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14205 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herbert%20A.%20Simon | Herbert A. Simon | Herbert Alexander Simon (June 15, 1916 – February 9, 2001) was an American political scientist, with a Ph.D. in political science, whose work also influenced the fields of computer science, economics, and cognitive psychology. His primary research interest was decision-making within organizations and he is best known for the theories of "bounded rationality" and "satisficing". He received the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 1978 and the Turing Award in computer science in 1975. His research was noted for its interdisciplinary nature and spanned across the fields of cognitive science, computer science, public administration, management, and political science. He was at Carnegie Mellon University for most of his career, from 1949 to 2001.
Notably, Simon was among the pioneers of several modern-day scientific domains such as artificial intelligence, information processing, decision-making, problem-solving, organization theory, and complex systems. He was among the earliest to analyze the architecture of complexity and to propose a preferential attachment mechanism to explain power law distributions.
Early life and education
Herbert Alexander Simon was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin on June 15, 1916. Simon's father, Arthur Simon (1881–1948), was a Jewish electrical engineer who came to the United States from Germany in 1903 after earning his engineering degree at Technische Hochschule Darmstadt. An inventor, Arthur also was an independent patent attorney. Simon's mother, Edna Marguerite Merkel (1888-1969), was an accomplished pianist whose ancestors came from Prague and Cologne. Simon's European ancestors were piano makers, goldsmiths, and vintners. Like his father, Simon's mother also came from a family with Jewish, Lutheran, and Catholic backgrounds.
Simon attended Milwaukee Public Schools, where he developed an interest in science and established himself as an atheist. While attending middle school, Simon wrote a letter to "the editor of the Milwaukee Journal defending the civil liberties of atheists". Unlike most children, Simon's family introduced him to the idea that human behavior could be studied scientifically; his mother's younger brother, Harold Merkel (1892-1922), who studied economics at the University of Wisconsin–Madison under John R. Commons, became one of his earliest influences. Through Harold's books on economics and psychology, Simon discovered social science. Among his earliest influences, Simon cited Norman Angell for his book The Great Illusion and Henry George for his book Progress and Poverty. While attending high school, Simon joined the debate team, where he argued "from conviction, rather than cussedness" in favor of George's single tax.
In 1933, Simon entered the University of Chicago, and, following his early influences, decided to study social science and mathematics. Simon was interested in studying biology but chose not to pursue the field because of his "color-blindness and awkwardness in the laboratory". At an early age, Simon learned he was color blind and discovered the external world is not the same as the perceived world. While in college, Simon focused on political science and economics. Simon's most important mentor was Henry Schultz, an econometrician and mathematical economist. Simon received both his B.A. (1936) and his Ph.D. (1943) in political science from the University of Chicago, where he studied under Harold Lasswell, Nicolas Rashevsky, Rudolf Carnap, Henry Schultz, and Charles Edward Merriam. After enrolling in a course on "Measuring Municipal Governments," Simon became a research assistant for Clarence Ridley, and the two co-authored Measuring Municipal Activities: A Survey of Suggested Criteria for Appraising Administration in 1938. Simon's studies led him to the field of organizational decision-making, which became the subject of his doctoral dissertation.
Career
After graduating with his undergraduate degree, Simon obtained a research assistantship in municipal administration which turned into a directorship at the University of California, Berkeley.
From 1942 to 1949, Simon was a professor of political science and also served as department chairman at Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago. There, he began participating in the seminars held by the staff of the Cowles Commission who at that time included Trygve Haavelmo, Jacob Marschak, and Tjalling Koopmans. He thus began an in-depth study of economics in the area of institutionalism. Marschak brought Simon in to assist in the study he was currently undertaking with Sam Schurr of the "prospective economic effects of atomic energy".
From 1949 to 2001, Simon was a faculty member at Carnegie-Mellon University, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. In 1949, Simon became a professor of administration and chairman of the Department of Industrial Management at Carnegie Institute of Technology ("Carnegie Tech"), which, in 1967, became Carnegie-Mellon University. Simon later also taught psychology and computer science in the same university, (occasionally visiting other universities).
Research
Seeking to replace the highly simplified classical approach to economic modeling, Simon became best known for his theory of corporate decision in his book Administrative Behavior. In this book he based his concepts with an approach that recognized multiple factors that contribute to decision making. His organization and administration interest allowed him to not only serve three times as a university department chairman, but he also played a big part in the creation of the Economic Cooperation Administration in 1948; administrative team that administered aid to the Marshall Plan for the U.S. government, serving on President Lyndon Johnson's Science Advisory Committee, and also the National Academy of Sciences. Simon has made a great number of contributions to both economic analysis and applications. Because of this, his work can be found in a number of economic literary works, making contributions to areas such as mathematical economics including theorem, human rationality, behavioral study of firms, theory of casual ordering, and the analysis of the parameter identification problem in econometrics.
Decision-making
Administrative Behavior, first published in 1947 and updated across the years, was based on Simon's doctoral dissertation. It served as the foundation for his life's work. The centerpiece of this book is the behavioral and cognitive processes of humans making rational decisions. By his definition, an operational administrative decision should be correct, efficient, and practical to implement with a set of coordinated means.
Simon recognized that a theory of administration is largely a theory of human decision making, and as such must be based on both economics and on psychology. He states:
Contrary to the "homo economicus" stereotype, Simon argued that alternatives and consequences may be partly known, and means and ends imperfectly differentiated, incompletely related, or poorly detailed.
Simon defined the task of rational decision making is to select the alternative that results in the more preferred set of all the possible consequences. Correctness of administrative decisions was thus measured by:
Adequacy of achieving the desired objective
Efficiency with which the result was obtained
The task of choice was divided into three required steps:
Identifying and listing all the alternatives
Determining all consequences resulting from each of the alternatives;
Comparing the accuracy and efficiency of each of these sets of consequences
Any given individual or organization attempting to implement this model in a real situation would be unable to comply with the three requirements. Simon argued that knowledge of all alternatives, or all consequences that follow from each alternative is impossible in many realistic cases.
Simon attempted to determine the techniques and/or behavioral processes that a person or organization could bring to bear to achieve approximately the best result given limits on rational decision making. Simon writes:
Therefore, Simon describes work in terms of an economic framework, conditioned on human cognitive limitations: Economic man and Administrative man.
Administrative Behavior addresses a wide range of human behaviors, cognitive abilities, management techniques, personnel policies, training goals and procedures, specialized roles, criteria for evaluation of accuracy and efficiency, and all of the ramifications of communication processes. Simon is particularly interested in how these factors influence the making of decisions, both directly and indirectly.
Simon argued that the two outcomes of a choice require monitoring and that many members of the organization would be expected to focus on adequacy, but that administrative management must pay particular attention to the efficiency with which the desired result was obtained.
Simon followed Chester Barnard, who stated "the decisions that an individual makes as a member of an organization are quite distinct from his personal decisions". Personal choices may be determined whether an individual joins a particular organization and continue to be made in his or her extra–organizational private life. As a member of an organization, however, that individual makes decisions not in relationship to personal needs and results, but in an impersonal sense as part of the organizational intent, purpose, and effect. Organizational inducements, rewards, and sanctions are all designed to form, strengthen, and maintain this identification.
Simon saw two universal elements of human social behavior as key to creating the possibility of organizational behavior in human individuals: Authority (addressed in Chapter VII—The Role of Authority) and in Loyalties and Identification (Addressed in Chapter X: Loyalties, and Organizational Identification).
Authority is a well-studied, primary mark of organizational behavior, straightforwardly defined in the organizational context as the ability and right of an individual of higher rank to guide the decisions of an individual of lower rank. The actions, attitudes, and relationships of the dominant and subordinate individuals constitute components of role behavior that may vary widely in form, style, and content, but do not vary in the expectation of obedience by the one of superior status, and willingness to obey from the subordinate.
Loyalty was defined by Simon as the "process whereby the individual substitutes organizational objectives (service objectives or conservation objectives) for his own aims as the value-indices which determine his organizational decisions". This entailed evaluating alternative choices in terms of their consequences for the group rather than only for oneself or one's family.
Decisions can be complex admixtures of facts and values. Information about facts, especially empirically-proven facts or facts derived from specialized experience, are more easily transmitted in the exercise of authority than are the expressions of values. Simon is primarily interested in seeking identification of the individual employee with the organizational goals and values. Following Lasswell, he states that "a person identifies himself with a group when, in making a decision, he evaluates the several alternatives of choice in terms of their consequences for the specified group". A person may identify himself with any number of social, geographic, economic, racial, religious, familial, educational, gender, political, and sports groups. Indeed, the number and variety are unlimited. The fundamental problem for organizations is to recognize that personal and group identifications may either facilitate or obstruct correct decision making for the organization. A specific organization has to determine deliberately, and specify in appropriate detail and clear language, its own goals, objectives, means, ends, and values.
Simon has been critical of traditional economics' elementary understanding of decision-making, and argues it "is too quick to build an idealistic, unrealistic picture of the decision-making process and then prescribe on the basis of such unrealistic picture".
Herbert Simon rediscovered path diagrams, which were originally invented by Sewall Wright around 1920.
Artificial intelligence
Simon was a pioneer in the field of artificial intelligence, creating with Allen Newell the Logic Theory Machine (1956) and the General Problem Solver (GPS) (1957) programs. GPS may possibly be the first method developed for separating problem solving strategy from information about particular problems. Both programs were developed using the Information Processing Language (IPL) (1956) developed by Newell, Cliff Shaw, and Simon. Donald Knuth mentions the development of list processing in IPL, with the linked list originally called "NSS memory" for its inventors. In 1957, Simon predicted that computer chess would surpass human chess abilities within "ten years" when, in reality, that transition took about forty years.
In the early 1960s psychologist Ulric Neisser asserted that while machines are capable of replicating "cold cognition" behaviors such as reasoning, planning, perceiving, and deciding, they would never be able to replicate "hot cognition" behaviors such as pain, pleasure, desire, and other emotions. Simon responded to Neisser's views in 1963 by writing a paper on emotional cognition, which he updated in 1967 and published in Psychological Review. Simon's work on emotional cognition was largely ignored by the artificial intelligence research community for several years, but subsequent work on emotions by Sloman and Picard helped refocus attention on Simon's paper and eventually, made it highly influential on the topic.
Simon also collaborated with James G. March on several works in organization theory.
With Allen Newell, Simon developed a theory for the simulation of human problem solving behavior using production rules. The study of human problem solving required new kinds of human measurements and, with Anders Ericsson, Simon developed the experimental technique of verbal protocol analysis. Simon was interested in the role of knowledge in expertise. He said that to become an expert on a topic required about ten years of experience and he and colleagues estimated that expertise was the result of learning roughly 50,000 chunks of information. A chess expert was said to have learned about 50,000 chunks or chess position patterns.
He was awarded the ACM Turing Award, along with Allen Newell, in 1975. "In joint scientific efforts extending over twenty years, initially in collaboration with J. C. (Cliff) Shaw at the RAND Corporation, and with numerous faculty and student colleagues at Carnegie Mellon University, they have made basic contributions to artificial intelligence, the psychology of human cognition, and list processing."
Psychology
Simon was interested in how humans learn and, with Edward Feigenbaum, he developed the EPAM (Elementary Perceiver and Memorizer) theory, one of the first theories of learning to be implemented as a computer program. EPAM was able to explain a large number of phenomena in the field of verbal learning. Later versions of the model were applied to concept formation and the acquisition of expertise. With Fernand Gobet, he has expanded the EPAM theory into the CHREST computational model. The theory explains how simple chunks of information form the building blocks of schemata, which are more complex structures. CHREST has been used predominantly, to simulate aspects of chess expertise.
Sociology and economics
Simon has been credited for revolutionary changes in microeconomics. He is responsible for the concept of organizational decision-making as it is known today. He was the first to rigorously examine how administrators made decisions when they did not have perfect and complete information. It was in this area that he was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1978.
At the Cowles Commission, Simon's main goal was to link economic theory to mathematics and statistics. His main contributions were to the fields of general equilibrium and econometrics. He was greatly influenced by the marginalist debate that began in the 1930s. The popular work of the time argued that it was not apparent empirically that entrepreneurs needed to follow the marginalist principles of profit-maximization/cost-minimization in running organizations. The argument went on to note that profit maximization was not accomplished, in part, because of the lack of complete information. In decision-making, Simon believed that agents face uncertainty about the future and costs in acquiring information in the present. These factors limit the extent to which agents may make a fully rational decision, thus they possess only "bounded rationality" and must make decisions by "satisficing", or choosing that which might not be optimal, but which will make them happy enough. Bounded rationality is a central theme in behavioral economics. It is concerned with the ways in which the actual decision making process influences decision. Theories of bounded rationality relax one or more assumptions of standard expected utility theory.
Further, Simon emphasized that psychologists invoke a "procedural" definition of rationality, whereas economists employ a "substantive" definition. Gustavos Barros argued that the procedural rationality concept does not have a significant presence in the economics field and has never had nearly as much weight as the concept of bounded rationality. However, in an earlier article, Bhargava (1997) noted the importance of Simon's arguments and emphasized that there are several applications of the "procedural" definition of rationality in econometric analyses of data on health. In particular, economists should employ "auxiliary assumptions" that reflect the knowledge in the relevant biomedical fields, and guide the specification of econometric models for health outcomes.
Simon was also known for his research on industrial organization. He determined that the internal organization of firms and the external business decisions thereof, did not conform to the neoclassical theories of "rational" decision-making. Simon wrote many articles on the topic over the course of his life, mainly focusing on the issue of decision-making within the behavior of what he termed "bounded rationality". "Rational behavior, in economics, means that individuals maximize their utility function under the constraints they face (e.g., their budget constraint, limited choices, ...) in pursuit of their self-interest. This is reflected in the theory of subjective expected utility. The term, bounded rationality, is used to designate rational choice that takes into account the cognitive limitations of both knowledge and cognitive capacity. Bounded rationality is a central theme in behavioral economics. It is concerned with the ways in which the actual decision-making process influences decisions. Theories of bounded rationality relax one or more assumptions of standard expected utility theory".
Simon determined that the best way to study these areas was through computer simulations. As such, he developed an interest in computer science. Simon's main interests in computer science were in artificial intelligence, human–computer interaction, principles of the organization of humans and machines as information processing systems, the use of computers to study (by modeling) philosophical problems of the nature of intelligence and of epistemology, and the social implications of computer technology.
In his youth, Simon took an interest in land economics and Georgism, an idea known at the time as "single tax". The system is meant to redistribute unearned economic rent to the public and improve land use. In 1979, Simon still maintained these ideas and argued that land value tax should replace taxes on wages.
Some of Simon's economic research was directed toward understanding technological change in general and the information processing revolution in particular.
Pedagogy
Simon's work has strongly influenced John Mighton, developer of a program that has achieved significant success in improving mathematics performance among elementary and high school students. Mighton cites a 2000 paper by Simon and two coauthors that counters arguments by French mathematics educator, Guy Brousseau, and others suggesting that excessive practice hampers children's understanding:
Awards and honors
Simon received many top-level honors in life, including becoming a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1959; election as a Member of the National Academy of Sciences in 1967; APA Award for Distinguished Scientific Contributions to Psychology (1969); the ACM's Turing Award for making "basic contributions to artificial intelligence, the psychology of human cognition, and list processing" (1975); the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics "for his pioneering research into the decision-making process within economic organizations" (1978); the National Medal of Science (1986); the APA's Award for Outstanding Lifetime Contributions to Psychology (1993); ACM fellow (1994); and IJCAI Award for Research Excellence (1995).
Honorary doctorate, Lund School of Economics and Management, 1968.
Honorary degree, University of Pavia, 1988.
Honorary Doctor of Laws (LL.D.) degree from Harvard University in 1990.
Honorary degree, University of Buenos Aires, 1999.
Selected publications
Simon was a prolific writer and authored 27 books and almost a thousand papers. As of 2016, Simon was the most cited person in artificial intelligence and cognitive psychology on Google Scholar. With almost a thousand highly cited publications, he was one of the most influential social scientists of the twentieth century.
Books
1947. Administrative Behavior: A Study of Decision-Making Processes in Administrative Organization.
– 4th ed. in 1997, The Free Press
1957. Models of Man. John Wiley. Presents mathematical models of human behaviour.
1958 (with James G. March and the collaboration of Harold Guetzkow). Organizations. New York: Wiley. the foundation of modern organization theory
1969. The Sciences of the Artificial. MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass, 1st edition. Made the idea easy to grasp: "objects (real or symbolic) in the environment of the decision-maker influence choice as much as the intrinsic information-processing capabilities of the decision-maker"; Explained "the principles of modeling complex systems, particularly the human information-processing system that we call the mind."
- 2nd ed. in 1981, MIT Press. As stated in the Preface, the second edition provided the author an opportunity "to amend and expand [his] thesis and to apply it to several additional fields" beyond organization theory, economics, management science, and psychology that were covered in the previous edition.
- 3rd ed. in 1996, MIT Press.
1972 (with Allen Newell). Human Problem Solving. Prentice Hall, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, (1972). "the most important book on the scientific study of human thinking in the 20th century"
1977. Models of Discovery : and other topics in the methods of science. Dordrecht, Holland: Reidel.
1979. Models of Thought, Vols. 1 and 2. Yale University Press. His papers on human information-processing and problem-solving.
1982. Models of Bounded Rationality, Vols. 1 and 2. MIT Press. His papers on economics.
- Vol. 3. in 1997, MIT Press. His papers on economics since the publication of Vols. 1 and 2 in 1982. The papers grouped under the category "The Structure of Complex Systems"– dealing with issues such as causal ordering, decomposability, aggregation of variables, model abstraction– are of general interest in systems modelling, not just in economics.
