.
* Video Podcast with Sir John Cadogan talking about Benzene since Faraday
* The letters of Faraday and Schoenbein 1836-1862. With notes, comments and references to contemporary letters (1899) full download PDF
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Michael_Faraday | Was faraday `s earliest chemical work as an assistant to Davy? | Yes | data/set4/a7 | Michael_Faraday
Michael Faraday, FRS (September 22, 1791 â August 25, 1867) was an English chemist and physicist (or natural philosopher, in the terminology of that time) who contributed to the fields of electromagnetism and electrochemistry.
Faraday studied the magnetic field around a conductor carrying a DC electric current, and established the basis for the magnetic field concept in physics. He discovered electromagnetic induction, diamagnetism and electrolysis. He established that magnetism could affect rays of light and that there was an underlying relationship between the two phenomena. Michael Faraday entry at the 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica hosted by LovetoKnow Retrieved January 2007. Institution of Engineering and Technology, London Archives, Michael Faraday His inventions of electromagnetic rotary devices formed the foundation of electric motor technology, and it was largely due to his efforts that electricity became viable for use in technology.
As a chemist, Faraday discovered benzene, investigated the clathrate hydrate of chlorine, invented an early form of the bunsen burner and the system of oxidation numbers, and popularized terminology such as anode, cathode, electrode, and ion.
Although Faraday received little formal education and knew little of higher mathematics, such as calculus, he was one of the most influential scientists in history. Some historians of science refer to him as the best experimentalist in the history of science. "best experimentalist in the history of science." Quoting Dr Peter Ford, from the University of Bathâs Department of Physics. Accessed January 2007. The SI unit of capacitance, the farad, is named after him, as is the Faraday constant, the charge on a mole of electrons (about 96,485 coulombs). Faraday's law of induction states that a magnetic field changing in time creates a proportional electromotive force.
Faraday was the first and foremost Fullerian Professor of Chemistry at the Royal Institution of Great Britain, a position to which he was appointed for life.
Michael Faraday from a photograph by John Watkins, British Library
Michael Faraday was born in Newington Butts, near present-day South London, England. His family was not well off. His father, James, was a member of the Sandemanian sect of Christianity. James Faraday had come to London ca 1790 from Outhgill in Westmorland, where he had been the village blacksmith. The young Michael Faraday, one of four children, having only the most basic of school educations, had to largely educate himself. "Michael Faraday." History of Science and Technology. Houghton Mifflin Company, 2004. Answers.com 4 June 2007. /ref> At fourteen he became apprenticed to a local bookbinder and bookseller George Riebau and, during his seven-year apprenticeship, he read many books, including Isaac Watts' The Improvement of the Mind, and he enthusiastically implemented the principles and suggestions contained therein. He developed an interest in science and specifically in electricity. In particular, he was inspired by the book Conversations in Chemistry by Jane Marcet.
At the age of twenty, in 1812, at the end of his apprenticeship, Faraday attended lectures by the eminent English chemist and physicist Humphry Davy of the Royal Institution and Royal Society, and John Tatum, founder of the City Philosophical Society. Many tickets for these lectures were given to Faraday by William Dance (one of the founders of the Royal Philharmonic Society). Afterwards, Faraday sent Davy a three hundred page book based on notes taken during the lectures. Davy's reply was immediate, kind, and favorable. When Davy damaged his eyesight in an accident with nitrogen trichloride, he decided to employ Faraday as a secretary. When John Payne, one of the Royal Institution's assistants, was fired, Sir Humphry Davy was asked to find a replacement. He appointed Faraday as Chemical Assistant at the Royal Institution on March 1.
In the class-based English society of the time, Faraday was not considered a gentleman. When Davy went on a long tour to the continent in 1813-5, his valet did not wish to go. Faraday was going as Davy's scientific assistant, and was asked to act as Davy's valet until a replacement could be found in Paris. Davy failed to find a replacement, and Faraday was forced to fill the role of valet as well as assistant throughout the trip. Davy's wife, Jane Apreece, refused to treat Faraday as an equal (making him travel outside the coach, eat with the servants, etc.) and generally made Faraday so miserable that he contemplated returning to England alone and giving up science altogether. The trip did, however, give him access to the European scientific elite and a host of stimulating ideas.
His sponsor and mentor was John 'Mad Jack' Fuller, who created the Fullerian Professorship of Chemistry at the Royal Institution.
Faraday was a devout Christian and a member of the small Sandemanian denomination, an offshoot of the Church of Scotland. He later served two terms as an elder in the group's church.
Faraday married Sarah Barnard (1800-1879) on June 2, 1821, although they would never have children. They met through attending the Sandemanian church.
He was elected a member of the Royal Society in 1824, appointed director of the laboratory in 1825; and in 1833 he was appointed Fullerian professor of chemistry in the institution for life, without the obligation to deliver lectures.
The title page of The Chemical History of a Candle (1861)
Faraday's earliest chemical work was as an assistant to Davy. He made a special study of chlorine, and discovered two new chlorides of carbon. He also made the first rough experiments on the diffusion of gases, a phenomenon first pointed out by John Dalton, the physical importance of which was more fully brought to light by Thomas Graham and Joseph Loschmidt. He succeeded in liquefying several gases; he investigated the alloys of steel, and produced several new kinds of glass intended for optical purposes. A specimen of one of these heavy glasses afterwards became historically important as the substance in which Faraday detected the rotation of the plane of polarisation of light when the glass was placed in a magnetic field, and also as the substance which was first repelled by the poles of the magnet. He also endeavoured, with some success, to make the general methods of chemistry, as distinguished from its results, the subject of special study and of popular exposition.
He invented an early form of what was to become the Bunsen burner, which is used almost universally in science laboratories as a convenient source of heat. See page 127 of Faraday's Chemical Manipulation, Being Instructions to Students in Chemistry (1827)
Faraday worked extensively in the field of chemistry, discovering chemical substances such as benzene (which he called bicarburet of hydrogen), inventing the system of oxidation numbers, and liquefying gases such as chlorine. In 1820 Faraday reported on the first syntheses of compounds made from carbon and chlorine, C 2 H 6 and C 2 H 4 , and published his results the following year. Faraday also determined the composition of the chlorine clathrate hydrate, which had been discovered by Humphry Davy in 1810.
Faraday also discovered the laws of electrolysis and popularized terminology such as anode, cathode, electrode, and ion, terms largely created by William Whewell.
Faraday was the first to report what later came to be called metallic nanoparticles. In 1847 he discovered that the optical properties of gold colloids differed from those of the corresponding bulk metal. This was probably the first reported observation of the effects of quantum size, and might be considered to be the birth of nanoscience.
Faraday's greatest work was probably with electricity and magnetism. The first experiment which he recorded was the construction of a voltaic pile with seven halfpence pieces, stacked together with seven disks of sheet zinc, and six pieces of paper moistened with salt water. With this pile he decomposed sulphate of magnesia (first letter to Abbott, July 12, 1812).
[[Image:Faraday photograph ii.jpg|thumb|200px|left|Michael Faraday holding a glass bar of the type he used in 1845 to show that magnetism can affect light. Detail of an engraving by Henry Adlard, based on an earlier photograph by Maull & Polyblank ca. 1857. See National Portrait Gallery, UK ]]
In 1821, soon after the Danish physicist and chemist, Hans Christian Ãrsted discovered the phenomenon of electromagnetism, Davy and British scientist William Hyde Wollaston tried but failed to design an electric motor. Faraday, having discussed the problem with the two men, went on to build two devices to produce what he called electromagnetic rotation: a continuous circular motion from the circular magnetic force around a wire and a wire extending into a pool of mercury with a magnet placed inside would rotate around the magnet if supplied with current from a chemical battery. The latter device is known as a homopolar motor. These experiments and inventions form the foundation of modern electromagnetic technology. Faraday published his results without acknowledging his debt to Wollaston and Davy, and the resulting controversy caused Faraday to withdraw from electromagnetic research for several years.
At this stage, there is also evidence to suggest that Davy may have been trying to slow Faradayâs rise as a scientist (or natural philosopher as it was known then). In 1825, for instance, Davy set him onto optical glass experiments, which progressed for six years with no great results. It was not until Davy's death, in 1829, that Faraday stopped these fruitless tasks and moved on to endeavors that were more worthwhile. Two years later, in 1831, he began his great series of experiments in which he discovered electromagnetic induction. Joseph Henry likely discovered self-induction a few months earlier and both may have been anticipated by the work of Francesco Zantedeschi in Italy in 1829 and 1830.
Faraday's breakthrough came when he wrapped two insulated coils of wire around a massive iron ring, bolted to a chair, and found that upon passing a current through one coil, a momentary current was induced in the other coil. This phenomenon is known as mutual induction. The iron ring-coil apparatus is still on display at the Royal Institution. In subsequent experiments he found that if he moved a magnet through a loop of wire, an electric current flowed in the wire. The current also flowed if the loop was moved over a stationary magnet. His demonstrations established that a changing magnetic field produces an electric field. This relation was mathematically modelled by Faraday's law, which subsequently became one of the four Maxwell equations. These in turn have evolved into the generalization known today as field theory.
Michael Faraday - statue in Savoy Place, London.
Sculptor John Henry Foley RA
Faraday later used the principle to construct the electric dynamo, the ancestor of modern power generators.
In 1839 he completed a series of experiments aimed at investigating the fundamental nature of electricity. Faraday used "static", batteries, and "animal electricity" to produce the phenomena of electrostatic attraction, electrolysis, magnetism, etc. He concluded that, contrary to scientific opinion of the time, the divisions between the various "kinds" of electricity were illusory. Faraday instead proposed that only a single "electricity" exists, and the changing values of quantity and intensity (voltage and charge) would produce different groups of phenomena.
Near the end of his career Faraday proposed that electromagnetic forces extended into the empty space around the conductor. This idea was rejected by his fellow scientists, and Faraday did not live to see this idea eventually accepted. Faraday's concept of lines of flux emanating from charged bodies and magnets provided a way to visualize electric and magnetic fields. That mental model was crucial to the successful development of electromechanical devices which dominated engineering and industry for the remainder of the 19th century.
In 1845, he discovered the phenomenon that he named diamagnetism, and what is now called the Faraday effect: The plane of polarization of linearly polarized light propagated through a material medium can be rotated by the application of an external magnetic field aligned in the propagation direction. He wrote in his notebook, "I have at last succeeded in illuminating a magnetic curve or line of force and in magnetising a ray of light". This established that magnetic force and light were related.
In his work on static electricity, Faraday demonstrated that the charge only resided on the exterior of a charged conductor, and exterior charge had no influence on anything enclosed within a conductor. This is because the exterior charges redistribute such that the interior fields due to them cancel. This shielding effect is used in what is now known as a Faraday cage.
Faraday was an excellent experimentalist who conveyed his ideas in clear and simple language. However, his mathematical abilities did not extend as far as trigonometry or any but the simplest algebra. It was James Clerk Maxwell who took the work of Faraday, and others, and consolidated it with a set of equations that lie at the base of all modern theories of electromagnetic phenomena.
Michael Faraday meets Father Thames, from Punch (July 21, 1855)
Beyond his scientific research into areas such as chemistry, electricity, and magnetism at the Royal Institution, Faraday undertook numerous, and often time-consuming, service projects for private enterprise and the British government. This work included investigations of explosions in mines, being an expert witness in court, and the preparation of high-quality optical glass.
As a respected scientist in a nation with strong maritime interests, Faraday spent extensive amounts of time on projects such as the construction and operation of light houses and protecting the bottoms of ships from corrosion.
Faraday also was active in what would now be called environmental science, or engineering. He investigated industrial pollution at Swansea and was consulted on air pollution at the Royal Mint. In July of 1855, Faraday wrote a letter to The Times on the subject of the foul condition of the River Thames, which resulted in an oft-reprinted cartoon in Punch. (See also The Great Stink.)
Faraday assisted with planning and judging of exhibits for the Great Exhibition of 1851 in London. He also advised the National Gallery on the cleaning and protection of its art collection, and served on the National Gallery Site Commission in 1857.
Education was another area of service for Faraday. He lectured on the topic in 1854 at the Royal Institution, and in 1862 he appeared before a Public Schools Commission to give his views on education in Great Britain. Faraday also weighed in, negatively, on the public's fascination with table-turning, mesmerism, and seances, chastising both the public and the nation's educational system. See The Illustrated London News, July 1853, for Faraday's comments.
125px
In June of 1832, the University of Oxford granted Faraday a Doctor of Civil Law degree (honorary). During his lifetime, Faraday rejected a knighthood and twice refused to become President of the Royal Society.
In 1848, as a result of representations by the Prince Consort, Michael Faraday was awarded a grace and favour house in Hampton Court, Surrey free of all expenses or upkeep. This was the Master Mason's House, later called Faraday House, and now No.37 Hampton Court Road. In 1858 Faraday retired to live there. Twickenham Museum on Faraday and Faraday House, Accessed June 2006
Faraday died at his house at Hampton Court on August 25, 1867. He turned down burial in Westminster Abbey, but he has a memorial plaque there, near Isaac Newton's tomb. Faraday was interred in the Sandemanian plot in Highgate Cemetery.
Michael Faraday's grave at Highgate Cemetery
Faraday gave a successful series of lectures on the chemistry and physics of flames at the Royal Institution, entitled The Chemical History of a Candle. This was one of the earlier Christmas lectures for young people, which are still given each year. Between 1827 and 1860, Faraday gave the Christmas lecture a record nineteen times.
Faraday refused to participate in the production of chemical weapons for the Crimean War citing ethical reasons.
A statue of Faraday stands in Savoy Place, London, outside the Institution of Electrical Engineers.
A recently built hall of accommodation at Brunel University is named after Faraday.
A hall at Loughborough University was named after Faraday in 1960. Near the entrance to its dining hall is a bronze casting, which depicts the symbol of an electrical transformer, and inside there hangs a portrait, both in Faraday's honour.
Faraday's picture was printed on British £20 banknotes from 1991 until 2001. Bank of England, Withdrawn Notes
In the video game Chromehounds there is a ThermoVision Device named the Faraday.
The former UK Faraday Atmospheric Research Station in Antarctica was named after him.
Faraday was one of the then eight foreign members of the French Academy of Sciences.
Michael Faraday's signature
Faraday's books, with the exception of Chemical Manipulation, were collections of scientific papers or transcriptions of lectures. See page 220 of Hamilton's A Life of Discovery: Michael Faraday, Giant of the Scientific Revolution (2002) Since his death, Faraday's diary has been published, as have several large volumes of his letters and Faraday's journal from his travels with Davy in 1813 - 1815.
* Chemical Manipulation, Being Instructions to Students in Chemistry, John Murray, 1st ed. 1827, 2nd ed. 1830, 3rd ed. 1842
* Experimental Researches in Electricity, vols. i. and ii., Richard and John Edward Taylor, vols. i. and ii.. 1844 and 1847; vol. iii., 1844; vol. iii. Richard Taylor and William Francis, 1855
* Experimental Researches in Chemistry and Physics, Taylor and Francis, 1859
* A Course of Six Lectures on the Chemical History of a Candle, edited by W. Crookes, Griffin, Bohn & Co., 1861
* On the Various Forces in Nature, edited by W. Crookes, Chatto & Windus, 1873
* Faraday's Diary edited by T. Martin was published in eight volumes, 1932 - 1936
* Curiosity Perfectly Satisfyed: Faraday's Travels in Europe 1813-1815, edited by B. Bowers and L. Symons, Institution of Electrical Engineers, 1991
* The Correspondence of Michael Faraday, edited by F. A. J. L. James, INSPEC, Inc., volume 1, 1991; volume 2, 1993; volume 3, 1996; volume 4, 1999
* "Nothing is too wonderful to be true if it be consistent with the laws of nature, and in such things as these, experiment is the best test of such consistency." From the entry of 19 March 1849 in Faraday's Diary
* "Work. Finish. Publish." â his well-known advice to the young William Crookes
* "The important thing is to know how to take all things quietly."
* Regarding the hereafter, "Speculations? I have none. I am resting on certainties. I know whom I have believed and am persuaded that he is able to keep that which I have committed unto him against that day."
* "Next Sabbath day (the 22nd) I shall complete my 70th year. I can hardly think of myself so old."
*Above the doorways of the Pfahler Hall of Science at Ursinus College in Collegeville, Pennsylvania, there is a stone inscription of a quote attributed to Michael Faraday which reads "but still try, for who knows what is possible..." See
* "One day sir, you may tax it." Faraday's reply to William Gladstone, then British Minister of Finance, when asked of the practical value of electricity.
* "If you would cause your view ... to be acknowledged by scientific men; you would do a great service to science. If you would even get them to say yes or no to your conclusions it would help to clear the future progress. I believe some hesitate because they do not like their thoughts disturbed." From Life and Letters, 2:389.
* Faraday rotator
* Superconductivity
* Tyndall, John, Faraday as a Discoverer, (Longmans, 1st ed. 1868, 2nd ed. 1870).
* Bence Jones, Henry (1870). The Life and Letters of Faraday in 2 vols, Longmans.
* Gladstone, J. H. (1872). Michael Faraday, Macmillan.
* Thompson, Silvanus (1901, reprinted 2005). Michael Faraday, His Life and Work. Cassell and Company, London, 1901; reprint by Kessenger Publishing, Whitefish, MT. ISBN 1-4179-7036-7
* The British Electrical and Allied Manufacturers Association (1931). Faraday. R. & R. Clark, Ltd., Edinburgh, 1931.
* Williams, L. Pearce (1971), Faraday: A Biography, Simon and Schuster.
* Cantor, Geoffrey (1991). Michael Faraday, Sandemanian and Scientist, Macmillian, ISBN 0-333-55077
* Hamilton, James (2002). Faraday: The Life. London: Harper Collins. ISBN 0-00-716376-2
* Hamilton, James (2004). A Life of Discovery: Michael Faraday, Giant of the Scientific Revolution. New York: Random House. ISBN 1-4000-6016-8
* Agassi, Joseph (1971), Faraday as a Natural Philosopher, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
* Ames, Joseph Sweetman (Ed.), The discovery of induced electric currents Vol. 2. Memoirs, by Michael Faraday. New York, Cincinnati [etc.] American book company [c1900] LCCN 00005889
* Gooding, David (Ed.) (1985), Faraday Rediscovered: Essays on the Life and Work of Michael Faraday, 1791-1867, London/New York, Macmillan/Stockton
* Thomas, John Meurig (1991). Michael Faraday and the Royal Institution: The Genius of Man and Place Bristol: Hilger. ISBN 0-7503-0145-7
150px
* Biography at The Royal Institution of Great Britain
* Faraday as a Discoverer by John Tyndall, Project Gutenberg (downloads)
* The Christian Character of Michael Faraday
* Michael Faraday on the British twenty-pound banknote
* The Life and Discoveries of Michael Faraday by J. A. Crowther, London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1920
* "Faraday" at LoveToKnow 1911 Britannica Online Encyclopedia.
*
* (downloads)
* "Experimental Researches in Electricity" by Michael Faraday Original text with Biographical Introduction by Professor John Tyndall, 1914, Everyman edition.
* Video Podcast with Sir John Cadogan talking about Benzene since Faraday
* The letters of Faraday and Schoenbein 1836-1862. With notes, comments and references to contemporary letters (1899) full download PDF
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Michael_Faraday | Who died at his house at Hampton Court on August 25, 1867? | Faraday | data/set4/a7 | Michael_Faraday
Michael Faraday, FRS (September 22, 1791 â August 25, 1867) was an English chemist and physicist (or natural philosopher, in the terminology of that time) who contributed to the fields of electromagnetism and electrochemistry.
Faraday studied the magnetic field around a conductor carrying a DC electric current, and established the basis for the magnetic field concept in physics. He discovered electromagnetic induction, diamagnetism and electrolysis. He established that magnetism could affect rays of light and that there was an underlying relationship between the two phenomena. Michael Faraday entry at the 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica hosted by LovetoKnow Retrieved January 2007. Institution of Engineering and Technology, London Archives, Michael Faraday His inventions of electromagnetic rotary devices formed the foundation of electric motor technology, and it was largely due to his efforts that electricity became viable for use in technology.
As a chemist, Faraday discovered benzene, investigated the clathrate hydrate of chlorine, invented an early form of the bunsen burner and the system of oxidation numbers, and popularized terminology such as anode, cathode, electrode, and ion.
Although Faraday received little formal education and knew little of higher mathematics, such as calculus, he was one of the most influential scientists in history. Some historians of science refer to him as the best experimentalist in the history of science. "best experimentalist in the history of science." Quoting Dr Peter Ford, from the University of Bathâs Department of Physics. Accessed January 2007. The SI unit of capacitance, the farad, is named after him, as is the Faraday constant, the charge on a mole of electrons (about 96,485 coulombs). Faraday's law of induction states that a magnetic field changing in time creates a proportional electromotive force.
Faraday was the first and foremost Fullerian Professor of Chemistry at the Royal Institution of Great Britain, a position to which he was appointed for life.
Michael Faraday from a photograph by John Watkins, British Library
Michael Faraday was born in Newington Butts, near present-day South London, England. His family was not well off. His father, James, was a member of the Sandemanian sect of Christianity. James Faraday had come to London ca 1790 from Outhgill in Westmorland, where he had been the village blacksmith. The young Michael Faraday, one of four children, having only the most basic of school educations, had to largely educate himself. "Michael Faraday." History of Science and Technology. Houghton Mifflin Company, 2004. Answers.com 4 June 2007. /ref> At fourteen he became apprenticed to a local bookbinder and bookseller George Riebau and, during his seven-year apprenticeship, he read many books, including Isaac Watts' The Improvement of the Mind, and he enthusiastically implemented the principles and suggestions contained therein. He developed an interest in science and specifically in electricity. In particular, he was inspired by the book Conversations in Chemistry by Jane Marcet.
At the age of twenty, in 1812, at the end of his apprenticeship, Faraday attended lectures by the eminent English chemist and physicist Humphry Davy of the Royal Institution and Royal Society, and John Tatum, founder of the City Philosophical Society. Many tickets for these lectures were given to Faraday by William Dance (one of the founders of the Royal Philharmonic Society). Afterwards, Faraday sent Davy a three hundred page book based on notes taken during the lectures. Davy's reply was immediate, kind, and favorable. When Davy damaged his eyesight in an accident with nitrogen trichloride, he decided to employ Faraday as a secretary. When John Payne, one of the Royal Institution's assistants, was fired, Sir Humphry Davy was asked to find a replacement. He appointed Faraday as Chemical Assistant at the Royal Institution on March 1.
In the class-based English society of the time, Faraday was not considered a gentleman. When Davy went on a long tour to the continent in 1813-5, his valet did not wish to go. Faraday was going as Davy's scientific assistant, and was asked to act as Davy's valet until a replacement could be found in Paris. Davy failed to find a replacement, and Faraday was forced to fill the role of valet as well as assistant throughout the trip. Davy's wife, Jane Apreece, refused to treat Faraday as an equal (making him travel outside the coach, eat with the servants, etc.) and generally made Faraday so miserable that he contemplated returning to England alone and giving up science altogether. The trip did, however, give him access to the European scientific elite and a host of stimulating ideas.
His sponsor and mentor was John 'Mad Jack' Fuller, who created the Fullerian Professorship of Chemistry at the Royal Institution.
Faraday was a devout Christian and a member of the small Sandemanian denomination, an offshoot of the Church of Scotland. He later served two terms as an elder in the group's church.
Faraday married Sarah Barnard (1800-1879) on June 2, 1821, although they would never have children. They met through attending the Sandemanian church.
He was elected a member of the Royal Society in 1824, appointed director of the laboratory in 1825; and in 1833 he was appointed Fullerian professor of chemistry in the institution for life, without the obligation to deliver lectures.
The title page of The Chemical History of a Candle (1861)
Faraday's earliest chemical work was as an assistant to Davy. He made a special study of chlorine, and discovered two new chlorides of carbon. He also made the first rough experiments on the diffusion of gases, a phenomenon first pointed out by John Dalton, the physical importance of which was more fully brought to light by Thomas Graham and Joseph Loschmidt. He succeeded in liquefying several gases; he investigated the alloys of steel, and produced several new kinds of glass intended for optical purposes. A specimen of one of these heavy glasses afterwards became historically important as the substance in which Faraday detected the rotation of the plane of polarisation of light when the glass was placed in a magnetic field, and also as the substance which was first repelled by the poles of the magnet. He also endeavoured, with some success, to make the general methods of chemistry, as distinguished from its results, the subject of special study and of popular exposition.
He invented an early form of what was to become the Bunsen burner, which is used almost universally in science laboratories as a convenient source of heat. See page 127 of Faraday's Chemical Manipulation, Being Instructions to Students in Chemistry (1827)
Faraday worked extensively in the field of chemistry, discovering chemical substances such as benzene (which he called bicarburet of hydrogen), inventing the system of oxidation numbers, and liquefying gases such as chlorine. In 1820 Faraday reported on the first syntheses of compounds made from carbon and chlorine, C 2 H 6 and C 2 H 4 , and published his results the following year. Faraday also determined the composition of the chlorine clathrate hydrate, which had been discovered by Humphry Davy in 1810.
Faraday also discovered the laws of electrolysis and popularized terminology such as anode, cathode, electrode, and ion, terms largely created by William Whewell.
Faraday was the first to report what later came to be called metallic nanoparticles. In 1847 he discovered that the optical properties of gold colloids differed from those of the corresponding bulk metal. This was probably the first reported observation of the effects of quantum size, and might be considered to be the birth of nanoscience.
Faraday's greatest work was probably with electricity and magnetism. The first experiment which he recorded was the construction of a voltaic pile with seven halfpence pieces, stacked together with seven disks of sheet zinc, and six pieces of paper moistened with salt water. With this pile he decomposed sulphate of magnesia (first letter to Abbott, July 12, 1812).
[[Image:Faraday photograph ii.jpg|thumb|200px|left|Michael Faraday holding a glass bar of the type he used in 1845 to show that magnetism can affect light. Detail of an engraving by Henry Adlard, based on an earlier photograph by Maull & Polyblank ca. 1857. See National Portrait Gallery, UK ]]
In 1821, soon after the Danish physicist and chemist, Hans Christian Ãrsted discovered the phenomenon of electromagnetism, Davy and British scientist William Hyde Wollaston tried but failed to design an electric motor. Faraday, having discussed the problem with the two men, went on to build two devices to produce what he called electromagnetic rotation: a continuous circular motion from the circular magnetic force around a wire and a wire extending into a pool of mercury with a magnet placed inside would rotate around the magnet if supplied with current from a chemical battery. The latter device is known as a homopolar motor. These experiments and inventions form the foundation of modern electromagnetic technology. Faraday published his results without acknowledging his debt to Wollaston and Davy, and the resulting controversy caused Faraday to withdraw from electromagnetic research for several years.
At this stage, there is also evidence to suggest that Davy may have been trying to slow Faradayâs rise as a scientist (or natural philosopher as it was known then). In 1825, for instance, Davy set him onto optical glass experiments, which progressed for six years with no great results. It was not until Davy's death, in 1829, that Faraday stopped these fruitless tasks and moved on to endeavors that were more worthwhile. Two years later, in 1831, he began his great series of experiments in which he discovered electromagnetic induction. Joseph Henry likely discovered self-induction a few months earlier and both may have been anticipated by the work of Francesco Zantedeschi in Italy in 1829 and 1830.
Faraday's breakthrough came when he wrapped two insulated coils of wire around a massive iron ring, bolted to a chair, and found that upon passing a current through one coil, a momentary current was induced in the other coil. This phenomenon is known as mutual induction. The iron ring-coil apparatus is still on display at the Royal Institution. In subsequent experiments he found that if he moved a magnet through a loop of wire, an electric current flowed in the wire. The current also flowed if the loop was moved over a stationary magnet. His demonstrations established that a changing magnetic field produces an electric field. This relation was mathematically modelled by Faraday's law, which subsequently became one of the four Maxwell equations. These in turn have evolved into the generalization known today as field theory.
Michael Faraday - statue in Savoy Place, London.
Sculptor John Henry Foley RA
Faraday later used the principle to construct the electric dynamo, the ancestor of modern power generators.
In 1839 he completed a series of experiments aimed at investigating the fundamental nature of electricity. Faraday used "static", batteries, and "animal electricity" to produce the phenomena of electrostatic attraction, electrolysis, magnetism, etc. He concluded that, contrary to scientific opinion of the time, the divisions between the various "kinds" of electricity were illusory. Faraday instead proposed that only a single "electricity" exists, and the changing values of quantity and intensity (voltage and charge) would produce different groups of phenomena.
Near the end of his career Faraday proposed that electromagnetic forces extended into the empty space around the conductor. This idea was rejected by his fellow scientists, and Faraday did not live to see this idea eventually accepted. Faraday's concept of lines of flux emanating from charged bodies and magnets provided a way to visualize electric and magnetic fields. That mental model was crucial to the successful development of electromechanical devices which dominated engineering and industry for the remainder of the 19th century.
In 1845, he discovered the phenomenon that he named diamagnetism, and what is now called the Faraday effect: The plane of polarization of linearly polarized light propagated through a material medium can be rotated by the application of an external magnetic field aligned in the propagation direction. He wrote in his notebook, "I have at last succeeded in illuminating a magnetic curve or line of force and in magnetising a ray of light". This established that magnetic force and light were related.
In his work on static electricity, Faraday demonstrated that the charge only resided on the exterior of a charged conductor, and exterior charge had no influence on anything enclosed within a conductor. This is because the exterior charges redistribute such that the interior fields due to them cancel. This shielding effect is used in what is now known as a Faraday cage.
Faraday was an excellent experimentalist who conveyed his ideas in clear and simple language. However, his mathematical abilities did not extend as far as trigonometry or any but the simplest algebra. It was James Clerk Maxwell who took the work of Faraday, and others, and consolidated it with a set of equations that lie at the base of all modern theories of electromagnetic phenomena.
Michael Faraday meets Father Thames, from Punch (July 21, 1855)
Beyond his scientific research into areas such as chemistry, electricity, and magnetism at the Royal Institution, Faraday undertook numerous, and often time-consuming, service projects for private enterprise and the British government. This work included investigations of explosions in mines, being an expert witness in court, and the preparation of high-quality optical glass.
As a respected scientist in a nation with strong maritime interests, Faraday spent extensive amounts of time on projects such as the construction and operation of light houses and protecting the bottoms of ships from corrosion.
Faraday also was active in what would now be called environmental science, or engineering. He investigated industrial pollution at Swansea and was consulted on air pollution at the Royal Mint. In July of 1855, Faraday wrote a letter to The Times on the subject of the foul condition of the River Thames, which resulted in an oft-reprinted cartoon in Punch. (See also The Great Stink.)
Faraday assisted with planning and judging of exhibits for the Great Exhibition of 1851 in London. He also advised the National Gallery on the cleaning and protection of its art collection, and served on the National Gallery Site Commission in 1857.
Education was another area of service for Faraday. He lectured on the topic in 1854 at the Royal Institution, and in 1862 he appeared before a Public Schools Commission to give his views on education in Great Britain. Faraday also weighed in, negatively, on the public's fascination with table-turning, mesmerism, and seances, chastising both the public and the nation's educational system. See The Illustrated London News, July 1853, for Faraday's comments.
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In June of 1832, the University of Oxford granted Faraday a Doctor of Civil Law degree (honorary). During his lifetime, Faraday rejected a knighthood and twice refused to become President of the Royal Society.
In 1848, as a result of representations by the Prince Consort, Michael Faraday was awarded a grace and favour house in Hampton Court, Surrey free of all expenses or upkeep. This was the Master Mason's House, later called Faraday House, and now No.37 Hampton Court Road. In 1858 Faraday retired to live there. Twickenham Museum on Faraday and Faraday House, Accessed June 2006
Faraday died at his house at Hampton Court on August 25, 1867. He turned down burial in Westminster Abbey, but he has a memorial plaque there, near Isaac Newton's tomb. Faraday was interred in the Sandemanian plot in Highgate Cemetery.
Michael Faraday's grave at Highgate Cemetery
Faraday gave a successful series of lectures on the chemistry and physics of flames at the Royal Institution, entitled The Chemical History of a Candle. This was one of the earlier Christmas lectures for young people, which are still given each year. Between 1827 and 1860, Faraday gave the Christmas lecture a record nineteen times.
Faraday refused to participate in the production of chemical weapons for the Crimean War citing ethical reasons.
A statue of Faraday stands in Savoy Place, London, outside the Institution of Electrical Engineers.
A recently built hall of accommodation at Brunel University is named after Faraday.
A hall at Loughborough University was named after Faraday in 1960. Near the entrance to its dining hall is a bronze casting, which depicts the symbol of an electrical transformer, and inside there hangs a portrait, both in Faraday's honour.
Faraday's picture was printed on British £20 banknotes from 1991 until 2001. Bank of England, Withdrawn Notes
In the video game Chromehounds there is a ThermoVision Device named the Faraday.
The former UK Faraday Atmospheric Research Station in Antarctica was named after him.
Faraday was one of the then eight foreign members of the French Academy of Sciences.
Michael Faraday's signature
Faraday's books, with the exception of Chemical Manipulation, were collections of scientific papers or transcriptions of lectures. See page 220 of Hamilton's A Life of Discovery: Michael Faraday, Giant of the Scientific Revolution (2002) Since his death, Faraday's diary has been published, as have several large volumes of his letters and Faraday's journal from his travels with Davy in 1813 - 1815.
* Chemical Manipulation, Being Instructions to Students in Chemistry, John Murray, 1st ed. 1827, 2nd ed. 1830, 3rd ed. 1842
* Experimental Researches in Electricity, vols. i. and ii., Richard and John Edward Taylor, vols. i. and ii.. 1844 and 1847; vol. iii., 1844; vol. iii. Richard Taylor and William Francis, 1855
* Experimental Researches in Chemistry and Physics, Taylor and Francis, 1859
* A Course of Six Lectures on the Chemical History of a Candle, edited by W. Crookes, Griffin, Bohn & Co., 1861
* On the Various Forces in Nature, edited by W. Crookes, Chatto & Windus, 1873
* Faraday's Diary edited by T. Martin was published in eight volumes, 1932 - 1936
* Curiosity Perfectly Satisfyed: Faraday's Travels in Europe 1813-1815, edited by B. Bowers and L. Symons, Institution of Electrical Engineers, 1991
* The Correspondence of Michael Faraday, edited by F. A. J. L. James, INSPEC, Inc., volume 1, 1991; volume 2, 1993; volume 3, 1996; volume 4, 1999
* "Nothing is too wonderful to be true if it be consistent with the laws of nature, and in such things as these, experiment is the best test of such consistency." From the entry of 19 March 1849 in Faraday's Diary
* "Work. Finish. Publish." â his well-known advice to the young William Crookes
* "The important thing is to know how to take all things quietly."
* Regarding the hereafter, "Speculations? I have none. I am resting on certainties. I know whom I have believed and am persuaded that he is able to keep that which I have committed unto him against that day."
* "Next Sabbath day (the 22nd) I shall complete my 70th year. I can hardly think of myself so old."
*Above the doorways of the Pfahler Hall of Science at Ursinus College in Collegeville, Pennsylvania, there is a stone inscription of a quote attributed to Michael Faraday which reads "but still try, for who knows what is possible..." See
* "One day sir, you may tax it." Faraday's reply to William Gladstone, then British Minister of Finance, when asked of the practical value of electricity.
* "If you would cause your view ... to be acknowledged by scientific men; you would do a great service to science. If you would even get them to say yes or no to your conclusions it would help to clear the future progress. I believe some hesitate because they do not like their thoughts disturbed." From Life and Letters, 2:389.
* Faraday rotator
* Superconductivity
* Tyndall, John, Faraday as a Discoverer, (Longmans, 1st ed. 1868, 2nd ed. 1870).
* Bence Jones, Henry (1870). The Life and Letters of Faraday in 2 vols, Longmans.
* Gladstone, J. H. (1872). Michael Faraday, Macmillan.
* Thompson, Silvanus (1901, reprinted 2005). Michael Faraday, His Life and Work. Cassell and Company, London, 1901; reprint by Kessenger Publishing, Whitefish, MT. ISBN 1-4179-7036-7
* The British Electrical and Allied Manufacturers Association (1931). Faraday. R. & R. Clark, Ltd., Edinburgh, 1931.
* Williams, L. Pearce (1971), Faraday: A Biography, Simon and Schuster.
* Cantor, Geoffrey (1991). Michael Faraday, Sandemanian and Scientist, Macmillian, ISBN 0-333-55077
* Hamilton, James (2002). Faraday: The Life. London: Harper Collins. ISBN 0-00-716376-2
* Hamilton, James (2004). A Life of Discovery: Michael Faraday, Giant of the Scientific Revolution. New York: Random House. ISBN 1-4000-6016-8
* Agassi, Joseph (1971), Faraday as a Natural Philosopher, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
* Ames, Joseph Sweetman (Ed.), The discovery of induced electric currents Vol. 2. Memoirs, by Michael Faraday. New York, Cincinnati [etc.] American book company [c1900] LCCN 00005889
* Gooding, David (Ed.) (1985), Faraday Rediscovered: Essays on the Life and Work of Michael Faraday, 1791-1867, London/New York, Macmillan/Stockton
* Thomas, John Meurig (1991). Michael Faraday and the Royal Institution: The Genius of Man and Place Bristol: Hilger. ISBN 0-7503-0145-7
150px
* Biography at The Royal Institution of Great Britain
* Faraday as a Discoverer by John Tyndall, Project Gutenberg (downloads)
* The Christian Character of Michael Faraday
* Michael Faraday on the British twenty-pound banknote
* The Life and Discoveries of Michael Faraday by J. A. Crowther, London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1920
* "Faraday" at LoveToKnow 1911 Britannica Online Encyclopedia.
*
* (downloads)
* "Experimental Researches in Electricity" by Michael Faraday Original text with Biographical Introduction by Professor John Tyndall, 1914, Everyman edition.
* Video Podcast with Sir John Cadogan talking about Benzene since Faraday
* The letters of Faraday and Schoenbein 1836-1862. With notes, comments and references to contemporary letters (1899) full download PDF
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Humphry Davy
Electromagnetic induction
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capacitance
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mole (unit)
electron
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1791
Newington Butts
England
August 25
1867
Hampton Court
London
England
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Michael_Faraday | When was Michael Faraday born? | September 22, 1791 | data/set4/a7 | Michael_Faraday
Michael Faraday, FRS (September 22, 1791 â August 25, 1867) was an English chemist and physicist (or natural philosopher, in the terminology of that time) who contributed to the fields of electromagnetism and electrochemistry.
Faraday studied the magnetic field around a conductor carrying a DC electric current, and established the basis for the magnetic field concept in physics. He discovered electromagnetic induction, diamagnetism and electrolysis. He established that magnetism could affect rays of light and that there was an underlying relationship between the two phenomena. Michael Faraday entry at the 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica hosted by LovetoKnow Retrieved January 2007. Institution of Engineering and Technology, London Archives, Michael Faraday His inventions of electromagnetic rotary devices formed the foundation of electric motor technology, and it was largely due to his efforts that electricity became viable for use in technology.
As a chemist, Faraday discovered benzene, investigated the clathrate hydrate of chlorine, invented an early form of the bunsen burner and the system of oxidation numbers, and popularized terminology such as anode, cathode, electrode, and ion.
Although Faraday received little formal education and knew little of higher mathematics, such as calculus, he was one of the most influential scientists in history. Some historians of science refer to him as the best experimentalist in the history of science. "best experimentalist in the history of science." Quoting Dr Peter Ford, from the University of Bathâs Department of Physics. Accessed January 2007. The SI unit of capacitance, the farad, is named after him, as is the Faraday constant, the charge on a mole of electrons (about 96,485 coulombs). Faraday's law of induction states that a magnetic field changing in time creates a proportional electromotive force.
Faraday was the first and foremost Fullerian Professor of Chemistry at the Royal Institution of Great Britain, a position to which he was appointed for life.
Michael Faraday from a photograph by John Watkins, British Library
Michael Faraday was born in Newington Butts, near present-day South London, England. His family was not well off. His father, James, was a member of the Sandemanian sect of Christianity. James Faraday had come to London ca 1790 from Outhgill in Westmorland, where he had been the village blacksmith. The young Michael Faraday, one of four children, having only the most basic of school educations, had to largely educate himself. "Michael Faraday." History of Science and Technology. Houghton Mifflin Company, 2004. Answers.com 4 June 2007. /ref> At fourteen he became apprenticed to a local bookbinder and bookseller George Riebau and, during his seven-year apprenticeship, he read many books, including Isaac Watts' The Improvement of the Mind, and he enthusiastically implemented the principles and suggestions contained therein. He developed an interest in science and specifically in electricity. In particular, he was inspired by the book Conversations in Chemistry by Jane Marcet.
At the age of twenty, in 1812, at the end of his apprenticeship, Faraday attended lectures by the eminent English chemist and physicist Humphry Davy of the Royal Institution and Royal Society, and John Tatum, founder of the City Philosophical Society. Many tickets for these lectures were given to Faraday by William Dance (one of the founders of the Royal Philharmonic Society). Afterwards, Faraday sent Davy a three hundred page book based on notes taken during the lectures. Davy's reply was immediate, kind, and favorable. When Davy damaged his eyesight in an accident with nitrogen trichloride, he decided to employ Faraday as a secretary. When John Payne, one of the Royal Institution's assistants, was fired, Sir Humphry Davy was asked to find a replacement. He appointed Faraday as Chemical Assistant at the Royal Institution on March 1.
In the class-based English society of the time, Faraday was not considered a gentleman. When Davy went on a long tour to the continent in 1813-5, his valet did not wish to go. Faraday was going as Davy's scientific assistant, and was asked to act as Davy's valet until a replacement could be found in Paris. Davy failed to find a replacement, and Faraday was forced to fill the role of valet as well as assistant throughout the trip. Davy's wife, Jane Apreece, refused to treat Faraday as an equal (making him travel outside the coach, eat with the servants, etc.) and generally made Faraday so miserable that he contemplated returning to England alone and giving up science altogether. The trip did, however, give him access to the European scientific elite and a host of stimulating ideas.
His sponsor and mentor was John 'Mad Jack' Fuller, who created the Fullerian Professorship of Chemistry at the Royal Institution.
Faraday was a devout Christian and a member of the small Sandemanian denomination, an offshoot of the Church of Scotland. He later served two terms as an elder in the group's church.
Faraday married Sarah Barnard (1800-1879) on June 2, 1821, although they would never have children. They met through attending the Sandemanian church.
He was elected a member of the Royal Society in 1824, appointed director of the laboratory in 1825; and in 1833 he was appointed Fullerian professor of chemistry in the institution for life, without the obligation to deliver lectures.
The title page of The Chemical History of a Candle (1861)
Faraday's earliest chemical work was as an assistant to Davy. He made a special study of chlorine, and discovered two new chlorides of carbon. He also made the first rough experiments on the diffusion of gases, a phenomenon first pointed out by John Dalton, the physical importance of which was more fully brought to light by Thomas Graham and Joseph Loschmidt. He succeeded in liquefying several gases; he investigated the alloys of steel, and produced several new kinds of glass intended for optical purposes. A specimen of one of these heavy glasses afterwards became historically important as the substance in which Faraday detected the rotation of the plane of polarisation of light when the glass was placed in a magnetic field, and also as the substance which was first repelled by the poles of the magnet. He also endeavoured, with some success, to make the general methods of chemistry, as distinguished from its results, the subject of special study and of popular exposition.
He invented an early form of what was to become the Bunsen burner, which is used almost universally in science laboratories as a convenient source of heat. See page 127 of Faraday's Chemical Manipulation, Being Instructions to Students in Chemistry (1827)
Faraday worked extensively in the field of chemistry, discovering chemical substances such as benzene (which he called bicarburet of hydrogen), inventing the system of oxidation numbers, and liquefying gases such as chlorine. In 1820 Faraday reported on the first syntheses of compounds made from carbon and chlorine, C 2 H 6 and C 2 H 4 , and published his results the following year. Faraday also determined the composition of the chlorine clathrate hydrate, which had been discovered by Humphry Davy in 1810.
Faraday also discovered the laws of electrolysis and popularized terminology such as anode, cathode, electrode, and ion, terms largely created by William Whewell.
Faraday was the first to report what later came to be called metallic nanoparticles. In 1847 he discovered that the optical properties of gold colloids differed from those of the corresponding bulk metal. This was probably the first reported observation of the effects of quantum size, and might be considered to be the birth of nanoscience.
Faraday's greatest work was probably with electricity and magnetism. The first experiment which he recorded was the construction of a voltaic pile with seven halfpence pieces, stacked together with seven disks of sheet zinc, and six pieces of paper moistened with salt water. With this pile he decomposed sulphate of magnesia (first letter to Abbott, July 12, 1812).
[[Image:Faraday photograph ii.jpg|thumb|200px|left|Michael Faraday holding a glass bar of the type he used in 1845 to show that magnetism can affect light. Detail of an engraving by Henry Adlard, based on an earlier photograph by Maull & Polyblank ca. 1857. See National Portrait Gallery, UK ]]
In 1821, soon after the Danish physicist and chemist, Hans Christian Ãrsted discovered the phenomenon of electromagnetism, Davy and British scientist William Hyde Wollaston tried but failed to design an electric motor. Faraday, having discussed the problem with the two men, went on to build two devices to produce what he called electromagnetic rotation: a continuous circular motion from the circular magnetic force around a wire and a wire extending into a pool of mercury with a magnet placed inside would rotate around the magnet if supplied with current from a chemical battery. The latter device is known as a homopolar motor. These experiments and inventions form the foundation of modern electromagnetic technology. Faraday published his results without acknowledging his debt to Wollaston and Davy, and the resulting controversy caused Faraday to withdraw from electromagnetic research for several years.
At this stage, there is also evidence to suggest that Davy may have been trying to slow Faradayâs rise as a scientist (or natural philosopher as it was known then). In 1825, for instance, Davy set him onto optical glass experiments, which progressed for six years with no great results. It was not until Davy's death, in 1829, that Faraday stopped these fruitless tasks and moved on to endeavors that were more worthwhile. Two years later, in 1831, he began his great series of experiments in which he discovered electromagnetic induction. Joseph Henry likely discovered self-induction a few months earlier and both may have been anticipated by the work of Francesco Zantedeschi in Italy in 1829 and 1830.
Faraday's breakthrough came when he wrapped two insulated coils of wire around a massive iron ring, bolted to a chair, and found that upon passing a current through one coil, a momentary current was induced in the other coil. This phenomenon is known as mutual induction. The iron ring-coil apparatus is still on display at the Royal Institution. In subsequent experiments he found that if he moved a magnet through a loop of wire, an electric current flowed in the wire. The current also flowed if the loop was moved over a stationary magnet. His demonstrations established that a changing magnetic field produces an electric field. This relation was mathematically modelled by Faraday's law, which subsequently became one of the four Maxwell equations. These in turn have evolved into the generalization known today as field theory.
Michael Faraday - statue in Savoy Place, London.
Sculptor John Henry Foley RA
Faraday later used the principle to construct the electric dynamo, the ancestor of modern power generators.
In 1839 he completed a series of experiments aimed at investigating the fundamental nature of electricity. Faraday used "static", batteries, and "animal electricity" to produce the phenomena of electrostatic attraction, electrolysis, magnetism, etc. He concluded that, contrary to scientific opinion of the time, the divisions between the various "kinds" of electricity were illusory. Faraday instead proposed that only a single "electricity" exists, and the changing values of quantity and intensity (voltage and charge) would produce different groups of phenomena.
Near the end of his career Faraday proposed that electromagnetic forces extended into the empty space around the conductor. This idea was rejected by his fellow scientists, and Faraday did not live to see this idea eventually accepted. Faraday's concept of lines of flux emanating from charged bodies and magnets provided a way to visualize electric and magnetic fields. That mental model was crucial to the successful development of electromechanical devices which dominated engineering and industry for the remainder of the 19th century.
In 1845, he discovered the phenomenon that he named diamagnetism, and what is now called the Faraday effect: The plane of polarization of linearly polarized light propagated through a material medium can be rotated by the application of an external magnetic field aligned in the propagation direction. He wrote in his notebook, "I have at last succeeded in illuminating a magnetic curve or line of force and in magnetising a ray of light". This established that magnetic force and light were related.
In his work on static electricity, Faraday demonstrated that the charge only resided on the exterior of a charged conductor, and exterior charge had no influence on anything enclosed within a conductor. This is because the exterior charges redistribute such that the interior fields due to them cancel. This shielding effect is used in what is now known as a Faraday cage.
Faraday was an excellent experimentalist who conveyed his ideas in clear and simple language. However, his mathematical abilities did not extend as far as trigonometry or any but the simplest algebra. It was James Clerk Maxwell who took the work of Faraday, and others, and consolidated it with a set of equations that lie at the base of all modern theories of electromagnetic phenomena.
Michael Faraday meets Father Thames, from Punch (July 21, 1855)
Beyond his scientific research into areas such as chemistry, electricity, and magnetism at the Royal Institution, Faraday undertook numerous, and often time-consuming, service projects for private enterprise and the British government. This work included investigations of explosions in mines, being an expert witness in court, and the preparation of high-quality optical glass.
As a respected scientist in a nation with strong maritime interests, Faraday spent extensive amounts of time on projects such as the construction and operation of light houses and protecting the bottoms of ships from corrosion.
Faraday also was active in what would now be called environmental science, or engineering. He investigated industrial pollution at Swansea and was consulted on air pollution at the Royal Mint. In July of 1855, Faraday wrote a letter to The Times on the subject of the foul condition of the River Thames, which resulted in an oft-reprinted cartoon in Punch. (See also The Great Stink.)
Faraday assisted with planning and judging of exhibits for the Great Exhibition of 1851 in London. He also advised the National Gallery on the cleaning and protection of its art collection, and served on the National Gallery Site Commission in 1857.
Education was another area of service for Faraday. He lectured on the topic in 1854 at the Royal Institution, and in 1862 he appeared before a Public Schools Commission to give his views on education in Great Britain. Faraday also weighed in, negatively, on the public's fascination with table-turning, mesmerism, and seances, chastising both the public and the nation's educational system. See The Illustrated London News, July 1853, for Faraday's comments.
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In June of 1832, the University of Oxford granted Faraday a Doctor of Civil Law degree (honorary). During his lifetime, Faraday rejected a knighthood and twice refused to become President of the Royal Society.
In 1848, as a result of representations by the Prince Consort, Michael Faraday was awarded a grace and favour house in Hampton Court, Surrey free of all expenses or upkeep. This was the Master Mason's House, later called Faraday House, and now No.37 Hampton Court Road. In 1858 Faraday retired to live there. Twickenham Museum on Faraday and Faraday House, Accessed June 2006
Faraday died at his house at Hampton Court on August 25, 1867. He turned down burial in Westminster Abbey, but he has a memorial plaque there, near Isaac Newton's tomb. Faraday was interred in the Sandemanian plot in Highgate Cemetery.
Michael Faraday's grave at Highgate Cemetery
Faraday gave a successful series of lectures on the chemistry and physics of flames at the Royal Institution, entitled The Chemical History of a Candle. This was one of the earlier Christmas lectures for young people, which are still given each year. Between 1827 and 1860, Faraday gave the Christmas lecture a record nineteen times.
Faraday refused to participate in the production of chemical weapons for the Crimean War citing ethical reasons.
A statue of Faraday stands in Savoy Place, London, outside the Institution of Electrical Engineers.
A recently built hall of accommodation at Brunel University is named after Faraday.
A hall at Loughborough University was named after Faraday in 1960. Near the entrance to its dining hall is a bronze casting, which depicts the symbol of an electrical transformer, and inside there hangs a portrait, both in Faraday's honour.
Faraday's picture was printed on British £20 banknotes from 1991 until 2001. Bank of England, Withdrawn Notes
In the video game Chromehounds there is a ThermoVision Device named the Faraday.
The former UK Faraday Atmospheric Research Station in Antarctica was named after him.
Faraday was one of the then eight foreign members of the French Academy of Sciences.
Michael Faraday's signature
Faraday's books, with the exception of Chemical Manipulation, were collections of scientific papers or transcriptions of lectures. See page 220 of Hamilton's A Life of Discovery: Michael Faraday, Giant of the Scientific Revolution (2002) Since his death, Faraday's diary has been published, as have several large volumes of his letters and Faraday's journal from his travels with Davy in 1813 - 1815.
* Chemical Manipulation, Being Instructions to Students in Chemistry, John Murray, 1st ed. 1827, 2nd ed. 1830, 3rd ed. 1842
* Experimental Researches in Electricity, vols. i. and ii., Richard and John Edward Taylor, vols. i. and ii.. 1844 and 1847; vol. iii., 1844; vol. iii. Richard Taylor and William Francis, 1855
* Experimental Researches in Chemistry and Physics, Taylor and Francis, 1859
* A Course of Six Lectures on the Chemical History of a Candle, edited by W. Crookes, Griffin, Bohn & Co., 1861
* On the Various Forces in Nature, edited by W. Crookes, Chatto & Windus, 1873
* Faraday's Diary edited by T. Martin was published in eight volumes, 1932 - 1936
* Curiosity Perfectly Satisfyed: Faraday's Travels in Europe 1813-1815, edited by B. Bowers and L. Symons, Institution of Electrical Engineers, 1991
* The Correspondence of Michael Faraday, edited by F. A. J. L. James, INSPEC, Inc., volume 1, 1991; volume 2, 1993; volume 3, 1996; volume 4, 1999
* "Nothing is too wonderful to be true if it be consistent with the laws of nature, and in such things as these, experiment is the best test of such consistency." From the entry of 19 March 1849 in Faraday's Diary
* "Work. Finish. Publish." â his well-known advice to the young William Crookes
* "The important thing is to know how to take all things quietly."
* Regarding the hereafter, "Speculations? I have none. I am resting on certainties. I know whom I have believed and am persuaded that he is able to keep that which I have committed unto him against that day."
* "Next Sabbath day (the 22nd) I shall complete my 70th year. I can hardly think of myself so old."
*Above the doorways of the Pfahler Hall of Science at Ursinus College in Collegeville, Pennsylvania, there is a stone inscription of a quote attributed to Michael Faraday which reads "but still try, for who knows what is possible..." See
* "One day sir, you may tax it." Faraday's reply to William Gladstone, then British Minister of Finance, when asked of the practical value of electricity.
* "If you would cause your view ... to be acknowledged by scientific men; you would do a great service to science. If you would even get them to say yes or no to your conclusions it would help to clear the future progress. I believe some hesitate because they do not like their thoughts disturbed." From Life and Letters, 2:389.
* Faraday rotator
* Superconductivity
* Tyndall, John, Faraday as a Discoverer, (Longmans, 1st ed. 1868, 2nd ed. 1870).
* Bence Jones, Henry (1870). The Life and Letters of Faraday in 2 vols, Longmans.
* Gladstone, J. H. (1872). Michael Faraday, Macmillan.
* Thompson, Silvanus (1901, reprinted 2005). Michael Faraday, His Life and Work. Cassell and Company, London, 1901; reprint by Kessenger Publishing, Whitefish, MT. ISBN 1-4179-7036-7
* The British Electrical and Allied Manufacturers Association (1931). Faraday. R. & R. Clark, Ltd., Edinburgh, 1931.
* Williams, L. Pearce (1971), Faraday: A Biography, Simon and Schuster.
* Cantor, Geoffrey (1991). Michael Faraday, Sandemanian and Scientist, Macmillian, ISBN 0-333-55077
* Hamilton, James (2002). Faraday: The Life. London: Harper Collins. ISBN 0-00-716376-2
* Hamilton, James (2004). A Life of Discovery: Michael Faraday, Giant of the Scientific Revolution. New York: Random House. ISBN 1-4000-6016-8
* Agassi, Joseph (1971), Faraday as a Natural Philosopher, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
* Ames, Joseph Sweetman (Ed.), The discovery of induced electric currents Vol. 2. Memoirs, by Michael Faraday. New York, Cincinnati [etc.] American book company [c1900] LCCN 00005889
* Gooding, David (Ed.) (1985), Faraday Rediscovered: Essays on the Life and Work of Michael Faraday, 1791-1867, London/New York, Macmillan/Stockton
* Thomas, John Meurig (1991). Michael Faraday and the Royal Institution: The Genius of Man and Place Bristol: Hilger. ISBN 0-7503-0145-7
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* Biography at The Royal Institution of Great Britain
* Faraday as a Discoverer by John Tyndall, Project Gutenberg (downloads)
* The Christian Character of Michael Faraday
* Michael Faraday on the British twenty-pound banknote
* The Life and Discoveries of Michael Faraday by J. A. Crowther, London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1920
* "Faraday" at LoveToKnow 1911 Britannica Online Encyclopedia.
*
* (downloads)
* "Experimental Researches in Electricity" by Michael Faraday Original text with Biographical Introduction by Professor John Tyndall, 1914, Everyman edition.
* Video Podcast with Sir John Cadogan talking about Benzene since Faraday
* The letters of Faraday and Schoenbein 1836-1862. With notes, comments and references to contemporary letters (1899) full download PDF
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Michael_Faraday | Where did he serve two terms? | the Church of Scotland | data/set4/a7 | Michael_Faraday
Michael Faraday, FRS (September 22, 1791 â August 25, 1867) was an English chemist and physicist (or natural philosopher, in the terminology of that time) who contributed to the fields of electromagnetism and electrochemistry.
Faraday studied the magnetic field around a conductor carrying a DC electric current, and established the basis for the magnetic field concept in physics. He discovered electromagnetic induction, diamagnetism and electrolysis. He established that magnetism could affect rays of light and that there was an underlying relationship between the two phenomena. Michael Faraday entry at the 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica hosted by LovetoKnow Retrieved January 2007. Institution of Engineering and Technology, London Archives, Michael Faraday His inventions of electromagnetic rotary devices formed the foundation of electric motor technology, and it was largely due to his efforts that electricity became viable for use in technology.
As a chemist, Faraday discovered benzene, investigated the clathrate hydrate of chlorine, invented an early form of the bunsen burner and the system of oxidation numbers, and popularized terminology such as anode, cathode, electrode, and ion.
Although Faraday received little formal education and knew little of higher mathematics, such as calculus, he was one of the most influential scientists in history. Some historians of science refer to him as the best experimentalist in the history of science. "best experimentalist in the history of science." Quoting Dr Peter Ford, from the University of Bathâs Department of Physics. Accessed January 2007. The SI unit of capacitance, the farad, is named after him, as is the Faraday constant, the charge on a mole of electrons (about 96,485 coulombs). Faraday's law of induction states that a magnetic field changing in time creates a proportional electromotive force.
Faraday was the first and foremost Fullerian Professor of Chemistry at the Royal Institution of Great Britain, a position to which he was appointed for life.
Michael Faraday from a photograph by John Watkins, British Library
Michael Faraday was born in Newington Butts, near present-day South London, England. His family was not well off. His father, James, was a member of the Sandemanian sect of Christianity. James Faraday had come to London ca 1790 from Outhgill in Westmorland, where he had been the village blacksmith. The young Michael Faraday, one of four children, having only the most basic of school educations, had to largely educate himself. "Michael Faraday." History of Science and Technology. Houghton Mifflin Company, 2004. Answers.com 4 June 2007. /ref> At fourteen he became apprenticed to a local bookbinder and bookseller George Riebau and, during his seven-year apprenticeship, he read many books, including Isaac Watts' The Improvement of the Mind, and he enthusiastically implemented the principles and suggestions contained therein. He developed an interest in science and specifically in electricity. In particular, he was inspired by the book Conversations in Chemistry by Jane Marcet.
At the age of twenty, in 1812, at the end of his apprenticeship, Faraday attended lectures by the eminent English chemist and physicist Humphry Davy of the Royal Institution and Royal Society, and John Tatum, founder of the City Philosophical Society. Many tickets for these lectures were given to Faraday by William Dance (one of the founders of the Royal Philharmonic Society). Afterwards, Faraday sent Davy a three hundred page book based on notes taken during the lectures. Davy's reply was immediate, kind, and favorable. When Davy damaged his eyesight in an accident with nitrogen trichloride, he decided to employ Faraday as a secretary. When John Payne, one of the Royal Institution's assistants, was fired, Sir Humphry Davy was asked to find a replacement. He appointed Faraday as Chemical Assistant at the Royal Institution on March 1.
In the class-based English society of the time, Faraday was not considered a gentleman. When Davy went on a long tour to the continent in 1813-5, his valet did not wish to go. Faraday was going as Davy's scientific assistant, and was asked to act as Davy's valet until a replacement could be found in Paris. Davy failed to find a replacement, and Faraday was forced to fill the role of valet as well as assistant throughout the trip. Davy's wife, Jane Apreece, refused to treat Faraday as an equal (making him travel outside the coach, eat with the servants, etc.) and generally made Faraday so miserable that he contemplated returning to England alone and giving up science altogether. The trip did, however, give him access to the European scientific elite and a host of stimulating ideas.
His sponsor and mentor was John 'Mad Jack' Fuller, who created the Fullerian Professorship of Chemistry at the Royal Institution.
Faraday was a devout Christian and a member of the small Sandemanian denomination, an offshoot of the Church of Scotland. He later served two terms as an elder in the group's church.
Faraday married Sarah Barnard (1800-1879) on June 2, 1821, although they would never have children. They met through attending the Sandemanian church.
He was elected a member of the Royal Society in 1824, appointed director of the laboratory in 1825; and in 1833 he was appointed Fullerian professor of chemistry in the institution for life, without the obligation to deliver lectures.
The title page of The Chemical History of a Candle (1861)
Faraday's earliest chemical work was as an assistant to Davy. He made a special study of chlorine, and discovered two new chlorides of carbon. He also made the first rough experiments on the diffusion of gases, a phenomenon first pointed out by John Dalton, the physical importance of which was more fully brought to light by Thomas Graham and Joseph Loschmidt. He succeeded in liquefying several gases; he investigated the alloys of steel, and produced several new kinds of glass intended for optical purposes. A specimen of one of these heavy glasses afterwards became historically important as the substance in which Faraday detected the rotation of the plane of polarisation of light when the glass was placed in a magnetic field, and also as the substance which was first repelled by the poles of the magnet. He also endeavoured, with some success, to make the general methods of chemistry, as distinguished from its results, the subject of special study and of popular exposition.
He invented an early form of what was to become the Bunsen burner, which is used almost universally in science laboratories as a convenient source of heat. See page 127 of Faraday's Chemical Manipulation, Being Instructions to Students in Chemistry (1827)
Faraday worked extensively in the field of chemistry, discovering chemical substances such as benzene (which he called bicarburet of hydrogen), inventing the system of oxidation numbers, and liquefying gases such as chlorine. In 1820 Faraday reported on the first syntheses of compounds made from carbon and chlorine, C 2 H 6 and C 2 H 4 , and published his results the following year. Faraday also determined the composition of the chlorine clathrate hydrate, which had been discovered by Humphry Davy in 1810.
Faraday also discovered the laws of electrolysis and popularized terminology such as anode, cathode, electrode, and ion, terms largely created by William Whewell.
Faraday was the first to report what later came to be called metallic nanoparticles. In 1847 he discovered that the optical properties of gold colloids differed from those of the corresponding bulk metal. This was probably the first reported observation of the effects of quantum size, and might be considered to be the birth of nanoscience.
Faraday's greatest work was probably with electricity and magnetism. The first experiment which he recorded was the construction of a voltaic pile with seven halfpence pieces, stacked together with seven disks of sheet zinc, and six pieces of paper moistened with salt water. With this pile he decomposed sulphate of magnesia (first letter to Abbott, July 12, 1812).
[[Image:Faraday photograph ii.jpg|thumb|200px|left|Michael Faraday holding a glass bar of the type he used in 1845 to show that magnetism can affect light. Detail of an engraving by Henry Adlard, based on an earlier photograph by Maull & Polyblank ca. 1857. See National Portrait Gallery, UK ]]
In 1821, soon after the Danish physicist and chemist, Hans Christian Ãrsted discovered the phenomenon of electromagnetism, Davy and British scientist William Hyde Wollaston tried but failed to design an electric motor. Faraday, having discussed the problem with the two men, went on to build two devices to produce what he called electromagnetic rotation: a continuous circular motion from the circular magnetic force around a wire and a wire extending into a pool of mercury with a magnet placed inside would rotate around the magnet if supplied with current from a chemical battery. The latter device is known as a homopolar motor. These experiments and inventions form the foundation of modern electromagnetic technology. Faraday published his results without acknowledging his debt to Wollaston and Davy, and the resulting controversy caused Faraday to withdraw from electromagnetic research for several years.
At this stage, there is also evidence to suggest that Davy may have been trying to slow Faradayâs rise as a scientist (or natural philosopher as it was known then). In 1825, for instance, Davy set him onto optical glass experiments, which progressed for six years with no great results. It was not until Davy's death, in 1829, that Faraday stopped these fruitless tasks and moved on to endeavors that were more worthwhile. Two years later, in 1831, he began his great series of experiments in which he discovered electromagnetic induction. Joseph Henry likely discovered self-induction a few months earlier and both may have been anticipated by the work of Francesco Zantedeschi in Italy in 1829 and 1830.
Faraday's breakthrough came when he wrapped two insulated coils of wire around a massive iron ring, bolted to a chair, and found that upon passing a current through one coil, a momentary current was induced in the other coil. This phenomenon is known as mutual induction. The iron ring-coil apparatus is still on display at the Royal Institution. In subsequent experiments he found that if he moved a magnet through a loop of wire, an electric current flowed in the wire. The current also flowed if the loop was moved over a stationary magnet. His demonstrations established that a changing magnetic field produces an electric field. This relation was mathematically modelled by Faraday's law, which subsequently became one of the four Maxwell equations. These in turn have evolved into the generalization known today as field theory.
Michael Faraday - statue in Savoy Place, London.
Sculptor John Henry Foley RA
Faraday later used the principle to construct the electric dynamo, the ancestor of modern power generators.
In 1839 he completed a series of experiments aimed at investigating the fundamental nature of electricity. Faraday used "static", batteries, and "animal electricity" to produce the phenomena of electrostatic attraction, electrolysis, magnetism, etc. He concluded that, contrary to scientific opinion of the time, the divisions between the various "kinds" of electricity were illusory. Faraday instead proposed that only a single "electricity" exists, and the changing values of quantity and intensity (voltage and charge) would produce different groups of phenomena.
Near the end of his career Faraday proposed that electromagnetic forces extended into the empty space around the conductor. This idea was rejected by his fellow scientists, and Faraday did not live to see this idea eventually accepted. Faraday's concept of lines of flux emanating from charged bodies and magnets provided a way to visualize electric and magnetic fields. That mental model was crucial to the successful development of electromechanical devices which dominated engineering and industry for the remainder of the 19th century.
In 1845, he discovered the phenomenon that he named diamagnetism, and what is now called the Faraday effect: The plane of polarization of linearly polarized light propagated through a material medium can be rotated by the application of an external magnetic field aligned in the propagation direction. He wrote in his notebook, "I have at last succeeded in illuminating a magnetic curve or line of force and in magnetising a ray of light". This established that magnetic force and light were related.
In his work on static electricity, Faraday demonstrated that the charge only resided on the exterior of a charged conductor, and exterior charge had no influence on anything enclosed within a conductor. This is because the exterior charges redistribute such that the interior fields due to them cancel. This shielding effect is used in what is now known as a Faraday cage.
Faraday was an excellent experimentalist who conveyed his ideas in clear and simple language. However, his mathematical abilities did not extend as far as trigonometry or any but the simplest algebra. It was James Clerk Maxwell who took the work of Faraday, and others, and consolidated it with a set of equations that lie at the base of all modern theories of electromagnetic phenomena.
Michael Faraday meets Father Thames, from Punch (July 21, 1855)
Beyond his scientific research into areas such as chemistry, electricity, and magnetism at the Royal Institution, Faraday undertook numerous, and often time-consuming, service projects for private enterprise and the British government. This work included investigations of explosions in mines, being an expert witness in court, and the preparation of high-quality optical glass.
As a respected scientist in a nation with strong maritime interests, Faraday spent extensive amounts of time on projects such as the construction and operation of light houses and protecting the bottoms of ships from corrosion.
Faraday also was active in what would now be called environmental science, or engineering. He investigated industrial pollution at Swansea and was consulted on air pollution at the Royal Mint. In July of 1855, Faraday wrote a letter to The Times on the subject of the foul condition of the River Thames, which resulted in an oft-reprinted cartoon in Punch. (See also The Great Stink.)
Faraday assisted with planning and judging of exhibits for the Great Exhibition of 1851 in London. He also advised the National Gallery on the cleaning and protection of its art collection, and served on the National Gallery Site Commission in 1857.
Education was another area of service for Faraday. He lectured on the topic in 1854 at the Royal Institution, and in 1862 he appeared before a Public Schools Commission to give his views on education in Great Britain. Faraday also weighed in, negatively, on the public's fascination with table-turning, mesmerism, and seances, chastising both the public and the nation's educational system. See The Illustrated London News, July 1853, for Faraday's comments.
125px
In June of 1832, the University of Oxford granted Faraday a Doctor of Civil Law degree (honorary). During his lifetime, Faraday rejected a knighthood and twice refused to become President of the Royal Society.
In 1848, as a result of representations by the Prince Consort, Michael Faraday was awarded a grace and favour house in Hampton Court, Surrey free of all expenses or upkeep. This was the Master Mason's House, later called Faraday House, and now No.37 Hampton Court Road. In 1858 Faraday retired to live there. Twickenham Museum on Faraday and Faraday House, Accessed June 2006
Faraday died at his house at Hampton Court on August 25, 1867. He turned down burial in Westminster Abbey, but he has a memorial plaque there, near Isaac Newton's tomb. Faraday was interred in the Sandemanian plot in Highgate Cemetery.
Michael Faraday's grave at Highgate Cemetery
Faraday gave a successful series of lectures on the chemistry and physics of flames at the Royal Institution, entitled The Chemical History of a Candle. This was one of the earlier Christmas lectures for young people, which are still given each year. Between 1827 and 1860, Faraday gave the Christmas lecture a record nineteen times.
Faraday refused to participate in the production of chemical weapons for the Crimean War citing ethical reasons.
A statue of Faraday stands in Savoy Place, London, outside the Institution of Electrical Engineers.
A recently built hall of accommodation at Brunel University is named after Faraday.
A hall at Loughborough University was named after Faraday in 1960. Near the entrance to its dining hall is a bronze casting, which depicts the symbol of an electrical transformer, and inside there hangs a portrait, both in Faraday's honour.
Faraday's picture was printed on British £20 banknotes from 1991 until 2001. Bank of England, Withdrawn Notes
In the video game Chromehounds there is a ThermoVision Device named the Faraday.
The former UK Faraday Atmospheric Research Station in Antarctica was named after him.
Faraday was one of the then eight foreign members of the French Academy of Sciences.
Michael Faraday's signature
Faraday's books, with the exception of Chemical Manipulation, were collections of scientific papers or transcriptions of lectures. See page 220 of Hamilton's A Life of Discovery: Michael Faraday, Giant of the Scientific Revolution (2002) Since his death, Faraday's diary has been published, as have several large volumes of his letters and Faraday's journal from his travels with Davy in 1813 - 1815.
* Chemical Manipulation, Being Instructions to Students in Chemistry, John Murray, 1st ed. 1827, 2nd ed. 1830, 3rd ed. 1842
* Experimental Researches in Electricity, vols. i. and ii., Richard and John Edward Taylor, vols. i. and ii.. 1844 and 1847; vol. iii., 1844; vol. iii. Richard Taylor and William Francis, 1855
* Experimental Researches in Chemistry and Physics, Taylor and Francis, 1859
* A Course of Six Lectures on the Chemical History of a Candle, edited by W. Crookes, Griffin, Bohn & Co., 1861
* On the Various Forces in Nature, edited by W. Crookes, Chatto & Windus, 1873
* Faraday's Diary edited by T. Martin was published in eight volumes, 1932 - 1936
* Curiosity Perfectly Satisfyed: Faraday's Travels in Europe 1813-1815, edited by B. Bowers and L. Symons, Institution of Electrical Engineers, 1991
* The Correspondence of Michael Faraday, edited by F. A. J. L. James, INSPEC, Inc., volume 1, 1991; volume 2, 1993; volume 3, 1996; volume 4, 1999
* "Nothing is too wonderful to be true if it be consistent with the laws of nature, and in such things as these, experiment is the best test of such consistency." From the entry of 19 March 1849 in Faraday's Diary
* "Work. Finish. Publish." â his well-known advice to the young William Crookes
* "The important thing is to know how to take all things quietly."
* Regarding the hereafter, "Speculations? I have none. I am resting on certainties. I know whom I have believed and am persuaded that he is able to keep that which I have committed unto him against that day."
* "Next Sabbath day (the 22nd) I shall complete my 70th year. I can hardly think of myself so old."
*Above the doorways of the Pfahler Hall of Science at Ursinus College in Collegeville, Pennsylvania, there is a stone inscription of a quote attributed to Michael Faraday which reads "but still try, for who knows what is possible..." See
* "One day sir, you may tax it." Faraday's reply to William Gladstone, then British Minister of Finance, when asked of the practical value of electricity.
* "If you would cause your view ... to be acknowledged by scientific men; you would do a great service to science. If you would even get them to say yes or no to your conclusions it would help to clear the future progress. I believe some hesitate because they do not like their thoughts disturbed." From Life and Letters, 2:389.
* Faraday rotator
* Superconductivity
* Tyndall, John, Faraday as a Discoverer, (Longmans, 1st ed. 1868, 2nd ed. 1870).
* Bence Jones, Henry (1870). The Life and Letters of Faraday in 2 vols, Longmans.
* Gladstone, J. H. (1872). Michael Faraday, Macmillan.
* Thompson, Silvanus (1901, reprinted 2005). Michael Faraday, His Life and Work. Cassell and Company, London, 1901; reprint by Kessenger Publishing, Whitefish, MT. ISBN 1-4179-7036-7
* The British Electrical and Allied Manufacturers Association (1931). Faraday. R. & R. Clark, Ltd., Edinburgh, 1931.
* Williams, L. Pearce (1971), Faraday: A Biography, Simon and Schuster.
* Cantor, Geoffrey (1991). Michael Faraday, Sandemanian and Scientist, Macmillian, ISBN 0-333-55077
* Hamilton, James (2002). Faraday: The Life. London: Harper Collins. ISBN 0-00-716376-2
* Hamilton, James (2004). A Life of Discovery: Michael Faraday, Giant of the Scientific Revolution. New York: Random House. ISBN 1-4000-6016-8
* Agassi, Joseph (1971), Faraday as a Natural Philosopher, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
* Ames, Joseph Sweetman (Ed.), The discovery of induced electric currents Vol. 2. Memoirs, by Michael Faraday. New York, Cincinnati [etc.] American book company [c1900] LCCN 00005889
* Gooding, David (Ed.) (1985), Faraday Rediscovered: Essays on the Life and Work of Michael Faraday, 1791-1867, London/New York, Macmillan/Stockton
* Thomas, John Meurig (1991). Michael Faraday and the Royal Institution: The Genius of Man and Place Bristol: Hilger. ISBN 0-7503-0145-7
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* Biography at The Royal Institution of Great Britain
* Faraday as a Discoverer by John Tyndall, Project Gutenberg (downloads)
* The Christian Character of Michael Faraday
* Michael Faraday on the British twenty-pound banknote
* The Life and Discoveries of Michael Faraday by J. A. Crowther, London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1920
* "Faraday" at LoveToKnow 1911 Britannica Online Encyclopedia.
*
* (downloads)
* "Experimental Researches in Electricity" by Michael Faraday Original text with Biographical Introduction by Professor John Tyndall, 1914, Everyman edition.
* Video Podcast with Sir John Cadogan talking about Benzene since Faraday
* The letters of Faraday and Schoenbein 1836-1862. With notes, comments and references to contemporary letters (1899) full download PDF
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Michael_Faraday | Who was born in Newington Butts, near present-day South London, England? | Michael Faraday | data/set4/a7 | Michael_Faraday
Michael Faraday, FRS (September 22, 1791 â August 25, 1867) was an English chemist and physicist (or natural philosopher, in the terminology of that time) who contributed to the fields of electromagnetism and electrochemistry.
Faraday studied the magnetic field around a conductor carrying a DC electric current, and established the basis for the magnetic field concept in physics. He discovered electromagnetic induction, diamagnetism and electrolysis. He established that magnetism could affect rays of light and that there was an underlying relationship between the two phenomena. Michael Faraday entry at the 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica hosted by LovetoKnow Retrieved January 2007. Institution of Engineering and Technology, London Archives, Michael Faraday His inventions of electromagnetic rotary devices formed the foundation of electric motor technology, and it was largely due to his efforts that electricity became viable for use in technology.
As a chemist, Faraday discovered benzene, investigated the clathrate hydrate of chlorine, invented an early form of the bunsen burner and the system of oxidation numbers, and popularized terminology such as anode, cathode, electrode, and ion.
Although Faraday received little formal education and knew little of higher mathematics, such as calculus, he was one of the most influential scientists in history. Some historians of science refer to him as the best experimentalist in the history of science. "best experimentalist in the history of science." Quoting Dr Peter Ford, from the University of Bathâs Department of Physics. Accessed January 2007. The SI unit of capacitance, the farad, is named after him, as is the Faraday constant, the charge on a mole of electrons (about 96,485 coulombs). Faraday's law of induction states that a magnetic field changing in time creates a proportional electromotive force.
Faraday was the first and foremost Fullerian Professor of Chemistry at the Royal Institution of Great Britain, a position to which he was appointed for life.