1983. Reason in Human Affairs, Stanford University Press. A readable 115pp. book on human decision-making and information processing, based on lectures he gave at Stanford in 1982. A popular presentation of his technical work.
1987 (with P. Langley, G. Bradshaw, and J. Zytkow). Scientific Discovery: computational explorations of the creative processes. MIT Press.
1991. Models of My Life. Basic Books, Sloan Foundation Series. His autobiography.
1997. An Empirically Based Microeconomics. Cambridge University Press. A compact and readable summary of his criticisms of conventional "axiomatic" microeconomics, based on a lecture series.
2008 (posthumously). Economics, Bounded Rationality and the Cognitive Revolution. Edward Elgar Publishing, . reprint some of his papers not widely read by economists.
Articles
1938 (with Clarence E. Ridley). Measuring Municipal Activities: a Survey of Suggested Criteria and Reporting Forms For Appraising Administration.
1943. Fiscal Aspects of Metropolitan Consolidation.
1945. The Technique of Municipal Administration, 2d ed.
1955. "A Behavioral Model of Rational Choice", Quarterly Journal of Economics, vol. 69, 99–118.
1956. "Reply: Surrogates for Uncertain Decision Problems", Office of Naval Research, January 1956.
– Reprinted in 1982, In: H.A. Simon, Models of Bounded Rationality, Volume 1, Economic Analysis and Public Policy, Cambridge, Mass., MIT Press, 235–44.
1958 (with Allen Newell and J. C. Shaw). Elements of a theory of human problem solving
1967. "Motivational and emotional controls of cognition", Psychological Review, vol. 74, 29–39, reprinted in Models of Thought Vol 1.
1972. "Theories of Bounded Rationality", Chapter 8 in C. B. McGuire and R. Radner, eds., Decision and Organization, Amsterdam: North-Holland Publishing Company.
1980 (with K. Anders Ericsson). "Verbal reports as data", Psychological Review, vol. 87, 215–251.
1985 "Human Nature in Politics: The Dialogue of Psychology with Political Science", The American Political Science Review, vol. 79, no. 2 (Jun., 1985), pp. 293–304
1989 (with M.J. Prietula). "The Experts in Your Midst", Harvard Business Review, January-February, 120-124.
1992 'What is an "Explanation" of Behavior?' Psychological Science, 3(3), 150-161
1995 (with Peter C.-H. Cheng). "Scientific discovery and creative reasoning with diagrams", in S. M. Smith, T. B. Ward & R. A. Finke (Eds.), The Creative Cognition Approach (pp. 205–228). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
1998 (with John R. Anderson, Lynne M. Reder, K. Anders Ericsson, and Robert Glaser). "Radical Constructivism and Cognitive Psychology", Brookings Papers on Education Policy, no. 1, 227–278.
2000 (with John R. Anderson and Lynne M. Reder). "Applications and misapplications of cognitive psychology to mathematics education", Texas Education Review, vol. 1, no. 2, 29–49.
Personal life and interests
Simon married Dorothea Pye in 1938. Their marriage lasted 63 years until his death. In January 2001, Simon underwent surgery at UPMC Presbyterian to remove a cancerous tumor in his abdomen. Although the surgery was successful, Simon later succumbed to the complications that followed. They had three children, Katherine, Peter, and Barbara. His wife died in 2002.
From 1950 to 1955, Simon studied mathematical economics and during this time, together with David Hawkins, discovered and proved the Hawkins–Simon theorem on the "conditions for the existence of positive solution vectors for input-output matrices". He also developed theorems on near-decomposability and aggregation. Having begun to apply these theorems to organizations, by 1954 Simon determined that the best way to study problem-solving was to simulate it with computer programs, which led to his interest in computer simulation of human cognition. Founded during the 1950s, he was among the first members of the Society for General Systems Research.
Simon was a pianist and had a keen interest in the arts. He was a friend of Robert Lepper and Richard Rappaport. Rappaport also painted Simon's commissioned portrait at Carnegie Mellon University. He was also a keen mountain climber. As a testament to his wide interests, he at one point taught an undergraduate course on the French Revolution.
References
Citations
Sources
Simon, Herbert A. 'Organizations and markets', Journal of Economic Perspectives, vol. 5, no. 2 (1991), pp. 25–44.
Further reading
Courtois, P.J., 1977. Decomposability: queueing and computer system applications. New York: Academic Press. Courtois was influenced by the work of Simon and Albert Ando on hierarchical nearly-decomposable systems in economic modelling as a criterion for computer systems design, and in this book he presents the mathematical theory of these nearly-decomposable systems in more detail than Simon and Ando do in their original papers.
Frantz, R., and Marsh, L. (Eds.) (2016). Minds, Models and Milieux: Commemorating the Centennial of the Birth of Herbert Simon. Palgrave Macmillan.
External links
A Tribute to Herbert A. Simon
Full-text digital archive of Herbert Simon papers
Mind Models online Artificial Intelligence exhibit
pioneering research into the decision-making process within economic organizations
History of Twentieth-Century Philosophy of Science BOOK VIII: Herbert Simon, Paul Thagard and Others on Discovery Systems – with free downloads for public use.
IDEAS/RePEc
Biography of Herbert A. Simon from the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences
Documentary interviews with Herbert Simon, with critiques of his work, as part of the Nobel Perspectives project
including the Prize Lecture December 8, 1978 Rational Decision-Making in Business Organizations
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Deaths from cancer in Pennsylvania | [
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14207 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hematite | Hematite | Hematite (), also spelled as haematite, is a common iron oxide compound with the formula, Fe2O3 and is widely found in rocks and soils. Hematite crystals belong to the rhombohedral lattice system which is designated the alpha polymorph of . It has the same crystal structure as corundum () and ilmenite (). With this it forms a complete solid solution at temperatures above .
Hematite naturally occurs in black to steel or silver-gray, brown to reddish-brown, or red colors. It is mined as an important ore of iron. It is electrically conductive. Hematite varieties include kidney ore, martite (pseudomorphs after magnetite), iron rose and specularite (specular hematite). While these forms vary, they all have a rust-red streak. Hematite is not only harder than pure iron, but also much more brittle. Maghemite is a polymorph of hematite (γ-) with the same chemical formula, but with a spinel structure like magnetite.
Large deposits of hematite are found in banded iron formations. Gray hematite is typically found in places that have still, standing water or mineral hot springs, such as those in Yellowstone National Park in North America. The mineral can precipitate in the water and collect in layers at the bottom of the lake, spring, or other standing water. Hematite can also occur in the absence of water, usually as the result of volcanic activity.
Clay-sized hematite crystals can also occur as a secondary mineral formed by weathering processes in soil, and along with other iron oxides or oxyhydroxides such as goethite, which is responsible for the red color of many tropical, ancient, or otherwise highly weathered soils.
Etymology and history
The name hematite is derived from the Greek word for blood (haima), due to the red coloration found in some varieties of hematite. The color of hematite is often used as a pigment. The English name of the stone is derived from Middle French hématite pierre, which was taken from Latin lapis haematites the 15th century, which originated from Ancient Greek (haimatitēs lithos, "blood-red stone").
Ochre is a clay that is colored by varying amounts of hematite, varying between 20% and 70%. Red ochre contains unhydrated hematite, whereas yellow ochre contains hydrated hematite (Fe2O3 · H2O). The principal use of ochre is for tinting with a permanent color.
The red chalk writing of this mineral was one of the earliest in the human history. The powdery mineral was first used 164,000 years ago by the Pinnacle-Point man, possibly for social purposes. Hematite residues are also found in graves from 80,000 years ago. Near Rydno in Poland and Lovas in Hungary red chalk mines have been found that are from 5000 BC, belonging to the Linear Pottery culture at the Upper Rhine.
Rich deposits of hematite have been found on the island of Elba that have been mined since the time of the Etruscans.
Magnetism
Hematite shows only a very feeble response to a magnetic field. Unlike magnetite, it is not noticeably attracted to an ordinary magnet. Hematite is an antiferromagnetic material below the Morin transition at , and a canted antiferromagnet or weakly ferromagnetic above the Morin transition and below its Néel temperature at , above which it is paramagnetic.
The magnetic structure of α-hematite was the subject of considerable discussion and debate during the 1950s, as it appeared to be ferromagnetic with a Curie temperature of approximately , but with an extremely small magnetic moment (0.002 Bohr magnetons). Adding to the surprise was a transition with a decrease in temperature at around to a phase with no net magnetic moment. It was shown that the system is essentially antiferromagnetic, but that the low symmetry of the cation sites allows spin–orbit coupling to cause canting of the moments when they are in the plane perpendicular to the c axis. The disappearance of the moment with a decrease in temperature at is caused by a change in the anisotropy which causes the moments to align along the c axis. In this configuration, spin canting does not reduce the energy. The magnetic properties of bulk hematite differ from their nanoscale counterparts. For example, the Morin transition temperature of hematite decreases with a decrease in the particle size. The suppression of this transition has been observed in hematite nanoparticles and is attributed to the presence of impurities, water molecules and defects in the crystals lattice. Hematite is part of a complex solid solution oxyhydroxide system having various contents of water, hydroxyl groups and vacancy substitutions that affect the mineral's magnetic and crystal chemical properties. Two other end-members are referred to as protohematite and hydrohematite.
Enhanced magnetic coercivities for hematite have been achieved by dry-heating a two-line ferrihydrite precursor prepared from solution. Hematite exhibited temperature-dependent magnetic coercivity values ranging from . The origin of these high coercivity values has been interpreted as a consequence of the subparticle structure induced by the different particle and crystallite size growth rates at increasing annealing temperature. These differences in the growth rates are translated into a progressive development of a subparticle structure at the nanoscale. At lower temperatures (350–600 °C), single particles crystallize. However; at higher temperatures (600–1000 °C), the growth of crystalline aggregates and a subparticle structure is favored.
Mine tailings
Hematite is present in the waste tailings of iron mines. A recently developed process, magnetation, uses magnets to glean waste hematite from old mine tailings in Minnesota's vast Mesabi Range iron district. Falu red is a pigment used in traditional Swedish house paints. Originally, it was made from tailings of the Falu mine.
Mars
The spectral signature of hematite was seen on the planet Mars by the infrared spectrometer on the NASA Mars Global Surveyor and 2001 Mars Odyssey spacecraft in orbit around Mars. The mineral was seen in abundance at two sites on the planet, the Terra Meridiani site, near the Martian equator at 0° longitude, and the Aram Chaos site near the Valles Marineris. Several other sites also showed hematite, such as Aureum Chaos. Because terrestrial hematite is typically a mineral formed in aqueous environments or by aqueous alteration, this detection was scientifically interesting enough that the second of the two Mars Exploration Rovers was sent to a site in the Terra Meridiani region designated Meridiani Planum. In-situ investigations by the Opportunity rover showed a significant amount of hematite, much of it in the form of small spherules that were informally named "blueberries" by the science team. Analysis indicates that these spherules are apparently concretions formed from a water solution.
"Knowing just how the hematite on Mars was formed will help us characterize the past environment and determine whether that environment was favorable for life".
Jewelry
Hematite was once used as mourning jewelry. A 1923 reference describes "hematite is sometimes used as settings in mourning jewelry." Certain types of hematite- or iron-oxide-rich clay, especially Armenian bole, have been used in gilding. Hematite is also used in art such as in the creation of intaglio engraved gems. Hematine is a synthetic material sold as magnetic hematite.
Gallery
See also
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Mineral redox buffer
Wüstite
References
External links
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Oxide minerals
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Minerals in space group 167
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Jewellery components
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14208 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocene%20extinction | Holocene extinction | The Holocene extinction, otherwise referred to as the sixth mass extinction or Anthropocene extinction, is an ongoing extinction event of species during the present Holocene epoch (with the more recent time sometimes called Anthropocene) as a result of human activity. The included extinctions span numerous families of bacteria, fungi, plants and animals, including mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, fish and invertebrates. With widespread degradation of highly biodiverse habitats such as coral reefs and rainforests, as well as other areas, the vast majority of these extinctions are thought to be undocumented, as the species are undiscovered at the time of their extinction, or no one has yet discovered their extinction. The current rate of extinction of species is estimated at 100 to 1,000 times higher than natural background extinction rates.
The Holocene extinction includes the disappearance of large land animals known as megafauna, starting at the end of the last glacial period. Megafauna outside of the African mainland, which did not evolve alongside humans, proved highly sensitive to the introduction of new predation, and many died out shortly after early humans began spreading and hunting across the Earth; many African species have also gone extinct in the Holocene, but – with few exceptions – megafauna of the mainland was largely unaffected until a few hundred years ago. These extinctions, occurring near the Pleistocene–Holocene boundary, are sometimes referred to as the Quaternary extinction event.
The most popular theory is that human overhunting of species added to existing stress conditions as the extinction coincides with human emergence. Although there is debate regarding how much human predation affected their decline, certain population declines have been directly correlated with human activity, such as the extinction events of New Zealand and Hawaii. Aside from humans, climate change may have been a driving factor in the megafaunal extinctions, especially at the end of the Pleistocene.
Ecologically, humanity has been noted as an unprecedented "global superpredator" that consistently preys on the adults of other apex predators, and has worldwide effects on food webs. There have been extinctions of species on every land mass and in every ocean: there are many famous examples within Africa, Asia, Europe, Australia, North and South America, and on smaller islands. Overall, the Holocene extinction can be linked to the human impact on the environment. The Holocene extinction continues into the 21st century, with meat consumption being a primary driver of the mass extinction, and deforestation, overfishing, ocean acidification, the destruction of wetlands, and the decline in amphibian populations being a few broader examples of global biodiversity loss. Human population growth and increasing per capita consumption are considered to be the primary drivers of this decline.
Definitions
The Holocene extinction is also known as the "sixth extinction", as it is possibly the sixth mass extinction event, after the Ordovician–Silurian extinction events, the Late Devonian extinction, the Permian–Triassic extinction event, the Triassic–Jurassic extinction event, and the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event. Mass extinctions are characterized by the loss of at least 75% of species within a geologically short period of time. There is no general agreement on where the Holocene, or anthropogenic, extinction begins, and the Quaternary extinction event, which includes climate change resulting in the end of the last ice age, ends, or if they should be considered separate events at all. Some have suggested that anthropogenic extinctions may have begun as early as when the first modern humans spread out of Africa between 200,000 and 100,000 years ago; this is supported by rapid megafaunal extinction following recent human colonisation in Australia, New Zealand and Madagascar, as might be expected when any large, adaptable predator (invasive species) moves into a new ecosystem. In many cases, it is suggested that even minimal hunting pressure was enough to wipe out large fauna, particularly on geographically isolated islands. Only during the most recent parts of the extinction have plants also suffered large losses.
In The Future of Life (2002), Edward Osborne Wilson of Harvard calculated that, if the current rate of human disruption of the biosphere continues, one-half of Earth's higher lifeforms will be extinct by 2100. A 1998 poll conducted by the American Museum of Natural History found that 70% of biologists acknowledge an ongoing anthropogenic extinction event. At present, the rate of extinction of species is estimated at 100 to 1,000 times higher than the background extinction rate, the historically typical rate of extinction (in terms of the natural evolution of the planet); also, the current rate of extinction is 10 to 100 times higher than in any of the previous mass extinctions in the history of Earth. One scientist estimates the current extinction rate may be 10,000 times the background extinction rate, although most scientists predict a much lower extinction rate than this outlying estimate. Theoretical ecologist Stuart Pimm stated that the extinction rate for plants is 100 times higher than normal.
In a pair of studies published in 2015, extrapolation from observed extinction of Hawaiian snails led to the conclusion that 7% of all species on Earth may have been lost already. A 2021 study published in the journal Frontiers in Forests and Global Change found that only around 3% of the planet's terrestrial surface is ecologically and faunally intact, meaning areas with healthy populations of native animal species and little to no human footprint.
There is widespread consensus among scientists that human activity is accelerating the extinction of many animal species through the destruction of habitats, the consumption of animals as resources, and the elimination of species that humans view as threats or competitors. That humans have become the primary driver of modern extinctions is undeniable, rapidly rising extinction trends impacting numerous animal groups including mammals, birds, reptiles, and amphibians have prompted scientists to declare a biodiversity crisis. The 2019 Global Assessment Report on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, published by the United Nations' Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, posits that roughly one million species of plants and animals face extinction within decades as the result of human actions. Organized human existence is jeopardized by increasingly rapid destruction of the systems that support life on Earth, according to the report, the result of one of the most comprehensive studies of the health of the planet ever conducted. Moreover, the 2021 Economics of Biodiversity review, published by the UK government, asserts that "biodiversity is declining faster than at any time in human history."
Some contend that this biotic destruction has yet to reach the level of the previous five mass extinctions, and that this comparison downplays how severe the first five mass extinctions were. Stuart Pimm, for example, asserts that the sixth mass extinction "is something that hasn't happened yet – we are on the edge of it." John Briggs argues that there is no way near enough data to determine the real rate of extinctions, and shows that estimates of current species extinctions varies enormously, ranging from 1.5 to 40’000 species going extinct due to human activities each year. Both papers from Barnosky et al. (2011) and Hull et al. (2015) point out that the real rate of extinction during previous mass extinctions is unknown, both as only some organisms leave fossil remains, and as the temporal resolution of the fossil layer is larger than the time frame of the extinction events. However, all these authors agree that there is a modern biodiversity crisis with population declines affecting numerous species, and that a future anthropogenic mass extinction event is a big risk. The 2011 study by Barnosky et al. confirms that "current extinction rates are higher than would be expected from the fossil record" and adds that anthropogenic ecological stressors, including climate change, habitat fragmentation, pollution, overfishing, overhunting, invasive species and expanding human biomass will intensify and accelerate extinction rates in the future without significant mitigation efforts.