Michael Faraday from a photograph by John Watkins, British Library
Michael Faraday was born in Newington Butts, near present-day South London, England. His family was not well off. His father, James, was a member of the Sandemanian sect of Christianity. James Faraday had come to London ca 1790 from Outhgill in Westmorland, where he had been the village blacksmith. The young Michael Faraday, one of four children, having only the most basic of school educations, had to largely educate himself. "Michael Faraday." History of Science and Technology. Houghton Mifflin Company, 2004. Answers.com 4 June 2007. /ref> At fourteen he became apprenticed to a local bookbinder and bookseller George Riebau and, during his seven-year apprenticeship, he read many books, including Isaac Watts' The Improvement of the Mind, and he enthusiastically implemented the principles and suggestions contained therein. He developed an interest in science and specifically in electricity. In particular, he was inspired by the book Conversations in Chemistry by Jane Marcet.
At the age of twenty, in 1812, at the end of his apprenticeship, Faraday attended lectures by the eminent English chemist and physicist Humphry Davy of the Royal Institution and Royal Society, and John Tatum, founder of the City Philosophical Society. Many tickets for these lectures were given to Faraday by William Dance (one of the founders of the Royal Philharmonic Society). Afterwards, Faraday sent Davy a three hundred page book based on notes taken during the lectures. Davy's reply was immediate, kind, and favorable. When Davy damaged his eyesight in an accident with nitrogen trichloride, he decided to employ Faraday as a secretary. When John Payne, one of the Royal Institution's assistants, was fired, Sir Humphry Davy was asked to find a replacement. He appointed Faraday as Chemical Assistant at the Royal Institution on March 1.
In the class-based English society of the time, Faraday was not considered a gentleman. When Davy went on a long tour to the continent in 1813-5, his valet did not wish to go. Faraday was going as Davy's scientific assistant, and was asked to act as Davy's valet until a replacement could be found in Paris. Davy failed to find a replacement, and Faraday was forced to fill the role of valet as well as assistant throughout the trip. Davy's wife, Jane Apreece, refused to treat Faraday as an equal (making him travel outside the coach, eat with the servants, etc.) and generally made Faraday so miserable that he contemplated returning to England alone and giving up science altogether. The trip did, however, give him access to the European scientific elite and a host of stimulating ideas.
His sponsor and mentor was John 'Mad Jack' Fuller, who created the Fullerian Professorship of Chemistry at the Royal Institution.
Faraday was a devout Christian and a member of the small Sandemanian denomination, an offshoot of the Church of Scotland. He later served two terms as an elder in the group's church.
Faraday married Sarah Barnard (1800-1879) on June 2, 1821, although they would never have children. They met through attending the Sandemanian church.
He was elected a member of the Royal Society in 1824, appointed director of the laboratory in 1825; and in 1833 he was appointed Fullerian professor of chemistry in the institution for life, without the obligation to deliver lectures.
The title page of The Chemical History of a Candle (1861)
Faraday's earliest chemical work was as an assistant to Davy. He made a special study of chlorine, and discovered two new chlorides of carbon. He also made the first rough experiments on the diffusion of gases, a phenomenon first pointed out by John Dalton, the physical importance of which was more fully brought to light by Thomas Graham and Joseph Loschmidt. He succeeded in liquefying several gases; he investigated the alloys of steel, and produced several new kinds of glass intended for optical purposes. A specimen of one of these heavy glasses afterwards became historically important as the substance in which Faraday detected the rotation of the plane of polarisation of light when the glass was placed in a magnetic field, and also as the substance which was first repelled by the poles of the magnet. He also endeavoured, with some success, to make the general methods of chemistry, as distinguished from its results, the subject of special study and of popular exposition.
He invented an early form of what was to become the Bunsen burner, which is used almost universally in science laboratories as a convenient source of heat. See page 127 of Faraday's Chemical Manipulation, Being Instructions to Students in Chemistry (1827)
Faraday worked extensively in the field of chemistry, discovering chemical substances such as benzene (which he called bicarburet of hydrogen), inventing the system of oxidation numbers, and liquefying gases such as chlorine. In 1820 Faraday reported on the first syntheses of compounds made from carbon and chlorine, C 2 H 6 and C 2 H 4 , and published his results the following year. Faraday also determined the composition of the chlorine clathrate hydrate, which had been discovered by Humphry Davy in 1810.
Faraday also discovered the laws of electrolysis and popularized terminology such as anode, cathode, electrode, and ion, terms largely created by William Whewell.
Faraday was the first to report what later came to be called metallic nanoparticles. In 1847 he discovered that the optical properties of gold colloids differed from those of the corresponding bulk metal. This was probably the first reported observation of the effects of quantum size, and might be considered to be the birth of nanoscience.
Faraday's greatest work was probably with electricity and magnetism. The first experiment which he recorded was the construction of a voltaic pile with seven halfpence pieces, stacked together with seven disks of sheet zinc, and six pieces of paper moistened with salt water. With this pile he decomposed sulphate of magnesia (first letter to Abbott, July 12, 1812).
[[Image:Faraday photograph ii.jpg|thumb|200px|left|Michael Faraday holding a glass bar of the type he used in 1845 to show that magnetism can affect light. Detail of an engraving by Henry Adlard, based on an earlier photograph by Maull & Polyblank ca. 1857. See National Portrait Gallery, UK ]]
In 1821, soon after the Danish physicist and chemist, Hans Christian Ãrsted discovered the phenomenon of electromagnetism, Davy and British scientist William Hyde Wollaston tried but failed to design an electric motor. Faraday, having discussed the problem with the two men, went on to build two devices to produce what he called electromagnetic rotation: a continuous circular motion from the circular magnetic force around a wire and a wire extending into a pool of mercury with a magnet placed inside would rotate around the magnet if supplied with current from a chemical battery. The latter device is known as a homopolar motor. These experiments and inventions form the foundation of modern electromagnetic technology. Faraday published his results without acknowledging his debt to Wollaston and Davy, and the resulting controversy caused Faraday to withdraw from electromagnetic research for several years.
At this stage, there is also evidence to suggest that Davy may have been trying to slow Faradayâs rise as a scientist (or natural philosopher as it was known then). In 1825, for instance, Davy set him onto optical glass experiments, which progressed for six years with no great results. It was not until Davy's death, in 1829, that Faraday stopped these fruitless tasks and moved on to endeavors that were more worthwhile. Two years later, in 1831, he began his great series of experiments in which he discovered electromagnetic induction. Joseph Henry likely discovered self-induction a few months earlier and both may have been anticipated by the work of Francesco Zantedeschi in Italy in 1829 and 1830.
Faraday's breakthrough came when he wrapped two insulated coils of wire around a massive iron ring, bolted to a chair, and found that upon passing a current through one coil, a momentary current was induced in the other coil. This phenomenon is known as mutual induction. The iron ring-coil apparatus is still on display at the Royal Institution. In subsequent experiments he found that if he moved a magnet through a loop of wire, an electric current flowed in the wire. The current also flowed if the loop was moved over a stationary magnet. His demonstrations established that a changing magnetic field produces an electric field. This relation was mathematically modelled by Faraday's law, which subsequently became one of the four Maxwell equations. These in turn have evolved into the generalization known today as field theory.
Michael Faraday - statue in Savoy Place, London.
Sculptor John Henry Foley RA
Faraday later used the principle to construct the electric dynamo, the ancestor of modern power generators.
In 1839 he completed a series of experiments aimed at investigating the fundamental nature of electricity. Faraday used "static", batteries, and "animal electricity" to produce the phenomena of electrostatic attraction, electrolysis, magnetism, etc. He concluded that, contrary to scientific opinion of the time, the divisions between the various "kinds" of electricity were illusory. Faraday instead proposed that only a single "electricity" exists, and the changing values of quantity and intensity (voltage and charge) would produce different groups of phenomena.
Near the end of his career Faraday proposed that electromagnetic forces extended into the empty space around the conductor. This idea was rejected by his fellow scientists, and Faraday did not live to see this idea eventually accepted. Faraday's concept of lines of flux emanating from charged bodies and magnets provided a way to visualize electric and magnetic fields. That mental model was crucial to the successful development of electromechanical devices which dominated engineering and industry for the remainder of the 19th century.
In 1845, he discovered the phenomenon that he named diamagnetism, and what is now called the Faraday effect: The plane of polarization of linearly polarized light propagated through a material medium can be rotated by the application of an external magnetic field aligned in the propagation direction. He wrote in his notebook, "I have at last succeeded in illuminating a magnetic curve or line of force and in magnetising a ray of light". This established that magnetic force and light were related.
In his work on static electricity, Faraday demonstrated that the charge only resided on the exterior of a charged conductor, and exterior charge had no influence on anything enclosed within a conductor. This is because the exterior charges redistribute such that the interior fields due to them cancel. This shielding effect is used in what is now known as a Faraday cage.
Faraday was an excellent experimentalist who conveyed his ideas in clear and simple language. However, his mathematical abilities did not extend as far as trigonometry or any but the simplest algebra. It was James Clerk Maxwell who took the work of Faraday, and others, and consolidated it with a set of equations that lie at the base of all modern theories of electromagnetic phenomena.
Michael Faraday meets Father Thames, from Punch (July 21, 1855)
Beyond his scientific research into areas such as chemistry, electricity, and magnetism at the Royal Institution, Faraday undertook numerous, and often time-consuming, service projects for private enterprise and the British government. This work included investigations of explosions in mines, being an expert witness in court, and the preparation of high-quality optical glass.
As a respected scientist in a nation with strong maritime interests, Faraday spent extensive amounts of time on projects such as the construction and operation of light houses and protecting the bottoms of ships from corrosion.
Faraday also was active in what would now be called environmental science, or engineering. He investigated industrial pollution at Swansea and was consulted on air pollution at the Royal Mint. In July of 1855, Faraday wrote a letter to The Times on the subject of the foul condition of the River Thames, which resulted in an oft-reprinted cartoon in Punch. (See also The Great Stink.)
Faraday assisted with planning and judging of exhibits for the Great Exhibition of 1851 in London. He also advised the National Gallery on the cleaning and protection of its art collection, and served on the National Gallery Site Commission in 1857.
Education was another area of service for Faraday. He lectured on the topic in 1854 at the Royal Institution, and in 1862 he appeared before a Public Schools Commission to give his views on education in Great Britain. Faraday also weighed in, negatively, on the public's fascination with table-turning, mesmerism, and seances, chastising both the public and the nation's educational system. See The Illustrated London News, July 1853, for Faraday's comments.
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In June of 1832, the University of Oxford granted Faraday a Doctor of Civil Law degree (honorary). During his lifetime, Faraday rejected a knighthood and twice refused to become President of the Royal Society.
In 1848, as a result of representations by the Prince Consort, Michael Faraday was awarded a grace and favour house in Hampton Court, Surrey free of all expenses or upkeep. This was the Master Mason's House, later called Faraday House, and now No.37 Hampton Court Road. In 1858 Faraday retired to live there. Twickenham Museum on Faraday and Faraday House, Accessed June 2006
Faraday died at his house at Hampton Court on August 25, 1867. He turned down burial in Westminster Abbey, but he has a memorial plaque there, near Isaac Newton's tomb. Faraday was interred in the Sandemanian plot in Highgate Cemetery.
Michael Faraday's grave at Highgate Cemetery
Faraday gave a successful series of lectures on the chemistry and physics of flames at the Royal Institution, entitled The Chemical History of a Candle. This was one of the earlier Christmas lectures for young people, which are still given each year. Between 1827 and 1860, Faraday gave the Christmas lecture a record nineteen times.
Faraday refused to participate in the production of chemical weapons for the Crimean War citing ethical reasons.
A statue of Faraday stands in Savoy Place, London, outside the Institution of Electrical Engineers.
A recently built hall of accommodation at Brunel University is named after Faraday.
A hall at Loughborough University was named after Faraday in 1960. Near the entrance to its dining hall is a bronze casting, which depicts the symbol of an electrical transformer, and inside there hangs a portrait, both in Faraday's honour.
Faraday's picture was printed on British £20 banknotes from 1991 until 2001. Bank of England, Withdrawn Notes
In the video game Chromehounds there is a ThermoVision Device named the Faraday.
The former UK Faraday Atmospheric Research Station in Antarctica was named after him.
Faraday was one of the then eight foreign members of the French Academy of Sciences.
Michael Faraday's signature
Faraday's books, with the exception of Chemical Manipulation, were collections of scientific papers or transcriptions of lectures. See page 220 of Hamilton's A Life of Discovery: Michael Faraday, Giant of the Scientific Revolution (2002) Since his death, Faraday's diary has been published, as have several large volumes of his letters and Faraday's journal from his travels with Davy in 1813 - 1815.
* Chemical Manipulation, Being Instructions to Students in Chemistry, John Murray, 1st ed. 1827, 2nd ed. 1830, 3rd ed. 1842
* Experimental Researches in Electricity, vols. i. and ii., Richard and John Edward Taylor, vols. i. and ii.. 1844 and 1847; vol. iii., 1844; vol. iii. Richard Taylor and William Francis, 1855
* Experimental Researches in Chemistry and Physics, Taylor and Francis, 1859
* A Course of Six Lectures on the Chemical History of a Candle, edited by W. Crookes, Griffin, Bohn & Co., 1861
* On the Various Forces in Nature, edited by W. Crookes, Chatto & Windus, 1873
* Faraday's Diary edited by T. Martin was published in eight volumes, 1932 - 1936
* Curiosity Perfectly Satisfyed: Faraday's Travels in Europe 1813-1815, edited by B. Bowers and L. Symons, Institution of Electrical Engineers, 1991
* The Correspondence of Michael Faraday, edited by F. A. J. L. James, INSPEC, Inc., volume 1, 1991; volume 2, 1993; volume 3, 1996; volume 4, 1999
* "Nothing is too wonderful to be true if it be consistent with the laws of nature, and in such things as these, experiment is the best test of such consistency." From the entry of 19 March 1849 in Faraday's Diary
* "Work. Finish. Publish." â his well-known advice to the young William Crookes
* "The important thing is to know how to take all things quietly."
* Regarding the hereafter, "Speculations? I have none. I am resting on certainties. I know whom I have believed and am persuaded that he is able to keep that which I have committed unto him against that day."
* "Next Sabbath day (the 22nd) I shall complete my 70th year. I can hardly think of myself so old."
*Above the doorways of the Pfahler Hall of Science at Ursinus College in Collegeville, Pennsylvania, there is a stone inscription of a quote attributed to Michael Faraday which reads "but still try, for who knows what is possible..." See
* "One day sir, you may tax it." Faraday's reply to William Gladstone, then British Minister of Finance, when asked of the practical value of electricity.
* "If you would cause your view ... to be acknowledged by scientific men; you would do a great service to science. If you would even get them to say yes or no to your conclusions it would help to clear the future progress. I believe some hesitate because they do not like their thoughts disturbed." From Life and Letters, 2:389.
* Faraday rotator
* Superconductivity
* Tyndall, John, Faraday as a Discoverer, (Longmans, 1st ed. 1868, 2nd ed. 1870).
* Bence Jones, Henry (1870). The Life and Letters of Faraday in 2 vols, Longmans.
* Gladstone, J. H. (1872). Michael Faraday, Macmillan.
* Thompson, Silvanus (1901, reprinted 2005). Michael Faraday, His Life and Work. Cassell and Company, London, 1901; reprint by Kessenger Publishing, Whitefish, MT. ISBN 1-4179-7036-7
* The British Electrical and Allied Manufacturers Association (1931). Faraday. R. & R. Clark, Ltd., Edinburgh, 1931.
* Williams, L. Pearce (1971), Faraday: A Biography, Simon and Schuster.
* Cantor, Geoffrey (1991). Michael Faraday, Sandemanian and Scientist, Macmillian, ISBN 0-333-55077
* Hamilton, James (2002). Faraday: The Life. London: Harper Collins. ISBN 0-00-716376-2
* Hamilton, James (2004). A Life of Discovery: Michael Faraday, Giant of the Scientific Revolution. New York: Random House. ISBN 1-4000-6016-8
* Agassi, Joseph (1971), Faraday as a Natural Philosopher, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
* Ames, Joseph Sweetman (Ed.), The discovery of induced electric currents Vol. 2. Memoirs, by Michael Faraday. New York, Cincinnati [etc.] American book company [c1900] LCCN 00005889
* Gooding, David (Ed.) (1985), Faraday Rediscovered: Essays on the Life and Work of Michael Faraday, 1791-1867, London/New York, Macmillan/Stockton
* Thomas, John Meurig (1991). Michael Faraday and the Royal Institution: The Genius of Man and Place Bristol: Hilger. ISBN 0-7503-0145-7
150px
* Biography at The Royal Institution of Great Britain
* Faraday as a Discoverer by John Tyndall, Project Gutenberg (downloads)
* The Christian Character of Michael Faraday
* Michael Faraday on the British twenty-pound banknote
* The Life and Discoveries of Michael Faraday by J. A. Crowther, London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1920
* "Faraday" at LoveToKnow 1911 Britannica Online Encyclopedia.
*
* (downloads)
* "Experimental Researches in Electricity" by Michael Faraday Original text with Biographical Introduction by Professor John Tyndall, 1914, Everyman edition.
* Video Podcast with Sir John Cadogan talking about Benzene since Faraday
* The letters of Faraday and Schoenbein 1836-1862. With notes, comments and references to contemporary letters (1899) full download PDF
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Michael_Faraday | Is it true that institution formed the foundation of electric motor technology? | no | data/set4/a7 | Michael_Faraday
Michael Faraday, FRS (September 22, 1791 â August 25, 1867) was an English chemist and physicist (or natural philosopher, in the terminology of that time) who contributed to the fields of electromagnetism and electrochemistry.
Faraday studied the magnetic field around a conductor carrying a DC electric current, and established the basis for the magnetic field concept in physics. He discovered electromagnetic induction, diamagnetism and electrolysis. He established that magnetism could affect rays of light and that there was an underlying relationship between the two phenomena. Michael Faraday entry at the 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica hosted by LovetoKnow Retrieved January 2007. Institution of Engineering and Technology, London Archives, Michael Faraday His inventions of electromagnetic rotary devices formed the foundation of electric motor technology, and it was largely due to his efforts that electricity became viable for use in technology.
As a chemist, Faraday discovered benzene, investigated the clathrate hydrate of chlorine, invented an early form of the bunsen burner and the system of oxidation numbers, and popularized terminology such as anode, cathode, electrode, and ion.
Although Faraday received little formal education and knew little of higher mathematics, such as calculus, he was one of the most influential scientists in history. Some historians of science refer to him as the best experimentalist in the history of science. "best experimentalist in the history of science." Quoting Dr Peter Ford, from the University of Bathâs Department of Physics. Accessed January 2007. The SI unit of capacitance, the farad, is named after him, as is the Faraday constant, the charge on a mole of electrons (about 96,485 coulombs). Faraday's law of induction states that a magnetic field changing in time creates a proportional electromotive force.
Faraday was the first and foremost Fullerian Professor of Chemistry at the Royal Institution of Great Britain, a position to which he was appointed for life.
Michael Faraday from a photograph by John Watkins, British Library
Michael Faraday was born in Newington Butts, near present-day South London, England. His family was not well off. His father, James, was a member of the Sandemanian sect of Christianity. James Faraday had come to London ca 1790 from Outhgill in Westmorland, where he had been the village blacksmith. The young Michael Faraday, one of four children, having only the most basic of school educations, had to largely educate himself. "Michael Faraday." History of Science and Technology. Houghton Mifflin Company, 2004. Answers.com 4 June 2007. /ref> At fourteen he became apprenticed to a local bookbinder and bookseller George Riebau and, during his seven-year apprenticeship, he read many books, including Isaac Watts' The Improvement of the Mind, and he enthusiastically implemented the principles and suggestions contained therein. He developed an interest in science and specifically in electricity. In particular, he was inspired by the book Conversations in Chemistry by Jane Marcet.
At the age of twenty, in 1812, at the end of his apprenticeship, Faraday attended lectures by the eminent English chemist and physicist Humphry Davy of the Royal Institution and Royal Society, and John Tatum, founder of the City Philosophical Society. Many tickets for these lectures were given to Faraday by William Dance (one of the founders of the Royal Philharmonic Society). Afterwards, Faraday sent Davy a three hundred page book based on notes taken during the lectures. Davy's reply was immediate, kind, and favorable. When Davy damaged his eyesight in an accident with nitrogen trichloride, he decided to employ Faraday as a secretary. When John Payne, one of the Royal Institution's assistants, was fired, Sir Humphry Davy was asked to find a replacement. He appointed Faraday as Chemical Assistant at the Royal Institution on March 1.
In the class-based English society of the time, Faraday was not considered a gentleman. When Davy went on a long tour to the continent in 1813-5, his valet did not wish to go. Faraday was going as Davy's scientific assistant, and was asked to act as Davy's valet until a replacement could be found in Paris. Davy failed to find a replacement, and Faraday was forced to fill the role of valet as well as assistant throughout the trip. Davy's wife, Jane Apreece, refused to treat Faraday as an equal (making him travel outside the coach, eat with the servants, etc.) and generally made Faraday so miserable that he contemplated returning to England alone and giving up science altogether. The trip did, however, give him access to the European scientific elite and a host of stimulating ideas.
His sponsor and mentor was John 'Mad Jack' Fuller, who created the Fullerian Professorship of Chemistry at the Royal Institution.
Faraday was a devout Christian and a member of the small Sandemanian denomination, an offshoot of the Church of Scotland. He later served two terms as an elder in the group's church.
Faraday married Sarah Barnard (1800-1879) on June 2, 1821, although they would never have children. They met through attending the Sandemanian church.
He was elected a member of the Royal Society in 1824, appointed director of the laboratory in 1825; and in 1833 he was appointed Fullerian professor of chemistry in the institution for life, without the obligation to deliver lectures.
The title page of The Chemical History of a Candle (1861)
Faraday's earliest chemical work was as an assistant to Davy. He made a special study of chlorine, and discovered two new chlorides of carbon. He also made the first rough experiments on the diffusion of gases, a phenomenon first pointed out by John Dalton, the physical importance of which was more fully brought to light by Thomas Graham and Joseph Loschmidt. He succeeded in liquefying several gases; he investigated the alloys of steel, and produced several new kinds of glass intended for optical purposes. A specimen of one of these heavy glasses afterwards became historically important as the substance in which Faraday detected the rotation of the plane of polarisation of light when the glass was placed in a magnetic field, and also as the substance which was first repelled by the poles of the magnet. He also endeavoured, with some success, to make the general methods of chemistry, as distinguished from its results, the subject of special study and of popular exposition.
He invented an early form of what was to become the Bunsen burner, which is used almost universally in science laboratories as a convenient source of heat. See page 127 of Faraday's Chemical Manipulation, Being Instructions to Students in Chemistry (1827)
Faraday worked extensively in the field of chemistry, discovering chemical substances such as benzene (which he called bicarburet of hydrogen), inventing the system of oxidation numbers, and liquefying gases such as chlorine. In 1820 Faraday reported on the first syntheses of compounds made from carbon and chlorine, C 2 H 6 and C 2 H 4 , and published his results the following year. Faraday also determined the composition of the chlorine clathrate hydrate, which had been discovered by Humphry Davy in 1810.
Faraday also discovered the laws of electrolysis and popularized terminology such as anode, cathode, electrode, and ion, terms largely created by William Whewell.
Faraday was the first to report what later came to be called metallic nanoparticles. In 1847 he discovered that the optical properties of gold colloids differed from those of the corresponding bulk metal. This was probably the first reported observation of the effects of quantum size, and might be considered to be the birth of nanoscience.
Faraday's greatest work was probably with electricity and magnetism. The first experiment which he recorded was the construction of a voltaic pile with seven halfpence pieces, stacked together with seven disks of sheet zinc, and six pieces of paper moistened with salt water. With this pile he decomposed sulphate of magnesia (first letter to Abbott, July 12, 1812).
[[Image:Faraday photograph ii.jpg|thumb|200px|left|Michael Faraday holding a glass bar of the type he used in 1845 to show that magnetism can affect light. Detail of an engraving by Henry Adlard, based on an earlier photograph by Maull & Polyblank ca. 1857. See National Portrait Gallery, UK ]]
In 1821, soon after the Danish physicist and chemist, Hans Christian Ãrsted discovered the phenomenon of electromagnetism, Davy and British scientist William Hyde Wollaston tried but failed to design an electric motor. Faraday, having discussed the problem with the two men, went on to build two devices to produce what he called electromagnetic rotation: a continuous circular motion from the circular magnetic force around a wire and a wire extending into a pool of mercury with a magnet placed inside would rotate around the magnet if supplied with current from a chemical battery. The latter device is known as a homopolar motor. These experiments and inventions form the foundation of modern electromagnetic technology. Faraday published his results without acknowledging his debt to Wollaston and Davy, and the resulting controversy caused Faraday to withdraw from electromagnetic research for several years.
At this stage, there is also evidence to suggest that Davy may have been trying to slow Faradayâs rise as a scientist (or natural philosopher as it was known then). In 1825, for instance, Davy set him onto optical glass experiments, which progressed for six years with no great results. It was not until Davy's death, in 1829, that Faraday stopped these fruitless tasks and moved on to endeavors that were more worthwhile. Two years later, in 1831, he began his great series of experiments in which he discovered electromagnetic induction. Joseph Henry likely discovered self-induction a few months earlier and both may have been anticipated by the work of Francesco Zantedeschi in Italy in 1829 and 1830.
Faraday's breakthrough came when he wrapped two insulated coils of wire around a massive iron ring, bolted to a chair, and found that upon passing a current through one coil, a momentary current was induced in the other coil. This phenomenon is known as mutual induction. The iron ring-coil apparatus is still on display at the Royal Institution. In subsequent experiments he found that if he moved a magnet through a loop of wire, an electric current flowed in the wire. The current also flowed if the loop was moved over a stationary magnet. His demonstrations established that a changing magnetic field produces an electric field. This relation was mathematically modelled by Faraday's law, which subsequently became one of the four Maxwell equations. These in turn have evolved into the generalization known today as field theory.
Michael Faraday - statue in Savoy Place, London.
Sculptor John Henry Foley RA
Faraday later used the principle to construct the electric dynamo, the ancestor of modern power generators.
In 1839 he completed a series of experiments aimed at investigating the fundamental nature of electricity. Faraday used "static", batteries, and "animal electricity" to produce the phenomena of electrostatic attraction, electrolysis, magnetism, etc. He concluded that, contrary to scientific opinion of the time, the divisions between the various "kinds" of electricity were illusory. Faraday instead proposed that only a single "electricity" exists, and the changing values of quantity and intensity (voltage and charge) would produce different groups of phenomena.
Near the end of his career Faraday proposed that electromagnetic forces extended into the empty space around the conductor. This idea was rejected by his fellow scientists, and Faraday did not live to see this idea eventually accepted. Faraday's concept of lines of flux emanating from charged bodies and magnets provided a way to visualize electric and magnetic fields. That mental model was crucial to the successful development of electromechanical devices which dominated engineering and industry for the remainder of the 19th century.
In 1845, he discovered the phenomenon that he named diamagnetism, and what is now called the Faraday effect: The plane of polarization of linearly polarized light propagated through a material medium can be rotated by the application of an external magnetic field aligned in the propagation direction. He wrote in his notebook, "I have at last succeeded in illuminating a magnetic curve or line of force and in magnetising a ray of light". This established that magnetic force and light were related.
In his work on static electricity, Faraday demonstrated that the charge only resided on the exterior of a charged conductor, and exterior charge had no influence on anything enclosed within a conductor. This is because the exterior charges redistribute such that the interior fields due to them cancel. This shielding effect is used in what is now known as a Faraday cage.
Faraday was an excellent experimentalist who conveyed his ideas in clear and simple language. However, his mathematical abilities did not extend as far as trigonometry or any but the simplest algebra. It was James Clerk Maxwell who took the work of Faraday, and others, and consolidated it with a set of equations that lie at the base of all modern theories of electromagnetic phenomena.
Michael Faraday meets Father Thames, from Punch (July 21, 1855)
Beyond his scientific research into areas such as chemistry, electricity, and magnetism at the Royal Institution, Faraday undertook numerous, and often time-consuming, service projects for private enterprise and the British government. This work included investigations of explosions in mines, being an expert witness in court, and the preparation of high-quality optical glass.
As a respected scientist in a nation with strong maritime interests, Faraday spent extensive amounts of time on projects such as the construction and operation of light houses and protecting the bottoms of ships from corrosion.
Faraday also was active in what would now be called environmental science, or engineering. He investigated industrial pollution at Swansea and was consulted on air pollution at the Royal Mint. In July of 1855, Faraday wrote a letter to The Times on the subject of the foul condition of the River Thames, which resulted in an oft-reprinted cartoon in Punch. (See also The Great Stink.)
Faraday assisted with planning and judging of exhibits for the Great Exhibition of 1851 in London. He also advised the National Gallery on the cleaning and protection of its art collection, and served on the National Gallery Site Commission in 1857.
Education was another area of service for Faraday. He lectured on the topic in 1854 at the Royal Institution, and in 1862 he appeared before a Public Schools Commission to give his views on education in Great Britain. Faraday also weighed in, negatively, on the public's fascination with table-turning, mesmerism, and seances, chastising both the public and the nation's educational system. See The Illustrated London News, July 1853, for Faraday's comments.
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In June of 1832, the University of Oxford granted Faraday a Doctor of Civil Law degree (honorary). During his lifetime, Faraday rejected a knighthood and twice refused to become President of the Royal Society.
In 1848, as a result of representations by the Prince Consort, Michael Faraday was awarded a grace and favour house in Hampton Court, Surrey free of all expenses or upkeep. This was the Master Mason's House, later called Faraday House, and now No.37 Hampton Court Road. In 1858 Faraday retired to live there. Twickenham Museum on Faraday and Faraday House, Accessed June 2006
Faraday died at his house at Hampton Court on August 25, 1867. He turned down burial in Westminster Abbey, but he has a memorial plaque there, near Isaac Newton's tomb. Faraday was interred in the Sandemanian plot in Highgate Cemetery.
Michael Faraday's grave at Highgate Cemetery
Faraday gave a successful series of lectures on the chemistry and physics of flames at the Royal Institution, entitled The Chemical History of a Candle. This was one of the earlier Christmas lectures for young people, which are still given each year. Between 1827 and 1860, Faraday gave the Christmas lecture a record nineteen times.
Faraday refused to participate in the production of chemical weapons for the Crimean War citing ethical reasons.
A statue of Faraday stands in Savoy Place, London, outside the Institution of Electrical Engineers.
A recently built hall of accommodation at Brunel University is named after Faraday.
A hall at Loughborough University was named after Faraday in 1960. Near the entrance to its dining hall is a bronze casting, which depicts the symbol of an electrical transformer, and inside there hangs a portrait, both in Faraday's honour.
Faraday's picture was printed on British £20 banknotes from 1991 until 2001. Bank of England, Withdrawn Notes
In the video game Chromehounds there is a ThermoVision Device named the Faraday.
The former UK Faraday Atmospheric Research Station in Antarctica was named after him.
Faraday was one of the then eight foreign members of the French Academy of Sciences.
Michael Faraday's signature
Faraday's books, with the exception of Chemical Manipulation, were collections of scientific papers or transcriptions of lectures. See page 220 of Hamilton's A Life of Discovery: Michael Faraday, Giant of the Scientific Revolution (2002) Since his death, Faraday's diary has been published, as have several large volumes of his letters and Faraday's journal from his travels with Davy in 1813 - 1815.
* Chemical Manipulation, Being Instructions to Students in Chemistry, John Murray, 1st ed. 1827, 2nd ed. 1830, 3rd ed. 1842
* Experimental Researches in Electricity, vols. i. and ii., Richard and John Edward Taylor, vols. i. and ii.. 1844 and 1847; vol. iii., 1844; vol. iii. Richard Taylor and William Francis, 1855
* Experimental Researches in Chemistry and Physics, Taylor and Francis, 1859
* A Course of Six Lectures on the Chemical History of a Candle, edited by W. Crookes, Griffin, Bohn & Co., 1861
* On the Various Forces in Nature, edited by W. Crookes, Chatto & Windus, 1873
* Faraday's Diary edited by T. Martin was published in eight volumes, 1932 - 1936
* Curiosity Perfectly Satisfyed: Faraday's Travels in Europe 1813-1815, edited by B. Bowers and L. Symons, Institution of Electrical Engineers, 1991
* The Correspondence of Michael Faraday, edited by F. A. J. L. James, INSPEC, Inc., volume 1, 1991; volume 2, 1993; volume 3, 1996; volume 4, 1999
* "Nothing is too wonderful to be true if it be consistent with the laws of nature, and in such things as these, experiment is the best test of such consistency." From the entry of 19 March 1849 in Faraday's Diary
* "Work. Finish. Publish." â his well-known advice to the young William Crookes
* "The important thing is to know how to take all things quietly."
* Regarding the hereafter, "Speculations? I have none. I am resting on certainties. I know whom I have believed and am persuaded that he is able to keep that which I have committed unto him against that day."
* "Next Sabbath day (the 22nd) I shall complete my 70th year. I can hardly think of myself so old."
*Above the doorways of the Pfahler Hall of Science at Ursinus College in Collegeville, Pennsylvania, there is a stone inscription of a quote attributed to Michael Faraday which reads "but still try, for who knows what is possible..." See
* "One day sir, you may tax it." Faraday's reply to William Gladstone, then British Minister of Finance, when asked of the practical value of electricity.
* "If you would cause your view ... to be acknowledged by scientific men; you would do a great service to science. If you would even get them to say yes or no to your conclusions it would help to clear the future progress. I believe some hesitate because they do not like their thoughts disturbed." From Life and Letters, 2:389.
* Faraday rotator
* Superconductivity
* Tyndall, John, Faraday as a Discoverer, (Longmans, 1st ed. 1868, 2nd ed. 1870).
* Bence Jones, Henry (1870). The Life and Letters of Faraday in 2 vols, Longmans.
* Gladstone, J. H. (1872). Michael Faraday, Macmillan.
* Thompson, Silvanus (1901, reprinted 2005). Michael Faraday, His Life and Work. Cassell and Company, London, 1901; reprint by Kessenger Publishing, Whitefish, MT. ISBN 1-4179-7036-7
* The British Electrical and Allied Manufacturers Association (1931). Faraday. R. & R. Clark, Ltd., Edinburgh, 1931.
* Williams, L. Pearce (1971), Faraday: A Biography, Simon and Schuster.
* Cantor, Geoffrey (1991). Michael Faraday, Sandemanian and Scientist, Macmillian, ISBN 0-333-55077
* Hamilton, James (2002). Faraday: The Life. London: Harper Collins. ISBN 0-00-716376-2
* Hamilton, James (2004). A Life of Discovery: Michael Faraday, Giant of the Scientific Revolution. New York: Random House. ISBN 1-4000-6016-8
* Agassi, Joseph (1971), Faraday as a Natural Philosopher, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
* Ames, Joseph Sweetman (Ed.), The discovery of induced electric currents Vol. 2. Memoirs, by Michael Faraday. New York, Cincinnati [etc.] American book company [c1900] LCCN 00005889
* Gooding, David (Ed.) (1985), Faraday Rediscovered: Essays on the Life and Work of Michael Faraday, 1791-1867, London/New York, Macmillan/Stockton
* Thomas, John Meurig (1991). Michael Faraday and the Royal Institution: The Genius of Man and Place Bristol: Hilger. ISBN 0-7503-0145-7
150px
* Biography at The Royal Institution of Great Britain
* Faraday as a Discoverer by John Tyndall, Project Gutenberg (downloads)
* The Christian Character of Michael Faraday
* Michael Faraday on the British twenty-pound banknote
* The Life and Discoveries of Michael Faraday by J. A. Crowther, London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1920
* "Faraday" at LoveToKnow 1911 Britannica Online Encyclopedia.
*
* (downloads)
* "Experimental Researches in Electricity" by Michael Faraday Original text with Biographical Introduction by Professor John Tyndall, 1914, Everyman edition.
* Video Podcast with Sir John Cadogan talking about Benzene since Faraday
* The letters of Faraday and Schoenbein 1836-1862. With notes, comments and references to contemporary letters (1899) full download PDF
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Electromagnetic induction
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Faraday effect
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electron
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chlorine
carbon
John Dalton
Thomas Graham (chemist)
Joseph Loschmidt
steel
Bunsen burner
chemistry
benzene
oxidation number
hexachloroethane
tetrachloroethylene
clathrate hydrate
electrolysis
anode
cathode
electrode
ion
William Whewell
nanoparticles
quantum
nanoscience
voltaic pile
July 12
1812
Henry Adlard
1821
Hans Christian Ãrsted
electromagnetism
William Hyde Wollaston
electric motor
mercury (element)
homopolar motor
1831
electromagnetic induction
Joseph Henry
Electromagnetic induction
Francesco Zantedeschi
mutual induction
Faraday's law of induction
Maxwell's equations
field theory
John Henry Foley
Electrical generator#Dynamo
1839
Electrostatics
Battery (electricity)
Bioelectromagnetism
electrolysis
Electromagnetism
diamagnetism
Faraday effect
polarization
Faraday cage
James Clerk Maxwell
July 21
1855
Swansea
Royal Mint
The Times
River Thames
Punch
The Great Stink
Great Exhibition
University of Oxford
knighthood
President of the Royal Society
Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha
grace and favour
Hampton Court
Surrey
Hampton Court
August 25
1867
Westminster Abbey
Isaac Newton
Highgate Cemetery
Highgate Cemetery
Royal Institution
The Chemical History of a Candle
Royal Institution Christmas Lectures
Crimean War
Institution of Electrical Engineers
Brunel University
Loughborough University
1960
transformer
British banknotes
video game
Chromehounds
Faraday Atmospheric Research Station in Antarctica (GALINDEZ ISLAND - 65.15S/64.16W)
French Academy of Sciences
William Crookes
Ursinus College
Faraday rotator
Superconductivity
George Biddell Airy
Copley Medal
Siméon Denis Poisson
Giovanni Antonio Amedeo Plana
Antoine César Becquerel
John Frederic Daniell
Copley Medal
Carl Friedrich Gauss
Robert Brown (botanist)
Physicist
Chemist
September 22
1791
Newington Butts
England
August 25
1867
Hampton Court
London
England
|
Michael_Faraday | Institution formed the foundation of what? | modern electromagnetic technology | data/set4/a7 | Michael_Faraday
Michael Faraday, FRS (September 22, 1791 â August 25, 1867) was an English chemist and physicist (or natural philosopher, in the terminology of that time) who contributed to the fields of electromagnetism and electrochemistry.
Faraday studied the magnetic field around a conductor carrying a DC electric current, and established the basis for the magnetic field concept in physics. He discovered electromagnetic induction, diamagnetism and electrolysis. He established that magnetism could affect rays of light and that there was an underlying relationship between the two phenomena. Michael Faraday entry at the 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica hosted by LovetoKnow Retrieved January 2007. Institution of Engineering and Technology, London Archives, Michael Faraday His inventions of electromagnetic rotary devices formed the foundation of electric motor technology, and it was largely due to his efforts that electricity became viable for use in technology.
As a chemist, Faraday discovered benzene, investigated the clathrate hydrate of chlorine, invented an early form of the bunsen burner and the system of oxidation numbers, and popularized terminology such as anode, cathode, electrode, and ion.
Although Faraday received little formal education and knew little of higher mathematics, such as calculus, he was one of the most influential scientists in history. Some historians of science refer to him as the best experimentalist in the history of science. "best experimentalist in the history of science." Quoting Dr Peter Ford, from the University of Bathâs Department of Physics. Accessed January 2007. The SI unit of capacitance, the farad, is named after him, as is the Faraday constant, the charge on a mole of electrons (about 96,485 coulombs). Faraday's law of induction states that a magnetic field changing in time creates a proportional electromotive force.
Faraday was the first and foremost Fullerian Professor of Chemistry at the Royal Institution of Great Britain, a position to which he was appointed for life.
Michael Faraday from a photograph by John Watkins, British Library
Michael Faraday was born in Newington Butts, near present-day South London, England. His family was not well off. His father, James, was a member of the Sandemanian sect of Christianity. James Faraday had come to London ca 1790 from Outhgill in Westmorland, where he had been the village blacksmith. The young Michael Faraday, one of four children, having only the most basic of school educations, had to largely educate himself. "Michael Faraday." History of Science and Technology. Houghton Mifflin Company, 2004. Answers.com 4 June 2007. /ref> At fourteen he became apprenticed to a local bookbinder and bookseller George Riebau and, during his seven-year apprenticeship, he read many books, including Isaac Watts' The Improvement of the Mind, and he enthusiastically implemented the principles and suggestions contained therein. He developed an interest in science and specifically in electricity. In particular, he was inspired by the book Conversations in Chemistry by Jane Marcet.
At the age of twenty, in 1812, at the end of his apprenticeship, Faraday attended lectures by the eminent English chemist and physicist Humphry Davy of the Royal Institution and Royal Society, and John Tatum, founder of the City Philosophical Society. Many tickets for these lectures were given to Faraday by William Dance (one of the founders of the Royal Philharmonic Society). Afterwards, Faraday sent Davy a three hundred page book based on notes taken during the lectures. Davy's reply was immediate, kind, and favorable. When Davy damaged his eyesight in an accident with nitrogen trichloride, he decided to employ Faraday as a secretary. When John Payne, one of the Royal Institution's assistants, was fired, Sir Humphry Davy was asked to find a replacement. He appointed Faraday as Chemical Assistant at the Royal Institution on March 1.
In the class-based English society of the time, Faraday was not considered a gentleman. When Davy went on a long tour to the continent in 1813-5, his valet did not wish to go. Faraday was going as Davy's scientific assistant, and was asked to act as Davy's valet until a replacement could be found in Paris. Davy failed to find a replacement, and Faraday was forced to fill the role of valet as well as assistant throughout the trip. Davy's wife, Jane Apreece, refused to treat Faraday as an equal (making him travel outside the coach, eat with the servants, etc.) and generally made Faraday so miserable that he contemplated returning to England alone and giving up science altogether. The trip did, however, give him access to the European scientific elite and a host of stimulating ideas.
His sponsor and mentor was John 'Mad Jack' Fuller, who created the Fullerian Professorship of Chemistry at the Royal Institution.
Faraday was a devout Christian and a member of the small Sandemanian denomination, an offshoot of the Church of Scotland. He later served two terms as an elder in the group's church.
Faraday married Sarah Barnard (1800-1879) on June 2, 1821, although they would never have children. They met through attending the Sandemanian church.
He was elected a member of the Royal Society in 1824, appointed director of the laboratory in 1825; and in 1833 he was appointed Fullerian professor of chemistry in the institution for life, without the obligation to deliver lectures.
The title page of The Chemical History of a Candle (1861)
Faraday's earliest chemical work was as an assistant to Davy. He made a special study of chlorine, and discovered two new chlorides of carbon. He also made the first rough experiments on the diffusion of gases, a phenomenon first pointed out by John Dalton, the physical importance of which was more fully brought to light by Thomas Graham and Joseph Loschmidt. He succeeded in liquefying several gases; he investigated the alloys of steel, and produced several new kinds of glass intended for optical purposes. A specimen of one of these heavy glasses afterwards became historically important as the substance in which Faraday detected the rotation of the plane of polarisation of light when the glass was placed in a magnetic field, and also as the substance which was first repelled by the poles of the magnet. He also endeavoured, with some success, to make the general methods of chemistry, as distinguished from its results, the subject of special study and of popular exposition.
He invented an early form of what was to become the Bunsen burner, which is used almost universally in science laboratories as a convenient source of heat. See page 127 of Faraday's Chemical Manipulation, Being Instructions to Students in Chemistry (1827)
Faraday worked extensively in the field of chemistry, discovering chemical substances such as benzene (which he called bicarburet of hydrogen), inventing the system of oxidation numbers, and liquefying gases such as chlorine. In 1820 Faraday reported on the first syntheses of compounds made from carbon and chlorine, C 2 H 6 and C 2 H 4 , and published his results the following year. Faraday also determined the composition of the chlorine clathrate hydrate, which had been discovered by Humphry Davy in 1810.
Faraday also discovered the laws of electrolysis and popularized terminology such as anode, cathode, electrode, and ion, terms largely created by William Whewell.
Faraday was the first to report what later came to be called metallic nanoparticles. In 1847 he discovered that the optical properties of gold colloids differed from those of the corresponding bulk metal. This was probably the first reported observation of the effects of quantum size, and might be considered to be the birth of nanoscience.
Faraday's greatest work was probably with electricity and magnetism. The first experiment which he recorded was the construction of a voltaic pile with seven halfpence pieces, stacked together with seven disks of sheet zinc, and six pieces of paper moistened with salt water. With this pile he decomposed sulphate of magnesia (first letter to Abbott, July 12, 1812).
[[Image:Faraday photograph ii.jpg|thumb|200px|left|Michael Faraday holding a glass bar of the type he used in 1845 to show that magnetism can affect light. Detail of an engraving by Henry Adlard, based on an earlier photograph by Maull & Polyblank ca. 1857. See National Portrait Gallery, UK ]]
In 1821, soon after the Danish physicist and chemist, Hans Christian Ãrsted discovered the phenomenon of electromagnetism, Davy and British scientist William Hyde Wollaston tried but failed to design an electric motor. Faraday, having discussed the problem with the two men, went on to build two devices to produce what he called electromagnetic rotation: a continuous circular motion from the circular magnetic force around a wire and a wire extending into a pool of mercury with a magnet placed inside would rotate around the magnet if supplied with current from a chemical battery. The latter device is known as a homopolar motor. These experiments and inventions form the foundation of modern electromagnetic technology. Faraday published his results without acknowledging his debt to Wollaston and Davy, and the resulting controversy caused Faraday to withdraw from electromagnetic research for several years.
At this stage, there is also evidence to suggest that Davy may have been trying to slow Faradayâs rise as a scientist (or natural philosopher as it was known then). In 1825, for instance, Davy set him onto optical glass experiments, which progressed for six years with no great results. It was not until Davy's death, in 1829, that Faraday stopped these fruitless tasks and moved on to endeavors that were more worthwhile. Two years later, in 1831, he began his great series of experiments in which he discovered electromagnetic induction. Joseph Henry likely discovered self-induction a few months earlier and both may have been anticipated by the work of Francesco Zantedeschi in Italy in 1829 and 1830.
Faraday's breakthrough came when he wrapped two insulated coils of wire around a massive iron ring, bolted to a chair, and found that upon passing a current through one coil, a momentary current was induced in the other coil. This phenomenon is known as mutual induction. The iron ring-coil apparatus is still on display at the Royal Institution. In subsequent experiments he found that if he moved a magnet through a loop of wire, an electric current flowed in the wire. The current also flowed if the loop was moved over a stationary magnet. His demonstrations established that a changing magnetic field produces an electric field. This relation was mathematically modelled by Faraday's law, which subsequently became one of the four Maxwell equations. These in turn have evolved into the generalization known today as field theory.
Michael Faraday - statue in Savoy Place, London.
Sculptor John Henry Foley RA
Faraday later used the principle to construct the electric dynamo, the ancestor of modern power generators.
In 1839 he completed a series of experiments aimed at investigating the fundamental nature of electricity. Faraday used "static", batteries, and "animal electricity" to produce the phenomena of electrostatic attraction, electrolysis, magnetism, etc. He concluded that, contrary to scientific opinion of the time, the divisions between the various "kinds" of electricity were illusory. Faraday instead proposed that only a single "electricity" exists, and the changing values of quantity and intensity (voltage and charge) would produce different groups of phenomena.
Near the end of his career Faraday proposed that electromagnetic forces extended into the empty space around the conductor. This idea was rejected by his fellow scientists, and Faraday did not live to see this idea eventually accepted. Faraday's concept of lines of flux emanating from charged bodies and magnets provided a way to visualize electric and magnetic fields. That mental model was crucial to the successful development of electromechanical devices which dominated engineering and industry for the remainder of the 19th century.
In 1845, he discovered the phenomenon that he named diamagnetism, and what is now called the Faraday effect: The plane of polarization of linearly polarized light propagated through a material medium can be rotated by the application of an external magnetic field aligned in the propagation direction. He wrote in his notebook, "I have at last succeeded in illuminating a magnetic curve or line of force and in magnetising a ray of light". This established that magnetic force and light were related.
In his work on static electricity, Faraday demonstrated that the charge only resided on the exterior of a charged conductor, and exterior charge had no influence on anything enclosed within a conductor. This is because the exterior charges redistribute such that the interior fields due to them cancel. This shielding effect is used in what is now known as a Faraday cage.
Faraday was an excellent experimentalist who conveyed his ideas in clear and simple language. However, his mathematical abilities did not extend as far as trigonometry or any but the simplest algebra. It was James Clerk Maxwell who took the work of Faraday, and others, and consolidated it with a set of equations that lie at the base of all modern theories of electromagnetic phenomena.
Michael Faraday meets Father Thames, from Punch (July 21, 1855)
Beyond his scientific research into areas such as chemistry, electricity, and magnetism at the Royal Institution, Faraday undertook numerous, and often time-consuming, service projects for private enterprise and the British government. This work included investigations of explosions in mines, being an expert witness in court, and the preparation of high-quality optical glass.
As a respected scientist in a nation with strong maritime interests, Faraday spent extensive amounts of time on projects such as the construction and operation of light houses and protecting the bottoms of ships from corrosion.
Faraday also was active in what would now be called environmental science, or engineering. He investigated industrial pollution at Swansea and was consulted on air pollution at the Royal Mint. In July of 1855, Faraday wrote a letter to The Times on the subject of the foul condition of the River Thames, which resulted in an oft-reprinted cartoon in Punch. (See also The Great Stink.)
Faraday assisted with planning and judging of exhibits for the Great Exhibition of 1851 in London. He also advised the National Gallery on the cleaning and protection of its art collection, and served on the National Gallery Site Commission in 1857.
Education was another area of service for Faraday. He lectured on the topic in 1854 at the Royal Institution, and in 1862 he appeared before a Public Schools Commission to give his views on education in Great Britain. Faraday also weighed in, negatively, on the public's fascination with table-turning, mesmerism, and seances, chastising both the public and the nation's educational system. See The Illustrated London News, July 1853, for Faraday's comments.
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In June of 1832, the University of Oxford granted Faraday a Doctor of Civil Law degree (honorary). During his lifetime, Faraday rejected a knighthood and twice refused to become President of the Royal Society.
In 1848, as a result of representations by the Prince Consort, Michael Faraday was awarded a grace and favour house in Hampton Court, Surrey free of all expenses or upkeep. This was the Master Mason's House, later called Faraday House, and now No.37 Hampton Court Road. In 1858 Faraday retired to live there. Twickenham Museum on Faraday and Faraday House, Accessed June 2006
Faraday died at his house at Hampton Court on August 25, 1867. He turned down burial in Westminster Abbey, but he has a memorial plaque there, near Isaac Newton's tomb. Faraday was interred in the Sandemanian plot in Highgate Cemetery.
Michael Faraday's grave at Highgate Cemetery
Faraday gave a successful series of lectures on the chemistry and physics of flames at the Royal Institution, entitled The Chemical History of a Candle. This was one of the earlier Christmas lectures for young people, which are still given each year. Between 1827 and 1860, Faraday gave the Christmas lecture a record nineteen times.
Faraday refused to participate in the production of chemical weapons for the Crimean War citing ethical reasons.
A statue of Faraday stands in Savoy Place, London, outside the Institution of Electrical Engineers.
A recently built hall of accommodation at Brunel University is named after Faraday.
A hall at Loughborough University was named after Faraday in 1960. Near the entrance to its dining hall is a bronze casting, which depicts the symbol of an electrical transformer, and inside there hangs a portrait, both in Faraday's honour.
Faraday's picture was printed on British £20 banknotes from 1991 until 2001. Bank of England, Withdrawn Notes
In the video game Chromehounds there is a ThermoVision Device named the Faraday.
The former UK Faraday Atmospheric Research Station in Antarctica was named after him.
Faraday was one of the then eight foreign members of the French Academy of Sciences.
Michael Faraday's signature
Faraday's books, with the exception of Chemical Manipulation, were collections of scientific papers or transcriptions of lectures. See page 220 of Hamilton's A Life of Discovery: Michael Faraday, Giant of the Scientific Revolution (2002) Since his death, Faraday's diary has been published, as have several large volumes of his letters and Faraday's journal from his travels with Davy in 1813 - 1815.
* Chemical Manipulation, Being Instructions to Students in Chemistry, John Murray, 1st ed. 1827, 2nd ed. 1830, 3rd ed. 1842
* Experimental Researches in Electricity, vols. i. and ii., Richard and John Edward Taylor, vols. i. and ii.. 1844 and 1847; vol. iii., 1844; vol. iii. Richard Taylor and William Francis, 1855
* Experimental Researches in Chemistry and Physics, Taylor and Francis, 1859
* A Course of Six Lectures on the Chemical History of a Candle, edited by W. Crookes, Griffin, Bohn & Co., 1861
* On the Various Forces in Nature, edited by W. Crookes, Chatto & Windus, 1873
* Faraday's Diary edited by T. Martin was published in eight volumes, 1932 - 1936
* Curiosity Perfectly Satisfyed: Faraday's Travels in Europe 1813-1815, edited by B. Bowers and L. Symons, Institution of Electrical Engineers, 1991
* The Correspondence of Michael Faraday, edited by F. A. J. L. James, INSPEC, Inc., volume 1, 1991; volume 2, 1993; volume 3, 1996; volume 4, 1999
* "Nothing is too wonderful to be true if it be consistent with the laws of nature, and in such things as these, experiment is the best test of such consistency." From the entry of 19 March 1849 in Faraday's Diary
* "Work. Finish. Publish." â his well-known advice to the young William Crookes
* "The important thing is to know how to take all things quietly."
* Regarding the hereafter, "Speculations? I have none. I am resting on certainties. I know whom I have believed and am persuaded that he is able to keep that which I have committed unto him against that day."
* "Next Sabbath day (the 22nd) I shall complete my 70th year. I can hardly think of myself so old."
*Above the doorways of the Pfahler Hall of Science at Ursinus College in Collegeville, Pennsylvania, there is a stone inscription of a quote attributed to Michael Faraday which reads "but still try, for who knows what is possible..." See
* "One day sir, you may tax it." Faraday's reply to William Gladstone, then British Minister of Finance, when asked of the practical value of electricity.
* "If you would cause your view ... to be acknowledged by scientific men; you would do a great service to science. If you would even get them to say yes or no to your conclusions it would help to clear the future progress. I believe some hesitate because they do not like their thoughts disturbed." From Life and Letters, 2:389.
* Faraday rotator
* Superconductivity
* Tyndall, John, Faraday as a Discoverer, (Longmans, 1st ed. 1868, 2nd ed. 1870).
* Bence Jones, Henry (1870). The Life and Letters of Faraday in 2 vols, Longmans.
* Gladstone, J. H. (1872). Michael Faraday, Macmillan.
* Thompson, Silvanus (1901, reprinted 2005). Michael Faraday, His Life and Work. Cassell and Company, London, 1901; reprint by Kessenger Publishing, Whitefish, MT. ISBN 1-4179-7036-7
* The British Electrical and Allied Manufacturers Association (1931). Faraday. R. & R. Clark, Ltd., Edinburgh, 1931.
* Williams, L. Pearce (1971), Faraday: A Biography, Simon and Schuster.
* Cantor, Geoffrey (1991). Michael Faraday, Sandemanian and Scientist, Macmillian, ISBN 0-333-55077
* Hamilton, James (2002). Faraday: The Life. London: Harper Collins. ISBN 0-00-716376-2
* Hamilton, James (2004). A Life of Discovery: Michael Faraday, Giant of the Scientific Revolution. New York: Random House. ISBN 1-4000-6016-8
* Agassi, Joseph (1971), Faraday as a Natural Philosopher, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
* Ames, Joseph Sweetman (Ed.), The discovery of induced electric currents Vol. 2. Memoirs, by Michael Faraday. New York, Cincinnati [etc.] American book company [c1900] LCCN 00005889
* Gooding, David (Ed.) (1985), Faraday Rediscovered: Essays on the Life and Work of Michael Faraday, 1791-1867, London/New York, Macmillan/Stockton
* Thomas, John Meurig (1991). Michael Faraday and the Royal Institution: The Genius of Man and Place Bristol: Hilger. ISBN 0-7503-0145-7
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* Biography at The Royal Institution of Great Britain
* Faraday as a Discoverer by John Tyndall, Project Gutenberg (downloads)
* The Christian Character of Michael Faraday
* Michael Faraday on the British twenty-pound banknote
* The Life and Discoveries of Michael Faraday by J. A. Crowther, London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1920
* "Faraday" at LoveToKnow 1911 Britannica Online Encyclopedia.
*
* (downloads)
* "Experimental Researches in Electricity" by Michael Faraday Original text with Biographical Introduction by Professor John Tyndall, 1914, Everyman edition.
* Video Podcast with Sir John Cadogan talking about Benzene since Faraday
* The letters of Faraday and Schoenbein 1836-1862. With notes, comments and references to contemporary letters (1899) full download PDF
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Michael_Faraday | Was his father member of the Sandemanian sect? | yes | data/set4/a7 | Michael_Faraday
Michael Faraday, FRS (September 22, 1791 â August 25, 1867) was an English chemist and physicist (or natural philosopher, in the terminology of that time) who contributed to the fields of electromagnetism and electrochemistry.
Faraday studied the magnetic field around a conductor carrying a DC electric current, and established the basis for the magnetic field concept in physics. He discovered electromagnetic induction, diamagnetism and electrolysis. He established that magnetism could affect rays of light and that there was an underlying relationship between the two phenomena. Michael Faraday entry at the 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica hosted by LovetoKnow Retrieved January 2007. Institution of Engineering and Technology, London Archives, Michael Faraday His inventions of electromagnetic rotary devices formed the foundation of electric motor technology, and it was largely due to his efforts that electricity became viable for use in technology.
As a chemist, Faraday discovered benzene, investigated the clathrate hydrate of chlorine, invented an early form of the bunsen burner and the system of oxidation numbers, and popularized terminology such as anode, cathode, electrode, and ion.
Although Faraday received little formal education and knew little of higher mathematics, such as calculus, he was one of the most influential scientists in history. Some historians of science refer to him as the best experimentalist in the history of science. "best experimentalist in the history of science." Quoting Dr Peter Ford, from the University of Bathâs Department of Physics. Accessed January 2007. The SI unit of capacitance, the farad, is named after him, as is the Faraday constant, the charge on a mole of electrons (about 96,485 coulombs). Faraday's law of induction states that a magnetic field changing in time creates a proportional electromotive force.
Faraday was the first and foremost Fullerian Professor of Chemistry at the Royal Institution of Great Britain, a position to which he was appointed for life.
Michael Faraday from a photograph by John Watkins, British Library
Michael Faraday was born in Newington Butts, near present-day South London, England. His family was not well off. His father, James, was a member of the Sandemanian sect of Christianity. James Faraday had come to London ca 1790 from Outhgill in Westmorland, where he had been the village blacksmith. The young Michael Faraday, one of four children, having only the most basic of school educations, had to largely educate himself. "Michael Faraday." History of Science and Technology. Houghton Mifflin Company, 2004. Answers.com 4 June 2007. /ref> At fourteen he became apprenticed to a local bookbinder and bookseller George Riebau and, during his seven-year apprenticeship, he read many books, including Isaac Watts' The Improvement of the Mind, and he enthusiastically implemented the principles and suggestions contained therein. He developed an interest in science and specifically in electricity. In particular, he was inspired by the book Conversations in Chemistry by Jane Marcet.
At the age of twenty, in 1812, at the end of his apprenticeship, Faraday attended lectures by the eminent English chemist and physicist Humphry Davy of the Royal Institution and Royal Society, and John Tatum, founder of the City Philosophical Society. Many tickets for these lectures were given to Faraday by William Dance (one of the founders of the Royal Philharmonic Society). Afterwards, Faraday sent Davy a three hundred page book based on notes taken during the lectures. Davy's reply was immediate, kind, and favorable. When Davy damaged his eyesight in an accident with nitrogen trichloride, he decided to employ Faraday as a secretary. When John Payne, one of the Royal Institution's assistants, was fired, Sir Humphry Davy was asked to find a replacement. He appointed Faraday as Chemical Assistant at the Royal Institution on March 1.
In the class-based English society of the time, Faraday was not considered a gentleman. When Davy went on a long tour to the continent in 1813-5, his valet did not wish to go. Faraday was going as Davy's scientific assistant, and was asked to act as Davy's valet until a replacement could be found in Paris. Davy failed to find a replacement, and Faraday was forced to fill the role of valet as well as assistant throughout the trip. Davy's wife, Jane Apreece, refused to treat Faraday as an equal (making him travel outside the coach, eat with the servants, etc.) and generally made Faraday so miserable that he contemplated returning to England alone and giving up science altogether. The trip did, however, give him access to the European scientific elite and a host of stimulating ideas.
His sponsor and mentor was John 'Mad Jack' Fuller, who created the Fullerian Professorship of Chemistry at the Royal Institution.
Faraday was a devout Christian and a member of the small Sandemanian denomination, an offshoot of the Church of Scotland. He later served two terms as an elder in the group's church.
Faraday married Sarah Barnard (1800-1879) on June 2, 1821, although they would never have children. They met through attending the Sandemanian church.
He was elected a member of the Royal Society in 1824, appointed director of the laboratory in 1825; and in 1833 he was appointed Fullerian professor of chemistry in the institution for life, without the obligation to deliver lectures.
The title page of The Chemical History of a Candle (1861)
Faraday's earliest chemical work was as an assistant to Davy. He made a special study of chlorine, and discovered two new chlorides of carbon. He also made the first rough experiments on the diffusion of gases, a phenomenon first pointed out by John Dalton, the physical importance of which was more fully brought to light by Thomas Graham and Joseph Loschmidt. He succeeded in liquefying several gases; he investigated the alloys of steel, and produced several new kinds of glass intended for optical purposes. A specimen of one of these heavy glasses afterwards became historically important as the substance in which Faraday detected the rotation of the plane of polarisation of light when the glass was placed in a magnetic field, and also as the substance which was first repelled by the poles of the magnet. He also endeavoured, with some success, to make the general methods of chemistry, as distinguished from its results, the subject of special study and of popular exposition.
He invented an early form of what was to become the Bunsen burner, which is used almost universally in science laboratories as a convenient source of heat. See page 127 of Faraday's Chemical Manipulation, Being Instructions to Students in Chemistry (1827)
Faraday worked extensively in the field of chemistry, discovering chemical substances such as benzene (which he called bicarburet of hydrogen), inventing the system of oxidation numbers, and liquefying gases such as chlorine. In 1820 Faraday reported on the first syntheses of compounds made from carbon and chlorine, C 2 H 6 and C 2 H 4 , and published his results the following year. Faraday also determined the composition of the chlorine clathrate hydrate, which had been discovered by Humphry Davy in 1810.
Faraday also discovered the laws of electrolysis and popularized terminology such as anode, cathode, electrode, and ion, terms largely created by William Whewell.
Faraday was the first to report what later came to be called metallic nanoparticles. In 1847 he discovered that the optical properties of gold colloids differed from those of the corresponding bulk metal. This was probably the first reported observation of the effects of quantum size, and might be considered to be the birth of nanoscience.
Faraday's greatest work was probably with electricity and magnetism. The first experiment which he recorded was the construction of a voltaic pile with seven halfpence pieces, stacked together with seven disks of sheet zinc, and six pieces of paper moistened with salt water. With this pile he decomposed sulphate of magnesia (first letter to Abbott, July 12, 1812).
[[Image:Faraday photograph ii.jpg|thumb|200px|left|Michael Faraday holding a glass bar of the type he used in 1845 to show that magnetism can affect light. Detail of an engraving by Henry Adlard, based on an earlier photograph by Maull & Polyblank ca. 1857. See National Portrait Gallery, UK ]]
In 1821, soon after the Danish physicist and chemist, Hans Christian Ãrsted discovered the phenomenon of electromagnetism, Davy and British scientist William Hyde Wollaston tried but failed to design an electric motor. Faraday, having discussed the problem with the two men, went on to build two devices to produce what he called electromagnetic rotation: a continuous circular motion from the circular magnetic force around a wire and a wire extending into a pool of mercury with a magnet placed inside would rotate around the magnet if supplied with current from a chemical battery. The latter device is known as a homopolar motor. These experiments and inventions form the foundation of modern electromagnetic technology. Faraday published his results without acknowledging his debt to Wollaston and Davy, and the resulting controversy caused Faraday to withdraw from electromagnetic research for several years.
At this stage, there is also evidence to suggest that Davy may have been trying to slow Faradayâs rise as a scientist (or natural philosopher as it was known then). In 1825, for instance, Davy set him onto optical glass experiments, which progressed for six years with no great results. It was not until Davy's death, in 1829, that Faraday stopped these fruitless tasks and moved on to endeavors that were more worthwhile. Two years later, in 1831, he began his great series of experiments in which he discovered electromagnetic induction. Joseph Henry likely discovered self-induction a few months earlier and both may have been anticipated by the work of Francesco Zantedeschi in Italy in 1829 and 1830.
Faraday's breakthrough came when he wrapped two insulated coils of wire around a massive iron ring, bolted to a chair, and found that upon passing a current through one coil, a momentary current was induced in the other coil. This phenomenon is known as mutual induction. The iron ring-coil apparatus is still on display at the Royal Institution. In subsequent experiments he found that if he moved a magnet through a loop of wire, an electric current flowed in the wire. The current also flowed if the loop was moved over a stationary magnet. His demonstrations established that a changing magnetic field produces an electric field. This relation was mathematically modelled by Faraday's law, which subsequently became one of the four Maxwell equations. These in turn have evolved into the generalization known today as field theory.
Michael Faraday - statue in Savoy Place, London.
Sculptor John Henry Foley RA
Faraday later used the principle to construct the electric dynamo, the ancestor of modern power generators.
In 1839 he completed a series of experiments aimed at investigating the fundamental nature of electricity. Faraday used "static", batteries, and "animal electricity" to produce the phenomena of electrostatic attraction, electrolysis, magnetism, etc. He concluded that, contrary to scientific opinion of the time, the divisions between the various "kinds" of electricity were illusory. Faraday instead proposed that only a single "electricity" exists, and the changing values of quantity and intensity (voltage and charge) would produce different groups of phenomena.
Near the end of his career Faraday proposed that electromagnetic forces extended into the empty space around the conductor. This idea was rejected by his fellow scientists, and Faraday did not live to see this idea eventually accepted. Faraday's concept of lines of flux emanating from charged bodies and magnets provided a way to visualize electric and magnetic fields. That mental model was crucial to the successful development of electromechanical devices which dominated engineering and industry for the remainder of the 19th century.
In 1845, he discovered the phenomenon that he named diamagnetism, and what is now called the Faraday effect: The plane of polarization of linearly polarized light propagated through a material medium can be rotated by the application of an external magnetic field aligned in the propagation direction. He wrote in his notebook, "I have at last succeeded in illuminating a magnetic curve or line of force and in magnetising a ray of light". This established that magnetic force and light were related.
In his work on static electricity, Faraday demonstrated that the charge only resided on the exterior of a charged conductor, and exterior charge had no influence on anything enclosed within a conductor. This is because the exterior charges redistribute such that the interior fields due to them cancel. This shielding effect is used in what is now known as a Faraday cage.
Faraday was an excellent experimentalist who conveyed his ideas in clear and simple language. However, his mathematical abilities did not extend as far as trigonometry or any but the simplest algebra. It was James Clerk Maxwell who took the work of Faraday, and others, and consolidated it with a set of equations that lie at the base of all modern theories of electromagnetic phenomena.
Michael Faraday meets Father Thames, from Punch (July 21, 1855)
Beyond his scientific research into areas such as chemistry, electricity, and magnetism at the Royal Institution, Faraday undertook numerous, and often time-consuming, service projects for private enterprise and the British government. This work included investigations of explosions in mines, being an expert witness in court, and the preparation of high-quality optical glass.
As a respected scientist in a nation with strong maritime interests, Faraday spent extensive amounts of time on projects such as the construction and operation of light houses and protecting the bottoms of ships from corrosion.
Faraday also was active in what would now be called environmental science, or engineering. He investigated industrial pollution at Swansea and was consulted on air pollution at the Royal Mint. In July of 1855, Faraday wrote a letter to The Times on the subject of the foul condition of the River Thames, which resulted in an oft-reprinted cartoon in Punch. (See also The Great Stink.)
Faraday assisted with planning and judging of exhibits for the Great Exhibition of 1851 in London. He also advised the National Gallery on the cleaning and protection of its art collection, and served on the National Gallery Site Commission in 1857.
Education was another area of service for Faraday. He lectured on the topic in 1854 at the Royal Institution, and in 1862 he appeared before a Public Schools Commission to give his views on education in Great Britain. Faraday also weighed in, negatively, on the public's fascination with table-turning, mesmerism, and seances, chastising both the public and the nation's educational system. See The Illustrated London News, July 1853, for Faraday's comments.
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In June of 1832, the University of Oxford granted Faraday a Doctor of Civil Law degree (honorary). During his lifetime, Faraday rejected a knighthood and twice refused to become President of the Royal Society.
In 1848, as a result of representations by the Prince Consort, Michael Faraday was awarded a grace and favour house in Hampton Court, Surrey free of all expenses or upkeep. This was the Master Mason's House, later called Faraday House, and now No.37 Hampton Court Road. In 1858 Faraday retired to live there. Twickenham Museum on Faraday and Faraday House, Accessed June 2006
Faraday died at his house at Hampton Court on August 25, 1867. He turned down burial in Westminster Abbey, but he has a memorial plaque there, near Isaac Newton's tomb. Faraday was interred in the Sandemanian plot in Highgate Cemetery.
Michael Faraday's grave at Highgate Cemetery
Faraday gave a successful series of lectures on the chemistry and physics of flames at the Royal Institution, entitled The Chemical History of a Candle. This was one of the earlier Christmas lectures for young people, which are still given each year. Between 1827 and 1860, Faraday gave the Christmas lecture a record nineteen times.
Faraday refused to participate in the production of chemical weapons for the Crimean War citing ethical reasons.
A statue of Faraday stands in Savoy Place, London, outside the Institution of Electrical Engineers.
A recently built hall of accommodation at Brunel University is named after Faraday.
A hall at Loughborough University was named after Faraday in 1960. Near the entrance to its dining hall is a bronze casting, which depicts the symbol of an electrical transformer, and inside there hangs a portrait, both in Faraday's honour.
Faraday's picture was printed on British £20 banknotes from 1991 until 2001. Bank of England, Withdrawn Notes
In the video game Chromehounds there is a ThermoVision Device named the Faraday.
The former UK Faraday Atmospheric Research Station in Antarctica was named after him.
Faraday was one of the then eight foreign members of the French Academy of Sciences.
Michael Faraday's signature
Faraday's books, with the exception of Chemical Manipulation, were collections of scientific papers or transcriptions of lectures. See page 220 of Hamilton's A Life of Discovery: Michael Faraday, Giant of the Scientific Revolution (2002) Since his death, Faraday's diary has been published, as have several large volumes of his letters and Faraday's journal from his travels with Davy in 1813 - 1815.
* Chemical Manipulation, Being Instructions to Students in Chemistry, John Murray, 1st ed. 1827, 2nd ed. 1830, 3rd ed. 1842
* Experimental Researches in Electricity, vols. i. and ii., Richard and John Edward Taylor, vols. i. and ii.. 1844 and 1847; vol. iii., 1844; vol. iii. Richard Taylor and William Francis, 1855
* Experimental Researches in Chemistry and Physics, Taylor and Francis, 1859
* A Course of Six Lectures on the Chemical History of a Candle, edited by W. Crookes, Griffin, Bohn & Co., 1861
* On the Various Forces in Nature, edited by W. Crookes, Chatto & Windus, 1873
* Faraday's Diary edited by T. Martin was published in eight volumes, 1932 - 1936
* Curiosity Perfectly Satisfyed: Faraday's Travels in Europe 1813-1815, edited by B. Bowers and L. Symons, Institution of Electrical Engineers, 1991
* The Correspondence of Michael Faraday, edited by F. A. J. L. James, INSPEC, Inc., volume 1, 1991; volume 2, 1993; volume 3, 1996; volume 4, 1999
* "Nothing is too wonderful to be true if it be consistent with the laws of nature, and in such things as these, experiment is the best test of such consistency." From the entry of 19 March 1849 in Faraday's Diary
* "Work. Finish. Publish." â his well-known advice to the young William Crookes
* "The important thing is to know how to take all things quietly."
* Regarding the hereafter, "Speculations? I have none. I am resting on certainties. I know whom I have believed and am persuaded that he is able to keep that which I have committed unto him against that day."
* "Next Sabbath day (the 22nd) I shall complete my 70th year. I can hardly think of myself so old."
*Above the doorways of the Pfahler Hall of Science at Ursinus College in Collegeville, Pennsylvania, there is a stone inscription of a quote attributed to Michael Faraday which reads "but still try, for who knows what is possible..." See
* "One day sir, you may tax it." Faraday's reply to William Gladstone, then British Minister of Finance, when asked of the practical value of electricity.
* "If you would cause your view ... to be acknowledged by scientific men; you would do a great service to science. If you would even get them to say yes or no to your conclusions it would help to clear the future progress. I believe some hesitate because they do not like their thoughts disturbed." From Life and Letters, 2:389.
* Faraday rotator
* Superconductivity
* Tyndall, John, Faraday as a Discoverer, (Longmans, 1st ed. 1868, 2nd ed. 1870).
* Bence Jones, Henry (1870). The Life and Letters of Faraday in 2 vols, Longmans.
* Gladstone, J. H. (1872). Michael Faraday, Macmillan.
* Thompson, Silvanus (1901, reprinted 2005). Michael Faraday, His Life and Work. Cassell and Company, London, 1901; reprint by Kessenger Publishing, Whitefish, MT. ISBN 1-4179-7036-7
* The British Electrical and Allied Manufacturers Association (1931). Faraday. R. & R. Clark, Ltd., Edinburgh, 1931.
* Williams, L. Pearce (1971), Faraday: A Biography, Simon and Schuster.
* Cantor, Geoffrey (1991). Michael Faraday, Sandemanian and Scientist, Macmillian, ISBN 0-333-55077
* Hamilton, James (2002). Faraday: The Life. London: Harper Collins. ISBN 0-00-716376-2
* Hamilton, James (2004). A Life of Discovery: Michael Faraday, Giant of the Scientific Revolution. New York: Random House. ISBN 1-4000-6016-8
* Agassi, Joseph (1971), Faraday as a Natural Philosopher, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
* Ames, Joseph Sweetman (Ed.), The discovery of induced electric currents Vol. 2. Memoirs, by Michael Faraday. New York, Cincinnati [etc.] American book company [c1900] LCCN 00005889
* Gooding, David (Ed.) (1985), Faraday Rediscovered: Essays on the Life and Work of Michael Faraday, 1791-1867, London/New York, Macmillan/Stockton
* Thomas, John Meurig (1991). Michael Faraday and the Royal Institution: The Genius of Man and Place Bristol: Hilger. ISBN 0-7503-0145-7
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* Biography at The Royal Institution of Great Britain
* Faraday as a Discoverer by John Tyndall, Project Gutenberg (downloads)
* The Christian Character of Michael Faraday
* Michael Faraday on the British twenty-pound banknote
* The Life and Discoveries of Michael Faraday by J. A. Crowther, London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1920
* "Faraday" at LoveToKnow 1911 Britannica Online Encyclopedia.
*
* (downloads)
* "Experimental Researches in Electricity" by Michael Faraday Original text with Biographical Introduction by Professor John Tyndall, 1914, Everyman edition.
* Video Podcast with Sir John Cadogan talking about Benzene since Faraday
* The letters of Faraday and Schoenbein 1836-1862. With notes, comments and references to contemporary letters (1899) full download PDF
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Michael_Faraday | Was faraday Christian of the small Sandemanian denomination? | yes | data/set4/a7 | Michael_Faraday
Michael Faraday, FRS (September 22, 1791 â August 25, 1867) was an English chemist and physicist (or natural philosopher, in the terminology of that time) who contributed to the fields of electromagnetism and electrochemistry.
Faraday studied the magnetic field around a conductor carrying a DC electric current, and established the basis for the magnetic field concept in physics. He discovered electromagnetic induction, diamagnetism and electrolysis. He established that magnetism could affect rays of light and that there was an underlying relationship between the two phenomena. Michael Faraday entry at the 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica hosted by LovetoKnow Retrieved January 2007. Institution of Engineering and Technology, London Archives, Michael Faraday His inventions of electromagnetic rotary devices formed the foundation of electric motor technology, and it was largely due to his efforts that electricity became viable for use in technology.
As a chemist, Faraday discovered benzene, investigated the clathrate hydrate of chlorine, invented an early form of the bunsen burner and the system of oxidation numbers, and popularized terminology such as anode, cathode, electrode, and ion.
Although Faraday received little formal education and knew little of higher mathematics, such as calculus, he was one of the most influential scientists in history. Some historians of science refer to him as the best experimentalist in the history of science. "best experimentalist in the history of science." Quoting Dr Peter Ford, from the University of Bathâs Department of Physics. Accessed January 2007. The SI unit of capacitance, the farad, is named after him, as is the Faraday constant, the charge on a mole of electrons (about 96,485 coulombs). Faraday's law of induction states that a magnetic field changing in time creates a proportional electromotive force.
Faraday was the first and foremost Fullerian Professor of Chemistry at the Royal Institution of Great Britain, a position to which he was appointed for life.
Michael Faraday from a photograph by John Watkins, British Library
Michael Faraday was born in Newington Butts, near present-day South London, England. His family was not well off. His father, James, was a member of the Sandemanian sect of Christianity. James Faraday had come to London ca 1790 from Outhgill in Westmorland, where he had been the village blacksmith. The young Michael Faraday, one of four children, having only the most basic of school educations, had to largely educate himself. "Michael Faraday." History of Science and Technology. Houghton Mifflin Company, 2004. Answers.com 4 June 2007. /ref> At fourteen he became apprenticed to a local bookbinder and bookseller George Riebau and, during his seven-year apprenticeship, he read many books, including Isaac Watts' The Improvement of the Mind, and he enthusiastically implemented the principles and suggestions contained therein. He developed an interest in science and specifically in electricity. In particular, he was inspired by the book Conversations in Chemistry by Jane Marcet.