Other studies posit that the earth has entered a sixth mass extinction event, including a 2015 paper by Barnosky et al. and a November 2017 statement titled "World Scientists’ Warning to Humanity: A Second Notice", led by eight authors and signed by 15,364 scientists from 184 countries which asserted that, among other things, "we have unleashed a mass extinction event, the sixth in roughly 540 million years, wherein many current life forms could be annihilated or at least committed to extinction by the end of this century." The World Wide Fund for Nature's 2020 Living Planet Report says that wildlife populations have declined by 68% since 1970 as a result of overconsumption, population growth and intensive farming, which is further evidence that humans have unleashed a sixth mass extinction event; however, this finding has been disputed by one 2020 study, which posits that this major decline was primarily driven by a few extreme outlier populations, and that when these outliers are removed, the trend shifts to that of a decline between the 1980s and 2000s, but a roughly positive trend after 2000. A 2021 report in Frontiers in Conservation Science which cites both of the aforementioned studies, says "population sizes of vertebrate species that have been monitored across years have declined by an average of 68% over the last five decades, with certain population clusters in extreme decline, thus presaging the imminent extinction of their species," and asserts "that we are already on the path of a sixth major extinction is now scientifically undeniable." A 2022 study published in Biological Reviews builds upon previous studies documenting biodiversity decline to assert that a sixth mass extinction event caused by anthropogenic activity is currently underway.
According to the UNDP's 2020 Human Development Report, The Next Frontier: Human Development and the Anthropocene:
Anthropocene
The abundance of species extinctions considered anthropogenic, or due to human activity, has sometimes (especially when referring to hypothesized future events) been collectively called the "Anthropocene extinction". Anthropocene is a term introduced in 2000. Some now postulate that a new geological epoch has begun, with the most abrupt and widespread extinction of species since the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event 66 million years ago.
The term "anthropocene" is being used more frequently by scientists, and some commentators may refer to the current and projected future extinctions as part of a longer Holocene extinction. The Holocene–Anthropocene boundary is contested, with some commentators asserting significant human influence on climate for much of what is normally regarded as the Holocene Epoch. Other commentators place the Holocene–Anthropocene boundary at the industrial revolution and also say that "[f]ormal adoption of this term in the near future will largely depend on its utility, particularly to earth scientists working on late Holocene successions."
It has been suggested that human activity has made the period starting from the mid-20th century different enough from the rest of the Holocene to consider it a new geological epoch, known as the Anthropocene, a term which was considered for inclusion in the timeline of Earth's history by the International Commission on Stratigraphy in 2016. In order to constitute the Holocene as an extinction event, scientists must determine exactly when anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions began to measurably alter natural atmospheric levels on a global scale, and when these alterations caused changes to global climate. Using chemical proxies from Antarctic ice cores, researchers have estimated the fluctuations of carbon dioxide (CO2) and methane (CH4) gases in the Earth's atmosphere during the late Pleistocene and Holocene epochs. Estimates of the fluctuations of these two gases in the atmosphere, using chemical proxies from Antarctic ice cores, generally indicate that the peak of the Anthropocene occurred within the previous two centuries: typically beginning with the Industrial Revolution, when the highest greenhouse gas levels were recorded.
Influences
Human activity
Activities contributing to extinctions
The Holocene extinction is mainly caused by human activities. Extinction of animals, plants, and other organisms caused by human actions may go as far back as the late Pleistocene, over 12,000 years ago. There is a correlation between megafaunal extinction and the arrival of humans, and contemporary human population size and growth, along with per-capita consumption growth, prominently in the past two centuries, are regarded as the underlying causes of extinction.
Human civilization was founded on and grew from agriculture. The more land used for farming, the greater the population a civilization could sustain, and subsequent popularization of farming led to habitat conversion.
Habitat destruction by humans, including in the ocean, such as through overfishing and contamination; and the modification and destruction of vast tracts of land and river systems around the world to meet solely human-centered ends (with 13 percent of Earth's ice-free land surface now used as row-crop agricultural sites, 26 percent used as pastures, and 4 percent urban-industrial areas), thus replacing the original local ecosystems. The sustained conversion of biodiversity rich forests and wetlands into poorer fields and pastures (of lesser carrying capacity for wild species), over the last 10,000 years, has considerably reduced the Earth's carrying capacity for wild birds, among other organisms, in both population size and species count.
Other, related human causes of the extinction event include deforestation, hunting, pollution, the introduction in various regions of non-native species, and the widespread transmission of infectious diseases spread through livestock and crops. Humans both create and destroy crop cultivar and domesticated animal varieties. Advances in transportation and industrial farming has led to monoculture and the extinction of many cultivars. The use of certain plants and animals for food has also resulted in their extinction, including silphium and the passenger pigeon.
Some scholars assert that the emergence of capitalism as the dominant economic system has accelerated ecological exploitation and destruction, and has also exacerbated mass species extinction. CUNY professor David Harvey, for example, posits that the neoliberal era "happens to be the era of the fastest mass extinction of species in the Earth's recent history".
Apex predator
Megafauna were once found on every continent of the world and large islands such as New Zealand and Madagascar, but are now almost exclusively found on the continent of Africa, with notable comparisons on Australia and the islands previously mentioned experiencing population crashes and trophic cascades shortly after the earliest human settlers. It has been suggested that the African megafauna survived because they evolved alongside humans. The timing of South American megafaunal extinction appears to precede human arrival, although the possibility that human activity at the time impacted the global climate enough to cause such an extinction has been suggested.
It has been noted, in the face of such evidence, that humans are unique in ecology as an unprecedented "global superpredator", regularly preying on large numbers of fully grown terrestrial and marine apex predators, and with a great deal of influence over food webs and climatic systems worldwide. Although significant debate exists as to how much human predation and indirect effects contributed to prehistoric extinctions, certain population crashes have been directly correlated with human arrival. Human activity has been the main cause of mammalian extinctions since the Late Pleistocene. A 2018 study published in PNAS found that since the dawn of human civilization, 83% of wild mammals, 80% of marine mammals, 50% of plants and 15% of fish have vanished. Currently, livestock make up 60% of the biomass of all mammals on earth, followed by humans (36%) and wild mammals (4%). As for birds, 70% are domesticated, such as poultry, whereas only 30% are wild.
Agriculture and climate change
Recent investigations into the practice of landscape burning during the Neolithic Revolution has a major implication for the current debate about the timing of the Anthropocene and the role that humans may have played in the production of greenhouse gases prior to the Industrial Revolution. Studies on early hunter-gatherers raises questions about the current use of population size or density as a proxy for the amount of land clearance and anthropogenic burning that took place in pre-industrial times. Scientists have questioned the correlation between population size and early territorial alterations. Ruddiman and Ellis' research paper in 2009 makes the case that early farmers involved in systems of agriculture used more land per capita than growers later in the Holocene, who intensified their labor to produce more food per unit of area (thus, per laborer); arguing that agricultural involvement in rice production implemented thousands of years ago by relatively small populations have created significant environmental impacts through large-scale means of deforestation.
While a number of human-derived factors are recognized as contributing to rising atmospheric concentrations of CH4 (methane) and CO2 (carbon dioxide), deforestation and territorial clearance practices associated with agricultural development may be contributing most to these concentrations globally. Scientists that are employing a variance of archaeological and paleoecological data argue that the processes contributing to substantial human modification of the environment spanned many thousands of years ago on a global scale and thus, not originating as early as the Industrial Revolution. Gaining popularity on his uncommon hypothesis, palaeoclimatologist William Ruddiman in 2003, stipulated that in the early Holocene 11,000 years ago, atmospheric carbon dioxide and methane levels fluctuated in a pattern which was different from the Pleistocene epoch before it. He argued that the patterns of the significant decline of CO2 levels during the last ice age of the Pleistocene inversely correlates to the Holocene where there have been dramatic increases of CO2 around 8000 years ago and CH4 levels 3000 years after that. The correlation between the decrease of CO2 in the Pleistocene and the increase of it during the Holocene implies that the causation of this spark of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere was the growth of human agriculture during the Holocene such as the anthropogenic expansion of (human) land use and irrigation.
Islands
Human arrival in the Caribbean around 6,000 years ago is correlated with the extinction of many species. These include many different genera of ground and arboreal sloths across all islands. These sloths were generally smaller than those found on the South American continent. Megalocnus were the largest genus at up to , Acratocnus were medium-sized relatives of modern two-toed sloths endemic to Cuba, Imagocnus also of Cuba, Neocnus and many others.
Recent research, based on archaeological and paleontological digs on 70 different Pacific islands, has shown that numerous species became extinct as people moved across the Pacific, starting 30,000 years ago in the Bismarck Archipelago and Solomon Islands. It is currently estimated that among the bird species of the Pacific, some 2000 species have gone extinct since the arrival of humans, representing a 20% drop in the biodiversity of birds worldwide.
The first human settlers of the Hawaiian islands are thought to have arrived between 300 and 800 CE, with European arrival in the 16th century. Hawaii is notable for its endemism of plants, birds, insects, mollusks and fish; 30% of its organisms are endemic. Many of its species are endangered or have gone extinct, primarily due to accidentally introduced species and livestock grazing. Over 40% of its bird species have gone extinct, and it is the location of 75% of extinctions in the United States. Extinction has increased in Hawaii over the last 200 years and is relatively well documented, with extinctions among native snails used as estimates for global extinction rates.
Australia
Australia was once home to a large assemblage of megafauna, with many parallels to those found on the African continent today. Australia's fauna is characterised by primarily marsupial mammals, and many reptiles and birds, all existing as giant forms until recently. Humans arrived on the continent very early, about 50,000 years ago. The extent human arrival contributed is controversial; climatic drying of Australia 40,000–60,000 years ago was an unlikely cause, as it was less severe in speed or magnitude than previous regional climate change which failed to kill off megafauna. Extinctions in Australia continued from original settlement until today in both plants and animals, whilst many more animals and plants have declined or are endangered.
Due to the older timeframe and the soil chemistry on the continent, very little subfossil preservation evidence exists relative to elsewhere. However, continent-wide extinction of all genera weighing over 100 kilograms, and six of seven genera weighing between 45 and 100 kilograms occurred around 46,400 years ago (4,000 years after human arrival) and the fact that megafauna survived until a later date on the island of Tasmania following the establishment of a land bridge suggest direct hunting or anthropogenic ecosystem disruption such as fire-stick farming as likely causes. The first evidence of direct human predation leading to extinction in Australia was published in 2016.
A 2021 study found that the rate of extinction of Australia's megafauna is rather unusual, with some generalistic species having gone extinct earlier while highly specialised ones having become extinct later or even still surviving today. A mosaic cause of extinction with different anthropogenic and environmental pressures has been proposed.
Madagascar
Within 500 years of the arrival of humans between 2,500 and 2,000 years ago, nearly all of Madagascar's distinct, endemic and geographically isolated megafauna became extinct. The largest animals, of more than , were extinct very shortly after the first human arrival, with large and medium-sized species dying out after prolonged hunting pressure from an expanding human population moving into more remote regions of the island around 1000 years ago. Smaller fauna experienced initial increases due to decreased competition, and then subsequent declines over the last 500 years. All fauna weighing over died out. The primary reasons for this are human hunting and habitat loss from early aridification, both of which persist and threaten Madagascar's remaining taxa today.
The eight or more species of elephant birds, giant flightless ratites in the genera Aepyornis, Vorombe, and Mullerornis, are extinct from over-hunting, as well as 17 species of lemur, known as giant, subfossil lemurs. Some of these lemurs typically weighed over , and fossils have provided evidence of human butchery on many species.
New Zealand
New Zealand is characterised by its geographic isolation and island biogeography, and had been isolated from mainland Australia for 80 million years. It was the last large land mass to be colonised by humans. The arrival of Polynesian settlers circa 12th century resulted in the extinction of all of the islands' megafaunal birds within several hundred years. The moa, large flightless ratites, became extinct within 200 years of the arrival of human settlers. The Polynesians also introduced the Polynesian rat. This may have put some pressure on other birds but at the time of early European contact (18th century) and colonisation (19th century) the bird life was prolific. With them, the Europeans brought various invasive species including ship rats, possums, cats and mustelids which devastated native bird life, some of which had adapted flightlessness and ground nesting habits, and had no defensive behavior as a result of having no native mammalian predators. The kakapo, the world's biggest parrot, which is flightless, now only exists in managed breeding sanctuaries. New Zealand's national emblem, the kiwi, is on the endangered bird list.
Americas
There has been a debate as to the extent to which the disappearance of megafauna at the end of the last glacial period can be attributed to human activities by hunting, or even by slaughter of prey populations. Discoveries at Monte Verde in South America and at Meadowcroft Rock Shelter in Pennsylvania have caused a controversy regarding the Clovis culture. There likely would have been human settlements prior to the Clovis Culture, and the history of humans in the Americas may extend back many thousands of years before the Clovis culture. The amount of correlation between human arrival and megafauna extinction is still being debated: for example, in Wrangel Island in Siberia the extinction of dwarf woolly mammoths (approximately 2000 BCE) did not coincide with the arrival of humans, nor did megafaunal mass extinction on the South American continent, although it has been suggested climate changes induced by anthropogenic effects elsewhere in the world may have contributed.
Comparisons are sometimes made between recent extinctions (approximately since the industrial revolution) and the Pleistocene extinction near the end of the last glacial period. The latter is exemplified by the extinction of large herbivores such as the woolly mammoth and the carnivores that preyed on them. Humans of this era actively hunted the mammoth and the mastodon, but it is not known if this hunting was the cause of the subsequent massive ecological changes, widespread extinctions and climate changes.
The ecosystems encountered by the first Americans had not been exposed to human interaction, and may have been far less resilient to human made changes than the ecosystems encountered by industrial era humans. Therefore, the actions of the Clovis people, despite seeming insignificant by today's standards could indeed have had a profound effect on the ecosystems and wild life which was entirely unused to human influence.
Afroeurasia
Africa experienced the smallest decline in megafauna compared to the other continents. This is presumably due to the idea that Afroeurasian megafauna evolved alongside humans, and thus developed a healthy fear of them, unlike the comparatively tame animals of other continents. Unlike other continents, the megafauna of Eurasia went extinct over a relatively long period of time, possibly due to climate fluctuations fragmenting and decreasing populations, leaving them vulnerable to over-exploitation, as with the steppe bison (Bison priscus). The warming of the arctic region caused the rapid decline of grasslands, which had a negative effect on the grazing megafauna of Eurasia. Most of what once was mammoth steppe has been converted to mire, rendering the environment incapable of supporting them, notably the woolly mammoth.
Climate change
One of the main theories for the extinction's cause is climate change. The climate change theory has suggested that a change in climate near the end of the late Pleistocene stressed the megafauna to the point of extinction. Some scientists favor abrupt climate change as the catalyst for the extinction of the mega-fauna at the end of the Pleistocene, but there are many who believe increased hunting from early modern humans also played a part, with others even suggesting that the two interacted. However, the annual mean temperature of the current interglacial period for the last 10,000 years is no higher than that of previous interglacial periods, yet some of the same megafauna survived similar temperature increases. In the Americas, a controversial explanation for the shift in climate is presented under the Younger Dryas impact hypothesis, which states that the impact of comets cooled global temperatures.
A 2020 study published in Science Advances found that human population size and/or specific human activities, not climate change, caused rapidly rising global mammal extinction rates during the past 126,000 years. Around 96% of all mammalian extinctions over this time period are attributable to human impacts. According to Tobias Andermann, lead author of the study, "these extinctions did not happen continuously and at constant pace. Instead, bursts of extinctions are detected across different continents at times when humans first reached them. More recently, the magnitude of human driven extinctions has picked up the pace again, this time on a global scale."
Megafaunal extinction
Megafauna play a significant role in the lateral transport of mineral nutrients in an ecosystem, tending to translocate them from areas of high to those of lower abundance. They do so by their movement between the time they consume the nutrient and the time they release it through elimination (or, to a much lesser extent, through decomposition after death). In South America's Amazon Basin, it is estimated that such lateral diffusion was reduced over 98% following the megafaunal extinctions that occurred roughly 12,500 years ago. Given that phosphorus availability is thought to limit productivity in much of the region, the decrease in its transport from the western part of the basin and from floodplains (both of which derive their supply from the uplift of the Andes) to other areas is thought to have significantly impacted the region's ecology, and the effects may not yet have reached their limits. The extinction of the mammoths allowed grasslands they had maintained through grazing habits to become birch forests. The new forest and the resulting forest fires may have induced climate change. Such disappearances might be the result of the proliferation of modern humans; some recent studies favor this theory.
Large populations of megaherbivores have the potential to contribute greatly to the atmospheric concentration of methane, which is an important greenhouse gas. Modern ruminant herbivores produce methane as a byproduct of foregut fermentation in digestion, and release it through belching or flatulence. Today, around 20% of annual methane emissions come from livestock methane release. In the Mesozoic, it has been estimated that sauropods could have emitted 520 million tons of methane to the atmosphere annually, contributing to the warmer climate of the time (up to 10 °C warmer than at present). This large emission follows from the enormous estimated biomass of sauropods, and because methane production of individual herbivores is believed to be almost proportional to their mass.
Recent studies have indicated that the extinction of megafaunal herbivores may have caused a reduction in atmospheric methane. This hypothesis is relatively new. One study examined the methane emissions from the bison that occupied the Great Plains of North America before contact with European settlers. The study estimated that the removal of the bison caused a decrease of as much as 2.2 million tons per year. Another study examined the change in the methane concentration in the atmosphere at the end of the Pleistocene epoch after the extinction of megafauna in the Americas. After early humans migrated to the Americas about 13,000 BP, their hunting and other associated ecological impacts led to the extinction of many megafaunal species there. Calculations suggest that this extinction decreased methane production by about 9.6 million tons per year. This suggests that the absence of megafaunal methane emissions may have contributed to the abrupt climatic cooling at the onset of the Younger Dryas. The decrease in atmospheric methane that occurred at that time, as recorded in ice cores, was 2–4 times more rapid than any other decrease in the last half million years, suggesting that an unusual mechanism was at work.