At the age of twenty, in 1812, at the end of his apprenticeship, Faraday attended lectures by the eminent English chemist and physicist Humphry Davy of the Royal Institution and Royal Society, and John Tatum, founder of the City Philosophical Society. Many tickets for these lectures were given to Faraday by William Dance (one of the founders of the Royal Philharmonic Society). Afterwards, Faraday sent Davy a three hundred page book based on notes taken during the lectures. Davy's reply was immediate, kind, and favorable. When Davy damaged his eyesight in an accident with nitrogen trichloride, he decided to employ Faraday as a secretary. When John Payne, one of the Royal Institution's assistants, was fired, Sir Humphry Davy was asked to find a replacement. He appointed Faraday as Chemical Assistant at the Royal Institution on March 1.
In the class-based English society of the time, Faraday was not considered a gentleman. When Davy went on a long tour to the continent in 1813-5, his valet did not wish to go. Faraday was going as Davy's scientific assistant, and was asked to act as Davy's valet until a replacement could be found in Paris. Davy failed to find a replacement, and Faraday was forced to fill the role of valet as well as assistant throughout the trip. Davy's wife, Jane Apreece, refused to treat Faraday as an equal (making him travel outside the coach, eat with the servants, etc.) and generally made Faraday so miserable that he contemplated returning to England alone and giving up science altogether. The trip did, however, give him access to the European scientific elite and a host of stimulating ideas.
His sponsor and mentor was John 'Mad Jack' Fuller, who created the Fullerian Professorship of Chemistry at the Royal Institution.
Faraday was a devout Christian and a member of the small Sandemanian denomination, an offshoot of the Church of Scotland. He later served two terms as an elder in the group's church.
Faraday married Sarah Barnard (1800-1879) on June 2, 1821, although they would never have children. They met through attending the Sandemanian church.
He was elected a member of the Royal Society in 1824, appointed director of the laboratory in 1825; and in 1833 he was appointed Fullerian professor of chemistry in the institution for life, without the obligation to deliver lectures.
The title page of The Chemical History of a Candle (1861)
Faraday's earliest chemical work was as an assistant to Davy. He made a special study of chlorine, and discovered two new chlorides of carbon. He also made the first rough experiments on the diffusion of gases, a phenomenon first pointed out by John Dalton, the physical importance of which was more fully brought to light by Thomas Graham and Joseph Loschmidt. He succeeded in liquefying several gases; he investigated the alloys of steel, and produced several new kinds of glass intended for optical purposes. A specimen of one of these heavy glasses afterwards became historically important as the substance in which Faraday detected the rotation of the plane of polarisation of light when the glass was placed in a magnetic field, and also as the substance which was first repelled by the poles of the magnet. He also endeavoured, with some success, to make the general methods of chemistry, as distinguished from its results, the subject of special study and of popular exposition.
He invented an early form of what was to become the Bunsen burner, which is used almost universally in science laboratories as a convenient source of heat. See page 127 of Faraday's Chemical Manipulation, Being Instructions to Students in Chemistry (1827)
Faraday worked extensively in the field of chemistry, discovering chemical substances such as benzene (which he called bicarburet of hydrogen), inventing the system of oxidation numbers, and liquefying gases such as chlorine. In 1820 Faraday reported on the first syntheses of compounds made from carbon and chlorine, C 2 H 6 and C 2 H 4 , and published his results the following year. Faraday also determined the composition of the chlorine clathrate hydrate, which had been discovered by Humphry Davy in 1810.
Faraday also discovered the laws of electrolysis and popularized terminology such as anode, cathode, electrode, and ion, terms largely created by William Whewell.
Faraday was the first to report what later came to be called metallic nanoparticles. In 1847 he discovered that the optical properties of gold colloids differed from those of the corresponding bulk metal. This was probably the first reported observation of the effects of quantum size, and might be considered to be the birth of nanoscience.
Faraday's greatest work was probably with electricity and magnetism. The first experiment which he recorded was the construction of a voltaic pile with seven halfpence pieces, stacked together with seven disks of sheet zinc, and six pieces of paper moistened with salt water. With this pile he decomposed sulphate of magnesia (first letter to Abbott, July 12, 1812).
[[Image:Faraday photograph ii.jpg|thumb|200px|left|Michael Faraday holding a glass bar of the type he used in 1845 to show that magnetism can affect light. Detail of an engraving by Henry Adlard, based on an earlier photograph by Maull & Polyblank ca. 1857. See National Portrait Gallery, UK ]]
In 1821, soon after the Danish physicist and chemist, Hans Christian Ãrsted discovered the phenomenon of electromagnetism, Davy and British scientist William Hyde Wollaston tried but failed to design an electric motor. Faraday, having discussed the problem with the two men, went on to build two devices to produce what he called electromagnetic rotation: a continuous circular motion from the circular magnetic force around a wire and a wire extending into a pool of mercury with a magnet placed inside would rotate around the magnet if supplied with current from a chemical battery. The latter device is known as a homopolar motor. These experiments and inventions form the foundation of modern electromagnetic technology. Faraday published his results without acknowledging his debt to Wollaston and Davy, and the resulting controversy caused Faraday to withdraw from electromagnetic research for several years.
At this stage, there is also evidence to suggest that Davy may have been trying to slow Faradayâs rise as a scientist (or natural philosopher as it was known then). In 1825, for instance, Davy set him onto optical glass experiments, which progressed for six years with no great results. It was not until Davy's death, in 1829, that Faraday stopped these fruitless tasks and moved on to endeavors that were more worthwhile. Two years later, in 1831, he began his great series of experiments in which he discovered electromagnetic induction. Joseph Henry likely discovered self-induction a few months earlier and both may have been anticipated by the work of Francesco Zantedeschi in Italy in 1829 and 1830.
Faraday's breakthrough came when he wrapped two insulated coils of wire around a massive iron ring, bolted to a chair, and found that upon passing a current through one coil, a momentary current was induced in the other coil. This phenomenon is known as mutual induction. The iron ring-coil apparatus is still on display at the Royal Institution. In subsequent experiments he found that if he moved a magnet through a loop of wire, an electric current flowed in the wire. The current also flowed if the loop was moved over a stationary magnet. His demonstrations established that a changing magnetic field produces an electric field. This relation was mathematically modelled by Faraday's law, which subsequently became one of the four Maxwell equations. These in turn have evolved into the generalization known today as field theory.
Michael Faraday - statue in Savoy Place, London.
Sculptor John Henry Foley RA
Faraday later used the principle to construct the electric dynamo, the ancestor of modern power generators.
In 1839 he completed a series of experiments aimed at investigating the fundamental nature of electricity. Faraday used "static", batteries, and "animal electricity" to produce the phenomena of electrostatic attraction, electrolysis, magnetism, etc. He concluded that, contrary to scientific opinion of the time, the divisions between the various "kinds" of electricity were illusory. Faraday instead proposed that only a single "electricity" exists, and the changing values of quantity and intensity (voltage and charge) would produce different groups of phenomena.
Near the end of his career Faraday proposed that electromagnetic forces extended into the empty space around the conductor. This idea was rejected by his fellow scientists, and Faraday did not live to see this idea eventually accepted. Faraday's concept of lines of flux emanating from charged bodies and magnets provided a way to visualize electric and magnetic fields. That mental model was crucial to the successful development of electromechanical devices which dominated engineering and industry for the remainder of the 19th century.
In 1845, he discovered the phenomenon that he named diamagnetism, and what is now called the Faraday effect: The plane of polarization of linearly polarized light propagated through a material medium can be rotated by the application of an external magnetic field aligned in the propagation direction. He wrote in his notebook, "I have at last succeeded in illuminating a magnetic curve or line of force and in magnetising a ray of light". This established that magnetic force and light were related.
In his work on static electricity, Faraday demonstrated that the charge only resided on the exterior of a charged conductor, and exterior charge had no influence on anything enclosed within a conductor. This is because the exterior charges redistribute such that the interior fields due to them cancel. This shielding effect is used in what is now known as a Faraday cage.
Faraday was an excellent experimentalist who conveyed his ideas in clear and simple language. However, his mathematical abilities did not extend as far as trigonometry or any but the simplest algebra. It was James Clerk Maxwell who took the work of Faraday, and others, and consolidated it with a set of equations that lie at the base of all modern theories of electromagnetic phenomena.
Michael Faraday meets Father Thames, from Punch (July 21, 1855)
Beyond his scientific research into areas such as chemistry, electricity, and magnetism at the Royal Institution, Faraday undertook numerous, and often time-consuming, service projects for private enterprise and the British government. This work included investigations of explosions in mines, being an expert witness in court, and the preparation of high-quality optical glass.
As a respected scientist in a nation with strong maritime interests, Faraday spent extensive amounts of time on projects such as the construction and operation of light houses and protecting the bottoms of ships from corrosion.
Faraday also was active in what would now be called environmental science, or engineering. He investigated industrial pollution at Swansea and was consulted on air pollution at the Royal Mint. In July of 1855, Faraday wrote a letter to The Times on the subject of the foul condition of the River Thames, which resulted in an oft-reprinted cartoon in Punch. (See also The Great Stink.)
Faraday assisted with planning and judging of exhibits for the Great Exhibition of 1851 in London. He also advised the National Gallery on the cleaning and protection of its art collection, and served on the National Gallery Site Commission in 1857.
Education was another area of service for Faraday. He lectured on the topic in 1854 at the Royal Institution, and in 1862 he appeared before a Public Schools Commission to give his views on education in Great Britain. Faraday also weighed in, negatively, on the public's fascination with table-turning, mesmerism, and seances, chastising both the public and the nation's educational system. See The Illustrated London News, July 1853, for Faraday's comments.
125px
In June of 1832, the University of Oxford granted Faraday a Doctor of Civil Law degree (honorary). During his lifetime, Faraday rejected a knighthood and twice refused to become President of the Royal Society.
In 1848, as a result of representations by the Prince Consort, Michael Faraday was awarded a grace and favour house in Hampton Court, Surrey free of all expenses or upkeep. This was the Master Mason's House, later called Faraday House, and now No.37 Hampton Court Road. In 1858 Faraday retired to live there. Twickenham Museum on Faraday and Faraday House, Accessed June 2006
Faraday died at his house at Hampton Court on August 25, 1867. He turned down burial in Westminster Abbey, but he has a memorial plaque there, near Isaac Newton's tomb. Faraday was interred in the Sandemanian plot in Highgate Cemetery.
Michael Faraday's grave at Highgate Cemetery
Faraday gave a successful series of lectures on the chemistry and physics of flames at the Royal Institution, entitled The Chemical History of a Candle. This was one of the earlier Christmas lectures for young people, which are still given each year. Between 1827 and 1860, Faraday gave the Christmas lecture a record nineteen times.
Faraday refused to participate in the production of chemical weapons for the Crimean War citing ethical reasons.
A statue of Faraday stands in Savoy Place, London, outside the Institution of Electrical Engineers.
A recently built hall of accommodation at Brunel University is named after Faraday.
A hall at Loughborough University was named after Faraday in 1960. Near the entrance to its dining hall is a bronze casting, which depicts the symbol of an electrical transformer, and inside there hangs a portrait, both in Faraday's honour.
Faraday's picture was printed on British £20 banknotes from 1991 until 2001. Bank of England, Withdrawn Notes
In the video game Chromehounds there is a ThermoVision Device named the Faraday.
The former UK Faraday Atmospheric Research Station in Antarctica was named after him.
Faraday was one of the then eight foreign members of the French Academy of Sciences.
Michael Faraday's signature
Faraday's books, with the exception of Chemical Manipulation, were collections of scientific papers or transcriptions of lectures. See page 220 of Hamilton's A Life of Discovery: Michael Faraday, Giant of the Scientific Revolution (2002) Since his death, Faraday's diary has been published, as have several large volumes of his letters and Faraday's journal from his travels with Davy in 1813 - 1815.
* Chemical Manipulation, Being Instructions to Students in Chemistry, John Murray, 1st ed. 1827, 2nd ed. 1830, 3rd ed. 1842
* Experimental Researches in Electricity, vols. i. and ii., Richard and John Edward Taylor, vols. i. and ii.. 1844 and 1847; vol. iii., 1844; vol. iii. Richard Taylor and William Francis, 1855
* Experimental Researches in Chemistry and Physics, Taylor and Francis, 1859
* A Course of Six Lectures on the Chemical History of a Candle, edited by W. Crookes, Griffin, Bohn & Co., 1861
* On the Various Forces in Nature, edited by W. Crookes, Chatto & Windus, 1873
* Faraday's Diary edited by T. Martin was published in eight volumes, 1932 - 1936
* Curiosity Perfectly Satisfyed: Faraday's Travels in Europe 1813-1815, edited by B. Bowers and L. Symons, Institution of Electrical Engineers, 1991
* The Correspondence of Michael Faraday, edited by F. A. J. L. James, INSPEC, Inc., volume 1, 1991; volume 2, 1993; volume 3, 1996; volume 4, 1999
* "Nothing is too wonderful to be true if it be consistent with the laws of nature, and in such things as these, experiment is the best test of such consistency." From the entry of 19 March 1849 in Faraday's Diary
* "Work. Finish. Publish." â his well-known advice to the young William Crookes
* "The important thing is to know how to take all things quietly."
* Regarding the hereafter, "Speculations? I have none. I am resting on certainties. I know whom I have believed and am persuaded that he is able to keep that which I have committed unto him against that day."
* "Next Sabbath day (the 22nd) I shall complete my 70th year. I can hardly think of myself so old."
*Above the doorways of the Pfahler Hall of Science at Ursinus College in Collegeville, Pennsylvania, there is a stone inscription of a quote attributed to Michael Faraday which reads "but still try, for who knows what is possible..." See
* "One day sir, you may tax it." Faraday's reply to William Gladstone, then British Minister of Finance, when asked of the practical value of electricity.
* "If you would cause your view ... to be acknowledged by scientific men; you would do a great service to science. If you would even get them to say yes or no to your conclusions it would help to clear the future progress. I believe some hesitate because they do not like their thoughts disturbed." From Life and Letters, 2:389.
* Faraday rotator
* Superconductivity
* Tyndall, John, Faraday as a Discoverer, (Longmans, 1st ed. 1868, 2nd ed. 1870).
* Bence Jones, Henry (1870). The Life and Letters of Faraday in 2 vols, Longmans.
* Gladstone, J. H. (1872). Michael Faraday, Macmillan.
* Thompson, Silvanus (1901, reprinted 2005). Michael Faraday, His Life and Work. Cassell and Company, London, 1901; reprint by Kessenger Publishing, Whitefish, MT. ISBN 1-4179-7036-7
* The British Electrical and Allied Manufacturers Association (1931). Faraday. R. & R. Clark, Ltd., Edinburgh, 1931.
* Williams, L. Pearce (1971), Faraday: A Biography, Simon and Schuster.
* Cantor, Geoffrey (1991). Michael Faraday, Sandemanian and Scientist, Macmillian, ISBN 0-333-55077
* Hamilton, James (2002). Faraday: The Life. London: Harper Collins. ISBN 0-00-716376-2
* Hamilton, James (2004). A Life of Discovery: Michael Faraday, Giant of the Scientific Revolution. New York: Random House. ISBN 1-4000-6016-8
* Agassi, Joseph (1971), Faraday as a Natural Philosopher, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
* Ames, Joseph Sweetman (Ed.), The discovery of induced electric currents Vol. 2. Memoirs, by Michael Faraday. New York, Cincinnati [etc.] American book company [c1900] LCCN 00005889
* Gooding, David (Ed.) (1985), Faraday Rediscovered: Essays on the Life and Work of Michael Faraday, 1791-1867, London/New York, Macmillan/Stockton
* Thomas, John Meurig (1991). Michael Faraday and the Royal Institution: The Genius of Man and Place Bristol: Hilger. ISBN 0-7503-0145-7
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* Biography at The Royal Institution of Great Britain
* Faraday as a Discoverer by John Tyndall, Project Gutenberg (downloads)
* The Christian Character of Michael Faraday
* Michael Faraday on the British twenty-pound banknote
* The Life and Discoveries of Michael Faraday by J. A. Crowther, London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1920
* "Faraday" at LoveToKnow 1911 Britannica Online Encyclopedia.
*
* (downloads)
* "Experimental Researches in Electricity" by Michael Faraday Original text with Biographical Introduction by Professor John Tyndall, 1914, Everyman edition.
* Video Podcast with Sir John Cadogan talking about Benzene since Faraday
* The letters of Faraday and Schoenbein 1836-1862. With notes, comments and references to contemporary letters (1899) full download PDF
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|
Nassau | Is Nassau Sound a body of water in Maine? | no | data/set3/a2 | Nassau
__NOTOC__
Nassau may mean the following:
Nassau, Germany: a town in Rhineland-Palatinate founded in AD 915, after which all the following are named, directly or indirectly:
*Nassau Castle, ancestral seat of the House of Nassau
*Duchy of Nassau: an extinct German duchy
*Hesse-Nassau: the Prussian province formed by annexation of that duchy
*Baarle-Nassau: a town in the southern Netherlands
*Nassau-Siegen: a historical territory in Germany
*Nassau, Bahamas: capital city of The Bahamas, on the island of New Providence.
*Nassau, Delaware: a community in the U.S.
*Nassau, Minnesota: a city in the U.S.
*Nassau (village), New York: a village in the U.S.
*Nassau (town), New York: a town in the U.S.
*Nassau Bay, Texas: a town in the U.S.
*East Nassau, New York: a village in the U.S.
*Nassau County, Florida: a county in the U.S.
*Nassau County, New York: a county in the U.S.
*Nassau Village-Ratliff, Florida: a town in the U.S.
*Nassau (Cook Islands): one of the Northern Cook Islands
*Nassau Range: one of the names of the highest mountain range in Indonesia
*Nassau Fjord: a fjord in Prince William Sound, Alaska, U.S.
*Nassau Street (Dublin): a street in Dublin, Ireland.
*Nassau Street (Winnipeg): a street in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada.
*Nassau Street (Princeton): a street in Princeton, New Jersey, U.S.
*Nassau Street (Manhattan): a street in Lower Manhattan, New York City, U.S.
*Nassau, Saxony: a village in Saxony, Germany, in the Ore Mountains
Of the House of Orange-Nassau, royal dynasty of the Netherlands:
*Adolf of Nassau
*Johan Willem Friso of Orange-Nassau
*Louis of Nassau
*Maurice of Nassau
*Sophia of Nassau
*Willem of Nassau
*William Henry Nassau de Zuylestein, 4th Earl of Rochford
*John Maurice of Nassau
*Adolf of Nassau-Weilburg
*Adolphe, Grand Duke of Luxembourg
*Guillaume IV, Grand Duke of Luxembourg
*Marie-Adélaïde, Grand Duchess of Luxembourg
*Charlotte, Grand Duchess of Luxembourg
*Jean, Grand Duke of Luxembourg
*Henri, Grand Duke of Luxembourg
*Nassau William Senior
*House of Nassau
*List of rulers of Nassau
*Nassau (steamboat), a steamboat placed in operation by Robert Fulton between Manhattan and Brooklyn in the U.S. state of New York in 1814
*Nassau Hall: the oldest building at Princeton University, and a meeting place for the USA's Second Continental Congress
*Evangelical Church of Hesse and Nassau; a church in Germany
*Fort Nassau: name of several forts built by the Dutch in the 17th century
*Nassau agreement: a treaty between the United States and the United Kingdom trading US-built Polaris missiles for rights to lease a nuclear submarine base in the Holy Loch, near Glasgow
*Nassau grouper: an endangered species of fish
*Nassau Community College: a two-year college in Nassau County, New York, USA
*Nassau Stakes: a horse race in the United Kingdom
*Nassau Stakes (Canada): a horse race in Canada
*Nassau Sound: a body of water in the U.S. state of Florida
*Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum; an ice hockey arena in Uniondale, New York, USA
*USS Nassau (CVE-16): a United States Navy escort aircraft carrier
*USS Nassau (LHA-4): a United States Navy amphibious assault ship
*SMS Nassau: a German battleship
*Nassau (bet): a type of bet between golfers that is essentially three separate bets. Money is wagered on the best score in the front 9, back 9, and total 18 holes.
* Nassau (album): a 1995 album by The Sea and Cake.
*Nassau Coliseum: an arena in Uniondale, New York, USA.
*Nassau (cookie): A chocolate peanut butter sandwich cookie from Pepperidge Farm.
*Nassau Royale: A brand of rum, an alcoholic spirit.
*Nassau Station: In the video game, Dead or Alive 4, a fighting arena modeled after a Magnetic Accelerator Cannon station from Halo 2
|
Nassau | Was Nassau placed in operation by Robert Fulton? | yes | data/set3/a2 | Nassau
__NOTOC__
Nassau may mean the following:
Nassau, Germany: a town in Rhineland-Palatinate founded in AD 915, after which all the following are named, directly or indirectly:
*Nassau Castle, ancestral seat of the House of Nassau
*Duchy of Nassau: an extinct German duchy
*Hesse-Nassau: the Prussian province formed by annexation of that duchy
*Baarle-Nassau: a town in the southern Netherlands
*Nassau-Siegen: a historical territory in Germany
*Nassau, Bahamas: capital city of The Bahamas, on the island of New Providence.
*Nassau, Delaware: a community in the U.S.
*Nassau, Minnesota: a city in the U.S.
*Nassau (village), New York: a village in the U.S.
*Nassau (town), New York: a town in the U.S.
*Nassau Bay, Texas: a town in the U.S.
*East Nassau, New York: a village in the U.S.
*Nassau County, Florida: a county in the U.S.
*Nassau County, New York: a county in the U.S.
*Nassau Village-Ratliff, Florida: a town in the U.S.
*Nassau (Cook Islands): one of the Northern Cook Islands
*Nassau Range: one of the names of the highest mountain range in Indonesia
*Nassau Fjord: a fjord in Prince William Sound, Alaska, U.S.
*Nassau Street (Dublin): a street in Dublin, Ireland.
*Nassau Street (Winnipeg): a street in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada.
*Nassau Street (Princeton): a street in Princeton, New Jersey, U.S.
*Nassau Street (Manhattan): a street in Lower Manhattan, New York City, U.S.
*Nassau, Saxony: a village in Saxony, Germany, in the Ore Mountains
Of the House of Orange-Nassau, royal dynasty of the Netherlands:
*Adolf of Nassau
*Johan Willem Friso of Orange-Nassau
*Louis of Nassau
*Maurice of Nassau
*Sophia of Nassau
*Willem of Nassau
*William Henry Nassau de Zuylestein, 4th Earl of Rochford
*John Maurice of Nassau
*Adolf of Nassau-Weilburg
*Adolphe, Grand Duke of Luxembourg
*Guillaume IV, Grand Duke of Luxembourg
*Marie-Adélaïde, Grand Duchess of Luxembourg
*Charlotte, Grand Duchess of Luxembourg
*Jean, Grand Duke of Luxembourg
*Henri, Grand Duke of Luxembourg
*Nassau William Senior
*House of Nassau
*List of rulers of Nassau
*Nassau (steamboat), a steamboat placed in operation by Robert Fulton between Manhattan and Brooklyn in the U.S. state of New York in 1814
*Nassau Hall: the oldest building at Princeton University, and a meeting place for the USA's Second Continental Congress
*Evangelical Church of Hesse and Nassau; a church in Germany
*Fort Nassau: name of several forts built by the Dutch in the 17th century
*Nassau agreement: a treaty between the United States and the United Kingdom trading US-built Polaris missiles for rights to lease a nuclear submarine base in the Holy Loch, near Glasgow
*Nassau grouper: an endangered species of fish
*Nassau Community College: a two-year college in Nassau County, New York, USA
*Nassau Stakes: a horse race in the United Kingdom
*Nassau Stakes (Canada): a horse race in Canada
*Nassau Sound: a body of water in the U.S. state of Florida
*Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum; an ice hockey arena in Uniondale, New York, USA
*USS Nassau (CVE-16): a United States Navy escort aircraft carrier
*USS Nassau (LHA-4): a United States Navy amphibious assault ship
*SMS Nassau: a German battleship
*Nassau (bet): a type of bet between golfers that is essentially three separate bets. Money is wagered on the best score in the front 9, back 9, and total 18 holes.
* Nassau (album): a 1995 album by The Sea and Cake.
*Nassau Coliseum: an arena in Uniondale, New York, USA.
*Nassau (cookie): A chocolate peanut butter sandwich cookie from Pepperidge Farm.
*Nassau Royale: A brand of rum, an alcoholic spirit.
*Nassau Station: In the video game, Dead or Alive 4, a fighting arena modeled after a Magnetic Accelerator Cannon station from Halo 2
|
Nassau | Who was Fort Nassau built by? | the Dutch | data/set3/a2 | Nassau
__NOTOC__
Nassau may mean the following:
Nassau, Germany: a town in Rhineland-Palatinate founded in AD 915, after which all the following are named, directly or indirectly:
*Nassau Castle, ancestral seat of the House of Nassau
*Duchy of Nassau: an extinct German duchy
*Hesse-Nassau: the Prussian province formed by annexation of that duchy
*Baarle-Nassau: a town in the southern Netherlands
*Nassau-Siegen: a historical territory in Germany
*Nassau, Bahamas: capital city of The Bahamas, on the island of New Providence.
*Nassau, Delaware: a community in the U.S.
*Nassau, Minnesota: a city in the U.S.
*Nassau (village), New York: a village in the U.S.
*Nassau (town), New York: a town in the U.S.
*Nassau Bay, Texas: a town in the U.S.
*East Nassau, New York: a village in the U.S.
*Nassau County, Florida: a county in the U.S.
*Nassau County, New York: a county in the U.S.
*Nassau Village-Ratliff, Florida: a town in the U.S.
*Nassau (Cook Islands): one of the Northern Cook Islands
*Nassau Range: one of the names of the highest mountain range in Indonesia
*Nassau Fjord: a fjord in Prince William Sound, Alaska, U.S.
*Nassau Street (Dublin): a street in Dublin, Ireland.
*Nassau Street (Winnipeg): a street in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada.
*Nassau Street (Princeton): a street in Princeton, New Jersey, U.S.
*Nassau Street (Manhattan): a street in Lower Manhattan, New York City, U.S.
*Nassau, Saxony: a village in Saxony, Germany, in the Ore Mountains
Of the House of Orange-Nassau, royal dynasty of the Netherlands:
*Adolf of Nassau
*Johan Willem Friso of Orange-Nassau
*Louis of Nassau
*Maurice of Nassau
*Sophia of Nassau
*Willem of Nassau
*William Henry Nassau de Zuylestein, 4th Earl of Rochford
*John Maurice of Nassau
*Adolf of Nassau-Weilburg
*Adolphe, Grand Duke of Luxembourg
*Guillaume IV, Grand Duke of Luxembourg
*Marie-Adélaïde, Grand Duchess of Luxembourg
*Charlotte, Grand Duchess of Luxembourg
*Jean, Grand Duke of Luxembourg
*Henri, Grand Duke of Luxembourg
*Nassau William Senior
*House of Nassau
*List of rulers of Nassau
*Nassau (steamboat), a steamboat placed in operation by Robert Fulton between Manhattan and Brooklyn in the U.S. state of New York in 1814
*Nassau Hall: the oldest building at Princeton University, and a meeting place for the USA's Second Continental Congress
*Evangelical Church of Hesse and Nassau; a church in Germany
*Fort Nassau: name of several forts built by the Dutch in the 17th century
*Nassau agreement: a treaty between the United States and the United Kingdom trading US-built Polaris missiles for rights to lease a nuclear submarine base in the Holy Loch, near Glasgow
*Nassau grouper: an endangered species of fish
*Nassau Community College: a two-year college in Nassau County, New York, USA
*Nassau Stakes: a horse race in the United Kingdom
*Nassau Stakes (Canada): a horse race in Canada
*Nassau Sound: a body of water in the U.S. state of Florida
*Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum; an ice hockey arena in Uniondale, New York, USA
*USS Nassau (CVE-16): a United States Navy escort aircraft carrier
*USS Nassau (LHA-4): a United States Navy amphibious assault ship
*SMS Nassau: a German battleship
*Nassau (bet): a type of bet between golfers that is essentially three separate bets. Money is wagered on the best score in the front 9, back 9, and total 18 holes.
* Nassau (album): a 1995 album by The Sea and Cake.
*Nassau Coliseum: an arena in Uniondale, New York, USA.
*Nassau (cookie): A chocolate peanut butter sandwich cookie from Pepperidge Farm.
*Nassau Royale: A brand of rum, an alcoholic spirit.
*Nassau Station: In the video game, Dead or Alive 4, a fighting arena modeled after a Magnetic Accelerator Cannon station from Halo 2
|
Nassau | What is Nassau Coliseum? | an arena in Uniondale, New York, USA | data/set3/a2 | Nassau
__NOTOC__
Nassau may mean the following:
Nassau, Germany: a town in Rhineland-Palatinate founded in AD 915, after which all the following are named, directly or indirectly:
*Nassau Castle, ancestral seat of the House of Nassau
*Duchy of Nassau: an extinct German duchy
*Hesse-Nassau: the Prussian province formed by annexation of that duchy
*Baarle-Nassau: a town in the southern Netherlands
*Nassau-Siegen: a historical territory in Germany
*Nassau, Bahamas: capital city of The Bahamas, on the island of New Providence.
*Nassau, Delaware: a community in the U.S.
*Nassau, Minnesota: a city in the U.S.
*Nassau (village), New York: a village in the U.S.
*Nassau (town), New York: a town in the U.S.
*Nassau Bay, Texas: a town in the U.S.
*East Nassau, New York: a village in the U.S.
*Nassau County, Florida: a county in the U.S.
*Nassau County, New York: a county in the U.S.
*Nassau Village-Ratliff, Florida: a town in the U.S.
*Nassau (Cook Islands): one of the Northern Cook Islands
*Nassau Range: one of the names of the highest mountain range in Indonesia
*Nassau Fjord: a fjord in Prince William Sound, Alaska, U.S.
*Nassau Street (Dublin): a street in Dublin, Ireland.
*Nassau Street (Winnipeg): a street in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada.
*Nassau Street (Princeton): a street in Princeton, New Jersey, U.S.
*Nassau Street (Manhattan): a street in Lower Manhattan, New York City, U.S.
*Nassau, Saxony: a village in Saxony, Germany, in the Ore Mountains
Of the House of Orange-Nassau, royal dynasty of the Netherlands:
*Adolf of Nassau
*Johan Willem Friso of Orange-Nassau
*Louis of Nassau
*Maurice of Nassau
*Sophia of Nassau
*Willem of Nassau
*William Henry Nassau de Zuylestein, 4th Earl of Rochford
*John Maurice of Nassau
*Adolf of Nassau-Weilburg
*Adolphe, Grand Duke of Luxembourg
*Guillaume IV, Grand Duke of Luxembourg
*Marie-Adélaïde, Grand Duchess of Luxembourg
*Charlotte, Grand Duchess of Luxembourg
*Jean, Grand Duke of Luxembourg
*Henri, Grand Duke of Luxembourg
*Nassau William Senior
*House of Nassau
*List of rulers of Nassau
*Nassau (steamboat), a steamboat placed in operation by Robert Fulton between Manhattan and Brooklyn in the U.S. state of New York in 1814
*Nassau Hall: the oldest building at Princeton University, and a meeting place for the USA's Second Continental Congress
*Evangelical Church of Hesse and Nassau; a church in Germany
*Fort Nassau: name of several forts built by the Dutch in the 17th century
*Nassau agreement: a treaty between the United States and the United Kingdom trading US-built Polaris missiles for rights to lease a nuclear submarine base in the Holy Loch, near Glasgow
*Nassau grouper: an endangered species of fish
*Nassau Community College: a two-year college in Nassau County, New York, USA
*Nassau Stakes: a horse race in the United Kingdom
*Nassau Stakes (Canada): a horse race in Canada
*Nassau Sound: a body of water in the U.S. state of Florida
*Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum; an ice hockey arena in Uniondale, New York, USA
*USS Nassau (CVE-16): a United States Navy escort aircraft carrier
*USS Nassau (LHA-4): a United States Navy amphibious assault ship
*SMS Nassau: a German battleship
*Nassau (bet): a type of bet between golfers that is essentially three separate bets. Money is wagered on the best score in the front 9, back 9, and total 18 holes.
* Nassau (album): a 1995 album by The Sea and Cake.
*Nassau Coliseum: an arena in Uniondale, New York, USA.
*Nassau (cookie): A chocolate peanut butter sandwich cookie from Pepperidge Farm.
*Nassau Royale: A brand of rum, an alcoholic spirit.
*Nassau Station: In the video game, Dead or Alive 4, a fighting arena modeled after a Magnetic Accelerator Cannon station from Halo 2
|
Nassau | What was the Dead or Alive 4 fighting arena modeled after? | a Magnetic Accelerator Cannon station from Halo 2 | data/set3/a2 | Nassau
__NOTOC__
Nassau may mean the following:
Nassau, Germany: a town in Rhineland-Palatinate founded in AD 915, after which all the following are named, directly or indirectly:
*Nassau Castle, ancestral seat of the House of Nassau
*Duchy of Nassau: an extinct German duchy
*Hesse-Nassau: the Prussian province formed by annexation of that duchy
*Baarle-Nassau: a town in the southern Netherlands
*Nassau-Siegen: a historical territory in Germany
*Nassau, Bahamas: capital city of The Bahamas, on the island of New Providence.
*Nassau, Delaware: a community in the U.S.
*Nassau, Minnesota: a city in the U.S.
*Nassau (village), New York: a village in the U.S.
*Nassau (town), New York: a town in the U.S.
*Nassau Bay, Texas: a town in the U.S.
*East Nassau, New York: a village in the U.S.
*Nassau County, Florida: a county in the U.S.
*Nassau County, New York: a county in the U.S.
*Nassau Village-Ratliff, Florida: a town in the U.S.
*Nassau (Cook Islands): one of the Northern Cook Islands
*Nassau Range: one of the names of the highest mountain range in Indonesia
*Nassau Fjord: a fjord in Prince William Sound, Alaska, U.S.
*Nassau Street (Dublin): a street in Dublin, Ireland.
*Nassau Street (Winnipeg): a street in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada.
*Nassau Street (Princeton): a street in Princeton, New Jersey, U.S.
*Nassau Street (Manhattan): a street in Lower Manhattan, New York City, U.S.
*Nassau, Saxony: a village in Saxony, Germany, in the Ore Mountains
Of the House of Orange-Nassau, royal dynasty of the Netherlands:
*Adolf of Nassau
*Johan Willem Friso of Orange-Nassau
*Louis of Nassau
*Maurice of Nassau
*Sophia of Nassau
*Willem of Nassau
*William Henry Nassau de Zuylestein, 4th Earl of Rochford
*John Maurice of Nassau
*Adolf of Nassau-Weilburg
*Adolphe, Grand Duke of Luxembourg
*Guillaume IV, Grand Duke of Luxembourg
*Marie-Adélaïde, Grand Duchess of Luxembourg
*Charlotte, Grand Duchess of Luxembourg
*Jean, Grand Duke of Luxembourg
*Henri, Grand Duke of Luxembourg
*Nassau William Senior
*House of Nassau
*List of rulers of Nassau
*Nassau (steamboat), a steamboat placed in operation by Robert Fulton between Manhattan and Brooklyn in the U.S. state of New York in 1814
*Nassau Hall: the oldest building at Princeton University, and a meeting place for the USA's Second Continental Congress
*Evangelical Church of Hesse and Nassau; a church in Germany
*Fort Nassau: name of several forts built by the Dutch in the 17th century
*Nassau agreement: a treaty between the United States and the United Kingdom trading US-built Polaris missiles for rights to lease a nuclear submarine base in the Holy Loch, near Glasgow
*Nassau grouper: an endangered species of fish
*Nassau Community College: a two-year college in Nassau County, New York, USA
*Nassau Stakes: a horse race in the United Kingdom
*Nassau Stakes (Canada): a horse race in Canada
*Nassau Sound: a body of water in the U.S. state of Florida
*Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum; an ice hockey arena in Uniondale, New York, USA
*USS Nassau (CVE-16): a United States Navy escort aircraft carrier
*USS Nassau (LHA-4): a United States Navy amphibious assault ship
*SMS Nassau: a German battleship
*Nassau (bet): a type of bet between golfers that is essentially three separate bets. Money is wagered on the best score in the front 9, back 9, and total 18 holes.
* Nassau (album): a 1995 album by The Sea and Cake.
*Nassau Coliseum: an arena in Uniondale, New York, USA.
*Nassau (cookie): A chocolate peanut butter sandwich cookie from Pepperidge Farm.
*Nassau Royale: A brand of rum, an alcoholic spirit.
*Nassau Station: In the video game, Dead or Alive 4, a fighting arena modeled after a Magnetic Accelerator Cannon station from Halo 2
|
Nassau | Is Nassau Range the highest mountain range in the world? | no | data/set3/a2 | Nassau
__NOTOC__
Nassau may mean the following:
Nassau, Germany: a town in Rhineland-Palatinate founded in AD 915, after which all the following are named, directly or indirectly:
*Nassau Castle, ancestral seat of the House of Nassau
*Duchy of Nassau: an extinct German duchy
*Hesse-Nassau: the Prussian province formed by annexation of that duchy
*Baarle-Nassau: a town in the southern Netherlands
*Nassau-Siegen: a historical territory in Germany
*Nassau, Bahamas: capital city of The Bahamas, on the island of New Providence.
*Nassau, Delaware: a community in the U.S.
*Nassau, Minnesota: a city in the U.S.
*Nassau (village), New York: a village in the U.S.
*Nassau (town), New York: a town in the U.S.
*Nassau Bay, Texas: a town in the U.S.
*East Nassau, New York: a village in the U.S.
*Nassau County, Florida: a county in the U.S.
*Nassau County, New York: a county in the U.S.
*Nassau Village-Ratliff, Florida: a town in the U.S.
*Nassau (Cook Islands): one of the Northern Cook Islands
*Nassau Range: one of the names of the highest mountain range in Indonesia
*Nassau Fjord: a fjord in Prince William Sound, Alaska, U.S.
*Nassau Street (Dublin): a street in Dublin, Ireland.
*Nassau Street (Winnipeg): a street in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada.
*Nassau Street (Princeton): a street in Princeton, New Jersey, U.S.
*Nassau Street (Manhattan): a street in Lower Manhattan, New York City, U.S.