Disease
The hyperdisease hypothesis, proposed by Ross MacPhee in 1997, states that the megafaunal die-off was due to an indirect transmission of diseases by newly arriving aboriginal humans. According to MacPhee, aboriginals or animals travelling with them, such as domestic dogs or livestock, introduced one or more highly virulent diseases into new environments whose native population had no immunity to them, eventually leading to their extinction. K-selection animals, such as the now-extinct megafauna, are especially vulnerable to diseases, as opposed to r-selection animals who have a shorter gestation period and a higher population size. Humans are thought to be the sole cause as other earlier migrations of animals into North America from Eurasia did not cause extinctions.
There are many problems with this theory, as this disease would have to meet several criteria: it has to be able to sustain itself in an environment with no hosts; it has to have a high infection rate; and be extremely lethal, with a mortality rate of 50–75%. Disease has to be very virulent to kill off all the individuals in a species, and even such a virulent disease as West Nile fever is unlikely to have caused extinction.
However, diseases have been the cause for some extinctions. The introduction of avian malaria and avipoxvirus, for example, have had a negative impact on the endemic birds of Hawaii.
Contemporary extinction
History
The loss of animal species from ecological communities, defaunation, is primarily driven by human activity. This has resulted in empty forests, ecological communities depleted of large vertebrates. This is not to be confused with extinction, as it includes both the disappearance of species and declines in abundance. Defaunation effects were first implied at the Symposium of Plant-Animal Interactions at the University of Campinas, Brazil in 1988 in the context of Neotropical forests. Since then, the term has gained broader usage in conservation biology as a global phenomenon.
Big cat populations have severely declined over the last half-century and could face extinction in the following decades. According to IUCN estimates: lions are down to 25,000, from 450,000; leopards are down to 50,000, from 750,000; cheetahs are down to 12,000, from 45,000; tigers are down to 3,000 in the wild, from 50,000. A December 2016 study by the Zoological Society of London, Panthera Corporation and Wildlife Conservation Society showed that cheetahs are far closer to extinction than previously thought, with only 7,100 remaining in the wild, and crammed within only 9% of their historic range. Human pressures are to blame for the cheetah population crash, including prey loss due to overhunting by people, retaliatory killing from farmers, habitat loss and the illegal wildlife trade.
The term pollinator decline refers to the reduction in abundance of insect and other animal pollinators in many ecosystems worldwide beginning at the end of the twentieth century, and continuing into the present day. Pollinators, which are necessary for 75% of food crops, are declining globally in both abundance and diversity. A 2017 study led by Radboud University's Hans de Kroon indicated that the biomass of insect life in Germany had declined by three-quarters in the previous 25 years. Participating researcher Dave Goulson of Sussex University stated that their study suggested that humans are making large parts of the planet uninhabitable for wildlife. Goulson characterized the situation as an approaching "ecological Armageddon", adding that "if we lose the insects then everything is going to collapse." As of 2019, 40% of insect species are in decline, and a third are endangered. The most significant drivers in the decline of insect populations are associated with intensive farming practices, along with pesticide use and climate change. Around 1 to 2 per cent of insects are lost per year.
Various species are predicted to become extinct in the near future, among them the rhinoceros, nonhuman primates, pangolins, and giraffes. Hunting alone threatens bird and mammalian populations around the world. The direct killing of megafauna for meat and body parts is the primary driver of their destruction, with 70% of the 362 megafauna species in decline as of 2019. Mammals in particular have suffered such severe losses as the result of human activity that it could take several million years for them to recover. 189 countries, which are signatory to the Convention on Biological Diversity (Rio Accord), have committed to preparing a Biodiversity Action Plan, a first step at identifying specific endangered species and habitats, country by country.
A June 2020 study published in PNAS posits that the contemporary extinction crisis "may be the most serious environmental threat to the persistence of civilization, because it is irreversible" and that its acceleration "is certain because of the still fast growth in human numbers and consumption rates." The study found that more than 500 vertebrate species are poised to be lost in the next two decades.
Recent extinction
Recent extinctions are more directly attributable to human influences, whereas prehistoric extinctions can be attributed to other factors, such as global climate change. The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) characterises 'recent' extinction as those that have occurred past the cut-off point of 1500, and at least 875 plant and animal species have gone extinct since that time and 2009. Some species, such as the Père David's deer and the Hawaiian crow, are extinct in the wild, and survive solely in captive populations. Other populations are only locally extinct (extirpated), still existent elsewhere, but reduced in distribution, as with the extinction of gray whales in the Atlantic, and of the leatherback sea turtle in Malaysia.
Most recently, insect populations have experienced rapid surprising declines. Insects have declined at an annual rate of 2.5% over the last 25–30 years. The most severe effects may include Puerto Rico, where insect ground fall has declined by 98% in the previous 35 years. Butterflies and moths are experiencing some of the most severe effect. Butterfly species have declined by 58% on farmland in England. In the last ten years, 40% of insect species and 22% of mammal species have disappeared. Germany is experiencing a 75% decline. Climate change and agriculture are believed to be the most significant contributors to the change.
A 2019 study published in Nature Communications found that rapid biodiversity loss is impacting larger mammals and birds to a much greater extent than smaller ones, with the body mass of such animals expected to shrink by 25% over the next century. Over the past 125,000 years, the average body size of wildlife has fallen by 14% as human actions eradicated megafauna on all continents with the exception of Africa. Another 2019 study published in Biology Letters found that extinction rates are perhaps much higher than previously estimated, in particular for bird species.
The 2019 Global Assessment Report on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services lists the primary causes of contemporary extinctions in descending order: (1) changes in land and sea use (primarily agriculture and overfishing respectively); (2) direct exploitation of organisms such as hunting; (3) anthropogenic climate change; (4) pollution and (5) invasive alien species spread by human trade. This report, along with the 2020 Living Planet Report by the WWF, both project that climate change will be the leading cause in the next several decades.
Habitat destruction
In March 2019, Nature Climate Change published a study by ecologists from Yale University, who found that over the next half century, human land use will reduce the habitats of 1,700 species by up to 50%, pushing them closer to extinction. That same month PLOS Biology published a similar study drawing on work at the University of Queensland, which found that "more than 1,200 species globally face threats to their survival in more than 90% of their habitat and will almost certainly face extinction without conservation intervention".
Since 1970, the populations of migratory freshwater fish have declined by 76%, according to research published by the Zoological Society of London in July 2020. Overall, around one in three freshwater fish species are threatened with extinction due to human-driven habitat degradation and overfishing.
Some scientists and academics assert that industrial agriculture and the growing demand for meat is contributing to significant global biodiversity loss as this is a significant driver of deforestation and habitat destruction; species-rich habitats, such as the Amazon region and Indonesia being converted to agriculture. A 2017 study by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) found that 60% of biodiversity loss can be attributed to the vast scale of feed crop cultivation required to rear tens of billions of farm animals. Moreover, a 2006 report by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations, Livestock's Long Shadow, also found that the livestock sector is a "leading player" in biodiversity loss. More recently, in 2019, the IPBES Global Assessment Report on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services attributed much of this ecological destruction to agriculture and fishing, with the meat and dairy industries having a very significant impact. Since the 1970s food production has soared in order to feed a growing human population and bolster economic growth, but at a huge price to the environment and other species. The report says some 25% of the earth's ice-free land is used for cattle grazing. A 2020 study published in Nature Communications warned that human impacts from housing, industrial agriculture and in particular meat consumption are wiping out a combined 50 billion years of earth's evolutionary history (defined as phylogenetic diversity) and driving to extinction some of the "most unique animals on the planet," among them the Aye-aye lemur, the Chinese crocodile lizard and the pangolin. Said lead author Rikki Gumbs:
Climate change
Climate change is expected to be a major driver of extinctions from the 21st century. Rising levels of carbon dioxide are resulting in influx of this gas into the ocean, increasing its acidity. Marine organisms which possess calcium carbonate shells or exoskeletons experience physiological pressure as the carbonate reacts with acid. For example, this is already resulting in coral bleaching on various coral reefs worldwide, which provide valuable habitat and maintain a high biodiversity. Marine gastropods, bivalves and other invertebrates are also affected, as are the organisms that feed on them. According to a 2018 study published in Science, global Orca populations are poised to collapse due to toxic chemical and PCB pollution. PCBs are still leaking into the sea in spite of being banned for decades.
Overexploitation
Overhunting can reduce the local population of game animals by more than half, as well as reducing population density, and may lead to extinction for some species. Populations located nearer to villages are significantly more at risk of depletion. Several conservationist organizations, among them IFAW and HSUS, assert that trophy hunters, particularly from the United States, are playing a significant role in the decline of giraffes, which they refer to as a "silent extinction".
The surge in the mass killings by poachers involved in the illegal ivory trade along with habitat loss is threatening African elephant populations. In 1979, their populations stood at 1.7 million; at present there are fewer than 400,000 remaining. Prior to European colonization, scientists believe Africa was home to roughly 20 million elephants. According to the Great Elephant Census, 30% of African elephants (or 144,000 individuals) disappeared over a seven-year period, 2007 to 2014. African elephants could become extinct by 2035 if poaching rates continue.
Fishing has had a devastating effect on marine organism populations for several centuries even before the explosion of destructive and highly effective fishing practices like trawling. Humans are unique among predators in that they regularly prey on other adult apex predators, particularly in marine environments; bluefin tuna, blue whales, North Atlantic right whales and over fifty species of sharks and rays are vulnerable to predation pressure from human fishing, in particular commercial fishing. A 2016 study published in Science concludes that humans tend to hunt larger species, and this could disrupt ocean ecosystems for millions of years. A 2020 study published in Science Advances found that around 18% of marine megafauna, including iconic species such as the Great white shark, are at risk of extinction from human pressures over the next century. In a worst-case scenario, 40% could go extinct over the same time period. According to a 2021 study published in Nature, 71% of oceanic shark and ray populations have been destroyed by overfishing (the primary driver of ocean defaunation) from 1970 to 2018, and are nearing the "point of no return" as 24 of the 31 species are now threatened with extinction, with several being classified as critically endangered.
Disease
The decline of amphibian populations has also been identified as an indicator of environmental degradation. As well as habitat loss, introduced predators and pollution, Chytridiomycosis, a fungal infection accidentally spread by human travel, globalization and the wildlife trade, has caused severe population drops of over 500 amphibian species, and perhaps 90 extinctions, including (among many others) the extinction of the golden toad in Costa Rica, the Gastric-brooding frog in Australia, the Rabb's fringe-limbed treefrog and the extinction of the Panamanian golden frog in the wild. Chytrid fungus has spread across Australia, New Zealand, Central America and Africa, including countries with high amphibian diversity such as cloud forests in Honduras and Madagascar. Batrachochytrium salamandrivorans is a similar infection currently threatening salamanders. Amphibians are now the most endangered vertebrate group, having existed for more than 300 million years through three other mass extinctions.
Millions of bats in the US have been dying off since 2012 due to a fungal infection known as white-nose syndrome that spread from European bats, who appear to be immune. Population drops have been as great as 90% within five years, and extinction of at least one bat species is predicted. There is currently no form of treatment, and such declines have been described as "unprecedented" in bat evolutionary history by Alan Hicks of the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation.
Between 2007 and 2013, over ten million beehives were abandoned due to colony collapse disorder, which causes worker bees to abandon the queen. Though no single cause has gained widespread acceptance by the scientific community, proposals include infections with Varroa and Acarapis mites; malnutrition; various pathogens; genetic factors; immunodeficiencies; loss of habitat; changing beekeeping practices; or a combination of factors.
Mitigation
Some leading scientists have advocated for the global community to designate as protected areas 30 percent of the planet by 2030, and 50 percent by 2050, in order to mitigate the contemporary extinction crisis as the human population is projected to grow to 10 billion by the middle of the century. Human consumption of food and water resources is also projected to double by this time.
In November 2018, the UN's biodiversity chief Cristiana Pașca Palmer urged people around the world to put pressure on governments to implement significant protections for wildlife by 2020, as rampant biodiversity loss is a "silent killer" as dangerous as global warming, but has received little attention by comparison. She says that "It’s different from climate change, where people feel the impact in everyday life. With biodiversity, it is not so clear but by the time you feel what is happening, it may be too late." In January 2020, the UN Convention on Biological Diversity drafted a Paris-style plan to stop biodiversity and ecosystem collapse by setting a deadline of 2030 to protect 30% of the earth's land and oceans and reduce pollution by 50%, with the goal of allowing for the restoration of ecosystems by 2050. The world failed to meet similar targets for 2020 set by the convention during a summit in Japan in 2010. Of the 20 biodiversity targets proposed, only six were "partially achieved" by the deadline. It was called a global failure by Inger Andersen, head of the United Nations Environment Programme:
Some scientists have proposed keeping extinctions below 20 per year for the next century as a global target to reduce species loss, which is the biodiversity equivalent of the 2 °C climate target, although it is still much higher than the normal background rate of two per year prior to anthropogenic impacts on the natural world.
An October 2020 report on the "era of pandemics" from IPBES found that many of the same human activities that contribute to biodiversity loss and climate change, including deforestation and the wildlife trade, have also increased the risk of future pandemics. The report offers several policy options to reduce such risk, such as taxing meat production and consumption, cracking down on the illegal wildlife trade, removing high disease-risk species from the legal wildlife trade, and eliminating subsidies to businesses which are harmful to the environment. According to marine zoologist John Spicer, "the COVID-19 crisis is not just another crisis alongside the biodiversity crisis and the climate change crisis. Make no mistake, this is one big crisis – the greatest that humans have ever faced."
According to a 2021 paper published in Frontiers in Conservation Science, humanity almost certainly faces a "ghastly future" of declining health, biodiversity collapse, climate change-driven social upheaval, displacement and resource conflict, and resource exhaustion, unless major efforts to change human industry and activity are rapidly undertaken.
See also
Animal–industrial complex
Anthropocentrism
Climate change
Coextinction
Ecocriticism
Effects of global warming
Extinction symbol
Extinction Rebellion
Extinction: The Facts (2020 documentary)
IUCN Red List
Late Quaternary prehistoric birds
List of extinct animals
List of recently extinct mammals
List of recently extinct birds
List of recently extinct invertebrates
List of recently extinct plants
List of recently extinct reptiles
List of recently extinct amphibians
Pleistocene rewilding
Planetary boundaries
Racing Extinction (2015 documentary film)
The Anthropocene Extinction (2015 album)
Tipping points in the climate system
Timeline of extinctions in the Holocene
Notes
a. Phylogenetic diversity (PD) is the sum of the phylogenetic branch lengths in years connecting a set of species to each other across their phylogenetic tree, and measures their collective contribution to the tree of life.
References
Further reading
External links
The Extinction Crisis. Center for Biological Diversity.
Vanishing: The extinction crisis is far worse than you think. CNN. December 2016.
Biologists say half of all species could be extinct by end of century, The Guardian, 25 February 2017
Humans are ushering in the sixth mass extinction of life on Earth, scientists warn, The Independent, 31 May 2017
Human activity pushing Earth towards 'sixth mass species extinction,' report warns. CBC. Mar 26, 2018
‘Terror being waged on wildlife', leaders warn. The Guardian. October 4, 2018.
Earth Is on the Cusp of the Sixth Mass Extinction. Here’s What Paleontologists Want You to Know. Discover. December 3, 2020.
Extinction
Extinction
Extinction
Environmental impact by effect
Human ecology
Human impact on the environment
Anthropocene
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14210 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harrison%20Narcotics%20Tax%20Act | Harrison Narcotics Tax Act | The Harrison Narcotics Tax Act (Ch. 1, ) was a United States federal law that regulated and taxed the production, importation, and distribution of opiates and coca products. The act was proposed by Representative Francis Burton Harrison of New York and was approved on December 17, 1914.
"An Act To provide for the registration of, with collectors of internal revenue, and to impose a special tax on all persons who produce, import, manufacture, compound, deal in, dispense, sell, distribute, or give away opium or coca leaves, their salts, derivatives, or preparations, and for other purposes." The courts interpreted this to mean that physicians could prescribe narcotics to patients in the course of normal treatment, but not for the treatment of addiction.
The Harrison Anti-Narcotic legislation consisted of three U.S. House bills imposing restrictions on the availability and consumption of the psychoactive drug opium. U.S. House bills and passed conjointly with House bill or the Opium and Coca Leaves Trade Restrictions Act.
Although technically illegal for purposes of distribution and use, the distribution, sale and use of cocaine was still legal for registered companies and individuals.
History
International background
Following the Spanish–American War and the Philippine-American War, the Philippines saw a proliferation of opium use. A cholera outbreak in 1902 further strengthened this tendency due to the astringent properties of opium.
Charles Henry Brent was an American Episcopal bishop who served as Missionary Bishop of the Philippines beginning in 1901. He convened a Commission of Inquiry, known as the Brent Commission, for the purpose of examining alternatives to a licensing system for opium addicts. Although Governor William Taft supported this policy, Brent opposed it "on moral grounds". The Commission recommended that narcotics should be subject to international control. The recommendations of the Brent Commission were endorsed by the United States Department of State and in 1906 President Theodore Roosevelt called for an international conference, the International Opium Commission, which was held in Shanghai in February 1909. A second conference was held at The Hague in May 1911, and out of it came the first international drug control treaty, the International Opium Convention of 1912.
Domestic background
In the 1800s, opiates and cocaine were mostly unregulated drugs. In the 1890s, the Sears & Roebuck catalogue, which was distributed to millions of Americans homes, offered a syringe and a small amount of cocaine for $1.50. On the other hand, as early as 1880, some states and localities had already passed laws against smoking opium, at least in public, for example as reported in the Los Angeles Herald in an article mentioning the city law against opium smoking.
At the beginning of the 20th century, cocaine began to be linked to crime. In 1900, the Journal of the American Medical Association published an editorial stating, "Negroes in the South are reported as being addicted to a new form of vice – that of 'cocaine sniffing' or the 'coke habit.'" Some newspapers later claimed cocaine use caused blacks to rape white women and was improving their pistol marksmanship. Chinese immigrants were blamed for importing the opium-smoking habit to the U.S. The 1903 blue-ribbon citizens' panel, the Committee on the Acquirement of the Drug Habit, concluded, "If the Chinaman cannot get along without his dope we can get along without him."
Opium
Theodore Roosevelt appointed Dr. Hamilton Wright as the first Opium Commissioner of the United States in 1908. In 1909, Wright attended the International Opium Commission in Shanghai as the American delegate. He was accompanied by Charles Henry Brent, the Episcopal Bishop. On March 12, 1911, Wright was quoted in an article in The New York Times: "Of all the nations of the world, the United States consumes most habit-forming drugs per capita. Opium, the most pernicious drug known to humanity, is surrounded, in this country, with far fewer safeguards than any other nation in Europe fences it with." He further claimed that "it has been authoritatively stated that cocaine is often the direct incentive to the crime of rape by the negroes of the South and other sections of the country". He also stated that "one of the most unfortunate phases of smoking opium in this country is the large number of women who have become involved and were living as common-law wives or cohabitating with Chinese in the Chinatowns of our various cities".
Opium usage had begun to decline by 1914 after rising dramatically in the post Civil War Era, peaking at around one-half million pounds per year in 1896. Demand gradually declined thereafter in response to mounting public concern, local and state regulations, and the Pure Food and Drugs Act of 1906, which required labeling of patent medicines that contained opiates, cocaine, alcohol, cannabis and other intoxicants. As of 1911, an estimated one U.S. citizen in 400 (0.25%) was addicted to some form of opium. The opium addicts were mostly women who were prescribed and dispensed legal opiates by physicians and pharmacist for "female problems" (probably pain at menstruation) or white men and Chinese at the Opium dens. Between two-thirds and three-quarters of these addicts were women. By 1914, forty-six states had regulations on cocaine and twenty-nine states had laws against opium, morphine, and heroin.
The committee report prior to the debate on the house floor and the debate itself, discussed the rise of opiate use in the United States. Harrison stated that "The purpose of this Bill can hardly be said to raise revenue, because it prohibits the importation of something upon which we have hitherto collected revenue." Later Harrison stated, "We are not attempting to collect revenue, but regulate commerce." House representative Thomas Sisson stated, "The purpose of this bill—and we are all in sympathy with it—is to prevent the use of opium in the United States, destructive as it is to human happiness and human life."
The drafters played on fears of "drug-crazed, sex-mad negroes" and made references to Negroes under the influence of drugs murdering whites, degenerate Mexicans smoking marijuana, and "Chinamen" seducing white women with drugs. Dr. Hamilton Wright, testified at a hearing for the Harrison Act. Wright alleged that drugs made blacks uncontrollable, gave them superhuman powers and caused them to rebel against white authority. Dr. Christopher Koch of the State Pharmacy Board of Pennsylvania testified that "Most of the attacks upon the white women of the South are the direct result of a cocaine-crazed Negro brain".
Before the Act was passed, on February 8, 1914, The New York Times published an article entitled "Negro Cocaine 'Fiends' Are New Southern Menace: Murder and Insanity Increasing Among Lower-Class Blacks" by Edward Huntington Williams, which reported that Southern sheriffs had increased the caliber of their weapons from .32 to .38 to bring down Negroes under the effect of cocaine.
Despite the extreme racialization of the issue that took place in the buildup to the Act's passage, the contemporary research on the subject indicated that black Americans were using cocaine and opium at much lower rates than white Americans.
Effect
Enforcement began in 1915.
The act appears to be mainly concerned about the marketing of opiates. However, a clause applying to doctors allowed distribution "in the course of his professional practice only." This clause was interpreted after 1917 to mean that a doctor could not prescribe opiates to an addict. A number of doctors were arrested and some were imprisoned. The medical profession quickly learned not to supply opiates to addicts. In United States v. Doremus, 249 U.S. 86 (1919), the Supreme Court ruled that the Harrison Act was constitutional, and in Webb v. United States, 249 U.S. 96, 99 (1919) that physicians could not prescribe narcotics solely for maintenance.
The impact of diminished supply was obvious by mid-1915. A 1918 commission called for sterner law enforcement, while newspapers published sensational articles about addiction-related crime waves. Congress responded by tightening up the Harrison Act—the importation of heroin for any purpose was banned in 1924.
The use of the term 'narcotic', which was originally derived from ancient Greek ναρκῶ (narkō), "to make numb", in the title of the act referenced not just opiates but also cocaine, which is a central nervous system stimulant. This set a precedent of frequent legislative and judicial misclassification of various (illegal) substances as 'narcotics'. Today, law enforcement agencies, popular media, the United Nations, other nations and even some medical practitioners can be observed applying the term very broadly and often pejoratively in reference to a wide range of illicit substances, regardless of the more precise definition existing in medical contexts. For this reason, however, 'narcotic' has come to mean any illegally used drug, but it is useful as a shorthand for referring to a controlled drug in a context where its legal status is more important than its physiological effects.
One effect of this act, which has largely been superseded by the Controlled Substances Act of 1970, is the warning "*Warning: May be habit forming" on labels, package inserts, and other places where ingredients are listed in the case of many opioids, barbiturates, medicinal formulations of cocaine, and chloral hydrate.
The act also marks the beginning of the criminalization of addiction and the American black market for drugs. Within five years the Rainey Committee, a Special Committee on Investigation appointed by Secretary of the Treasury William Gibbs McAdoo and led by Congressman T. Rainey, reported in June, 1919 that drugs were being smuggled into the country by sea, and across the Mexican and Canadian borders by nationally established organisations and that the United States consumed 470,000 pounds of opium annually, compared to 17,000 pounds in both France and Germany. The Monthly Summary of Foreign Commerce of the United States recorded that in the 7 months to January 1920, 528,635 pounds of opium was imported, compared to 74,650 pounds in the same period in 1919.
Challenge
The Act's applicability in prosecuting doctors who prescribe narcotics to addicts was successfully challenged in Linder v. United States in 1925, as Justice McReynolds ruled that the federal government has no power to regulate medical practice.
See also
Arguments for and against drug prohibition
Prohibition of drugs
References
Further reading
External links
1914 in law
1914 in the United States
History of drug control
United States federal controlled substances legislation
United States federal taxation legislation | [
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14215 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horse%20tack | Horse tack | Tack is equipment or accessories equipped on horses and other equines in the course of their use as domesticated animals. Saddles, stirrups, bridles, halters, reins, bits, harnesses, martingales, and breastplates are all forms of horse tack. Equipping a horse is often referred to as tacking up. A room to store such equipment, usually near or in a stable, is a tack room.
Saddles
Saddles are seats for the rider, fastened to the horse's back by means of a girth (English-style riding), known as a cinch in the Western US, a wide strap that goes around the horse at a point about four inches behind the forelegs. Some western saddles will also have a second strap known as a flank or back cinch that fastens at the rear of the saddle and goes around the widest part of the horse's belly.
It is important that the saddle be comfortable for both the rider and the horse as an improperly fitting saddle may create pressure points on the horse's back muscle (Latissimus dorsi) and cause the horse pain and can lead to the horse, rider, or both getting injured.
There are many types of saddle, each specially designed for its given task.
Saddles are usually divided into two major categories: "English saddles" and "Western saddles" according to the riding discipline they are used in. Other types of saddles, such as racing saddles, Australian saddles, sidesaddles and endurance saddles do not necessarily fit neatly in either category.
Saddle accessories
Breastplate or breastcollar: Prevents saddles of all styles from sliding sideways or backward on a horse's back
Surcingle
Crupper
Breeching, also called "britching"
Saddle blanket or numnah
Stirrups
Stirrups are supports for the rider's feet that hang down on either side of the saddle. They provide greater stability for the rider but can have safety concerns due to the potential for a rider's feet to get stuck in them. If a rider is thrown from a horse but has a foot caught in the stirrup, they could be dragged if the horse runs away. To minimize this risk, a number of safety precautions are taken. First, most riders wear riding boots with a heel and a smooth sole. Next, some saddles, particularly English saddles, have safety bars that allow a stirrup leather to fall off the saddle if pulled backwards by a falling rider. Other precautions are done with stirrup design itself. Western saddles have wide stirrup treads that make it more difficult for the foot to become trapped. A number of saddle styles incorporate a tapedero, which is covering over the front of the stirrup that keeps the foot from sliding all the way through the stirrup. The English stirrup (or "iron") has several design variations which are either shaped to allow the rider's foot to slip out easily or are closed with a very heavy rubber band. The invention of stirrups was of great historic significance in mounted combat, giving the rider secure foot support while on horseback.
Headgear
Bridles, hackamores, halters or headcollars, and similar equipment consist of various arrangements of straps around the horse's head, and are used for control and communication with the animal.
Halters
A halter (US) or headcollar (UK) (occasionally headstall) consists of a noseband and headstall that buckles around the horse's head and allows the horse to be led or tied. The lead rope is separate, and it may be short (from six to ten feet, two to three meters) for everyday leading and tying, or much longer (up to , eight meters) for tasks such as for leading packhorses or for picketing a horse out to graze.
Some horses, particularly stallions, may have a chain attached to the lead rope and placed over the nose or under the jaw to increase the control provided by a halter while being led. Most of the time, horses are not ridden with a halter, as it offers insufficient precision and control. Halters have no bit.
In Australian and British English, a halter is a rope with a spliced running loop around the nose and another over the poll, used mainly for unbroken horses or for cattle. The lead rope cannot be removed from the halter. A show halter is made from rolled leather and the lead attaches to form the chinpiece of the noseband. These halters are not suitable for paddock usage or in loose stalls. An underhalter is a lightweight halter or headcollar which is made with only one small buckle, and can be worn under a bridle for tethering a horse without untacking.
Bridles
Bridles usually have a bit attached to reins and are used for riding and driving horses.
English Bridles have a cavesson style noseband and are seen in English riding. Their reins are buckled to one another, and they have little adornment or flashy hardware.
Western Bridles used in Western riding usually have no noseband, are made of thin bridle leather. They may have long, separated "Split" reins or shorter closed reins, which sometimes include an attached Romal. Western bridles are often adorned with silver or other decorative features.
Double bridles are a type of English bridle that use two bits in the mouth at once, a snaffle and a curb. The two bits allow the rider to have very precise control of the horse. As a rule, only very advanced horses and riders use double bridles. Double bridles are usually seen in the top levels of dressage, but also are seen in certain types of show hack and Saddle seat competition.
Hackamores and other bitless designs
A hackamore is a headgear that utilizes a heavy noseband of some sort, rather than a bit, most often used to train young horses or to go easy on an older horse's mouth. Hackamores are more often seen in western riding. Some related styles of headgear that control a horse with a noseband rather than a bit are known as bitless bridles.
The word "hackamore" is derived from the Spanish word jáquima. Hackamores are seen in western riding disciplines, as well as in endurance riding and English riding disciplines such as show jumping and the stadium phase of eventing. While the classic bosal-style hackamore is usually used to start young horses, other designs, such as various bitless bridles and the mechanical hackamore are often seen on mature horses with dental issues that make bit use painful, horses with certain training problems, and on horses with mouth or tongue injuries. Some riders also like to use them in the winter to avoid putting a frozen metal bit into a horse's mouth.
Like bitted bridles, noseband-based designs can be gentle or harsh, depending on the hands of the rider. It is a myth that a bit is cruel and a hackamore is gentler. The horse's face is very soft and sensitive with many nerve endings. Misuse of a hackamore can cause swelling on the nose, scraping on the nose and jawbone, and extreme misuse may cause damage to the bones and cartilage of the horse's head.
Other headgear
A longeing cavesson (UK: lungeing) is a special type of halter or noseband used for longeing a horse. Longeing is the activity of having a horse walk, trot and/or canter in a large circle around the handler at the end of a rope that is 25 to long. It is used for training and exercise.
A neck rope or cordeo is a rope tied around a horse's neck used to guide the horse during bridleless riding or groundwork.
Reins
Reins consist of leather straps or rope attached to the outer ends of a bit and extend to the rider's or driver's hands. Reins are the means by which a horse rider or driver communicates directional commands to the horse's head. Pulling on the reins can be used to steer or stop the horse. The sides of a horse's mouth are sensitive, so pulling on the reins pulls the bit, which then pulls the horse's head from side to side, which is how the horse is controlled.
On some types of harnesses there might be supporting rings to carry the reins over the horse's back. When pairs of horses are used in drawing a wagon or coach it is usual for the outer side of each pair to be connected to reins and the inside of the bits connected by a short bridging strap or rope. The driver carries "four-in-hand" or "six-in-hand" being the number of reins connecting to the pairs of horses.
A rein may be attached to a halter to lead or guide the horse in a circle for training purposes or to lead a packhorse, but a simple lead rope is more often used for these purposes. A longe line is sometimes called a "longe rein," but it is actually a flat line about long, usually made of nylon or cotton web, about one inch wide, thus longer and wider than even a driving rein.
Bits
A bit is a device placed in a horse's mouth, kept on a horse's head by means of a headstall. There are many types, each useful for specific types of riding and training.
The mouthpiece of the bit does not rest on the teeth of the horse, but rather rests on the gums or "bars" of the horse's mouth in an interdental space behind the front incisors and in front of the back molars. It is important that the style of bit is appropriate to the horse's needs and is fitted properly for it to function properly and be as comfortable as possible for the horse.
The basic "classic" styles of bits are:
Curb bit
Snaffle bit
Pelham bit
Weymouth or Double Bridle
While there are literally hundreds of types of bit mouthpieces, bit rings and bit shanks, essentially there are really only two broad categories: direct pressure bits, broadly termed snaffle bits; and leverage bits, usually termed curbs.
Bits that act with direct pressure on the tongue and lips of the bit are in the general category of snaffle bits. Snaffle bits commonly have a single jointed mouthpiece and act with a nutcracker effect on the bars, tongue and occasionally roof of the mouth. However, regardless of mouthpiece, any bit that operates only on direct pressure is a "snaffle" bit.
Leverage bits have shanks coming off the mouthpiece to create leverage that applies pressure to the poll, chin groove and mouth of the horse are in the category of curb bits. Any bit with shanks that works off of leverage is a "curb" bit, regardless of whether the mouthpiece is solid or jointed.
Some combination or hybrid bits combine direct pressure and leverage, such as the Kimblewick or Kimberwicke, which adds slight leverage to a two-rein design that resembles a snaffle; and the four rein designs such as the single mouthpiece Pelham bit and the double bridle, which places a curb and a snaffle bit simultaneously in the horse's mouth.
In the wrong hands even the mildest bit can hurt the horse. Conversely, a very severe bit, in the right hands, can transmit subtle commands that cause no pain to the horse. Bit commands should be given with only the quietest movements of the hands, and much steering and stopping should be done with the legs and seat.
Harness
A horse harness is a set of devices and straps that attaches a horse to a cart, carriage, sledge or any other load. There are two main styles of harnesses - breaststrap and collar and hames style. These differ in how the weight of the load is attached. Most Harnesses are made from leather, which is the traditional material for harnesses, though some designs are now made of nylon webbing or synthetic biothane.
A breaststrap harness has a wide leather strap going horizontally across the horses' breast, attached to the traces and then to the load. This is used only for lighter loads. A collar and hames harness has a collar around the horses' neck with wood or metal hames in the collar. The traces attach from the hames to the load. This type of harness is needed for heavy draft work.
Both types will also have a bridle and reins. A harness that is used to support shafts, such as on a cart pulled by a single horse, will also have a saddle attached to the harness to help the horse support the shafts and breeching to brake the forward motion of the vehicle, especially when stopping or moving downhill. Horses guiding vehicles by means of a pole, such as two-horse teams pulling a wagon, a hay-mower, or a dray, will have pole-straps attached to the lower part of the horse collar.
Breastplates and martingales
Breastplates, breastcollars or breastgirths attach to the front of the saddle, cross the horse's chest, and usually have a strap that runs between the horse's front legs and attaches to the girth. They keep the saddle from sliding back or sideways. They are usually seen in demanding, fast-paced sports. They are crucial pieces of safety equipment for English riding activities requiring jumping, such as eventing, show jumping, polo, and fox hunting. They are also seen in Western riding events, particularly in rodeo, reining and cutting, where it is particularly important to prevent a saddle from shifting. They may also be worn in other horse show classes for decorative purposes.
A martingale is a piece of equipment that keeps a horse from raising its head too high. Various styles can be used as a control measure, to prevent the horse from avoiding rider commands by raising its head out of position; or as a safety measure to keep the horse from tossing its head high or hard enough to smack its rider in the face.
They are allowed in many types of competition, especially those where speed or jumping may be required, but are not allowed in most "flat" classes at horse shows, though an exception is made in a few classes limited exclusively to young or "green" horses who may not yet be fully trained.
Martingales are usually attached to the horse one of two ways. They are either attached to the center chest ring of a breastplate or, if no breastplate is worn, they are attached by two straps, one that goes around the horse's neck, and the other that attaches to the girth, with the martingale itself beginning at the point in the center of the chest where the neck and girth straps intersect.