*Nassau, Saxony: a village in Saxony, Germany, in the Ore Mountains
Of the House of Orange-Nassau, royal dynasty of the Netherlands:
*Adolf of Nassau
*Johan Willem Friso of Orange-Nassau
*Louis of Nassau
*Maurice of Nassau
*Sophia of Nassau
*Willem of Nassau
*William Henry Nassau de Zuylestein, 4th Earl of Rochford
*John Maurice of Nassau
*Adolf of Nassau-Weilburg
*Adolphe, Grand Duke of Luxembourg
*Guillaume IV, Grand Duke of Luxembourg
*Marie-Adélaïde, Grand Duchess of Luxembourg
*Charlotte, Grand Duchess of Luxembourg
*Jean, Grand Duke of Luxembourg
*Henri, Grand Duke of Luxembourg
*Nassau William Senior
*House of Nassau
*List of rulers of Nassau
*Nassau (steamboat), a steamboat placed in operation by Robert Fulton between Manhattan and Brooklyn in the U.S. state of New York in 1814
*Nassau Hall: the oldest building at Princeton University, and a meeting place for the USA's Second Continental Congress
*Evangelical Church of Hesse and Nassau; a church in Germany
*Fort Nassau: name of several forts built by the Dutch in the 17th century
*Nassau agreement: a treaty between the United States and the United Kingdom trading US-built Polaris missiles for rights to lease a nuclear submarine base in the Holy Loch, near Glasgow
*Nassau grouper: an endangered species of fish
*Nassau Community College: a two-year college in Nassau County, New York, USA
*Nassau Stakes: a horse race in the United Kingdom
*Nassau Stakes (Canada): a horse race in Canada
*Nassau Sound: a body of water in the U.S. state of Florida
*Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum; an ice hockey arena in Uniondale, New York, USA
*USS Nassau (CVE-16): a United States Navy escort aircraft carrier
*USS Nassau (LHA-4): a United States Navy amphibious assault ship
*SMS Nassau: a German battleship
*Nassau (bet): a type of bet between golfers that is essentially three separate bets. Money is wagered on the best score in the front 9, back 9, and total 18 holes.
* Nassau (album): a 1995 album by The Sea and Cake.
*Nassau Coliseum: an arena in Uniondale, New York, USA.
*Nassau (cookie): A chocolate peanut butter sandwich cookie from Pepperidge Farm.
*Nassau Royale: A brand of rum, an alcoholic spirit.
*Nassau Station: In the video game, Dead or Alive 4, a fighting arena modeled after a Magnetic Accelerator Cannon station from Halo 2
|
Nassau | Is Nassau County named after a German town? | yes | data/set3/a2 | Nassau
__NOTOC__
Nassau may mean the following:
Nassau, Germany: a town in Rhineland-Palatinate founded in AD 915, after which all the following are named, directly or indirectly:
*Nassau Castle, ancestral seat of the House of Nassau
*Duchy of Nassau: an extinct German duchy
*Hesse-Nassau: the Prussian province formed by annexation of that duchy
*Baarle-Nassau: a town in the southern Netherlands
*Nassau-Siegen: a historical territory in Germany
*Nassau, Bahamas: capital city of The Bahamas, on the island of New Providence.
*Nassau, Delaware: a community in the U.S.
*Nassau, Minnesota: a city in the U.S.
*Nassau (village), New York: a village in the U.S.
*Nassau (town), New York: a town in the U.S.
*Nassau Bay, Texas: a town in the U.S.
*East Nassau, New York: a village in the U.S.
*Nassau County, Florida: a county in the U.S.
*Nassau County, New York: a county in the U.S.
*Nassau Village-Ratliff, Florida: a town in the U.S.
*Nassau (Cook Islands): one of the Northern Cook Islands
*Nassau Range: one of the names of the highest mountain range in Indonesia
*Nassau Fjord: a fjord in Prince William Sound, Alaska, U.S.
*Nassau Street (Dublin): a street in Dublin, Ireland.
*Nassau Street (Winnipeg): a street in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada.
*Nassau Street (Princeton): a street in Princeton, New Jersey, U.S.
*Nassau Street (Manhattan): a street in Lower Manhattan, New York City, U.S.
*Nassau, Saxony: a village in Saxony, Germany, in the Ore Mountains
Of the House of Orange-Nassau, royal dynasty of the Netherlands:
*Adolf of Nassau
*Johan Willem Friso of Orange-Nassau
*Louis of Nassau
*Maurice of Nassau
*Sophia of Nassau
*Willem of Nassau
*William Henry Nassau de Zuylestein, 4th Earl of Rochford
*John Maurice of Nassau
*Adolf of Nassau-Weilburg
*Adolphe, Grand Duke of Luxembourg
*Guillaume IV, Grand Duke of Luxembourg
*Marie-Adélaïde, Grand Duchess of Luxembourg
*Charlotte, Grand Duchess of Luxembourg
*Jean, Grand Duke of Luxembourg
*Henri, Grand Duke of Luxembourg
*Nassau William Senior
*House of Nassau
*List of rulers of Nassau
*Nassau (steamboat), a steamboat placed in operation by Robert Fulton between Manhattan and Brooklyn in the U.S. state of New York in 1814
*Nassau Hall: the oldest building at Princeton University, and a meeting place for the USA's Second Continental Congress
*Evangelical Church of Hesse and Nassau; a church in Germany
*Fort Nassau: name of several forts built by the Dutch in the 17th century
*Nassau agreement: a treaty between the United States and the United Kingdom trading US-built Polaris missiles for rights to lease a nuclear submarine base in the Holy Loch, near Glasgow
*Nassau grouper: an endangered species of fish
*Nassau Community College: a two-year college in Nassau County, New York, USA
*Nassau Stakes: a horse race in the United Kingdom
*Nassau Stakes (Canada): a horse race in Canada
*Nassau Sound: a body of water in the U.S. state of Florida
*Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum; an ice hockey arena in Uniondale, New York, USA
*USS Nassau (CVE-16): a United States Navy escort aircraft carrier
*USS Nassau (LHA-4): a United States Navy amphibious assault ship
*SMS Nassau: a German battleship
*Nassau (bet): a type of bet between golfers that is essentially three separate bets. Money is wagered on the best score in the front 9, back 9, and total 18 holes.
* Nassau (album): a 1995 album by The Sea and Cake.
*Nassau Coliseum: an arena in Uniondale, New York, USA.
*Nassau (cookie): A chocolate peanut butter sandwich cookie from Pepperidge Farm.
*Nassau Royale: A brand of rum, an alcoholic spirit.
*Nassau Station: In the video game, Dead or Alive 4, a fighting arena modeled after a Magnetic Accelerator Cannon station from Halo 2
|
Nassau | Does the United States have a base near Glasgow? | yes | data/set3/a2 | Nassau
__NOTOC__
Nassau may mean the following:
Nassau, Germany: a town in Rhineland-Palatinate founded in AD 915, after which all the following are named, directly or indirectly:
*Nassau Castle, ancestral seat of the House of Nassau
*Duchy of Nassau: an extinct German duchy
*Hesse-Nassau: the Prussian province formed by annexation of that duchy
*Baarle-Nassau: a town in the southern Netherlands
*Nassau-Siegen: a historical territory in Germany
*Nassau, Bahamas: capital city of The Bahamas, on the island of New Providence.
*Nassau, Delaware: a community in the U.S.
*Nassau, Minnesota: a city in the U.S.
*Nassau (village), New York: a village in the U.S.
*Nassau (town), New York: a town in the U.S.
*Nassau Bay, Texas: a town in the U.S.
*East Nassau, New York: a village in the U.S.
*Nassau County, Florida: a county in the U.S.
*Nassau County, New York: a county in the U.S.
*Nassau Village-Ratliff, Florida: a town in the U.S.
*Nassau (Cook Islands): one of the Northern Cook Islands
*Nassau Range: one of the names of the highest mountain range in Indonesia
*Nassau Fjord: a fjord in Prince William Sound, Alaska, U.S.
*Nassau Street (Dublin): a street in Dublin, Ireland.
*Nassau Street (Winnipeg): a street in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada.
*Nassau Street (Princeton): a street in Princeton, New Jersey, U.S.
*Nassau Street (Manhattan): a street in Lower Manhattan, New York City, U.S.
*Nassau, Saxony: a village in Saxony, Germany, in the Ore Mountains
Of the House of Orange-Nassau, royal dynasty of the Netherlands:
*Adolf of Nassau
*Johan Willem Friso of Orange-Nassau
*Louis of Nassau
*Maurice of Nassau
*Sophia of Nassau
*Willem of Nassau
*William Henry Nassau de Zuylestein, 4th Earl of Rochford
*John Maurice of Nassau
*Adolf of Nassau-Weilburg
*Adolphe, Grand Duke of Luxembourg
*Guillaume IV, Grand Duke of Luxembourg
*Marie-Adélaïde, Grand Duchess of Luxembourg
*Charlotte, Grand Duchess of Luxembourg
*Jean, Grand Duke of Luxembourg
*Henri, Grand Duke of Luxembourg
*Nassau William Senior
*House of Nassau
*List of rulers of Nassau
*Nassau (steamboat), a steamboat placed in operation by Robert Fulton between Manhattan and Brooklyn in the U.S. state of New York in 1814
*Nassau Hall: the oldest building at Princeton University, and a meeting place for the USA's Second Continental Congress
*Evangelical Church of Hesse and Nassau; a church in Germany
*Fort Nassau: name of several forts built by the Dutch in the 17th century
*Nassau agreement: a treaty between the United States and the United Kingdom trading US-built Polaris missiles for rights to lease a nuclear submarine base in the Holy Loch, near Glasgow
*Nassau grouper: an endangered species of fish
*Nassau Community College: a two-year college in Nassau County, New York, USA
*Nassau Stakes: a horse race in the United Kingdom
*Nassau Stakes (Canada): a horse race in Canada
*Nassau Sound: a body of water in the U.S. state of Florida
*Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum; an ice hockey arena in Uniondale, New York, USA
*USS Nassau (CVE-16): a United States Navy escort aircraft carrier
*USS Nassau (LHA-4): a United States Navy amphibious assault ship
*SMS Nassau: a German battleship
*Nassau (bet): a type of bet between golfers that is essentially three separate bets. Money is wagered on the best score in the front 9, back 9, and total 18 holes.
* Nassau (album): a 1995 album by The Sea and Cake.
*Nassau Coliseum: an arena in Uniondale, New York, USA.
*Nassau (cookie): A chocolate peanut butter sandwich cookie from Pepperidge Farm.
*Nassau Royale: A brand of rum, an alcoholic spirit.
*Nassau Station: In the video game, Dead or Alive 4, a fighting arena modeled after a Magnetic Accelerator Cannon station from Halo 2
|
Nikola_Tesla | Did Tesla study electrical engineering? | Yes | data/set4/a3 | Nikola_Tesla
Nikola Tesla (Serbian Cyrillic: Ðикола ТеÑла) (July 10 1856 7 January 1943) was an inventor, physicist, mechanical engineer, and electrical engineer. Born in Smiljan, Croatian Krajina, Military Frontier, he was an ethnic Serb subject of the Austrian Empire and later became an American citizen. Tesla is best known for his many revolutionary contributions to the discipline of electricity and magnetism in the late 19th and early 20th century. Tesla's patents and theoretical work formed the basis of modern alternating current electric power (AC) systems, including the polyphase power distribution systems and the AC motor, with which he helped usher in the Second Industrial Revolution. Contemporary biographers of Tesla have deemed him "the man who invented the twentieth century" Title of a biography by Robert Lomas (seen) and "the patron saint of modern electricity." Seifer, "Wizard: The Life and Times of Nikola Tesla," book synopsis
After his demonstration of wireless communication (radio) in 1893 and after being the victor in the "War of Currents", he was widely respected as America's greatest electrical engineer. /ref> Much of his early work pioneered modern electrical engineering and many of his discoveries were of groundbreaking importance. During this period, in the United States, Tesla's fame rivaled that of any other inventor or scientist in history or popular culture, Harnessing the Wheelwork of Nature: Tesla's Science of Energy by Thomas Valone but due to his eccentric personality and unbelievable and sometimes bizarre claims about possible scientific and technological developments, Tesla was ultimately ostracized and regarded as a mad scientist. Childress, David Hatcher, (ed.) "The Tesla Papers: Nikola Tesla on Free Energy & Wireless Transmission of Power". Adventures Unlimited Press, 2000. ISBN Lomas, Robert, " The essay," Spark of genius. Independent Magazine, August 21 1999. Never having put much focus on his finances, Tesla died impoverished at the age of 86.
The SI unit measuring magnetic flux density or magnetic induction (commonly known as the magnetic field B\, ), the tesla, was named in his honour (at the Conférence Générale des Poids et Mesures, Paris, 1960).
Aside from his work on electromagnetism and engineering, Tesla is said to have contributed in varying degrees to the establishment of robotics, remote control, radar and computer science, and to the expansion of ballistics, nuclear physics Cheney, Margaret, "Tesla: Man Out of Time", 1979. ISBN 0743215362. Front cover flap , and theoretical physics. In 1943, the Supreme Court of the United States credited him as being the inventor of the radio. Many of his achievements have been used, with some controversy, to support various pseudosciences, UFO theories, and early new age occultism.
Tesla is honoured in both Serbia and Croatia, as well as his adopted home, the United States.
According to legend, Tesla was born precisely at midnight during an electrical storm, to a Serbian family in the village of Smiljan near GospiÄ, in the Lika region of the Croatian Krajina in Military Frontier (part of the Austrian Empire), in the present-day Croatia. Dommermuth-Costa, Carol, Nikola Tesla: A Spark of Genius, pp. 11-12. 1994. ISBN
Nikola Tesla's birth house and statue in Smiljan
His baptism certificate reports that he was born on June 28 (N.S. July 10) , 1856, and christened by the Serbian Orthodox priest Toma Oklobdžija. His father was Rev. Milutin Tesla, a priest in the Serbian Orthodox Church Metropolitanate of Sremski Karlovci. Milutin was born on 19 February 1819 in the village of Meduc, county Medak in Lika, Austrian Empire, as son of Nikola Tesla (b. 1789 in the military frontier, settled after his service in the Napoleonic Wars in Gospic in 1815) and Ana KaliniÄ, from the famous frontier Kalinic family. Tesla's family asserted its last name as such in Lika. His paternal origin is thought to be of the DraganiÄ family from the Tara valley area below the geographical entity known as Old Vlach, from one of the local Serb clans; however genealogical research shows that Nikola is from the Herzegovinian noble KomnenoviÄ (modern-day Old Herzegovina in Montenegro), from its OrloviÄ subgroup that traces its origin from the semi-mythic Pavle Orlovic that bore Prince Lazar's banner at the Battle of Kosovo in 1389. His mother was Äuka MandiÄ, herself a daughter of a Serbian Orthodox Church priest. She came from a family domiciled in Lika and Banija, but with deeper origins to Kosovo. She was talented in making home craft tools. She memorized many Serbian epic poems, but never learned to read. Seifer, "Wizard" p 7 His godfather, Jovan Drenovac, was a captain in the army protecting the Military Frontier.
Nikola was one of five children, having one brother (Dane, who was killed in a horse-riding accident when Nikola was five) and three sisters (Milka, Angelina and Marica). Margaret Cheney, Robert Uth, and Jim Glenn, "Tesla, Master of Lightning". Barnes & Noble Publishing, 1999. ISBN 0760710058. His family moved to GospiÄ in 1862. Tesla went to school in Karlovac. He finished a four year term in the span of three years. Walker, E. H. (1900). Leaders of the 19th century with some noted characters of earlier times, their efforts and achievements in advancing human progress vividly portrayed for the guidance of present and future generations. Chicago: A.B. Kuhlman Co., Page 474.
Tesla then studied electrical engineering at the Austrian Polytechnic in Graz (1875). While there, he studied the uses of alternating current. Some sources say he received Baccalaureate degrees from the university at Graz. " The Book of New York: Forty Years' Recollections of the American Metropolis"
says he matriculated 4 degrees (physics, mathematics, mechanical engineering and electrical engineering)
However, the university says that he did not receive a degree and did not continue beyond the first semester of his third year, during which he stopped attending lectures. Nikola Tesla: the European Years, D. Mrkich
Others have stated that he was discharged without a degree for nonpayment of his tuition for the first semester of his junior year.
According to a college roommate, he did not graduate. . Cited in Seifer, Marc, The Life and Times of Nikola Tesla, 1996
In December 1878 he left Graz and broke all relations with his family. His friends thought that he had drowned in Mura. He went to Maribor, Slovenia, where he was first employed as an assistant engineer for a year. He suffered a nervous breakdown during this time. Tesla was later persuaded by his father to attend the Charles-Ferdinand University in Prague, which he attended for the summer term of 1880. However after his father died he left the university, having completed only one term.
Nikola Tesla as a young man
Tesla engaged in reading many works, memorizing complete books. He had a photographic memory. Tesla related in his autobiography that he experienced detailed moments of inspiration. During his early life, Tesla was stricken with illness time and time again. He suffered a peculiar affliction in which blinding flashes of light would appear before his eyes, often accompanied by hallucinations. Much of the time the visions were linked to a word or idea he might have come across; just by hearing the name of an item, he would involuntarily envision it in realistic detail. Modern-day synesthetes report similar symptoms. Tesla would visualise an invention in his brain in precise form before moving to the construction stage; a technique sometimes known as picture thinking. Tesla also often had flashbacks to events that had happened previously in his life; this began to happen during childhood.
In 1881, he moved to Budapest, Hungary, to work under Tivadar Puskás in a telegraph company, James Grant Wilson, John Fiske, Appleton's Cyclopædia of American Biography. Page 261.
the National Telephone Company. There, he met NebojÅ¡a PetroviÄ, a young inventor from Austria. Although their encounter was brief, they did work on a project together using twin turbines to create continual power. On the opening of the telephone exchange in Budapest, 1881, Tesla became the chief electrician to the company, and was later engineer for the country's first telephone system. He also developed a device that, according to some, was a telephone repeater or amplifier, but according to others could have been the first loudspeaker. " Did Tesla really invent the loudspeaker?". Twenty First Century Books, Breckenridge, CO.
In 1882 he moved to Paris, France, to work as an engineer for the Continental Edison Company, designing improvements to electric equipment. In the same year, Tesla conceived the induction motor and began developing various devices that use rotating magnetic fields (for which he received patents in 1888).
Soon thereafter, Tesla hastened from Paris to his mother's side as she lay dying, arriving hours before her death in April, 1892. Seifer, "Wizard: The Life and Times of Nikola Tesla" - page 94
Her last words to him were, "You've arrived, Nidžo, my pride." After her death, Tesla fell ill. He spent two to three weeks recuperating in GospiÄ and the village of Tomingaj near GraÄac, the birthplace of his mother.
On June 6, 1884, Tesla first arrived in the US in New York City. "Master of Lightning" by Public Broadcasting Service. Website
He had little besides a letter of recommendation from Charles Batchelor, his manager in his previous job. In the letter of recommendation to Thomas Edison, Charles Batchelor wrote, "I know two great men and you are one of them; the other is this young man." Edison hired Tesla to work for his company Edison Machine Works. Tesla's work for Edison began with simple electrical engineering and quickly progressed to solving the company's most difficult problems. Tesla was offered the task of a complete redesign of the Edison company's direct current generators.
During his employment, Edison offered Tesla $50,000 (equivalent to about $1 million in 2006, adjusted for inflation) Adjusting the reported given amount of money for inflation', the $50,000 in 1885 would equal $1,082,008.74 in 2006 if he redesigned Edison's inefficient motor and generators, an improvement in both service and economy. Tesla said he worked night and day to redesign them and gave the Edison company several profitable new patents in the process. During the year of 1885, when Tesla inquired about the payment on the work, Edison replied to him, "Tesla, you don't understand our American humor," and reneged on his promise. Clifford A. Pickover, Strange Brains and Genius: The Secret Lives of Eccentric Scientists and Madmen. HarperCollins, 1999. 352 pages. Page 14. ISBN 0688168949 "My Inventions" by Nikola Tesla, printed in Electrical Experimenter Feb-June, 1919. Reprinted, edited by Ben Johnson, New York: Barnes & Noble, 1982. ISBN
Tesla resigned when he was refused a raise to $25 per week. At Tesla's salary of $18 per week, the bonus would have amounted to over 53 years pay, and the amount was equal to the initial capital of the company. Jonnes,"Empire of light" p110
Tesla eventually found himself digging ditches for a short period of time â ironically for the Edison company. Edison had also never wanted to hear about Tesla's AC polyphase designs, believing that DC electricity was the future. Tesla focused intently on his AC polyphase system, even while digging ditches.
In 1886, Tesla formed his own company, Tesla Electric Light & Manufacturing. The initial financial investors disagreed with Tesla on his plan for an alternating current motor and eventually relieved him of his duties at the company. Tesla worked in New York as a common laborer from 1886 to 1887 to feed himself and raise capital for his next project. In 1887, he constructed the initial brushless alternating current induction motor, which he demonstrated to the American Institute of Electrical Engineers (now IEEE) in 1888. In the same year, he developed the principles of his Tesla coil and began working with George Westinghouse at Westinghouse Electric & Manufacturing Company's Pittsburgh labs. Westinghouse listened to his ideas for polyphase systems which would allow transmission of alternating current electricity over large distances.
In April of 1887, Tesla began investigating what would later be called X-rays using his own single node vacuum tubes (similar to his patent ). This device differed from other early X-ray tubes in that they had no target electrode. The modern term for the phenomenon produced by this device is bremsstrahlung (or braking radiation). We now know that this device operated by emitting electrons from the single electrode through a combination of field emission and thermionic emission. Once liberated, electrons are strongly repelled by the high electric field near the electrode during negative voltage peaks from the oscillating HV output of the Tesla Coil, generating X-rays as they collide with the glass envelope. He also used Geissler tubes. By 1892, Tesla became aware of what Wilhelm Röntgen later identified as effects of X-rays.
In the early research, Tesla devised several experimental setups to produce X-rays. Tesla held that, with his circuits, the "instrument will [... enable one to] generate Roentgen rays of much greater power than obtainable with ordinary apparatus." N. Tesla, "High frequency oscillators for electro-therapeutic and other purposes". Proceedings of the American Electro-Therapeutic Association, American Electro-Therapeutic Association. Page 25.
He also commented on the hazards of working with his circuit and single node X-ray producing devices. Of his many notes in the early investigation of this phenomenon, he attributed the skin damage to various causes. One of the options for the cause, which is not in conformity with current facts, was that the ozone generated rather than the radiation was responsible. He early on stated,
Tesla later stated,
Tesla continued research in the field and, later, observed an assistant severely "burnt" by X-rays in his lab. He performed several experiments prior to Roentgen's discovery (including photographing the bones of his hand; later, he sent these images to Roentgen) but didn't make his findings widely known; much of his research was lost in the 5th Avenue lab fire of March 1895.
A "world system" for "the transmission of electrical energy without wires" that depends upon the electrical conductivity was proposed in which transmission in various natural mediums with current that passes between the two point are used to power devices. In a practical wireless energy transmission system using this principle, a high-power ultraviolet beam might be used to form a vertical ionized channel in the air directly above the transmitter-receiver stations. The same concept is used in virtual lightning rods, the electrolaser electroshock weapon, A Survey of Laser Lightning Rod Techniques - Barnes, Arnold A., Jr. ; Berthel, Robert O.
and has been proposed for disabling vehicles. Frequently Asked Questions - HSV Technologies Vehicle Disabling Weapon by Peter A. Schlesinger, President, HSV Technologies, Inc. - NDIA Non-Lethal Defense IV 20-22 Mar 2000
Tesla demonstrated "the transmission of electrical energy without wires" that depends upon electrical conductivity as early as 1891. The Tesla effect (named in honor of Tesla) is the archaic term for an application of this type of electrical conduction (that is, the movement of energy through space and matter; not just the production of voltage across a conductor). Norrie, H. S., "Induction Coils: How to make, use, and repair them". Norman H. Schneider, 1907, New York. 4th edition.
Wireless transmission of power and energy demonstration during his high frequency and potential lecture of 1891.
On July 30, 1891, he became a naturalized citizen of the United States at the age of 35. Tesla established his 35 South Fifth Avenue laboratory in New York during this same year. Later, Tesla would establish his Houston Street laboratory in New York at 46 E. Houston Street. There, at one point while conducting mechanical resonance experiments with electro-mechanical oscillators he generated a resonance of several surrounding buildings, but ironically due to the frequencies involved, not his own building, causing complaints to the police. As the speed grew he hit the resonant frequency of his own building and belatedly realizing the danger he was forced to apply a sledge hammer to terminate the experiment, just as the astonished police arrived. O'Neill, "Prodigal Genius" pp162-164
He also lit vacuum tubes wirelessly at both of the New York locations, providing evidence for the potential of wireless power transmission. Krumme, Katherine, Mark Twain and Nikola Tesla: Thunder and Lightning. December 4, 2000 (PDF)
Some of Tesla's closest friends were artists. He befriended Century Magazine editor Robert Underwood Johnson, who adapted several Serbian poems of Jovan JovanoviÄ Zmaj (which Tesla translated). Also during this time, Tesla was influenced by the Vedic philosophy teachings of the Swami Vivekananda. Grotz, Toby, " The Influence of Vedic Philosophy on Nikola Tesla's Understanding of Free Energy".
Nikola Tesla's AC dynamo used to generate AC which is used to transport electricity across great distances. It is contained in .
When Tesla was 36 years old, the first patents concerning the polyphase power system were granted. He continued research of the system and rotating magnetic field principles. Tesla served, from 1892 to 1894, as the vice president of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers, the forerunner (along with the Institute of Radio Engineers) of the modern-day IEEE. From 1893 to 1895, he investigated high frequency alternating currents. He generated AC of one million volts using a conical Tesla coil and investigated the skin effect in conductors, designed tuned circuits, invented a machine for inducing sleep, cordless gas discharge lamps, and transmitted electromagnetic energy without wires, building the first radio transmitter. In St. Louis, Missouri, Tesla made a demonstration related to radio communication in 1893. Addressing the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and the National Electric Light Association, he described and demonstrated in detail its principles. Tesla's demonstrations were written about widely through various media outlets. Tesla also investigated harvesting energy that is present throughout space. He believed that it was just merely a question of time when men will succeed in attaching their machinery to the very wheelwork of nature, stating:
At the 1893 World's Fair, the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago, an international exposition was held which for the first time devoted a building to electrical exhibits. It was an historic event as Tesla and George Westinghouse introduced visitors to AC power by using it to illuminate the Exposition. On display were Tesla's fluorescent lamps and single node bulbs. Tesla also explained the principles of the rotating magnetic field and induction motor by demonstrating how to make an egg made of copper stand on end in his demonstration of the device he constructed known as the "Egg of Columbus".
Also in the late 1880s, Tesla and Edison became adversaries in part due to Edison's promotion of direct current (DC) for electric power distribution over the more efficient alternating current advocated by Tesla and Westinghouse. Until Tesla invented the induction motor, AC's advantages for long distance high voltage transmission were counterbalanced by the inability to operate motors on AC. As a result of the "War of Currents," Edison and Westinghouse went nearly bankrupt, so in 1897, Tesla released Westinghouse from contract, providing Westinghouse a break from Tesla's patent royalties. Also in 1897, Tesla researched radiation which led to setting up the basic formulation of cosmic rays. Waser, André, "Nikola Teslaâs Radiations and the Cosmic Rays".
When Tesla was forty-one years old, he filed the first basic radio patent ( ). A year later, he demonstrated a radio controlled boat to the US military, believing that the military would want things such as radio controlled torpedoes. Tesla had developed the "Art of Telautomatics", a form of robotics, as well as the technology of remote control. Tesla, Nikola, " My Inventions", Electrical Experimenter magazine, Feb, June, and Oct, 1919. ISBN (teslaplay.comversion; also the version at rastko.org) In 1898, a radio-controlled boat was demonstrated to the public during an electrical exhibition at Madison Square Garden. These devices had an innovative coherer and a series of logic gates. Tesla called his boat a "teleautomaton" and said of it, "You see there the first of a race of robots, mechanical men which will do the laborious work of the human race." Jonnes, Jill. Empires of Light ISBN 0-375-75884-4. Page 355, referencing O'Neill, John J., Prodigal Genius: The Life of Nikola Tesla (New York: David McKay, 1944), p.167. Radio remote control remained a novelty until the 1960s. In the same year, Tesla devised an "electric igniter" or spark plug for Internal combustion gasoline engines. He gained , "Electrical Igniter for Gas Engines", on this mechanical ignition system. Tesla lived in the former Gerlach Hotel, renamed The Radio Wave building, at 49 W 27th St. (between Broadway and Sixth Avenue), Lower Manhattan, before the end of the century where he conducted the radio wave experiments. A commemorative plaque was placed on the building in 1977 to honor his work.
In 1899, Tesla decided to move and began research in Colorado Springs, Colorado, where he would have room for his high-voltage, high-frequency experiments. Upon his arrival he told reporters that he was conducting wireless telegraphy experiments transmitting signals from Pikes Peak to Paris. Tesla's diary contains explanations of his experiments concerning the ionosphere and the ground's telluric currents via transverse waves and longitudinal waves. Tesla, Nikola, "The True Wireless". Electrical Experimenter, May 1919. ( also at pbs.org)
At his lab, Tesla proved that the earth was a conductor, and he produced artificial lightning (with discharges consisting of millions of volts, and up to 135 feet long). Gillispie, Charles Coulston, "Dictionary of Scientific Biography"; Tesla, Nikola. Charles Scribner's Sons, New York. ISBN
Tesla also investigated atmospheric electricity, observing lightning signals via his receivers. Reproductions of Tesla's receivers and coherer circuits show an unpredicted level of complexity (e.g., distributed high-Q helical resonators, radio frequency feedback, crude heterodyne effects, and regeneration techniques). Corum, K. L., J. F. Corum, and A. H. Aidinejad, "Atmospheric Fields, Tesla's Receivers and Regenerative Detectors". 1994.
Tesla stated that he observed stationary waves during this time. Corum, K. L., J. F. Corum, "Nikola Tesla, Lightning Observations, and Stationary Waves". 1994.
Tesla researched ways to transmit power and energy wirelessly over long distances (via transverse waves, to a lesser extent, and, more readily, longitudinal waves). He transmitted extremely low frequencies through the ground as well as between the earth's surface and the Kennelly-Heaviside layer. He received patents on wireless transceivers that developed standing waves by this method. In his experiments, he made mathematical calculations and computations based on his experiments and discovered that the resonant frequency of the Earth was approximately 8 Hertz (Hz). In the 1950s, researchers confirmed that the resonant frequency of the Earth's ionospheric cavity was in this range (later named the Schumann resonance).
In the Colorado Springs lab, Tesla observed unusual signals that he later thought may have been evidence of extraterrestrial radio communications coming from Venus or Mars. Tesla, Nikola, " Talking with Planets". Collier's Weekly, February 19, 1901. (EarlyRadioHistory.us)
He noticed repetitive signals from his receiver which were substantially different from the signals he had noted from storms and earth noise. Specifically, he later recalled that the signals appeared in groups of one, two, three, and four clicks together. Tesla had mentioned before this event and many times after that he thought his inventions could be used to talk with other planets. There have even been claims that he invented a "Teslascope" for just such a purpose. It is debatable what type of signals Tesla received or whether he picked up anything at all. Research has suggested that Tesla may have had a misunderstanding of the new technology he was working with,
or that the signals Tesla observed may have simply been an observation of a non-terrestrial natural radio source such as the Jovian plasma torus signals.
Tesla left Colorado Springs on January 7, 1900. The lab was torn down and its contents sold to pay debts. The Colorado experiments prepared Tesla for his next project, the establishment of a wireless power transmission facility that would be known as Wardenclyffe. Tesla was granted for the means of increasing the intensity of electrical oscillations. The United States Patent Office classification system currently assigns this patent to the primary Class 178/43 ("telegraphy/space induction"), although the other applicable classes include 505/825 ("low temperature superconductivity-related apparatus").
In 1900, with $150,000 (51% from J. Pierpont Morgan), Tesla began planning the Wardenclyffe Tower facility. In June 1902, Tesla's lab operations were moved to Wardenclyffe from Houston Street. The tower was finally dismantled for scrap during World War I. Newspapers of the time labeled Wardenclyffe "Tesla's million-dollar folly." In 1904, the US Patent Office reversed its decision and awarded Guglielmo Marconi the patent for radio, and Tesla began his fight to re-acquire the radio patent. On his 50th birthday in 1906, Tesla demonstrated his 200 hp (150 kW) 16,000 rpm bladeless turbine. During 1910 1911 at the Waterside Power Station in New York, several of his bladeless turbine engines were tested at 100 5000 hp.
Since the Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to Marconi for radio in 1909, Thomas Edison and Tesla were mentioned as potential laureates to share the Nobel Prize of 1915 in a press dispatch, leading to one of several Nobel Prize controversies. Some sources have claimed that due to their animosity toward each other neither was given the award, despite their enormous scientific contributions, and that each sought to minimize the other one's achievements and right to win the award, that both refused to ever accept the award if the other received it first, and that both rejected any possibility of sharing it. O'Neill, "Prodigal Genius" pp228-229
In the following events after the rumors, neither Tesla nor Edison won the prize (although Edison did receive one of 38 possible bids in 1915, and Tesla did receive one bid out of 38 in 1937). Seifer, "Wizard" pp378-380
Earlier, Tesla alone was rumored to have been nominated for the Nobel Prize of 1912. The rumored nomination was primarily for his experiments with tuned circuits using high-voltage high-frequency resonant transformers.
In 1915, Tesla filed a lawsuit against Marconi attempting, unsuccessfully, to obtain a court injunction against the claims of Marconi. After Wardenclyffe, Tesla built the Telefunken Wireless Station in Sayville, Long Island. Some of what he wanted to achieve at Wardenclyffe was accomplished with the Telefunken Wireless. In 1917, the facility was seized and torn down by the Marines, because it was suspected that it could be used by German spies.
Prior to World War I, Tesla looked overseas for investors to fund his research. When the war started, Tesla lost the funding he was receiving from his European patents. After the war ended, Tesla made predictions regarding the relevant issues of the post-World War I environment, in a printed article (December 20, 1914). Tesla believed that the League of Nations was not a remedy for the times and issues. Tesla started to exhibit pronounced symptoms of obsessive-compulsive disorder in the years following. He became obsessed with the number three; he often felt compelled to walk around a block three times before entering a building, demanded a stack of three folded, cloth napkins beside his plate at every meal, etc. The nature of OCD was little understood at the time and no treatments were available, so his symptoms were considered by some to be evidence of partial insanity, and this undoubtedly hurt what was left of his reputation.
At this time, he was staying at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, renting in an arrangement for deferred payments. Eventually, the Wardenclyffe deed was turned over to George Boldt, proprietor of the Waldorf-Astoria to pay a $20,000 debt. In 1917, around the time that the Wardenclyffe Tower was demolished by Boldt to make the land a more viable real estate asset, Tesla received AIEE's highest honor, the Edison Medal.
Tesla, in August 1917, first established principles regarding frequency and power level for the first primitive RADAR units. Page, R.M., "The Early History of RADAR", Proceedings of the IRE, Volume 50, Number 5, May, 1962, (special 50th Anniversary Issue).
In 1934, Ãmile Girardeau, working with the first French RADAR systems, stated he was building RADAR systems "conceived according to the principles stated by Tesla". By the twenties, Tesla was reportedly negotiating with the United Kingdom government about a ray system. Tesla had also stated that efforts had been made to steal the so called "death ray". It is suggested that the removal of the Chamberlain government ended negotiations.
On Tesla's seventy-fifth birthday in 1931, Time magazine put him on its cover.
The cover caption noted his contribution to electrical power generation. Tesla received his last patent in 1928 for an apparatus for aerial transportation which was the first instance of VTOL aircraft. In 1934, Tesla wrote to consul JankoviÄ of his homeland. The letter contained the message of gratitude to Mihajlo Pupin who initiated a donation scheme by which American companies could support Tesla. Tesla refused the assistance, and chose to live by a modest pension received from Yugoslavia and to continue researching.
In 1936, Tesla stated "I'm equally proud of my Serbian origin and my Croatian homeland." Tesla's response to Vlatko MaÄek in 1936
When he was eighty-one, Tesla stated he had completed a dynamic theory of gravity. He stated that it was "worked out in all details" and that he hoped to soon give it to the world. Prepared Statement by Nikola Tesla downloadable from www.tesla.hu
The theory was never published. At the time of his announcement, it was considered by the scientific establishment to exceed the bounds of reason. Some believe that Tesla never fully developed the Unified Field Theory.
The bulk of the theory was developed between 1892 and 1894, during the period that he was conducting experiments with high frequency and high potential electromagnetism and patenting devices for their utilization. It was completed, according to Tesla, by the end of the 1930s. Tesla's theory explained gravity using electrodynamics consisting of transverse waves (to a lesser extent) and longitudinal waves (for the majority). Reminiscent of Mach's principle, Tesla stated in 1925 that:
Nikola Tesla, with Rudjer Boscovich's book Theoria Philosophiae Naturalis, sits in front of the spiral coil of his high-frequency transformer at East Houston Street, New York.
Tesla was critical of Einstein's relativity work, calling it:
Tesla also argued:
Tesla, also believed that much of Albert Einstein's relativity theory had already been proposed by RuÄer BoÅ¡koviÄ, stating in an unpublished interview:
Later in life, Tesla made some remarkable claims concerning a "teleforce" weapon. "Tesla's Ray". Time, July 23, 1934.
The press called it a "peace ray" or death ray. "Tesla, at 78, Bares New 'Death-Beam"', New York Times, July 11, 1934. "Tesla Invents Peace Ray". New York Sun, July 10, 1934.
In total, the components and methods included: "Death-Ray Machine Described", New York Sun, July 11, 1934. "A Machine to End War". Feb. 1935.
# An apparatus for producing manifestations of energy in free air instead of in a high vacuum as in the past. This, according to Tesla in 1934, was accomplished.
# A mechanism for generating tremendous electrical force. This, according to Tesla, was also accomplished.
# A means of intensifying and amplifying the force developed by the second mechanism.
# A new method for producing a tremendous electrical repelling force. This would be the projector, or gun, of the invention.
Tesla worked on plans for a directed-energy weapon between the early 1900s till the time of his death. In 1937, Tesla composed a treatise entitled "The Art of Projecting Concentrated Non-dispersive Energy through the Natural Media" concerning charged particle beams. Seifer, Marc J., "Wizard, the Life and Times of Nikola Tesla". ISBN (HC) pg. 454
Tesla published the document in an attempt to expound on the technical description of a "superweapon that would put an end to all war". This treatise of the particle beam is currently in the Nikola Tesla Museum archive in Belgrade. It described an open ended vacuum tube with a gas jet seal that allowed particles to exit, a method of charging particles to millions of volts, and a method of creating and directing nondispersive particle streams (through electrostatic repulsion). Seifer, "Wizard" pg. 454
Records of his indicate that it was based on a narrow stream of atomic clusters of liquid mercury or tungsten accelerated via high voltage (by means akin to his magnifying transformer). Tesla gave the following description concerning the particle gun's operation:
The weapon could be used against ground based infantry or for antiaircraft purposes. "'Death Ray' for Planes". New York Times, September 22, 1940.