Martingale types include:
German martingale or Market Harborough: This design consists of a split fork that comes up from the chest, runs through the rings of the bit and attaches to the reins of the bridle between the bit and the rider's hand. It acts in a manner similar to a running martingale, but with greater leverage. It is not usually considered show legal and is used primarily as a training aid.
Irish martingale: Unlike the previous designs, this very simple "martingale" does not control the height of the horse's head, but merely keeps the reins from going over the horse's head in the result of a fall. It consists of a piece of leather with a ring on each end through which each rein runs.
Running martingale: This design adds leverage to a bit and features a split fork beginning at the chest with a ring on each side of the fork through which the reins pass, enabling the rider to more easily keep the horse under control, but also allowing the horse freedom of movement when needed. Fitted correctly, the running martingale only controls how high the horse carries its head when the rider tightens the reins. The standard adjustment of a running martingale is to set the rings at a height where they do not engage and add leverage to the reins when the horse carries its head at the proper height. Sometimes a running martingale may be adjusted at a greater or lesser length depending on the needs of the horse and rider.
Standing martingale: A design with one strap that runs from the girth or the chest and attaches to the noseband of the bridle. The standing martingale acts on the horse's nose and creates an absolute limit to how high a horse can raise its head. The term used in western riding for this piece of equipment is the tie down. Standard adjustment of a standing martingale allows enough slack to bring the strap to the horse's throatlatch when the animal has its head in a relaxed, natural position. However, it is sometimes adjusted shorter. Unlike the running martingale, it limits the freedom of the horse's head, no matter how long or short the reins may be. While standing martingales are common in show hunter and equitation classes, the limits placed on the horse's movement are dangerous for cross-country riding or show jumping. Therefore, in these disciplines, a running martingale is necessary for safety reasons, if a martingale is used at all.
There are other training devices that fall loosely in the martingale category, in that they use straps attached to the reins or bit which limit the movement of the horse's head or add leverage to the rider's hands in order to control the horse's head. Common devices of this nature include the overcheck, the chambon, de Gogue, grazing reins, draw reins and the "bitting harness" or "bitting rig". However, most of this equipment is used for training purposes and is not legal in any competition. In some disciplines, use of leverage devices, even in training, is controversial.
Associated accoutrements
Bell boots
Crop
Hoof boot
Horseshoe
Polo wraps
Splint boots
Spurs
Whip
Blinkers and Blinders
See also
Glossary of equestrian terms
Great Stirrup Controversy
Equestrian helmet
Riding boot
References
Horse protective equipment
Horse ornamentation | [
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14216 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hausa%20language | Hausa language | Hausa (; /; Ajami: ) is a Chadic language spoken by the Hausa people in Chad, and mainly within the northern half of Nigeria, Ghana, Cameroon, and the southern half of Niger, with significant minorities in Sudan, Benin, and Ivory Coast.
Hausa is a member of the Afroasiatic language family and is the most widely spoken language within the Chadic branch of that family. Ethnologue estimated that it was spoken as a first language by some 47 million people and as a second language by another 25 million, bringing the total number of Hausa speakers to an estimated 72 million. According to more recent estimations, Hausa is spoken by 100–150 million people.
In Nigeria, the Hausa-speaking film industry is known as Kannywood.
Classification
Hausa belongs to the West Chadic languages subgroup of the Chadic languages group, which in turn is part of the Afroasiatic language family.
Geographic distribution
Native speakers of Hausa, the Hausa people, are mostly found in Niger, in Northern Nigeria, Northern Cameroon, and in Chad. Furthermore, the language is used as a lingua franca by non-native speakers in most of Northern Nigeria and Southern Niger, and as a trade language across a much larger swathe of West Africa (Benin, Ghana, Cameroon, Togo, Chad and parts of Sudan).
Dialects
Hausa presents a wide uniformity wherever is spoken. However, linguists have identified dialect areas with a cluster of features characteristic of each one.
Traditional dialects
Eastern Hausa dialects include Dauranci in Daura, Kananci in Kano, Bausanci in Bauchi, Gudduranci in Katagum Misau and part of Borno, and Hadejanci in Hadejiya.
Western Hausa dialects include Sakkwatanci in Sokoto, Katsinanci in Katsina, Arewanci in Gobir, Adar, Kebbi, and Zamfara, and Kurhwayanci in Kurfey in Niger. Katsina is transitional between Eastern and Western dialects. Sokoto is used in a variety of classical Hausa literature, and is often known as Classical Hausa.
Northern Hausa dialects include Arewa (meaning 'North') and Arewaci.
Zazzaganci in Zazzau is the major Southern dialect.
The Daura (Dauranchi) and Kano (Kananci) dialect are the standard. The BBC, Deutsche Welle, Radio France Internationale and Voice of America offer Hausa services on their international news web sites using Dauranci and Kananci. In recent language development Zazzaganci took over the innovation of writing and speaking the current Hausa language use.
Northernmost dialects and loss of tonality
The western to eastern Hausa dialects of Kurhwayanci, Damagaram and Adarawa, represent the traditional northernmost limit of native Hausa communities. These are spoken in the northernmost sahel and mid-Saharan regions in west and central Niger in the Tillaberi, Tahoua, Dosso, Maradi, Agadez and Zinder regions. While mutually comprehensible with other dialects (especially Sakkwatanci, and to a lesser extent Gaananci), the northernmost dialects have slight grammatical and lexical differences owing to frequent contact with the Zarma, Fula, and Tuareg groups and cultural changes owing to the geographical differences between the grassland and desert zones. These dialects also have the quality of bordering on non-tonal pitch accent dialects.
This link between non-tonality and geographic location is not limited to Hausa alone, but is exhibited in other northern dialects of neighbouring languages; example includes differences within the Songhay language (between the non-tonal northernmost dialects of Koyra Chiini in Timbuktu and Koyraboro Senni in Gao; and the tonal southern Zarma dialect, spoken from western Niger to northern Ghana), and within the Soninke language (between the non-tonal northernmost dialects of Imraguen and Nemadi spoken in east-central Mauritania; and the tonal southern dialects of Senegal, Mali and the Sahel).
Ghanaian Hausa dialect
The Ghanaian Hausa dialect (Gaananci), spoken in Ghana and Togo, is a distinct western native Hausa dialect-bloc with adequate linguistic and media resources available. Separate smaller Hausa dialects are spoken by an unknown number of Hausa further west in parts of Burkina Faso, and in the Haoussa Foulane, Badji Haoussa, Guezou Haoussa, and Ansongo districts of northeastern Mali (where it is designated as a minority language by the Malian government), but there are very little linguistic resources and research done on these particular dialects at this time.
Gaananci forms a separate group from other Western Hausa dialects, as it now falls outside the contiguous Hausa-dominant area, and is usually identified by the use of c for ky, and j for gy. This is attributed to the fact that Ghana's Hausa population descend from Hausa-Fulani traders settled in the zongo districts of major trade-towns up and down the previous Asante, Gonja and Dagomba kingdoms stretching from the sahel to coastal regions, in particular the cities of Accra (Sabon Zango, Nima), Takoradi and Cape Coast
Gaananci exhibits noted inflected influences from Zarma, Gur, Jula-Bambara, Akan, and Soninke, as Ghana is the westernmost area in which the Hausa language is a major lingua-franca among sahelian/Muslim West Africans, including both Ghanaian and non-Ghanaian zango migrants primarily from the northern regions, or Mali and Burkina Faso. Ghana also marks the westernmost boundary in which the Hausa people inhabit in any considerable number. Immediately west and north of Ghana (in Cote d'Ivoire, and Burkina Faso), Hausa is abruptly replaced with Dioula–Bambara as the main sahelian/Muslim lingua-franca of what become predominantly Manding areas, and native Hausa-speakers plummet to a very small urban minority.
Because of this, and the presence of surrounding Akan, Gbe, Gur and Mande languages, Gaananci was historically isolated from the other Hausa dialects. Despite this difference, grammatical similarities between Sakkwatanci and Ghanaian Hausa determine that the dialect, and the origin of the Ghanaian Hausa people themselves, are derived from the northwestern Hausa area surrounding Sokoto.
Hausa is also widely spoken by non-native Gur, and Mandé Ghanaian Muslims, but differs from Gaananci, and rather has features consistent with non-native Hausa dialects.
Other native dialects
Hausa is also spoken in various parts of Cameroon and Chad, which combined the mixed dialects of Northern Nigeria and Niger. In addition, Arabic has had a great influence in the way Hausa is spoken by the native Hausa speakers in these areas.
Non-native Hausa
In West Africa, Hausa's use as a lingua franca has given rise to a non-native pronunciation that differs vastly from native pronunciation by way of key omissions of implosive and ejective consonants present in native Hausa dialects, such as ɗ, ɓ and kʼ/ƙ, which are pronounced by non-native speakers as d, b and k respectively. This creates confusion among non-native and native Hausa speakers, as non-native pronunciation does not distinguish words like ("correct") and ("one-by-one"). Another difference between native and non-native Hausa is the omission of vowel length in words and change in the standard tone of native Hausa dialects (ranging from native Fulani and Tuareg Hausa-speakers omitting tone altogether, to Hausa speakers with Gur or Yoruba mother tongues using additional tonal structures similar to those used in their native languages). Use of masculine and feminine gender nouns and sentence structure are usually omitted or interchanged, and many native Hausa nouns and verbs are substituted with non-native terms from local languages.
Non-native speakers of Hausa numbered more than 25 million and, in some areas, live close to native Hausa. It has replaced many other languages especially in the north-central and north-eastern part of Nigeria and continues to gain popularity in other parts of Africa as a result of Hausa movies and music which spread out throughout the region.
Hausa-based pidgins
There are several pidgin forms of Hausa. Barikanchi was formerly used in the colonial army of Nigeria. Gibanawa is currently in widespread use in Jega in northwestern Nigeria, south of the native Hausa area.
Phonology
Consonants
Hausa has between 23 and 25 consonant phonemes depending on the speaker.
The three-way contrast between palatalized velars , plain velars , and labialized velars is found only before long and short , e.g. ('grass'), ('to increase'), ('shea-nuts'). Before front vowels, only palatalized and labialized velars occur, e.g. ('jealousy') vs. ('side of body'). Before rounded vowels, only labialized velars occur, e.g. ('ringworm').
Glottalic consonants
Hausa has glottalic consonants (implosives and ejectives) at four or five places of articulation (depending on the dialect). They require movement of the glottis during pronunciation and have a staccato sound.
They are written with modified versions of Latin letters. They can also be denoted with an apostrophe, either before or after depending on the letter, as shown below.
ɓ / b', an implosive consonant, , sometimes ;
ɗ / d', an implosive , sometimes ;
ts', an ejective consonant, or , according to the dialect;
ch', an ejective (does not occur in Kano dialect)
ƙ / k', an ejective ; and are separate consonants;
ƴ / 'y is a palatal approximant with creaky voice, , found in only a small number of high-frequency words (e.g. "children", "daughter"). Historically it developed from palatalized .
Vowels
Hausa vowels occur in five different vowel qualities, all of which can be short or long, totaling 10 monophthongs. In addition, there are four diphthongs, giving a total number of 14 vocalic phonemes.
Monophthongs Short (single) vowels: . Long vowels: .
In comparison with the long vowels, the short can be similar in quality to the long vowels, mid-centralized to or centralized to .
Medial can be neutralized to , with the rounding depending on the environment.
Medial are neutralized with .
The short can be either similar in quality to the long , or it can be as high as , with possible intermediate pronunciations ().
Diphthongs .
Tones
Hausa is a tonal language. Each of its five vowels may have low tone, high tone or falling tone. In standard written Hausa, tone is not marked. In recent linguistic and pedagogical materials, tone is marked by means of diacritics.
– low tone: grave accent ()
– falling tone: circumflex ()
An acute accent () may be used for high tone, but the usual practice is to leave high tone unmarked.
Morphology
Except for the Zaria and Bauchi dialects spoken south of Kano, Hausa distinguishes between masculine and feminine genders.
Hausa, like the rest of the Chadic languages, is known for its complex, irregular pluralization of nouns. Noun plurals in Hausa are derived using a variety of morphological processes, such as suffixation, infixation, reduplication, or a combination of any of these processes. There are 20 plural classes proposed by Newman (2000).
Pronouns
Hausa marks tense differences by different sets of subject pronouns, sometimes with the pronoun combined with some additional particle. For this reason, a subject pronoun must accompany every verb in Hausa, regardless of whether the subject is known from previous context or is expressed by a noun subject.
Writing systems
Boko (Latin)
Hausa's modern official orthography is a Latin-based alphabet called boko, which was introduced in the 1930s by the British colonial administration.
The letter ƴ (y with a right hook) is used only in Niger; in Nigeria it is written ʼy.
Tone and vowel length are not marked in writing. So, for example, "from" and "battle" are both written daga. The distinction between and (which does not exist for all speakers) is not always marked.
Ajami (Arabic)
Hausa has also been written in ajami, an Arabic alphabet, since the early 17th century. The first known work to be written in Hausa is Riwayar Nabi Musa by Abdullahi Suka in the 17th century. There is no standard system of using ajami, and different writers may use letters with different values. Short vowels are written regularly with the help of vowel marks, which are seldom used in Arabic texts other than the Quran. Many medieval Hausa manuscripts in ajami, similar to the Timbuktu Manuscripts, have been discovered recently; some of them even describe constellations and calendars.
In the following table, short and long e are shown along with the Arabic letter for t ().
Other systems
Hausa is one of three indigenous languages of Nigeria which has been rendered in braille.
At least three other writing systems for Hausa have been proposed or "discovered". None of these are in active use beyond perhaps some individuals.
A Hausa alphabet supposedly of ancient origin and in use in north of Maradi, Niger.
A script that apparently originated with the writing/publishing group Raina Kama in the 1980s.
A script called "Tafi" proposed in the 1970s(?)
See also
Hausa people
History of Niger
History of Nigeria
Kanem Empire
Bornu Empire
Bayajidda
References
Bibliography
(Now in the public domain).
External links
Omniglot
Hausa Language Acquisitions at Columbia University Libraries
Hausa Vocabulary List –World Loanword Database
Hausa Dictionary at University of Vienna
Hausar Yau Da Kullum: –Intermediate and Advanced Lessons in Hausa Language and Culture
Hausa News and Blog at the University of Ahmadu bello university also visit www.dariyamedia.com for more info about hausa culture and people
Fusional languages
Subject–verb–object languages
Languages of Benin
Languages of Burkina Faso
Languages of Cameroon
Languages of Ghana
Languages of Niger
Languages of Nigeria
Languages of Sudan
Languages of Togo
Languages of Ivory Coast | [
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14220 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History%20of%20mathematics | History of mathematics | The history of mathematics deals with the origin of discoveries in mathematics and the mathematical methods and notation of the past. Before the modern age and the worldwide spread of knowledge, written examples of new mathematical developments have come to light only in a few locales. From 3000 BC the Mesopotamian states of Sumer, Akkad and Assyria, followed closely by Ancient Egypt and the Levantine state of Ebla began using arithmetic, algebra and geometry for purposes of taxation, commerce, trade and also in the patterns in nature, the field of astronomy and to record time and formulate calendars.
The earliest mathematical texts available are from Mesopotamia and Egypt – Plimpton 322 (Babylonian c. 2000 – 1900 BC), the Rhind Mathematical Papyrus (Egyptian c. 1800 BC) and the Moscow Mathematical Papyrus (Egyptian c. 1890 BC). All of these texts mention the so-called Pythagorean triples, so, by inference, the Pythagorean theorem seems to be the most ancient and widespread mathematical development after basic arithmetic and geometry.
The study of mathematics as a "demonstrative discipline" began in the 6th century BC with the Pythagoreans, who coined the term "mathematics" from the ancient Greek μάθημα (mathema), meaning "subject of instruction". Greek mathematics greatly refined the methods (especially through the introduction of deductive reasoning and mathematical rigor in proofs) and expanded the subject matter of mathematics. Although they made virtually no contributions to theoretical mathematics, the ancient Romans used applied mathematics in surveying, structural engineering, mechanical engineering, bookkeeping, creation of lunar and solar calendars, and even arts and crafts. Chinese mathematics made early contributions, including a place value system and the first use of negative numbers. The Hindu–Arabic numeral system and the rules for the use of its operations, in use throughout the world today evolved over the course of the first millennium AD in India and were transmitted to the Western world via Islamic mathematics through the work of Muḥammad ibn Mūsā al-Khwārizmī. Islamic mathematics, in turn, developed and expanded the mathematics known to these civilizations. Contemporaneous with but independent of these traditions were the mathematics developed by the Maya civilization of Mexico and Central America, where the concept of zero was given a standard symbol in Maya numerals.
Many Greek and Arabic texts on mathematics were translated into Latin from the 12th century onward, leading to further development of mathematics in Medieval Europe. From ancient times through the Middle Ages, periods of mathematical discovery were often followed by centuries of stagnation. Beginning in Renaissance Italy in the 15th century, new mathematical developments, interacting with new scientific discoveries, were made at an increasing pace that continues through the present day. This includes the groundbreaking work of both Isaac Newton and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz in the development of infinitesimal calculus during the course of the 17th century. At the end of the 19th century the International Congress of Mathematicians was founded and continues to spearhead advances in the field.
Prehistoric
The origins of mathematical thought lie in the concepts of number, patterns in nature, magnitude, and form. Modern studies of animal cognition have shown that these concepts are not unique to humans. Such concepts would have been part of everyday life in hunter-gatherer societies. The idea of the "number" concept evolving gradually over time is supported by the existence of languages which preserve the distinction between "one", "two", and "many", but not of numbers larger than two.