Tesla tried to interest the US War Department in the device. "Aerial Defense 'Death-Beam' Offered to U. S. By Tesla" July 12, 1940
He also offered this invention to European countries. O'Neill, John J., " Tesla Tries To Prevent World War II". (unpublished Chapter 34 of Prodigal Genius) (PBS)
None of the governments purchased a contract to build the device. He was unable to act on his plans. Velox, Particle beam weapon. everything2.com
Tesla began to theorize about electricity and magnetism's power to warp, or rather change, space and time and the procedure by which man could forcibly control this power. Near the end of his life, Tesla was fascinated with the idea of light as both a particle and a wave, a fundamental proposition already incorporated into quantum physics. This field of inquiry led to the idea of creating a "wall of light" by manipulating electromagnetic waves in a certain pattern. This mysterious wall of light would enable time, space, gravity and matter to be altered at will, and engendered an array of Tesla proposals that seem to leap straight out of science fiction, including anti-gravity airships, teleportation, and time travel. The single strangest invention Tesla ever proposed was probably the "thought photography" machine. He reasoned that a thought formed in the mind created a corresponding image in the retina, and the electrical data of this neural transmission could be read and recorded in a machine. The stored information could then be processed through an artificial optic nerve and played back as visual patterns on a viewscreen.
Another of Tesla's theorized inventions is commonly referred to as Tesla's Flying Machine, which appears to resemble an ion-propelled aircraft. Tesla claimed that one of his life goals was to create a flying machine that would run without the use of an airplane engine, wings, ailerons, propellers, or an onboard fuel source. Initially, Tesla pondered about the idea of a flying craft that would fly using an electric motor powered by grounded base stations. As time progressed, Tesla suggested that perhaps such an aircraft could be run entirely electro-mechanically. The theorized appearance would typically take the form of a cigar or saucer.
Bust of Tesla by Ivan MeÅ¡troviÄ, 1952, in Zagreb, Croatia
Tesla died of heart failure alone in the New Yorker Hotel, some time between the evening of January 5 and the morning of January 8, 1943, at the age of 86. Despite selling his AC electricity patents, Tesla was destitute and died with significant debts. Later that year the US Supreme Court upheld Tesla's patent number in effect recognizing him as the inventor of radio.
Immediately after Tesla's death became known, the Federal Bureau of Investigation instructed the government's Alien Property Custodian office to take possession of his papers and property, despite his US citizenship. His safe at the hotel was also opened. At the time of his death, Tesla had been continuing work on the teleforce weapon, or death ray, that he had unsuccessfully marketed to the US War Department. It appears that his proposed death ray was related to his research into ball lightning and plasma and was imagined as a particle beam weapon. The US government did not find a prototype of the device in the safe. After the FBI was contacted by the War Department, his papers were declared to be top secret. The so-called "peace ray" constitutes a part of some conspiracy theories as a means of destruction. The personal effects were seized on the advice of presidential advisers, and J. Edgar Hoover declared the case "most secret", because of the nature of Tesla's inventions and patents. Hoover, John Edgar, et al., FOIA FBI files, 1943.
One document states that "[he] is reported to have some 80 trunks in different places containing transcripts and plans having to do with his experiments [...]". Charlotte Muzar reported that there were several "missing" papers and property.
Statue of Nikola Tesla in Niagara Falls State Park on Goat Island, New York; There is another statue with Tesla standing in Queen Victoria Park on the Canadian side of Niagara Falls.
Tesla's family and the Yugoslav embassy struggled with the American authorities to gain these items after his death due to the potential significance of some of his research. Eventually, his nephew, Sava KosanoviÄ, got possession of some of his personal effects which are now housed in the Nikola Tesla Museum in Belgrade, Serbia. Nikola Tesla Museum
Tesla's funeral took place on January 12, 1943, at the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine in Manhattan, New York City. After the funeral, his body was cremated. His ashes were taken to Belgrade, Yugoslavia in 1957. The urn was placed in the Nikola Tesla Museum, where it resides to this day.
Tesla did not like to pose for portraits. He did it only once for princess Vilma Lwoff-Parlaghy (1863-1923). The portrait survived in the collection of Ludwig Nissen, Brooklyn, see: Klaus Lengsfeld: Sammlung Ludwig Nissen : Husum 1855 - 1924 New York; Dokumentation d. Kunstsammlung Ludwig Nissens anlässl. d. Ausstellung zu seinem 125. Geburtstag im Nissenhaus zu Husum, 1980, 169 S. (= Schriften des Nordfriesischen Museums Ludwig-Nissen-Haus, Nr. 16) His wish was to have a sculpture made by his close friend Ivan MeÅ¡troviÄ, who was at that time in United States, but he died before getting a chance to see it. MeÅ¡troviÄ made a bronze bust (1952) that is held in the Nikola Tesla Museum in Belgrade and a statue (1955/56) placed at the RuÄer BoÅ¡koviÄ Institute in Zagreb. This statue was moved to Nikola Tesla Street in Zagreb's city centre on the 150th anniversary of Tesla's birth, with the RuÄer BoÅ¡koviÄ Institute to receive a duplicate.
In 1976, a bronze statue of Tesla was placed at Niagara Falls, New York. A similar statue was also erected in his hometown of GospiÄ in 1986.
The SI unit tesla (T) for measuring magnetic flux density or magnetic induction (commonly known as the magnetic field B\, ) was named in Teslaâs honour at the Conférence Générale des Poids et Mesures, Paris in 1960. The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) of which Tesla had been vice president also created an award in recognition of Tesla. Called the IEEE Nikola Tesla Award, it is given to individuals or a team that has made outstanding contributions to the generation or utilization of electric power, and is considered the most prestigious award in the area of electric power. IEEE, " IEEE Nikola Tesla Award. April 01, 2005.
The Tesla crater on the far side of the Moon and the minor planet 2244 Tesla are also named after him.
[[Image:100RSD front.jpg|thumb|left|200px|100 Serbian dinar banknote obverse.
Photo courtesy of National Bank of Serbia. National Bank of Serbia ]]
100 Serbian dinars banknote reverse. Note the drawing of the electric motor.
Tesla has received many recognitions within Serbia. He is featured on the current 100 Serbian dinar note (see left). The largest power plant complex in Serbia, the TPP Nikola Tesla is named in his honour. On July 10, 2006 the biggest airport in Serbia (Belgrade) was renamed Belgrade Nikola Tesla Airport in honor of Teslaâs 150th birthday.
An electric car company, Tesla Motors, named their company in tribute to Nikola Tesla. Their website states: The namesake of our Tesla Roadster is the genius Nikola Tesla [...] Weâre confident that if he were alive today, Nikola Tesla would look over our car and nod his head with both understanding and approval. Why the Name "Tesla"?, Tesla Motors, Inc., 2006
The Croatian subsidiary of Ericsson is also named 'Ericsson Nikola Tesla d.d'. ('Nikola Tesla' was a phone hardware company in Zagreb before Ericsson bought it in the 1990s) in honour of Nikola Tesla's pioneering work in wireless communication.
The year 2006 was celebrated by UNESCO as the 150th anniversary of the birth of Nikola Tesla, scientist (1856-1943), as well as being proclaimed by the governments of Croatia and Serbia to be the Year of Tesla. On this anniversary, July 10 2006, the renovated village of Smiljan (which had been demolished during the wars of the 1990s) was opened to the public along with Tesla's house (as a memorial museum) and a new multimedia center dedicated to the life and work of Nikola Tesla. The parochial church of St. Peter and Paul, where Tesla's father had held services, was renovated as well. The museum and multimedia center are filled with replicas of Tesla's work. The museum has collected almost all of the papers ever published by, and about, Nikola Tesla; most of these provided by Ljubo Vujovic from the Tesla Memorial Society.
in New York. Alongside Tesla's house, a monument created by sculptor Mile Blazevic has been erected. In the nearby city of GospiÄ, on the same date as the reopening of the renovated village and museums, a higher education school named Nikola Tesla was opened, and a replica of the statue of Tesla made by Frano Krsinic (the original is in Belgrade) was presented.
In the years after, many of his innovations, theories and claims have been used, at times unsuitably and with some controversy, to support various fringe theories that are regarded as unscientific. Most of Tesla's own work conformed with the principles and methods accepted by science, but his extravagant personality and sometimes unrealistic claims, combined with his unquestionable genius, have made him a popular figure among fringe theorists and believers in conspiracies about 'hidden knowledge'. Some conspiracy theorists even in his time believed that he was actually an angelic being from Venus sent to Earth to reveal scientific knowledge to humanity.
Tesla was fluent in many languages. Along with Serbo-Croatian, he also spoke seven other foreign languages: Czech, English, French, German, Hungarian, Italian, and Latin.
Tesla may have suffered from obsessive-compulsive disorder, Kerryr.net
and had many unusual quirks and phobias. He did things in threes, and was adamant about staying in a hotel room with a number divisible by three. Tesla was also noted to be physically revolted by jewelry, notably pearl earrings. He was fastidious about cleanliness and hygiene, and was by all accounts germaphobic. He greatly disliked touching round objects and human hair other than his own.
Tesla was obsessed with pigeons, ordering special seeds for the pigeons he fed in Central Park and even bringing some into his hotel room with him. Tesla was an animal-lover, often reflecting contentedly about a childhood cat, "The Magnificent Macak". Tesla never married. He was celibate and claimed that his chastity was very helpful to his scientific abilities.
Nonetheless there have been numerous accounts of women vying for Tesla's affection, even some madly in love with him. Tesla, though polite, behaved rather ambivalently to these women in the romantic sense.
Tesla was prone to alienating himself and was generally soft-spoken. However, when he did engage in a social life, many people spoke very positively and admiringly of him. Robert Underwood Johnson described him as attaining a "distinguished sweetness, sincerity, modesty, refinement, generosity, and force..." His loyal secretary, Dorothy Skerrit, wrote "his genial smile and nobility of bearing always denoted the gentlemanly characteristics that were so ingrained in his soul." Tesla's friend Hawthorne wrote that, "seldom did one meet a scientist or engineer who was also a poet, a philosopher, an appreciator of fine music, a linguist, and a connoisseur of food and drink."
Nevertheless, Tesla displayed the occasional cruel streak; he openly expressed his disgust for overweight people, once firing a secretary because of her weight. He was quick to criticize others' clothing as well, demanding a subordinate to go home and change her dress on several occasions.
Tesla was widely known for his great showmanship, presenting his innovations and demonstrations to the public as an artform, almost like a magician. This seems to conflict with his observed reclusiveness; Tesla was a complicated figure. He refused to hold conventions without his Tesla coil blasting electricity throughout the room, despite the audience often being terrified, though he assured them everything was perfectly safe.
Mark Twain in Nikola Tesla's lab, spring 1894
In middle age, Nikola Tesla became very close friends with Mark Twain. They spent a lot of time together in his lab and elsewhere.
Tesla remained bitter in the aftermath of his incident with Edison. The day after Edison died the New York Times contained extensive coverage of Edison's life, with the only negative opinion coming from Tesla, who was quoted as saying, Shortly before Edison died, he said that his biggest mistake he had made was in trying to develop directed current, rather than the vastly superior alternating current system that Tesla had put within his grasp.
Tesla was good friends with Robert Underwood Johnson. He had amicable relations with Francis Marion Crawford, Stanford White, Fritz Lowenstein, George Scherff, and Kenneth Swezey. Tesla made his first million at the age of forty, but gave away nearly all his royalties on future innovations. Tesla was rather financially inept, but he was almost entirely unconcerned with material wealth. He ripped up a Westinghouse contract that would have made him the world's first billionaire, in part because of the implications it would have on his future vision of free power, and in part because it would run Westinghouse out of business, and Tesla had no desire to deal with the creditors.
Tesla lived the last ten years of his life in a two-room suite on the 33rd floor of the Hotel New Yorker, room 3327. There, near the end of his life, when Tesla was slipping into what many consider an altered state of mind, he would claim to be visited by a specific white pigeon daily. Several biographers note that Tesla viewed the death of the pigeon as a "final blow" to himself and his work.
Tesla believed that war could not be avoided until the cause for its recurrence was removed, but was opposed to wars in general. Secor, H. Winfield, " Tesla's views on Electricity and the War", Electrical Experimenter, Volume 5, Number 4, August, 1917.
He sought to reduce distance, such as in communication for better understanding, transportation, and transmission of energy, as a means to ensure friendly international relations. " Giant Eye to See Round the World" Albany Telegram, February 25, 1923 (doc).
Like many of his era, Tesla, a life-long bachelor, became a proponent of a self-imposed selective breeding version of eugenics. In a 1937 interview, he stated,
In 1926, Tesla commented on the ills of the social subservience of women and the struggle of women toward gender equality, indicated that humanity's future would be run by "Queen Bees". He believed that women would become the dominant sex in the future. Kennedy, John B., " When woman is boss, An interview with Nikola Tesla". Colliers, January 30, 1926.
In his later years Tesla became a vegetarian. In an article for Century Illustrated Magazine he wrote: "It is certainly preferable to raise vegetables, and I think, therefore, that vegetarianism is a commendable departure from the established barbarous habit." Tesla argued that it is wrong to eat uneconomic meat when large numbers of people are starving; he also believed that plant food was "superior to it [meat] in regard to both mechanical and mental performance." He also argued that animal slaughter was "wanton and cruel". Nikola Tesla, " The Problem of Increasing Human Energy". Century Illustrated Magazine, June 1900.
In his final years he suffered from extreme sensitivity to light, sound and other influences. O'Neill, "Prodigal Genius" (extract at Electrosensitivity.org - Q&A)
A monument to Tesla was established at Niagara Falls, New York, USA. The monument was officially unveiled on Sunday, July 9, 2006 on the 150th anniversary of Tesla's birth. The Monument was sponsored by St. George Serbian Church, Niagara Falls, and designed by Les Drysdale of Hamilton, Ontario. Mr. Drysdale's design was the winning design from an international competition. Another monument to Tesla, featuring him standing on a portion of an alternator, was established at Queen Victoria Park in Niagara Falls, Ontario, Canada.
A number of live theatrical plays based on Tesla's life have been produced and staged worldwide.
*The Canadian theatrical company Electric Company Theatre took its stage production Brilliant! The Blinding Enlightenment of Nikola Tesla on tour first starting in 1996. In August 2007, their production was again listed on their current performance schedule.
*The Austin, Texas based theatrical collective Rude Mechanicals created and then produced Kirk Lynn's Requiem For Tesla in January/Feb of 2001, and then presented again at the Fresh Terrain Festival in February 2003
* List of Tesla patents
* Nikola Tesla in popular culture
* Teslascope
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* Margaret Cheney, Robert Uth, and Jim Glenn, "Tesla, Master of Lightning", published by Barnes & Noble, 1999. ISBN 0760710058.
* Germano, Frank, " Dr. Nikola Tesla". Frank. Germano.com.
* Lomas, Robert, " The Man who Invented the Twentieth Century". Lecture to South Western Branch of Instititute of Physics.
* Martin, Thomas Commerford, "The Inventions, Researches, and Writings of Nikola Tesla", New York: The Electrical Engineer, 1894 (3rd Ed); reprinted by Barnes & Noble, 1995 ISBN-X
* O'Neill, John J., " Prodigal Genius: The Life of Nikola", 1944. ISBN (Tesla reportedly said of this biographer "You understand me better than any man alive"; also the version at uncletaz.com with other items at uncletaz's site)
* Penner, John R.H. The Strange Life of Nikola Tesla, corrupted version of My Inventions.
* Pratt, H., "Nikola Tesla 1856 1943", Proceedings of the IRE, Vol. 44, September, 1956.
* " Nikola Tesla". IEEE History Center, 2005.
* Seifer, Marc J. "Wizard: The Life and Times of Nikola Tesla; Biography of a Genius", Secaucus, NJ: Carol Publishing Group, 1996. ISBN
* Weisstein, Eric W., " Tesla, Nikola (1856 1943)". Eric Weisstein's World of Science.
* "Gazetteer of Planetary Nomenclature", Moon Nomenclature: Crater. USGS, Astrogeology Research Program.
* Dimitrijevic, Milan S., "Belgrade Astronomical Observatory Historical Review". Publ. Astron. Obs. Belgrade,), 162 170. Also, "Srpski asteroidi, Tesla". Astronomski magazine.
* Hoover, John Edgar, et al., FOIA FBI files, 1943.
* Pratt, H., "Nikola Tesla 1856 1943", Proceedings of the IRE, Vol. 44, September, 1956.
* W.C. Wysock, J.F. Corum, J.M. Hardesty and K.L. Corum, " Who Was The Real Dr. Nikola Tesla? (A Look At His Professional Credentials)". Antenna Measurement Techniques Association, posterpaper, October 22 25, 2001 (PDF)
* Roguin, Ariel, "Historical Note: Nikola Tesla: The man behind the magnetic field unit". J. Magn. Reson. Imaging 2004;19:369 374. © 2004 Wiley-Liss, Inc.
* Sellon, J. L., "The impact of Nikola Tesla on the cement industry". Behrent Eng. Co., Wheat Ridge, CO. Cement Industry Technical Conference. 1997. XXXIX Conference Record., 1997 IEEE/PC. Page(s) 125 133. ISBN
* Valentinuzzi, M.E., "Nikola Tesla: why was he so much resisted and forgotten?" Inst. de Bioingenieria, Univ. Nacional de Tucuman; Engineering in Medicine and Biology Magazine, IEEE. July/August 1998, 17:4, p 74 75. ISSN
* Waser, André, " Nikola Teslaâs Radiations and the Cosmic Rays". (PDF)
* Secor, H. Winfield, "Tesla's views on Electricity and the War", Electrical Experimenter, Volume 5, Number 4, August, 1917.
* Florey, Glen, "Tesla and the Military". Engineering 24, December 5, 2000.
* Corum, K. L., J. F. Corum, "Nikola Tesla, Lightning Observations, and Stationary Waves". 1994.
* Corum, K. L., J. F. Corum, and A. H. Aidinejad, "Atmospheric Fields, Tesla's Receivers and Regenerative Detectors". 1994.
* Meyl, Konstantin, H. Weidner, E. Zentgraf, T. Senkel, T. Junker, and P. Winkels, "Experiments to proof the evidence of scalar waves Tests with a Tesla reproduction". Institut für Gravitationsforschung (IGF), Am Heerbach 5, D-63857 Waldaschaff.
* Anderson, L. I., "John Stone Stone on Nikola Teslaâs Priority in Radio and Continuous Wave Radiofrequency Apparatus". The Antique Wireless Association Review, Vol. 1, 1986, pp. 18 41.
* Anderson, L. I., "Priority in Invention of Radio, Tesla v. Marconi". Antique Wireless Association monograph, March 1980.
* Marincic, A., and D. Budimir, "Tesla's contribution to radiowave propagation". Dept. of Electron. Eng., Belgrade Univ. (5th International Conference on Telecommunications in Modern Satellite, Cable and Broadcasting Service, 2001. TELSIKS 2001. pg., 327 331 vol.1) ISBN-X
* Page, R.M., "The Early History of Radar", Proceedings of the IRE, Volume 50, Number 5, May, 1962, (special 50th Anniversary Issue).
* C Mackechnie Jarvis "Nikola Tesla and the induction motor". 1970 Phys. Educ. 5 280 287.
* " Giant Eye to See Round the World" (DOC)
* Nichelson, Oliver, " Nikola Tesla's Latter Energy Generation Designs", A description of Tesla's energy generator that "would not consume fuel." 26th IECEC Proceedings, 1991, Boston, MA (American Nuclear Society) Vol. 4, pp 433-438.
* Nichelson, Oliver, " The Thermodynamics of Tesla's Fuelless Electrical generator". A theory of the physics of Tesla's new energy generator. (American Chemical Society, 1993. 2722-5/93/0028-63)
* Toby Grotz, " The Influence of Vedic Philosophy on Nikola Tesla's Understanding of Free Energy".
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222px
*A New System of Alternating Current Motors and Transformers, American Institute of Electrical Engineers, May 1888.
* Selected Tesla Writings, Written by Tesla and others,.
* Light Without Heat, The Manufacturer and Builder, January 1892, Vol. 24
* Biography - Nikola Tesla, The Century Magazine, November 1893, Vol. 47
* Tesla's Oscillator and Other Inventions, The Century Magazine, November 1894, Vol. 49
* The New Telegraphy. Recent Experiments in Telegraphy wih Sparks, The Century Magazine, November 1897, Vol. 55
* Anderson, Leland I., "Dr. Nikola Tesla (1856 1943)", 2d enl. ed., Minneapolis, Tesla Society. 1956. LCCN /L
* Cheney, Margaret, "", 1979. ISBN 0743215362.
* Childress, David H., "The Fantastic Inventions of Nikola Tesla," 1993. ISBN
* Glenn, Jim, "The Complete Patents of Nikola Tesla," 1994. ISBN
* Jonnes, Jill "". New York: Random House, 2003. ISBN
* Martin, Thomas C., "The Inventions, Researches, and Writings of Nikola Tesla," 1894 . ISBN-X
* O'Neill, John Jacob,"Prodigal Genius," 1944. Paperback reprint 1994, ISBN 978-0914732334. (ed. Prodigal Genius is available online)
* Lomas, Robert,"," 1999. ISBN
* Ratzlaff, John and Lee Anderson, "Dr. Nikola Tesla Bibliography", Ragusan Press, Palo Alto, California, 1979, 237 pages. Extensive listing of articles about and by Nikola Tesla.
* Seifer, Marc J., "Wizard, the Life and Times of Nikola Tesla," 1998. ISBN (HC), ISBN (SC)
* Tesla, Nikola, "Colorado Springs Notes, 1899 1900", ISBN-X
* Tesla, Nikola, "My Inventions" Parts I through V published in the Electrical Experimenter monthly magazine from February through June, 1919. Part VI published October, 1919. Reprint edition with introductory notes by Ben Johnson, New York: Barnes and Noble,1982, ISBN; also online at " My Inventions", 1919. ISBN
* Valone, Thomas, "," 2002. ISBN
* Caparica, A.J., "The Adventurers" features Nikola Tesla as a main protagonist. 2007. ISBN
* Carlson, W. Bernard, "Inventor of dreams". Scientific American, March 2005 v292 i3 p78(7).
* Jatras, Stella L., "The genius of Nikola Tesla". The New American, July 28, 2003 v19 i15 p9(1)
* Rybak, James P., "Nikola Tesla: Scientific Savant". Popular Electronics, 1042170X, Nov99, Vol. 16, Issue 11.
* Lawren, B., "Rediscovering Tesla". Omni, Mar88, Vol. 10 Issue 6.
* There are at least two films describing Tesla's life. In the first, filmed in 1977, arranged for TV, Tesla was portrayed by Rade Å erbedžija. In 1980, Orson Welles produced a Yugoslav film named Tajna Nikole Tesle (The Secret of Nikola Tesla), in which Welles himself played the part of Tesla's patron, J.P. Morgan. Film was directed by Krsto PapiÄ, and Nikola Tesla was portrayed by Petar BožoviÄ.
* " Tesla: Master of Lightning". 1999. ISBN (Book) ISBN (PBS Video)
* Lost Lightning: The Missing Secrets of Nikola Tesla (at Google Video) - Phenomenon: the Lost Archives documentary about Tesla's designs for free energy and defensive weapons systems.
* David Bowie portrayed Tesla in the 2006 film "The Prestige". Tesla's time in Colorado Springs was the focus of the scenes in the film.
* Tesla Resource Surrounding the PBS "Master of Lightning" documentary
* The Nikola Tesla museum
* Nikola Tesla 150
* Tesla Forum of Western Australia Inc.
* World of Scientific Biography: Nikola Tesla, by Wolfsram Research
* Nikola Tesla Page
* Tesla's grand-nephew William H. Terbo's site
* Nikola Tesla, Forgotten American Scientist
* The Tesla Wardenclyffe Project. Shoreham, New York. Aims to reuse Wardenclyffe Tower
* Nikola Tesla's Father - Milutin Tesla
* Tesla - The European Years
* Tesla's Case File at The Franklin Institute containing information about his 1894 Franklin Award for research in high-frequency phenomena
* Tesla's 'Death-Ray' and the Egg of Columbus, from American Antigravity.
* Dr. James Corum's Tesla Engineering Papers, from Arcs 'N Sparks.
* Fred Walters' hand-scanned Tesla patents (PDFs)
* Jim Bieberich's The Complete Nikola Tesla U.S. Patent Collection
* Online archive of many of Tesla's writings, articles and published papers
* Seifer, Marc J., and Michael Behar, Electric Mind, Wired Magazine, October 1998.
* Palmer, Stephen E., " Wardenclyffe: Nikola Tesla's Dream For Free Energy And The Conspiracy Which Destroyed It".
*
* Nikola Tesla on various Yugoslavian and Serbian banknotes.
* Nikola Tesla's FBI file in pdf
* Kenneth M. Swezey Papers, 1891 1982, Archives Center, National Museum of American History, archival resources.
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Nikola_Tesla | Did Tesla study electrical engineering? | yes | data/set4/a3 | Nikola_Tesla
Nikola Tesla (Serbian Cyrillic: Ðикола ТеÑла) (July 10 1856 7 January 1943) was an inventor, physicist, mechanical engineer, and electrical engineer. Born in Smiljan, Croatian Krajina, Military Frontier, he was an ethnic Serb subject of the Austrian Empire and later became an American citizen. Tesla is best known for his many revolutionary contributions to the discipline of electricity and magnetism in the late 19th and early 20th century. Tesla's patents and theoretical work formed the basis of modern alternating current electric power (AC) systems, including the polyphase power distribution systems and the AC motor, with which he helped usher in the Second Industrial Revolution. Contemporary biographers of Tesla have deemed him "the man who invented the twentieth century" Title of a biography by Robert Lomas (seen) and "the patron saint of modern electricity." Seifer, "Wizard: The Life and Times of Nikola Tesla," book synopsis
After his demonstration of wireless communication (radio) in 1893 and after being the victor in the "War of Currents", he was widely respected as America's greatest electrical engineer. /ref> Much of his early work pioneered modern electrical engineering and many of his discoveries were of groundbreaking importance. During this period, in the United States, Tesla's fame rivaled that of any other inventor or scientist in history or popular culture, Harnessing the Wheelwork of Nature: Tesla's Science of Energy by Thomas Valone but due to his eccentric personality and unbelievable and sometimes bizarre claims about possible scientific and technological developments, Tesla was ultimately ostracized and regarded as a mad scientist. Childress, David Hatcher, (ed.) "The Tesla Papers: Nikola Tesla on Free Energy & Wireless Transmission of Power". Adventures Unlimited Press, 2000. ISBN Lomas, Robert, " The essay," Spark of genius. Independent Magazine, August 21 1999. Never having put much focus on his finances, Tesla died impoverished at the age of 86.
The SI unit measuring magnetic flux density or magnetic induction (commonly known as the magnetic field B\, ), the tesla, was named in his honour (at the Conférence Générale des Poids et Mesures, Paris, 1960).
Aside from his work on electromagnetism and engineering, Tesla is said to have contributed in varying degrees to the establishment of robotics, remote control, radar and computer science, and to the expansion of ballistics, nuclear physics Cheney, Margaret, "Tesla: Man Out of Time", 1979. ISBN 0743215362. Front cover flap , and theoretical physics. In 1943, the Supreme Court of the United States credited him as being the inventor of the radio. Many of his achievements have been used, with some controversy, to support various pseudosciences, UFO theories, and early new age occultism.
Tesla is honoured in both Serbia and Croatia, as well as his adopted home, the United States.
According to legend, Tesla was born precisely at midnight during an electrical storm, to a Serbian family in the village of Smiljan near GospiÄ, in the Lika region of the Croatian Krajina in Military Frontier (part of the Austrian Empire), in the present-day Croatia. Dommermuth-Costa, Carol, Nikola Tesla: A Spark of Genius, pp. 11-12. 1994. ISBN
Nikola Tesla's birth house and statue in Smiljan
His baptism certificate reports that he was born on June 28 (N.S. July 10) , 1856, and christened by the Serbian Orthodox priest Toma Oklobdžija. His father was Rev. Milutin Tesla, a priest in the Serbian Orthodox Church Metropolitanate of Sremski Karlovci. Milutin was born on 19 February 1819 in the village of Meduc, county Medak in Lika, Austrian Empire, as son of Nikola Tesla (b. 1789 in the military frontier, settled after his service in the Napoleonic Wars in Gospic in 1815) and Ana KaliniÄ, from the famous frontier Kalinic family. Tesla's family asserted its last name as such in Lika. His paternal origin is thought to be of the DraganiÄ family from the Tara valley area below the geographical entity known as Old Vlach, from one of the local Serb clans; however genealogical research shows that Nikola is from the Herzegovinian noble KomnenoviÄ (modern-day Old Herzegovina in Montenegro), from its OrloviÄ subgroup that traces its origin from the semi-mythic Pavle Orlovic that bore Prince Lazar's banner at the Battle of Kosovo in 1389. His mother was Äuka MandiÄ, herself a daughter of a Serbian Orthodox Church priest. She came from a family domiciled in Lika and Banija, but with deeper origins to Kosovo. She was talented in making home craft tools. She memorized many Serbian epic poems, but never learned to read. Seifer, "Wizard" p 7 His godfather, Jovan Drenovac, was a captain in the army protecting the Military Frontier.
Nikola was one of five children, having one brother (Dane, who was killed in a horse-riding accident when Nikola was five) and three sisters (Milka, Angelina and Marica). Margaret Cheney, Robert Uth, and Jim Glenn, "Tesla, Master of Lightning". Barnes & Noble Publishing, 1999. ISBN 0760710058. His family moved to GospiÄ in 1862. Tesla went to school in Karlovac. He finished a four year term in the span of three years. Walker, E. H. (1900). Leaders of the 19th century with some noted characters of earlier times, their efforts and achievements in advancing human progress vividly portrayed for the guidance of present and future generations. Chicago: A.B. Kuhlman Co., Page 474.
Tesla then studied electrical engineering at the Austrian Polytechnic in Graz (1875). While there, he studied the uses of alternating current. Some sources say he received Baccalaureate degrees from the university at Graz. " The Book of New York: Forty Years' Recollections of the American Metropolis"
says he matriculated 4 degrees (physics, mathematics, mechanical engineering and electrical engineering)
However, the university says that he did not receive a degree and did not continue beyond the first semester of his third year, during which he stopped attending lectures. Nikola Tesla: the European Years, D. Mrkich
Others have stated that he was discharged without a degree for nonpayment of his tuition for the first semester of his junior year.
According to a college roommate, he did not graduate. . Cited in Seifer, Marc, The Life and Times of Nikola Tesla, 1996
In December 1878 he left Graz and broke all relations with his family. His friends thought that he had drowned in Mura. He went to Maribor, Slovenia, where he was first employed as an assistant engineer for a year. He suffered a nervous breakdown during this time. Tesla was later persuaded by his father to attend the Charles-Ferdinand University in Prague, which he attended for the summer term of 1880. However after his father died he left the university, having completed only one term.
Nikola Tesla as a young man
Tesla engaged in reading many works, memorizing complete books. He had a photographic memory. Tesla related in his autobiography that he experienced detailed moments of inspiration. During his early life, Tesla was stricken with illness time and time again. He suffered a peculiar affliction in which blinding flashes of light would appear before his eyes, often accompanied by hallucinations. Much of the time the visions were linked to a word or idea he might have come across; just by hearing the name of an item, he would involuntarily envision it in realistic detail. Modern-day synesthetes report similar symptoms. Tesla would visualise an invention in his brain in precise form before moving to the construction stage; a technique sometimes known as picture thinking. Tesla also often had flashbacks to events that had happened previously in his life; this began to happen during childhood.
In 1881, he moved to Budapest, Hungary, to work under Tivadar Puskás in a telegraph company, James Grant Wilson, John Fiske, Appleton's Cyclopædia of American Biography. Page 261.
the National Telephone Company. There, he met NebojÅ¡a PetroviÄ, a young inventor from Austria. Although their encounter was brief, they did work on a project together using twin turbines to create continual power. On the opening of the telephone exchange in Budapest, 1881, Tesla became the chief electrician to the company, and was later engineer for the country's first telephone system. He also developed a device that, according to some, was a telephone repeater or amplifier, but according to others could have been the first loudspeaker. " Did Tesla really invent the loudspeaker?". Twenty First Century Books, Breckenridge, CO.
In 1882 he moved to Paris, France, to work as an engineer for the Continental Edison Company, designing improvements to electric equipment. In the same year, Tesla conceived the induction motor and began developing various devices that use rotating magnetic fields (for which he received patents in 1888).
Soon thereafter, Tesla hastened from Paris to his mother's side as she lay dying, arriving hours before her death in April, 1892. Seifer, "Wizard: The Life and Times of Nikola Tesla" - page 94
Her last words to him were, "You've arrived, Nidžo, my pride." After her death, Tesla fell ill. He spent two to three weeks recuperating in GospiÄ and the village of Tomingaj near GraÄac, the birthplace of his mother.
On June 6, 1884, Tesla first arrived in the US in New York City. "Master of Lightning" by Public Broadcasting Service. Website
He had little besides a letter of recommendation from Charles Batchelor, his manager in his previous job. In the letter of recommendation to Thomas Edison, Charles Batchelor wrote, "I know two great men and you are one of them; the other is this young man." Edison hired Tesla to work for his company Edison Machine Works. Tesla's work for Edison began with simple electrical engineering and quickly progressed to solving the company's most difficult problems. Tesla was offered the task of a complete redesign of the Edison company's direct current generators.
During his employment, Edison offered Tesla $50,000 (equivalent to about $1 million in 2006, adjusted for inflation) Adjusting the reported given amount of money for inflation', the $50,000 in 1885 would equal $1,082,008.74 in 2006 if he redesigned Edison's inefficient motor and generators, an improvement in both service and economy. Tesla said he worked night and day to redesign them and gave the Edison company several profitable new patents in the process. During the year of 1885, when Tesla inquired about the payment on the work, Edison replied to him, "Tesla, you don't understand our American humor," and reneged on his promise. Clifford A. Pickover, Strange Brains and Genius: The Secret Lives of Eccentric Scientists and Madmen. HarperCollins, 1999. 352 pages. Page 14. ISBN 0688168949 "My Inventions" by Nikola Tesla, printed in Electrical Experimenter Feb-June, 1919. Reprinted, edited by Ben Johnson, New York: Barnes & Noble, 1982. ISBN
Tesla resigned when he was refused a raise to $25 per week. At Tesla's salary of $18 per week, the bonus would have amounted to over 53 years pay, and the amount was equal to the initial capital of the company. Jonnes,"Empire of light" p110
Tesla eventually found himself digging ditches for a short period of time â ironically for the Edison company. Edison had also never wanted to hear about Tesla's AC polyphase designs, believing that DC electricity was the future. Tesla focused intently on his AC polyphase system, even while digging ditches.
In 1886, Tesla formed his own company, Tesla Electric Light & Manufacturing. The initial financial investors disagreed with Tesla on his plan for an alternating current motor and eventually relieved him of his duties at the company. Tesla worked in New York as a common laborer from 1886 to 1887 to feed himself and raise capital for his next project. In 1887, he constructed the initial brushless alternating current induction motor, which he demonstrated to the American Institute of Electrical Engineers (now IEEE) in 1888. In the same year, he developed the principles of his Tesla coil and began working with George Westinghouse at Westinghouse Electric & Manufacturing Company's Pittsburgh labs. Westinghouse listened to his ideas for polyphase systems which would allow transmission of alternating current electricity over large distances.
In April of 1887, Tesla began investigating what would later be called X-rays using his own single node vacuum tubes (similar to his patent ). This device differed from other early X-ray tubes in that they had no target electrode. The modern term for the phenomenon produced by this device is bremsstrahlung (or braking radiation). We now know that this device operated by emitting electrons from the single electrode through a combination of field emission and thermionic emission. Once liberated, electrons are strongly repelled by the high electric field near the electrode during negative voltage peaks from the oscillating HV output of the Tesla Coil, generating X-rays as they collide with the glass envelope. He also used Geissler tubes. By 1892, Tesla became aware of what Wilhelm Röntgen later identified as effects of X-rays.
In the early research, Tesla devised several experimental setups to produce X-rays. Tesla held that, with his circuits, the "instrument will [... enable one to] generate Roentgen rays of much greater power than obtainable with ordinary apparatus." N. Tesla, "High frequency oscillators for electro-therapeutic and other purposes". Proceedings of the American Electro-Therapeutic Association, American Electro-Therapeutic Association. Page 25.
He also commented on the hazards of working with his circuit and single node X-ray producing devices. Of his many notes in the early investigation of this phenomenon, he attributed the skin damage to various causes. One of the options for the cause, which is not in conformity with current facts, was that the ozone generated rather than the radiation was responsible. He early on stated,
Tesla later stated,
Tesla continued research in the field and, later, observed an assistant severely "burnt" by X-rays in his lab. He performed several experiments prior to Roentgen's discovery (including photographing the bones of his hand; later, he sent these images to Roentgen) but didn't make his findings widely known; much of his research was lost in the 5th Avenue lab fire of March 1895.
A "world system" for "the transmission of electrical energy without wires" that depends upon the electrical conductivity was proposed in which transmission in various natural mediums with current that passes between the two point are used to power devices. In a practical wireless energy transmission system using this principle, a high-power ultraviolet beam might be used to form a vertical ionized channel in the air directly above the transmitter-receiver stations. The same concept is used in virtual lightning rods, the electrolaser electroshock weapon, A Survey of Laser Lightning Rod Techniques - Barnes, Arnold A., Jr. ; Berthel, Robert O.
and has been proposed for disabling vehicles. Frequently Asked Questions - HSV Technologies Vehicle Disabling Weapon by Peter A. Schlesinger, President, HSV Technologies, Inc. - NDIA Non-Lethal Defense IV 20-22 Mar 2000
Tesla demonstrated "the transmission of electrical energy without wires" that depends upon electrical conductivity as early as 1891. The Tesla effect (named in honor of Tesla) is the archaic term for an application of this type of electrical conduction (that is, the movement of energy through space and matter; not just the production of voltage across a conductor). Norrie, H. S., "Induction Coils: How to make, use, and repair them". Norman H. Schneider, 1907, New York. 4th edition.
Wireless transmission of power and energy demonstration during his high frequency and potential lecture of 1891.
On July 30, 1891, he became a naturalized citizen of the United States at the age of 35. Tesla established his 35 South Fifth Avenue laboratory in New York during this same year. Later, Tesla would establish his Houston Street laboratory in New York at 46 E. Houston Street. There, at one point while conducting mechanical resonance experiments with electro-mechanical oscillators he generated a resonance of several surrounding buildings, but ironically due to the frequencies involved, not his own building, causing complaints to the police. As the speed grew he hit the resonant frequency of his own building and belatedly realizing the danger he was forced to apply a sledge hammer to terminate the experiment, just as the astonished police arrived. O'Neill, "Prodigal Genius" pp162-164
He also lit vacuum tubes wirelessly at both of the New York locations, providing evidence for the potential of wireless power transmission. Krumme, Katherine, Mark Twain and Nikola Tesla: Thunder and Lightning. December 4, 2000 (PDF)
Some of Tesla's closest friends were artists. He befriended Century Magazine editor Robert Underwood Johnson, who adapted several Serbian poems of Jovan JovanoviÄ Zmaj (which Tesla translated). Also during this time, Tesla was influenced by the Vedic philosophy teachings of the Swami Vivekananda. Grotz, Toby, " The Influence of Vedic Philosophy on Nikola Tesla's Understanding of Free Energy".
Nikola Tesla's AC dynamo used to generate AC which is used to transport electricity across great distances. It is contained in .
When Tesla was 36 years old, the first patents concerning the polyphase power system were granted. He continued research of the system and rotating magnetic field principles. Tesla served, from 1892 to 1894, as the vice president of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers, the forerunner (along with the Institute of Radio Engineers) of the modern-day IEEE. From 1893 to 1895, he investigated high frequency alternating currents. He generated AC of one million volts using a conical Tesla coil and investigated the skin effect in conductors, designed tuned circuits, invented a machine for inducing sleep, cordless gas discharge lamps, and transmitted electromagnetic energy without wires, building the first radio transmitter. In St. Louis, Missouri, Tesla made a demonstration related to radio communication in 1893. Addressing the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and the National Electric Light Association, he described and demonstrated in detail its principles. Tesla's demonstrations were written about widely through various media outlets. Tesla also investigated harvesting energy that is present throughout space. He believed that it was just merely a question of time when men will succeed in attaching their machinery to the very wheelwork of nature, stating:
At the 1893 World's Fair, the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago, an international exposition was held which for the first time devoted a building to electrical exhibits. It was an historic event as Tesla and George Westinghouse introduced visitors to AC power by using it to illuminate the Exposition. On display were Tesla's fluorescent lamps and single node bulbs. Tesla also explained the principles of the rotating magnetic field and induction motor by demonstrating how to make an egg made of copper stand on end in his demonstration of the device he constructed known as the "Egg of Columbus".
Also in the late 1880s, Tesla and Edison became adversaries in part due to Edison's promotion of direct current (DC) for electric power distribution over the more efficient alternating current advocated by Tesla and Westinghouse. Until Tesla invented the induction motor, AC's advantages for long distance high voltage transmission were counterbalanced by the inability to operate motors on AC. As a result of the "War of Currents," Edison and Westinghouse went nearly bankrupt, so in 1897, Tesla released Westinghouse from contract, providing Westinghouse a break from Tesla's patent royalties. Also in 1897, Tesla researched radiation which led to setting up the basic formulation of cosmic rays. Waser, André, "Nikola Teslaâs Radiations and the Cosmic Rays".
When Tesla was forty-one years old, he filed the first basic radio patent ( ). A year later, he demonstrated a radio controlled boat to the US military, believing that the military would want things such as radio controlled torpedoes. Tesla had developed the "Art of Telautomatics", a form of robotics, as well as the technology of remote control. Tesla, Nikola, " My Inventions", Electrical Experimenter magazine, Feb, June, and Oct, 1919. ISBN (teslaplay.comversion; also the version at rastko.org) In 1898, a radio-controlled boat was demonstrated to the public during an electrical exhibition at Madison Square Garden. These devices had an innovative coherer and a series of logic gates. Tesla called his boat a "teleautomaton" and said of it, "You see there the first of a race of robots, mechanical men which will do the laborious work of the human race." Jonnes, Jill. Empires of Light ISBN 0-375-75884-4. Page 355, referencing O'Neill, John J., Prodigal Genius: The Life of Nikola Tesla (New York: David McKay, 1944), p.167. Radio remote control remained a novelty until the 1960s. In the same year, Tesla devised an "electric igniter" or spark plug for Internal combustion gasoline engines. He gained , "Electrical Igniter for Gas Engines", on this mechanical ignition system. Tesla lived in the former Gerlach Hotel, renamed The Radio Wave building, at 49 W 27th St. (between Broadway and Sixth Avenue), Lower Manhattan, before the end of the century where he conducted the radio wave experiments. A commemorative plaque was placed on the building in 1977 to honor his work.
In 1899, Tesla decided to move and began research in Colorado Springs, Colorado, where he would have room for his high-voltage, high-frequency experiments. Upon his arrival he told reporters that he was conducting wireless telegraphy experiments transmitting signals from Pikes Peak to Paris. Tesla's diary contains explanations of his experiments concerning the ionosphere and the ground's telluric currents via transverse waves and longitudinal waves. Tesla, Nikola, "The True Wireless". Electrical Experimenter, May 1919. ( also at pbs.org)
At his lab, Tesla proved that the earth was a conductor, and he produced artificial lightning (with discharges consisting of millions of volts, and up to 135 feet long). Gillispie, Charles Coulston, "Dictionary of Scientific Biography"; Tesla, Nikola. Charles Scribner's Sons, New York. ISBN
Tesla also investigated atmospheric electricity, observing lightning signals via his receivers. Reproductions of Tesla's receivers and coherer circuits show an unpredicted level of complexity (e.g., distributed high-Q helical resonators, radio frequency feedback, crude heterodyne effects, and regeneration techniques). Corum, K. L., J. F. Corum, and A. H. Aidinejad, "Atmospheric Fields, Tesla's Receivers and Regenerative Detectors". 1994.
Tesla stated that he observed stationary waves during this time. Corum, K. L., J. F. Corum, "Nikola Tesla, Lightning Observations, and Stationary Waves". 1994.
Tesla researched ways to transmit power and energy wirelessly over long distances (via transverse waves, to a lesser extent, and, more readily, longitudinal waves). He transmitted extremely low frequencies through the ground as well as between the earth's surface and the Kennelly-Heaviside layer. He received patents on wireless transceivers that developed standing waves by this method. In his experiments, he made mathematical calculations and computations based on his experiments and discovered that the resonant frequency of the Earth was approximately 8 Hertz (Hz). In the 1950s, researchers confirmed that the resonant frequency of the Earth's ionospheric cavity was in this range (later named the Schumann resonance).
In the Colorado Springs lab, Tesla observed unusual signals that he later thought may have been evidence of extraterrestrial radio communications coming from Venus or Mars. Tesla, Nikola, " Talking with Planets". Collier's Weekly, February 19, 1901. (EarlyRadioHistory.us)
He noticed repetitive signals from his receiver which were substantially different from the signals he had noted from storms and earth noise. Specifically, he later recalled that the signals appeared in groups of one, two, three, and four clicks together. Tesla had mentioned before this event and many times after that he thought his inventions could be used to talk with other planets. There have even been claims that he invented a "Teslascope" for just such a purpose. It is debatable what type of signals Tesla received or whether he picked up anything at all. Research has suggested that Tesla may have had a misunderstanding of the new technology he was working with,
or that the signals Tesla observed may have simply been an observation of a non-terrestrial natural radio source such as the Jovian plasma torus signals.
Tesla left Colorado Springs on January 7, 1900. The lab was torn down and its contents sold to pay debts. The Colorado experiments prepared Tesla for his next project, the establishment of a wireless power transmission facility that would be known as Wardenclyffe. Tesla was granted for the means of increasing the intensity of electrical oscillations. The United States Patent Office classification system currently assigns this patent to the primary Class 178/43 ("telegraphy/space induction"), although the other applicable classes include 505/825 ("low temperature superconductivity-related apparatus").
In 1900, with $150,000 (51% from J. Pierpont Morgan), Tesla began planning the Wardenclyffe Tower facility. In June 1902, Tesla's lab operations were moved to Wardenclyffe from Houston Street. The tower was finally dismantled for scrap during World War I. Newspapers of the time labeled Wardenclyffe "Tesla's million-dollar folly." In 1904, the US Patent Office reversed its decision and awarded Guglielmo Marconi the patent for radio, and Tesla began his fight to re-acquire the radio patent. On his 50th birthday in 1906, Tesla demonstrated his 200 hp (150 kW) 16,000 rpm bladeless turbine. During 1910 1911 at the Waterside Power Station in New York, several of his bladeless turbine engines were tested at 100 5000 hp.
Since the Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to Marconi for radio in 1909, Thomas Edison and Tesla were mentioned as potential laureates to share the Nobel Prize of 1915 in a press dispatch, leading to one of several Nobel Prize controversies. Some sources have claimed that due to their animosity toward each other neither was given the award, despite their enormous scientific contributions, and that each sought to minimize the other one's achievements and right to win the award, that both refused to ever accept the award if the other received it first, and that both rejected any possibility of sharing it. O'Neill, "Prodigal Genius" pp228-229
In the following events after the rumors, neither Tesla nor Edison won the prize (although Edison did receive one of 38 possible bids in 1915, and Tesla did receive one bid out of 38 in 1937). Seifer, "Wizard" pp378-380
Earlier, Tesla alone was rumored to have been nominated for the Nobel Prize of 1912. The rumored nomination was primarily for his experiments with tuned circuits using high-voltage high-frequency resonant transformers.
In 1915, Tesla filed a lawsuit against Marconi attempting, unsuccessfully, to obtain a court injunction against the claims of Marconi. After Wardenclyffe, Tesla built the Telefunken Wireless Station in Sayville, Long Island. Some of what he wanted to achieve at Wardenclyffe was accomplished with the Telefunken Wireless. In 1917, the facility was seized and torn down by the Marines, because it was suspected that it could be used by German spies.
Prior to World War I, Tesla looked overseas for investors to fund his research. When the war started, Tesla lost the funding he was receiving from his European patents. After the war ended, Tesla made predictions regarding the relevant issues of the post-World War I environment, in a printed article (December 20, 1914). Tesla believed that the League of Nations was not a remedy for the times and issues. Tesla started to exhibit pronounced symptoms of obsessive-compulsive disorder in the years following. He became obsessed with the number three; he often felt compelled to walk around a block three times before entering a building, demanded a stack of three folded, cloth napkins beside his plate at every meal, etc. The nature of OCD was little understood at the time and no treatments were available, so his symptoms were considered by some to be evidence of partial insanity, and this undoubtedly hurt what was left of his reputation.
At this time, he was staying at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, renting in an arrangement for deferred payments. Eventually, the Wardenclyffe deed was turned over to George Boldt, proprietor of the Waldorf-Astoria to pay a $20,000 debt. In 1917, around the time that the Wardenclyffe Tower was demolished by Boldt to make the land a more viable real estate asset, Tesla received AIEE's highest honor, the Edison Medal.
Tesla, in August 1917, first established principles regarding frequency and power level for the first primitive RADAR units. Page, R.M., "The Early History of RADAR", Proceedings of the IRE, Volume 50, Number 5, May, 1962, (special 50th Anniversary Issue).
In 1934, Ãmile Girardeau, working with the first French RADAR systems, stated he was building RADAR systems "conceived according to the principles stated by Tesla". By the twenties, Tesla was reportedly negotiating with the United Kingdom government about a ray system. Tesla had also stated that efforts had been made to steal the so called "death ray". It is suggested that the removal of the Chamberlain government ended negotiations.
On Tesla's seventy-fifth birthday in 1931, Time magazine put him on its cover.
The cover caption noted his contribution to electrical power generation. Tesla received his last patent in 1928 for an apparatus for aerial transportation which was the first instance of VTOL aircraft. In 1934, Tesla wrote to consul JankoviÄ of his homeland. The letter contained the message of gratitude to Mihajlo Pupin who initiated a donation scheme by which American companies could support Tesla. Tesla refused the assistance, and chose to live by a modest pension received from Yugoslavia and to continue researching.
In 1936, Tesla stated "I'm equally proud of my Serbian origin and my Croatian homeland." Tesla's response to Vlatko MaÄek in 1936
When he was eighty-one, Tesla stated he had completed a dynamic theory of gravity. He stated that it was "worked out in all details" and that he hoped to soon give it to the world. Prepared Statement by Nikola Tesla downloadable from www.tesla.hu
The theory was never published. At the time of his announcement, it was considered by the scientific establishment to exceed the bounds of reason. Some believe that Tesla never fully developed the Unified Field Theory.
The bulk of the theory was developed between 1892 and 1894, during the period that he was conducting experiments with high frequency and high potential electromagnetism and patenting devices for their utilization. It was completed, according to Tesla, by the end of the 1930s. Tesla's theory explained gravity using electrodynamics consisting of transverse waves (to a lesser extent) and longitudinal waves (for the majority). Reminiscent of Mach's principle, Tesla stated in 1925 that:
Nikola Tesla, with Rudjer Boscovich's book Theoria Philosophiae Naturalis, sits in front of the spiral coil of his high-frequency transformer at East Houston Street, New York.
Tesla was critical of Einstein's relativity work, calling it:
Tesla also argued:
Tesla, also believed that much of Albert Einstein's relativity theory had already been proposed by RuÄer BoÅ¡koviÄ, stating in an unpublished interview:
Later in life, Tesla made some remarkable claims concerning a "teleforce" weapon. "Tesla's Ray". Time, July 23, 1934.
The press called it a "peace ray" or death ray. "Tesla, at 78, Bares New 'Death-Beam"', New York Times, July 11, 1934. "Tesla Invents Peace Ray". New York Sun, July 10, 1934.
In total, the components and methods included: "Death-Ray Machine Described", New York Sun, July 11, 1934. "A Machine to End War". Feb. 1935.
# An apparatus for producing manifestations of energy in free air instead of in a high vacuum as in the past. This, according to Tesla in 1934, was accomplished.
# A mechanism for generating tremendous electrical force. This, according to Tesla, was also accomplished.
# A means of intensifying and amplifying the force developed by the second mechanism.
# A new method for producing a tremendous electrical repelling force. This would be the projector, or gun, of the invention.
Tesla worked on plans for a directed-energy weapon between the early 1900s till the time of his death. In 1937, Tesla composed a treatise entitled "The Art of Projecting Concentrated Non-dispersive Energy through the Natural Media" concerning charged particle beams. Seifer, Marc J., "Wizard, the Life and Times of Nikola Tesla". ISBN (HC) pg. 454
Tesla published the document in an attempt to expound on the technical description of a "superweapon that would put an end to all war". This treatise of the particle beam is currently in the Nikola Tesla Museum archive in Belgrade. It described an open ended vacuum tube with a gas jet seal that allowed particles to exit, a method of charging particles to millions of volts, and a method of creating and directing nondispersive particle streams (through electrostatic repulsion). Seifer, "Wizard" pg. 454
Records of his indicate that it was based on a narrow stream of atomic clusters of liquid mercury or tungsten accelerated via high voltage (by means akin to his magnifying transformer). Tesla gave the following description concerning the particle gun's operation:
The weapon could be used against ground based infantry or for antiaircraft purposes. "'Death Ray' for Planes". New York Times, September 22, 1940.
Tesla tried to interest the US War Department in the device. "Aerial Defense 'Death-Beam' Offered to U. S. By Tesla" July 12, 1940
He also offered this invention to European countries. O'Neill, John J., " Tesla Tries To Prevent World War II". (unpublished Chapter 34 of Prodigal Genius) (PBS)
None of the governments purchased a contract to build the device. He was unable to act on his plans. Velox, Particle beam weapon. everything2.com
Tesla began to theorize about electricity and magnetism's power to warp, or rather change, space and time and the procedure by which man could forcibly control this power. Near the end of his life, Tesla was fascinated with the idea of light as both a particle and a wave, a fundamental proposition already incorporated into quantum physics. This field of inquiry led to the idea of creating a "wall of light" by manipulating electromagnetic waves in a certain pattern. This mysterious wall of light would enable time, space, gravity and matter to be altered at will, and engendered an array of Tesla proposals that seem to leap straight out of science fiction, including anti-gravity airships, teleportation, and time travel. The single strangest invention Tesla ever proposed was probably the "thought photography" machine. He reasoned that a thought formed in the mind created a corresponding image in the retina, and the electrical data of this neural transmission could be read and recorded in a machine. The stored information could then be processed through an artificial optic nerve and played back as visual patterns on a viewscreen.
Another of Tesla's theorized inventions is commonly referred to as Tesla's Flying Machine, which appears to resemble an ion-propelled aircraft. Tesla claimed that one of his life goals was to create a flying machine that would run without the use of an airplane engine, wings, ailerons, propellers, or an onboard fuel source. Initially, Tesla pondered about the idea of a flying craft that would fly using an electric motor powered by grounded base stations. As time progressed, Tesla suggested that perhaps such an aircraft could be run entirely electro-mechanically. The theorized appearance would typically take the form of a cigar or saucer.
Bust of Tesla by Ivan MeÅ¡troviÄ, 1952, in Zagreb, Croatia
Tesla died of heart failure alone in the New Yorker Hotel, some time between the evening of January 5 and the morning of January 8, 1943, at the age of 86. Despite selling his AC electricity patents, Tesla was destitute and died with significant debts. Later that year the US Supreme Court upheld Tesla's patent number in effect recognizing him as the inventor of radio.
Immediately after Tesla's death became known, the Federal Bureau of Investigation instructed the government's Alien Property Custodian office to take possession of his papers and property, despite his US citizenship. His safe at the hotel was also opened. At the time of his death, Tesla had been continuing work on the teleforce weapon, or death ray, that he had unsuccessfully marketed to the US War Department. It appears that his proposed death ray was related to his research into ball lightning and plasma and was imagined as a particle beam weapon. The US government did not find a prototype of the device in the safe. After the FBI was contacted by the War Department, his papers were declared to be top secret. The so-called "peace ray" constitutes a part of some conspiracy theories as a means of destruction. The personal effects were seized on the advice of presidential advisers, and J. Edgar Hoover declared the case "most secret", because of the nature of Tesla's inventions and patents. Hoover, John Edgar, et al., FOIA FBI files, 1943.
One document states that "[he] is reported to have some 80 trunks in different places containing transcripts and plans having to do with his experiments [...]". Charlotte Muzar reported that there were several "missing" papers and property.
Statue of Nikola Tesla in Niagara Falls State Park on Goat Island, New York; There is another statue with Tesla standing in Queen Victoria Park on the Canadian side of Niagara Falls.
Tesla's family and the Yugoslav embassy struggled with the American authorities to gain these items after his death due to the potential significance of some of his research. Eventually, his nephew, Sava KosanoviÄ, got possession of some of his personal effects which are now housed in the Nikola Tesla Museum in Belgrade, Serbia. Nikola Tesla Museum
Tesla's funeral took place on January 12, 1943, at the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine in Manhattan, New York City. After the funeral, his body was cremated. His ashes were taken to Belgrade, Yugoslavia in 1957. The urn was placed in the Nikola Tesla Museum, where it resides to this day.
Tesla did not like to pose for portraits. He did it only once for princess Vilma Lwoff-Parlaghy (1863-1923). The portrait survived in the collection of Ludwig Nissen, Brooklyn, see: Klaus Lengsfeld: Sammlung Ludwig Nissen : Husum 1855 - 1924 New York; Dokumentation d. Kunstsammlung Ludwig Nissens anlässl. d. Ausstellung zu seinem 125. Geburtstag im Nissenhaus zu Husum, 1980, 169 S. (= Schriften des Nordfriesischen Museums Ludwig-Nissen-Haus, Nr. 16) His wish was to have a sculpture made by his close friend Ivan MeÅ¡troviÄ, who was at that time in United States, but he died before getting a chance to see it. MeÅ¡troviÄ made a bronze bust (1952) that is held in the Nikola Tesla Museum in Belgrade and a statue (1955/56) placed at the RuÄer BoÅ¡koviÄ Institute in Zagreb. This statue was moved to Nikola Tesla Street in Zagreb's city centre on the 150th anniversary of Tesla's birth, with the RuÄer BoÅ¡koviÄ Institute to receive a duplicate.
In 1976, a bronze statue of Tesla was placed at Niagara Falls, New York. A similar statue was also erected in his hometown of GospiÄ in 1986.
The SI unit tesla (T) for measuring magnetic flux density or magnetic induction (commonly known as the magnetic field B\, ) was named in Teslaâs honour at the Conférence Générale des Poids et Mesures, Paris in 1960. The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) of which Tesla had been vice president also created an award in recognition of Tesla. Called the IEEE Nikola Tesla Award, it is given to individuals or a team that has made outstanding contributions to the generation or utilization of electric power, and is considered the most prestigious award in the area of electric power. IEEE, " IEEE Nikola Tesla Award. April 01, 2005.
The Tesla crater on the far side of the Moon and the minor planet 2244 Tesla are also named after him.
[[Image:100RSD front.jpg|thumb|left|200px|100 Serbian dinar banknote obverse.
Photo courtesy of National Bank of Serbia. National Bank of Serbia ]]
100 Serbian dinars banknote reverse. Note the drawing of the electric motor.
Tesla has received many recognitions within Serbia. He is featured on the current 100 Serbian dinar note (see left). The largest power plant complex in Serbia, the TPP Nikola Tesla is named in his honour. On July 10, 2006 the biggest airport in Serbia (Belgrade) was renamed Belgrade Nikola Tesla Airport in honor of Teslaâs 150th birthday.
An electric car company, Tesla Motors, named their company in tribute to Nikola Tesla. Their website states: The namesake of our Tesla Roadster is the genius Nikola Tesla [...] Weâre confident that if he were alive today, Nikola Tesla would look over our car and nod his head with both understanding and approval. Why the Name "Tesla"?, Tesla Motors, Inc., 2006
The Croatian subsidiary of Ericsson is also named 'Ericsson Nikola Tesla d.d'. ('Nikola Tesla' was a phone hardware company in Zagreb before Ericsson bought it in the 1990s) in honour of Nikola Tesla's pioneering work in wireless communication.
The year 2006 was celebrated by UNESCO as the 150th anniversary of the birth of Nikola Tesla, scientist (1856-1943), as well as being proclaimed by the governments of Croatia and Serbia to be the Year of Tesla. On this anniversary, July 10 2006, the renovated village of Smiljan (which had been demolished during the wars of the 1990s) was opened to the public along with Tesla's house (as a memorial museum) and a new multimedia center dedicated to the life and work of Nikola Tesla. The parochial church of St. Peter and Paul, where Tesla's father had held services, was renovated as well. The museum and multimedia center are filled with replicas of Tesla's work. The museum has collected almost all of the papers ever published by, and about, Nikola Tesla; most of these provided by Ljubo Vujovic from the Tesla Memorial Society.
in New York. Alongside Tesla's house, a monument created by sculptor Mile Blazevic has been erected. In the nearby city of GospiÄ, on the same date as the reopening of the renovated village and museums, a higher education school named Nikola Tesla was opened, and a replica of the statue of Tesla made by Frano Krsinic (the original is in Belgrade) was presented.
In the years after, many of his innovations, theories and claims have been used, at times unsuitably and with some controversy, to support various fringe theories that are regarded as unscientific. Most of Tesla's own work conformed with the principles and methods accepted by science, but his extravagant personality and sometimes unrealistic claims, combined with his unquestionable genius, have made him a popular figure among fringe theorists and believers in conspiracies about 'hidden knowledge'. Some conspiracy theorists even in his time believed that he was actually an angelic being from Venus sent to Earth to reveal scientific knowledge to humanity.
Tesla was fluent in many languages. Along with Serbo-Croatian, he also spoke seven other foreign languages: Czech, English, French, German, Hungarian, Italian, and Latin.
Tesla may have suffered from obsessive-compulsive disorder, Kerryr.net
and had many unusual quirks and phobias. He did things in threes, and was adamant about staying in a hotel room with a number divisible by three. Tesla was also noted to be physically revolted by jewelry, notably pearl earrings. He was fastidious about cleanliness and hygiene, and was by all accounts germaphobic. He greatly disliked touching round objects and human hair other than his own.
Tesla was obsessed with pigeons, ordering special seeds for the pigeons he fed in Central Park and even bringing some into his hotel room with him. Tesla was an animal-lover, often reflecting contentedly about a childhood cat, "The Magnificent Macak". Tesla never married. He was celibate and claimed that his chastity was very helpful to his scientific abilities.
Nonetheless there have been numerous accounts of women vying for Tesla's affection, even some madly in love with him. Tesla, though polite, behaved rather ambivalently to these women in the romantic sense.
Tesla was prone to alienating himself and was generally soft-spoken. However, when he did engage in a social life, many people spoke very positively and admiringly of him. Robert Underwood Johnson described him as attaining a "distinguished sweetness, sincerity, modesty, refinement, generosity, and force..." His loyal secretary, Dorothy Skerrit, wrote "his genial smile and nobility of bearing always denoted the gentlemanly characteristics that were so ingrained in his soul." Tesla's friend Hawthorne wrote that, "seldom did one meet a scientist or engineer who was also a poet, a philosopher, an appreciator of fine music, a linguist, and a connoisseur of food and drink."
Nevertheless, Tesla displayed the occasional cruel streak; he openly expressed his disgust for overweight people, once firing a secretary because of her weight. He was quick to criticize others' clothing as well, demanding a subordinate to go home and change her dress on several occasions.
Tesla was widely known for his great showmanship, presenting his innovations and demonstrations to the public as an artform, almost like a magician. This seems to conflict with his observed reclusiveness; Tesla was a complicated figure. He refused to hold conventions without his Tesla coil blasting electricity throughout the room, despite the audience often being terrified, though he assured them everything was perfectly safe.
Mark Twain in Nikola Tesla's lab, spring 1894
In middle age, Nikola Tesla became very close friends with Mark Twain. They spent a lot of time together in his lab and elsewhere.
Tesla remained bitter in the aftermath of his incident with Edison. The day after Edison died the New York Times contained extensive coverage of Edison's life, with the only negative opinion coming from Tesla, who was quoted as saying, Shortly before Edison died, he said that his biggest mistake he had made was in trying to develop directed current, rather than the vastly superior alternating current system that Tesla had put within his grasp.
Tesla was good friends with Robert Underwood Johnson. He had amicable relations with Francis Marion Crawford, Stanford White, Fritz Lowenstein, George Scherff, and Kenneth Swezey. Tesla made his first million at the age of forty, but gave away nearly all his royalties on future innovations. Tesla was rather financially inept, but he was almost entirely unconcerned with material wealth. He ripped up a Westinghouse contract that would have made him the world's first billionaire, in part because of the implications it would have on his future vision of free power, and in part because it would run Westinghouse out of business, and Tesla had no desire to deal with the creditors.
Tesla lived the last ten years of his life in a two-room suite on the 33rd floor of the Hotel New Yorker, room 3327. There, near the end of his life, when Tesla was slipping into what many consider an altered state of mind, he would claim to be visited by a specific white pigeon daily. Several biographers note that Tesla viewed the death of the pigeon as a "final blow" to himself and his work.
Tesla believed that war could not be avoided until the cause for its recurrence was removed, but was opposed to wars in general. Secor, H. Winfield, " Tesla's views on Electricity and the War", Electrical Experimenter, Volume 5, Number 4, August, 1917.
He sought to reduce distance, such as in communication for better understanding, transportation, and transmission of energy, as a means to ensure friendly international relations. " Giant Eye to See Round the World" Albany Telegram, February 25, 1923 (doc).
Like many of his era, Tesla, a life-long bachelor, became a proponent of a self-imposed selective breeding version of eugenics. In a 1937 interview, he stated,
In 1926, Tesla commented on the ills of the social subservience of women and the struggle of women toward gender equality, indicated that humanity's future would be run by "Queen Bees". He believed that women would become the dominant sex in the future. Kennedy, John B., " When woman is boss, An interview with Nikola Tesla". Colliers, January 30, 1926.
In his later years Tesla became a vegetarian. In an article for Century Illustrated Magazine he wrote: "It is certainly preferable to raise vegetables, and I think, therefore, that vegetarianism is a commendable departure from the established barbarous habit." Tesla argued that it is wrong to eat uneconomic meat when large numbers of people are starving; he also believed that plant food was "superior to it [meat] in regard to both mechanical and mental performance." He also argued that animal slaughter was "wanton and cruel". Nikola Tesla, " The Problem of Increasing Human Energy". Century Illustrated Magazine, June 1900.
In his final years he suffered from extreme sensitivity to light, sound and other influences. O'Neill, "Prodigal Genius" (extract at Electrosensitivity.org - Q&A)
A monument to Tesla was established at Niagara Falls, New York, USA. The monument was officially unveiled on Sunday, July 9, 2006 on the 150th anniversary of Tesla's birth. The Monument was sponsored by St. George Serbian Church, Niagara Falls, and designed by Les Drysdale of Hamilton, Ontario. Mr. Drysdale's design was the winning design from an international competition. Another monument to Tesla, featuring him standing on a portion of an alternator, was established at Queen Victoria Park in Niagara Falls, Ontario, Canada.
A number of live theatrical plays based on Tesla's life have been produced and staged worldwide.
*The Canadian theatrical company Electric Company Theatre took its stage production Brilliant! The Blinding Enlightenment of Nikola Tesla on tour first starting in 1996. In August 2007, their production was again listed on their current performance schedule.
*The Austin, Texas based theatrical collective Rude Mechanicals created and then produced Kirk Lynn's Requiem For Tesla in January/Feb of 2001, and then presented again at the Fresh Terrain Festival in February 2003
* List of Tesla patents
* Nikola Tesla in popular culture
* Teslascope
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* Margaret Cheney, Robert Uth, and Jim Glenn, "Tesla, Master of Lightning", published by Barnes & Noble, 1999. ISBN 0760710058.
* Germano, Frank, " Dr. Nikola Tesla". Frank. Germano.com.
* Lomas, Robert, " The Man who Invented the Twentieth Century". Lecture to South Western Branch of Instititute of Physics.
* Martin, Thomas Commerford, "The Inventions, Researches, and Writings of Nikola Tesla", New York: The Electrical Engineer, 1894 (3rd Ed); reprinted by Barnes & Noble, 1995 ISBN-X
* O'Neill, John J., " Prodigal Genius: The Life of Nikola", 1944. ISBN (Tesla reportedly said of this biographer "You understand me better than any man alive"; also the version at uncletaz.com with other items at uncletaz's site)
* Penner, John R.H. The Strange Life of Nikola Tesla, corrupted version of My Inventions.
* Pratt, H., "Nikola Tesla 1856 1943", Proceedings of the IRE, Vol. 44, September, 1956.
* " Nikola Tesla". IEEE History Center, 2005.
* Seifer, Marc J. "Wizard: The Life and Times of Nikola Tesla; Biography of a Genius", Secaucus, NJ: Carol Publishing Group, 1996. ISBN
* Weisstein, Eric W., " Tesla, Nikola (1856 1943)". Eric Weisstein's World of Science.
* "Gazetteer of Planetary Nomenclature", Moon Nomenclature: Crater. USGS, Astrogeology Research Program.
* Dimitrijevic, Milan S., "Belgrade Astronomical Observatory Historical Review". Publ. Astron. Obs. Belgrade,), 162 170. Also, "Srpski asteroidi, Tesla". Astronomski magazine.
* Hoover, John Edgar, et al., FOIA FBI files, 1943.
* Pratt, H., "Nikola Tesla 1856 1943", Proceedings of the IRE, Vol. 44, September, 1956.
* W.C. Wysock, J.F. Corum, J.M. Hardesty and K.L. Corum, " Who Was The Real Dr. Nikola Tesla? (A Look At His Professional Credentials)". Antenna Measurement Techniques Association, posterpaper, October 22 25, 2001 (PDF)
* Roguin, Ariel, "Historical Note: Nikola Tesla: The man behind the magnetic field unit". J. Magn. Reson. Imaging 2004;19:369 374. © 2004 Wiley-Liss, Inc.
* Sellon, J. L., "The impact of Nikola Tesla on the cement industry". Behrent Eng. Co., Wheat Ridge, CO. Cement Industry Technical Conference. 1997. XXXIX Conference Record., 1997 IEEE/PC. Page(s) 125 133. ISBN
* Valentinuzzi, M.E., "Nikola Tesla: why was he so much resisted and forgotten?" Inst. de Bioingenieria, Univ. Nacional de Tucuman; Engineering in Medicine and Biology Magazine, IEEE. July/August 1998, 17:4, p 74 75. ISSN
* Waser, André, " Nikola Teslaâs Radiations and the Cosmic Rays". (PDF)
* Secor, H. Winfield, "Tesla's views on Electricity and the War", Electrical Experimenter, Volume 5, Number 4, August, 1917.
* Florey, Glen, "Tesla and the Military". Engineering 24, December 5, 2000.
* Corum, K. L., J. F. Corum, "Nikola Tesla, Lightning Observations, and Stationary Waves". 1994.
* Corum, K. L., J. F. Corum, and A. H. Aidinejad, "Atmospheric Fields, Tesla's Receivers and Regenerative Detectors". 1994.
* Meyl, Konstantin, H. Weidner, E. Zentgraf, T. Senkel, T. Junker, and P. Winkels, "Experiments to proof the evidence of scalar waves Tests with a Tesla reproduction". Institut für Gravitationsforschung (IGF), Am Heerbach 5, D-63857 Waldaschaff.
* Anderson, L. I., "John Stone Stone on Nikola Teslaâs Priority in Radio and Continuous Wave Radiofrequency Apparatus". The Antique Wireless Association Review, Vol. 1, 1986, pp. 18 41.
* Anderson, L. I., "Priority in Invention of Radio, Tesla v. Marconi". Antique Wireless Association monograph, March 1980.
* Marincic, A., and D. Budimir, "Tesla's contribution to radiowave propagation". Dept. of Electron. Eng., Belgrade Univ. (5th International Conference on Telecommunications in Modern Satellite, Cable and Broadcasting Service, 2001. TELSIKS 2001. pg., 327 331 vol.1) ISBN-X
* Page, R.M., "The Early History of Radar", Proceedings of the IRE, Volume 50, Number 5, May, 1962, (special 50th Anniversary Issue).
* C Mackechnie Jarvis "Nikola Tesla and the induction motor". 1970 Phys. Educ. 5 280 287.
* " Giant Eye to See Round the World" (DOC)
* Nichelson, Oliver, " Nikola Tesla's Latter Energy Generation Designs", A description of Tesla's energy generator that "would not consume fuel." 26th IECEC Proceedings, 1991, Boston, MA (American Nuclear Society) Vol. 4, pp 433-438.
* Nichelson, Oliver, " The Thermodynamics of Tesla's Fuelless Electrical generator". A theory of the physics of Tesla's new energy generator. (American Chemical Society, 1993. 2722-5/93/0028-63)
* Toby Grotz, " The Influence of Vedic Philosophy on Nikola Tesla's Understanding of Free Energy".
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222px
*A New System of Alternating Current Motors and Transformers, American Institute of Electrical Engineers, May 1888.
* Selected Tesla Writings, Written by Tesla and others,.
* Light Without Heat, The Manufacturer and Builder, January 1892, Vol. 24
* Biography - Nikola Tesla, The Century Magazine, November 1893, Vol. 47
* Tesla's Oscillator and Other Inventions, The Century Magazine, November 1894, Vol. 49
* The New Telegraphy. Recent Experiments in Telegraphy wih Sparks, The Century Magazine, November 1897, Vol. 55
* Anderson, Leland I., "Dr. Nikola Tesla (1856 1943)", 2d enl. ed., Minneapolis, Tesla Society. 1956. LCCN /L
* Cheney, Margaret, "", 1979. ISBN 0743215362.
* Childress, David H., "The Fantastic Inventions of Nikola Tesla," 1993. ISBN
* Glenn, Jim, "The Complete Patents of Nikola Tesla," 1994. ISBN
* Jonnes, Jill "". New York: Random House, 2003. ISBN
* Martin, Thomas C., "The Inventions, Researches, and Writings of Nikola Tesla," 1894 . ISBN-X
* O'Neill, John Jacob,"Prodigal Genius," 1944. Paperback reprint 1994, ISBN 978-0914732334. (ed. Prodigal Genius is available online)
* Lomas, Robert,"," 1999. ISBN
* Ratzlaff, John and Lee Anderson, "Dr. Nikola Tesla Bibliography", Ragusan Press, Palo Alto, California, 1979, 237 pages. Extensive listing of articles about and by Nikola Tesla.
* Seifer, Marc J., "Wizard, the Life and Times of Nikola Tesla," 1998. ISBN (HC), ISBN (SC)
* Tesla, Nikola, "Colorado Springs Notes, 1899 1900", ISBN-X
* Tesla, Nikola, "My Inventions" Parts I through V published in the Electrical Experimenter monthly magazine from February through June, 1919. Part VI published October, 1919. Reprint edition with introductory notes by Ben Johnson, New York: Barnes and Noble,1982, ISBN; also online at " My Inventions", 1919. ISBN
* Valone, Thomas, "," 2002. ISBN
* Caparica, A.J., "The Adventurers" features Nikola Tesla as a main protagonist. 2007. ISBN
* Carlson, W. Bernard, "Inventor of dreams". Scientific American, March 2005 v292 i3 p78(7).
* Jatras, Stella L., "The genius of Nikola Tesla". The New American, July 28, 2003 v19 i15 p9(1)
* Rybak, James P., "Nikola Tesla: Scientific Savant". Popular Electronics, 1042170X, Nov99, Vol. 16, Issue 11.
* Lawren, B., "Rediscovering Tesla". Omni, Mar88, Vol. 10 Issue 6.
* There are at least two films describing Tesla's life. In the first, filmed in 1977, arranged for TV, Tesla was portrayed by Rade Å erbedžija. In 1980, Orson Welles produced a Yugoslav film named Tajna Nikole Tesle (The Secret of Nikola Tesla), in which Welles himself played the part of Tesla's patron, J.P. Morgan. Film was directed by Krsto PapiÄ, and Nikola Tesla was portrayed by Petar BožoviÄ.
* " Tesla: Master of Lightning". 1999. ISBN (Book) ISBN (PBS Video)
* Lost Lightning: The Missing Secrets of Nikola Tesla (at Google Video) - Phenomenon: the Lost Archives documentary about Tesla's designs for free energy and defensive weapons systems.
* David Bowie portrayed Tesla in the 2006 film "The Prestige". Tesla's time in Colorado Springs was the focus of the scenes in the film.
* Tesla Resource Surrounding the PBS "Master of Lightning" documentary
* The Nikola Tesla museum
* Nikola Tesla 150
* Tesla Forum of Western Australia Inc.
* World of Scientific Biography: Nikola Tesla, by Wolfsram Research
* Nikola Tesla Page
* Tesla's grand-nephew William H. Terbo's site
* Nikola Tesla, Forgotten American Scientist
* The Tesla Wardenclyffe Project. Shoreham, New York. Aims to reuse Wardenclyffe Tower
* Nikola Tesla's Father - Milutin Tesla
* Tesla - The European Years
* Tesla's Case File at The Franklin Institute containing information about his 1894 Franklin Award for research in high-frequency phenomena
* Tesla's 'Death-Ray' and the Egg of Columbus, from American Antigravity.
* Dr. James Corum's Tesla Engineering Papers, from Arcs 'N Sparks.
* Fred Walters' hand-scanned Tesla patents (PDFs)
* Jim Bieberich's The Complete Nikola Tesla U.S. Patent Collection
* Online archive of many of Tesla's writings, articles and published papers
* Seifer, Marc J., and Michael Behar, Electric Mind, Wired Magazine, October 1998.
* Palmer, Stephen E., " Wardenclyffe: Nikola Tesla's Dream For Free Energy And The Conspiracy Which Destroyed It".
*
* Nikola Tesla on various Yugoslavian and Serbian banknotes.
* Nikola Tesla's FBI file in pdf
* Kenneth M. Swezey Papers, 1891 1982, Archives Center, National Museum of American History, archival resources.
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