The Ishango bone, found near the headwaters of the Nile river (northeastern Congo), may be more than 20,000 years old and consists of a series of marks carved in three columns running the length of the bone. Common interpretations are that the Ishango bone shows either a tally of the earliest known demonstration of sequences of prime numbers or a six-month lunar calendar. Peter Rudman argues that the development of the concept of prime numbers could only have come about after the concept of division, which he dates to after 10,000 BC, with prime numbers probably not being understood until about 500 BC. He also writes that "no attempt has been made to explain why a tally of something should exhibit multiples of two, prime numbers between 10 and 20, and some numbers that are almost multiples of 10." The Ishango bone, according to scholar Alexander Marshack, may have influenced the later development of mathematics in Egypt as, like some entries on the Ishango bone, Egyptian arithmetic also made use of multiplication by 2; this however, is disputed.
Predynastic Egyptians of the 5th millennium BC pictorially represented geometric designs. It has been claimed that megalithic monuments in England and Scotland, dating from the 3rd millennium BC, incorporate geometric ideas such as circles, ellipses, and Pythagorean triples in their design. All of the above are disputed however, and the currently oldest undisputed mathematical documents are from Babylonian and dynastic Egyptian sources.
Babylonian
Babylonian mathematics refers to any mathematics of the peoples of Mesopotamia (modern Iraq) from the days of the early Sumerians through the Hellenistic period almost to the dawn of Christianity. The majority of Babylonian mathematical work comes from two widely separated periods: The first few hundred years of the second millennium BC (Old Babylonian period), and the last few centuries of the first millennium BC (Seleucid period). It is named Babylonian mathematics due to the central role of Babylon as a place of study. Later under the Arab Empire, Mesopotamia, especially Baghdad, once again became an important center of study for Islamic mathematics.
In contrast to the sparsity of sources in Egyptian mathematics, knowledge of Babylonian mathematics is derived from more than 400 clay tablets unearthed since the 1850s. Written in Cuneiform script, tablets were inscribed whilst the clay was moist, and baked hard in an oven or by the heat of the sun. Some of these appear to be graded homework.
The earliest evidence of written mathematics dates back to the ancient Sumerians, who built the earliest civilization in Mesopotamia. They developed a complex system of metrology from 3000 BC. From around 2500 BC onward, the Sumerians wrote multiplication tables on clay tablets and dealt with geometrical exercises and division problems. The earliest traces of the Babylonian numerals also date back to this period.
Babylonian mathematics were written using a sexagesimal (base-60) numeral system. From this derives the modern-day usage of 60 seconds in a minute, 60 minutes in an hour, and 360 (60 × 6) degrees in a circle, as well as the use of seconds and minutes of arc to denote fractions of a degree. It is likely the sexagesimal system was chosen because 60 can be evenly divided by 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 10, 12, 15, 20 and 30. Also, unlike the Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans, the Babylonians had a place-value system, where digits written in the left column represented larger values, much as in the decimal system. The power of the Babylonian notational system lay in that it could be used to represent fractions as easily as whole numbers; thus multiplying two numbers that contained fractions was no different from multiplying integers, similar to modern notation. The notational system of the Babylonians was the best of any civilization until the Renaissance, and its power allowed it to achieve remarkable computational accuracy; for example, the Babylonian tablet YBC 7289 gives an approximation of accurate to five decimal places. The Babylonians lacked, however, an equivalent of the decimal point, and so the place value of a symbol often had to be inferred from the context. By the Seleucid period, the Babylonians had developed a zero symbol as a placeholder for empty positions; however it was only used for intermediate positions. This zero sign does not appear in terminal positions, thus the Babylonians came close but did not develop a true place value system.
Other topics covered by Babylonian mathematics include fractions, algebra, quadratic and cubic equations, and the calculation of regular numbers, and their reciprocal pairs. The tablets also include multiplication tables and methods for solving linear, quadratic equations and cubic equations, a remarkable achievement for the time. Tablets from the Old Babylonian period also contain the earliest known statement of the Pythagorean theorem. However, as with Egyptian mathematics, Babylonian mathematics shows no awareness of the difference between exact and approximate solutions, or the solvability of a problem, and most importantly, no explicit statement of the need for proofs or logical principles.
Egyptian
Egyptian mathematics refers to mathematics written in the Egyptian language. From the Hellenistic period, Greek replaced Egyptian as the written language of Egyptian scholars. Mathematical study in Egypt later continued under the Arab Empire as part of Islamic mathematics, when Arabic became the written language of Egyptian scholars.
The most extensive Egyptian mathematical text is the Rhind papyrus (sometimes also called the Ahmes Papyrus after its author), dated to c. 1650 BC but likely a copy of an older document from the Middle Kingdom of about 2000–1800 BC. It is an instruction manual for students in arithmetic and geometry. In addition to giving area formulas and methods for multiplication, division and working with unit fractions, it also contains evidence of other mathematical knowledge, including composite and prime numbers; arithmetic, geometric and harmonic means; and simplistic understandings of both the Sieve of Eratosthenes and perfect number theory (namely, that of the number 6). It also shows how to solve first order linear equations as well as arithmetic and geometric series.
Another significant Egyptian mathematical text is the Moscow papyrus, also from the Middle Kingdom period, dated to c. 1890 BC. It consists of what are today called word problems or story problems, which were apparently intended as entertainment. One problem is considered to be of particular importance because it gives a method for finding the volume of a frustum (truncated pyramid).
Finally, the Berlin Papyrus 6619 (c. 1800 BC) shows that ancient Egyptians could solve a second-order algebraic equation.
Greek
Greek mathematics refers to the mathematics written in the Greek language from the time of Thales of Miletus (~600 BC) to the closure of the Academy of Athens in 529 AD. Greek mathematicians lived in cities spread over the entire Eastern Mediterranean, from Italy to North Africa, but were united by culture and language. Greek mathematics of the period following Alexander the Great is sometimes called Hellenistic mathematics.
Greek mathematics was much more sophisticated than the mathematics that had been developed by earlier cultures. All surviving records of pre-Greek mathematics show the use of inductive reasoning, that is, repeated observations used to establish rules of thumb. Greek mathematicians, by contrast, used deductive reasoning. The Greeks used logic to derive conclusions from definitions and axioms, and used mathematical rigor to prove them.
Greek mathematics is thought to have begun with Thales of Miletus (c. 624–c.546 BC) and Pythagoras of Samos (c. 582–c. 507 BC). Although the extent of the influence is disputed, they were probably inspired by Egyptian and Babylonian mathematics. According to legend, Pythagoras traveled to Egypt to learn mathematics, geometry, and astronomy from Egyptian priests.
Thales used geometry to solve problems such as calculating the height of pyramids and the distance of ships from the shore. He is credited with the first use of deductive reasoning applied to geometry, by deriving four corollaries to Thales' Theorem. As a result, he has been hailed as the first true mathematician and the first known individual to whom a mathematical discovery has been attributed. Pythagoras established the Pythagorean School, whose doctrine it was that mathematics ruled the universe and whose motto was "All is number". It was the Pythagoreans who coined the term "mathematics", and with whom the study of mathematics for its own sake begins. The Pythagoreans are credited with the first proof of the Pythagorean theorem, though the statement of the theorem has a long history, and with the proof of the existence of irrational numbers. Although he was preceded by the Babylonians and the Chinese, the Neopythagorean mathematician Nicomachus (60–120 AD) provided one of the earliest Greco-Roman multiplication tables, whereas the oldest extant Greek multiplication table is found on a wax tablet dated to the 1st century AD (now found in the British Museum). The association of the Neopythagoreans with the Western invention of the multiplication table is evident in its later Medieval name: the mensa Pythagorica.
Plato (428/427 BC – 348/347 BC) is important in the history of mathematics for inspiring and guiding others. His Platonic Academy, in Athens, became the mathematical center of the world in the 4th century BC, and it was from this school that the leading mathematicians of the day, such as Eudoxus of Cnidus, came. Plato also discussed the foundations of mathematics, clarified some of the definitions (e.g. that of a line as "breadthless length"), and reorganized the assumptions. The analytic method is ascribed to Plato, while a formula for obtaining Pythagorean triples bears his name.
Eudoxus (408–c. 355 BC) developed the method of exhaustion, a precursor of modern integration and a theory of ratios that avoided the problem of incommensurable magnitudes. The former allowed the calculations of areas and volumes of curvilinear figures, while the latter enabled subsequent geometers to make significant advances in geometry. Though he made no specific technical mathematical discoveries, Aristotle (384–c. 322 BC) contributed significantly to the development of mathematics by laying the foundations of logic.
In the 3rd century BC, the premier center of mathematical education and research was the Musaeum of Alexandria. It was there that Euclid (c. 300 BC) taught, and wrote the Elements, widely considered the most successful and influential textbook of all time. The Elements introduced mathematical rigor through the axiomatic method and is the earliest example of the format still used in mathematics today, that of definition, axiom, theorem, and proof. Although most of the contents of the Elements were already known, Euclid arranged them into a single, coherent logical framework. The Elements was known to all educated people in the West up through the middle of the 20th century and its contents are still taught in geometry classes today. In addition to the familiar theorems of Euclidean geometry, the Elements was meant as an introductory textbook to all mathematical subjects of the time, such as number theory, algebra and solid geometry, including proofs that the square root of two is irrational and that there are infinitely many prime numbers. Euclid also wrote extensively on other subjects, such as conic sections, optics, spherical geometry, and mechanics, but only half of his writings survive.
Archimedes (c. 287–212 BC) of Syracuse, widely considered the greatest mathematician of antiquity, used the method of exhaustion to calculate the area under the arc of a parabola with the summation of an infinite series, in a manner not too dissimilar from modern calculus. He also showed one could use the method of exhaustion to calculate the value of π with as much precision as desired, and obtained the most accurate value of π then known, . He also studied the spiral bearing his name, obtained formulas for the volumes of surfaces of revolution (paraboloid, ellipsoid, hyperboloid), and an ingenious method of exponentiation for expressing very large numbers. While he is also known for his contributions to physics and several advanced mechanical devices, Archimedes himself placed far greater value on the products of his thought and general mathematical principles. He regarded as his greatest achievement his finding of the surface area and volume of a sphere, which he obtained by proving these are 2/3 the surface area and volume of a cylinder circumscribing the sphere.
Apollonius of Perga (c. 262–190 BC) made significant advances to the study of conic sections, showing that one can obtain all three varieties of conic section by varying the angle of the plane that cuts a double-napped cone. He also coined the terminology in use today for conic sections, namely parabola ("place beside" or "comparison"), "ellipse" ("deficiency"), and "hyperbola" ("a throw beyond"). His work Conics is one of the best known and preserved mathematical works from antiquity, and in it he derives many theorems concerning conic sections that would prove invaluable to later mathematicians and astronomers studying planetary motion, such as Isaac Newton. While neither Apollonius nor any other Greek mathematicians made the leap to coordinate geometry, Apollonius' treatment of curves is in some ways similar to the modern treatment, and some of his work seems to anticipate the development of analytical geometry by Descartes some 1800 years later.
Around the same time, Eratosthenes of Cyrene (c. 276–194 BC) devised the Sieve of Eratosthenes for finding prime numbers. The 3rd century BC is generally regarded as the "Golden Age" of Greek mathematics, with advances in pure mathematics henceforth in relative decline. Nevertheless, in the centuries that followed significant advances were made in applied mathematics, most notably trigonometry, largely to address the needs of astronomers. Hipparchus of Nicaea (c. 190–120 BC) is considered the founder of trigonometry for compiling the first known trigonometric table, and to him is also due the systematic use of the 360 degree circle. Heron of Alexandria (c. 10–70 AD) is credited with Heron's formula for finding the area of a scalene triangle and with being the first to recognize the possibility of negative numbers possessing square roots. Menelaus of Alexandria (c. 100 AD) pioneered spherical trigonometry through Menelaus' theorem. The most complete and influential trigonometric work of antiquity is the Almagest of Ptolemy (c. AD 90–168), a landmark astronomical treatise whose trigonometric tables would be used by astronomers for the next thousand years. Ptolemy is also credited with Ptolemy's theorem for deriving trigonometric quantities, and the most accurate value of π outside of China until the medieval period, 3.1416.
Following a period of stagnation after Ptolemy, the period between 250 and 350 AD is sometimes referred to as the "Silver Age" of Greek mathematics. During this period, Diophantus made significant advances in algebra, particularly indeterminate analysis, which is also known as "Diophantine analysis". The study of Diophantine equations and Diophantine approximations is a significant area of research to this day. His main work was the Arithmetica, a collection of 150 algebraic problems dealing with exact solutions to determinate and indeterminate equations. The Arithmetica had a significant influence on later mathematicians, such as Pierre de Fermat, who arrived at his famous Last Theorem after trying to generalize a problem he had read in the Arithmetica (that of dividing a square into two squares). Diophantus also made significant advances in notation, the Arithmetica being the first instance of algebraic symbolism and syncopation.
Among the last great Greek mathematicians is Pappus of Alexandria (4th century AD). He is known for his hexagon theorem and centroid theorem, as well as the Pappus configuration and Pappus graph. His Collection is a major source of knowledge on Greek mathematics as most of it has survived. Pappus is considered the last major innovator in Greek mathematics, with subsequent work consisting mostly of commentaries on earlier work.
The first woman mathematician recorded by history was Hypatia of Alexandria (AD 350–415). She succeeded her father (Theon of Alexandria) as Librarian at the Great Library and wrote many works on applied mathematics. Because of a political dispute, the Christian community in Alexandria had her stripped publicly and executed. Her death is sometimes taken as the end of the era of the Alexandrian Greek mathematics, although work did continue in Athens for another century with figures such as Proclus, Simplicius and Eutocius. Although Proclus and Simplicius were more philosophers than mathematicians, their commentaries on earlier works are valuable sources on Greek mathematics. The closure of the neo-Platonic Academy of Athens by the emperor Justinian in 529 AD is traditionally held as marking the end of the era of Greek mathematics, although the Greek tradition continued unbroken in the Byzantine empire with mathematicians such as Anthemius of Tralles and Isidore of Miletus, the architects of the Hagia Sophia. Nevertheless, Byzantine mathematics consisted mostly of commentaries, with little in the way of innovation, and the centers of mathematical innovation were to be found elsewhere by this time.
Roman
Although ethnic Greek mathematicians continued under the rule of the late Roman Republic and subsequent Roman Empire, there were no noteworthy native Latin mathematicians in comparison. Ancient Romans such as Cicero (106–43 BC), an influential Roman statesman who studied mathematics in Greece, believed that Roman surveyors and calculators were far more interested in applied mathematics than the theoretical mathematics and geometry that were prized by the Greeks. It is unclear if the Romans first derived their numerical system directly from the Greek precedent or from Etruscan numerals used by the Etruscan civilization centered in what is now Tuscany, central Italy.
Using calculation, Romans were adept at both instigating and detecting financial fraud, as well as managing taxes for the treasury. Siculus Flaccus, one of the Roman gromatici (i.e. land surveyor), wrote the Categories of Fields, which aided Roman surveyors in measuring the surface areas of allotted lands and territories. Aside from managing trade and taxes, the Romans also regularly applied mathematics to solve problems in engineering, including the erection of architecture such as bridges, road-building, and preparation for military campaigns. Arts and crafts such as Roman mosaics, inspired by previous Greek designs, created illusionist geometric patterns and rich, detailed scenes that required precise measurements for each tessera tile, the opus tessellatum pieces on average measuring eight millimeters square and the finer opus vermiculatum pieces having an average surface of four millimeters square.
The creation of the Roman calendar also necessitated basic mathematics. The first calendar allegedly dates back to 8th century BC during the Roman Kingdom and included 356 days plus a leap year every other year. In contrast, the lunar calendar of the Republican era contained 355 days, roughly ten-and-one-fourth days shorter than the solar year, a discrepancy that was solved by adding an extra month into the calendar after the 23rd of February. This calendar was supplanted by the Julian calendar, a solar calendar organized by Julius Caesar (100–44 BC) and devised by Sosigenes of Alexandria to include a leap day every four years in a 365-day cycle. This calendar, which contained an error of 11 minutes and 14 seconds, was later corrected by the Gregorian calendar organized by Pope Gregory XIII (), virtually the same solar calendar used in modern times as the international standard calendar.
At roughly the same time, the Han Chinese and the Romans both invented the wheeled odometer device for measuring distances traveled, the Roman model first described by the Roman civil engineer and architect Vitruvius (c. 80 BC – c. 15 BC). The device was used at least until the reign of emperor Commodus (), but its design seems to have been lost until experiments were made during the 15th century in Western Europe. Perhaps relying on similar gear-work and technology found in the Antikythera mechanism, the odometer of Vitruvius featured chariot wheels measuring 4 feet (1.2 m) in diameter turning four-hundred times in one Roman mile (roughly 4590 ft/1400 m). With each revolution, a pin-and-axle device engaged a 400-tooth cogwheel that turned a second gear responsible for dropping pebbles into a box, each pebble representing one mile traversed.
Chinese
An analysis of early Chinese mathematics has demonstrated its unique development compared to other parts of the world, leading scholars to assume an entirely independent development. The oldest extant mathematical text from China is the Zhoubi Suanjing, variously dated to between 1200 BC and 100 BC, though a date of about 300 BC during the Warring States Period appears reasonable. However, the Tsinghua Bamboo Slips, containing the earliest known decimal multiplication table (although ancient Babylonians had ones with a base of 60), is dated around 305 BC and is perhaps the oldest surviving mathematical text of China.
Of particular note is the use in Chinese mathematics of a decimal positional notation system, the so-called "rod numerals" in which distinct ciphers were used for numbers between 1 and 10, and additional ciphers for powers of ten. Thus, the number 123 would be written using the symbol for "1", followed by the symbol for "100", then the symbol for "2" followed by the symbol for "10", followed by the symbol for "3". This was the most advanced number system in the world at the time, apparently in use several centuries before the common era and well before the development of the Indian numeral system. Rod numerals allowed the representation of numbers as large as desired and allowed calculations to be carried out on the suan pan, or Chinese abacus. The date of the invention of the suan pan is not certain, but the earliest written mention dates from AD 190, in Xu Yue's Supplementary Notes on the Art of Figures.
The oldest existent work on geometry in China comes from the philosophical Mohist canon c. 330 BC, compiled by the followers of Mozi (470–390 BC). The Mo Jing described various aspects of many fields associated with physical science, and provided a small number of geometrical theorems as well. It also defined the concepts of circumference, diameter, radius, and volume.
In 212 BC, the Emperor Qin Shi Huang commanded all books in the Qin Empire other than officially sanctioned ones be burned. This decree was not universally obeyed, but as a consequence of this order little is known about ancient Chinese mathematics before this date. After the book burning of 212 BC, the Han dynasty (202 BC–220 AD) produced works of mathematics which presumably expanded on works that are now lost. The most important of these is The Nine Chapters on the Mathematical Art, the full title of which appeared by AD 179, but existed in part under other titles beforehand. It consists of 246 word problems involving agriculture, business, employment of geometry to figure height spans and dimension ratios for Chinese pagoda towers, engineering, surveying, and includes material on right triangles. It created mathematical proof for the Pythagorean theorem, and a mathematical formula for Gaussian elimination. The treatise also provides values of π, which Chinese mathematicians originally approximated as 3 until Liu Xin (d. 23 AD) provided a figure of 3.1457 and subsequently Zhang Heng (78–139) approximated pi as 3.1724, as well as 3.162 by taking the square root of 10. Liu Hui commented on the Nine Chapters in the 3rd century AD and gave a value of π accurate to 5 decimal places (i.e. 3.14159). Though more of a matter of computational stamina than theoretical insight, in the 5th century AD Zu Chongzhi computed the value of π to seven decimal places (i.e. 3.141592), which remained the most accurate value of π for almost the next 1000 years. He also established a method which would later be called Cavalieri's principle to find the volume of a sphere.
The high-water mark of Chinese mathematics occurred in the 13th century during the latter half of the Song dynasty (960–1279), with the development of Chinese algebra. The most important text from that period is the Precious Mirror of the Four Elements by Zhu Shijie (1249–1314), dealing with the solution of simultaneous higher order algebraic equations using a method similar to Horner's method. The Precious Mirror also contains a diagram of Pascal's triangle with coefficients of binomial expansions through the eighth power, though both appear in Chinese works as early as 1100. The Chinese also made use of the complex combinatorial diagram known as the magic square and magic circles, described in ancient times and perfected by Yang Hui (AD 1238–1298).
Even after European mathematics began to flourish during the Renaissance, European and Chinese mathematics were separate traditions, with significant Chinese mathematical output in decline from the 13th century onwards. Jesuit missionaries such as Matteo Ricci carried mathematical ideas back and forth between the two cultures from the 16th to 18th centuries, though at this point far more mathematical ideas were entering China than leaving.
Japanese mathematics, Korean mathematics, and Vietnamese mathematics are traditionally viewed as stemming from Chinese mathematics and belonging to the Confucian-based East Asian cultural sphere. Korean and Japanese mathematics were heavily influenced by the algebraic works produced during China's Song dynasty, whereas Vietnamese mathematics was heavily indebted to popular works of China's Ming dynasty (1368–1644). For instance, although Vietnamese mathematical treatises were written in either Chinese or the native Vietnamese Chữ Nôm script, all of them followed the Chinese format of presenting a collection of problems with algorithms for solving them, followed by numerical answers. Mathematics in Vietnam and Korea were mostly associated with the professional court bureaucracy of mathematicians and astronomers, whereas in Japan it was more prevalent in the realm of private schools.
Indian
The earliest civilization on the Indian subcontinent is the Indus Valley Civilization (mature phase: 2600 to 1900 BC) that flourished in the Indus river basin. Their cities were laid out with geometric regularity, but no known mathematical documents survive from this civilization.
The oldest extant mathematical records from India are the Sulba Sutras (dated variously between the 8th century BC and the 2nd century AD), appendices to religious texts which give simple rules for constructing altars of various shapes, such as squares, rectangles, parallelograms, and others. As with Egypt, the preoccupation with temple functions points to an origin of mathematics in religious ritual. The Sulba Sutras give methods for constructing a circle with approximately the same area as a given square, which imply several different approximations of the value of π. In addition, they compute the square root of 2 to several decimal places, list Pythagorean triples, and give a statement of the Pythagorean theorem. All of these results are present in Babylonian mathematics, indicating Mesopotamian influence. It is not known to what extent the Sulba Sutras influenced later Indian mathematicians. As in China, there is a lack of continuity in Indian mathematics; significant advances are separated by long periods of inactivity.
Pāṇini (c. 5th century BC) formulated the rules for Sanskrit grammar. His notation was similar to modern mathematical notation, and used metarules, transformations, and recursion. Pingala (roughly 3rd–1st centuries BC) in his treatise of prosody uses a device corresponding to a binary numeral system. His discussion of the combinatorics of meters corresponds to an elementary version of the binomial theorem. Pingala's work also contains the basic ideas of Fibonacci numbers (called mātrāmeru).
The next significant mathematical documents from India after the Sulba Sutras are the Siddhantas, astronomical treatises from the 4th and 5th centuries AD (Gupta period) showing strong Hellenistic influence. They are significant in that they contain the first instance of trigonometric relations based on the half-chord, as is the case in modern trigonometry, rather than the full chord, as was the case in Ptolemaic trigonometry. Through a series of translation errors, the words "sine" and "cosine" derive from the Sanskrit "jiya" and "kojiya".
Around 500 AD, Aryabhata wrote the Aryabhatiya, a slim volume, written in verse, intended to supplement the rules of calculation used in astronomy and mathematical mensuration, though with no feeling for logic or deductive methodology. Though about half of the entries are wrong, it is in the Aryabhatiya that the decimal place-value system first appears. Several centuries later, the Muslim mathematician Abu Rayhan Biruni described the Aryabhatiya as a "mix of common pebbles and costly crystals".
In the 7th century, Brahmagupta identified the Brahmagupta theorem, Brahmagupta's identity and Brahmagupta's formula, and for the first time, in Brahma-sphuta-siddhanta, he lucidly explained the use of zero as both a placeholder and decimal digit, and explained the Hindu–Arabic numeral system. It was from a translation of this Indian text on mathematics (c. 770) that Islamic mathematicians were introduced to this numeral system, which they adapted as Arabic numerals. Islamic scholars carried knowledge of this number system to Europe by the 12th century, and it has now displaced all older number systems throughout the world. Various symbol sets are used to represent numbers in the Hindu–Arabic numeral system, all of which evolved from the Brahmi numerals. Each of the roughly dozen major scripts of India has its own numeral glyphs. In the 10th century, Halayudha's commentary on Pingala's work contains a study of the Fibonacci sequence and Pascal's triangle, and describes the formation of a matrix.
In the 12th century, Bhāskara II lived in southern India and wrote extensively on all then known branches of mathematics. His work contains mathematical objects equivalent or approximately equivalent to infinitesimals, derivatives, the mean value theorem and the derivative of the sine function. To what extent he anticipated the invention of calculus is a controversial subject among historians of mathematics.
In the 14th century, Madhava of Sangamagrama, the founder of the Kerala School of Mathematics, found the Madhava–Leibniz series and obtained from it a transformed series, whose first 21 terms he used to compute the value of π as 3.14159265359. Madhava also found the Madhava-Gregory series to determine the arctangent, the Madhava-Newton power series to determine sine and cosine and the Taylor approximation for sine and cosine functions. In the 16th century, Jyesthadeva consolidated many of the Kerala School's developments and theorems in the Yukti-bhāṣā.
It has been argued that the advances of the Kerala school, which laid the foundations of the calculus, were transmitted to Europe in the 16th century. via Jesuit missionaries and traders who were active around the ancient port of Muziris at the time and, as a result, directly influenced later European developments in analysis and calculus. However, other scholars argue that the Kerala School did not formulate a systematic theory of differentiation and integration, and that there is not any direct evidence of their results being transmitted outside Kerala.
Islamic empires
The Islamic Empire established across Persia, the Middle East, Central Asia, North Africa, Iberia, and in parts of India in the 8th century made significant contributions towards mathematics. Although most Islamic texts on mathematics were written in Arabic, most of them were not written by Arabs, since much like the status of Greek in the Hellenistic world, Arabic was used as the written language of non-Arab scholars throughout the Islamic world at the time. Persians contributed to the world of Mathematics alongside Arabs.
In the 9th century, the Persian mathematician Muḥammad ibn Mūsā al-Khwārizmī wrote an important book on the Hindu–Arabic numerals and one on methods for solving equations. His book On the Calculation with Hindu Numerals, written about 825, along with the work of Al-Kindi, were instrumental in spreading Indian mathematics and Indian numerals to the West. The word algorithm is derived from the Latinization of his name, Algoritmi, and the word algebra from the title of one of his works, Al-Kitāb al-mukhtaṣar fī hīsāb al-ğabr wa’l-muqābala (The Compendious Book on Calculation by Completion and Balancing). He gave an exhaustive explanation for the algebraic solution of quadratic equations with positive roots, and he was the first to teach algebra in an elementary form and for its own sake. He also discussed the fundamental method of "reduction" and "balancing", referring to the transposition of subtracted terms to the other side of an equation, that is, the cancellation of like terms on opposite sides of the equation. This is the operation which al-Khwārizmī originally described as al-jabr. His algebra was also no longer concerned "with a series of problems to be resolved, but an exposition which starts with primitive terms in which the combinations must give all possible prototypes for equations, which henceforward explicitly constitute the true object of study." He also studied an equation for its own sake and "in a generic manner, insofar as it does not simply emerge in the course of solving a problem, but is specifically called on to define an infinite class of problems."
In Egypt, Abu Kamil extended algebra to the set of irrational numbers, accepting square roots and fourth roots as solutions and coefficients to quadratic equations. He also developed techniques used to solve three non-linear simultaneous equations with three unknown variables. One unique feature of his works was trying to find all the possible solutions to some of his problems, including one where he found 2676 solutions. His works formed an important foundation for the development of algebra and influenced later mathematicians, such as al-Karaji and Fibonacci.
Further developments in algebra were made by Al-Karaji in his treatise al-Fakhri, where he extends the methodology to incorporate integer powers and integer roots of unknown quantities. Something close to a proof by mathematical induction appears in a book written by Al-Karaji around 1000 AD, who used it to prove the binomial theorem, Pascal's triangle, and the sum of integral cubes. The historian of mathematics, F. Woepcke, praised Al-Karaji for being "the first who introduced the theory of algebraic calculus." Also in the 10th century, Abul Wafa translated the works of Diophantus into Arabic. Ibn al-Haytham was the first mathematician to derive the formula for the sum of the fourth powers, using a method that is readily generalizable for determining the general formula for the sum of any integral powers. He performed an integration in order to find the volume of a paraboloid, and was able to generalize his result for the integrals of polynomials up to the fourth degree. He thus came close to finding a general formula for the integrals of polynomials, but he was not concerned with any polynomials higher than the fourth degree.
In the late 11th century, Omar Khayyam wrote Discussions of the Difficulties in Euclid, a book about what he perceived as flaws in Euclid's Elements, especially the parallel postulate. He was also the first to find the general geometric solution to cubic equations. He was also very influential in calendar reform.
In the 13th century, Nasir al-Din Tusi (Nasireddin) made advances in spherical trigonometry. He also wrote influential work on Euclid's parallel postulate. In the 15th century, Ghiyath al-Kashi computed the value of π to the 16th decimal place. Kashi also had an algorithm for calculating nth roots, which was a special case of the methods given many centuries later by Ruffini and Horner.
Other achievements of Muslim mathematicians during this period include the addition of the decimal point notation to the Arabic numerals, the discovery of all the modern trigonometric functions besides the sine, al-Kindi's introduction of cryptanalysis and frequency analysis, the development of analytic geometry by Ibn al-Haytham, the beginning of algebraic geometry by Omar Khayyam and the development of an algebraic notation by al-Qalasādī.
During the time of the Ottoman Empire and Safavid Empire from the 15th century, the development of Islamic mathematics became stagnant.
Maya
In the Pre-Columbian Americas, the Maya civilization that flourished in Mexico and Central America during the 1st millennium AD developed a unique tradition of mathematics that, due to its geographic isolation, was entirely independent of existing European, Egyptian, and Asian mathematics. Maya numerals utilized a base of twenty, the vigesimal system, instead of a base of ten that forms the basis of the decimal system used by most modern cultures. The Maya used mathematics to create the Maya calendar as well as to predict astronomical phenomena in their native Maya astronomy. While the concept of zero had to be inferred in the mathematics of many contemporary cultures, the Maya developed a standard symbol for it.
Medieval European
Medieval European interest in mathematics was driven by concerns quite different from those of modern mathematicians. One driving element was the belief that mathematics provided the key to understanding the created order of nature, frequently justified by Plato's Timaeus and the biblical passage (in the Book of Wisdom) that God had ordered all things in measure, and number, and weight.
Boethius provided a place for mathematics in the curriculum in the 6th century when he coined the term quadrivium to describe the study of arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music. He wrote De institutione arithmetica, a free translation from the Greek of Nicomachus's Introduction to Arithmetic; De institutione musica, also derived from Greek sources; and a series of excerpts from Euclid's Elements. His works were theoretical, rather than practical, and were the basis of mathematical study until the recovery of Greek and Arabic mathematical works.
In the 12th century, European scholars traveled to Spain and Sicily seeking scientific Arabic texts, including al-Khwārizmī's The Compendious Book on Calculation by Completion and Balancing, translated into Latin by Robert of Chester, and the complete text of Euclid's Elements, translated in various versions by Adelard of Bath, Herman of Carinthia, and Gerard of Cremona. These and other new sources sparked a renewal of mathematics.
Leonardo of Pisa, now known as Fibonacci, serendipitously learned about the Hindu–Arabic numerals on a trip to what is now Béjaïa, Algeria with his merchant father. (Europe was still using Roman numerals.) There, he observed a system of arithmetic (specifically algorism) which due to the positional notation of Hindu–Arabic numerals was much more efficient and greatly facilitated commerce. Leonardo wrote Liber Abaci in 1202 (updated in 1254) introducing the technique to Europe and beginning a long period of popularizing it. The book also brought to Europe what is now known as the Fibonacci sequence (known to Indian mathematicians for hundreds of years before that) which was used as an unremarkable example within the text.
The 14th century saw the development of new mathematical concepts to investigate a wide range of problems. One important contribution was development of mathematics of local motion.
Thomas Bradwardine proposed that speed (V) increases in arithmetic proportion as the ratio of force (F) to resistance (R) increases in geometric proportion. Bradwardine expressed this by a series of specific examples, but although the logarithm had not yet been conceived, we can express his conclusion anachronistically by writing:
V = log (F/R). Bradwardine's analysis is an example of transferring a mathematical technique used by al-Kindi and Arnald of Villanova to quantify the nature of compound medicines to a different physical problem.
One of the 14th-century Oxford Calculators, William Heytesbury, lacking differential calculus and the concept of limits, proposed to measure instantaneous speed "by the path that would be described by [a body] if... it were moved uniformly at the same degree of speed with which it is moved in that given instant".
Heytesbury and others mathematically determined the distance covered by a body undergoing uniformly accelerated motion (today solved by integration), stating that "a moving body uniformly acquiring or losing that increment [of speed] will traverse in some given time a [distance] completely equal to that which it would traverse if it were moving continuously through the same time with the mean degree [of speed]".
Nicole Oresme at the University of Paris and the Italian Giovanni di Casali independently provided graphical demonstrations of this relationship, asserting that the area under the line depicting the constant acceleration, represented the total distance traveled. In a later mathematical commentary on Euclid's Elements, Oresme made a more detailed general analysis in which he demonstrated that a body will acquire in each successive increment of time an increment of any quality that increases as the odd numbers. Since Euclid had demonstrated the sum of the odd numbers are the square numbers, the total quality acquired by the body increases as the square of the time.
Renaissance
During the Renaissance, the development of mathematics and of accounting were intertwined. While there is no direct relationship between algebra and accounting, the teaching of the subjects and the books published often intended for the children of merchants who were sent to reckoning schools (in Flanders and Germany) or abacus schools (known as abbaco in Italy), where they learned the skills useful for trade and commerce. There is probably no need for algebra in performing bookkeeping operations, but for complex bartering operations or the calculation of compound interest, a basic knowledge of arithmetic was mandatory and knowledge of algebra was very useful.
Piero della Francesca (c. 1415–1492) wrote books on solid geometry and linear perspective, including De Prospectiva Pingendi (On Perspective for Painting), Trattato d’Abaco (Abacus Treatise), and De quinque corporibus regularibus (On the Five Regular Solids).
Luca Pacioli's Summa de Arithmetica, Geometria, Proportioni et Proportionalità (Italian: "Review of Arithmetic, Geometry, Ratio and Proportion") was first printed and published in Venice in 1494. It included a 27-page treatise on bookkeeping, "Particularis de Computis et Scripturis" (Italian: "Details of Calculation and Recording"). It was written primarily for, and sold mainly to, merchants who used the book as a reference text, as a source of pleasure from the mathematical puzzles it contained, and to aid the education of their sons. In Summa Arithmetica, Pacioli introduced symbols for plus and minus for the first time in a printed book, symbols that became standard notation in Italian Renaissance mathematics. Summa Arithmetica was also the first known book printed in Italy to contain algebra. Pacioli obtained many of his ideas from Piero Della Francesca whom he plagiarized.
In Italy, during the first half of the 16th century, Scipione del Ferro and Niccolò Fontana Tartaglia discovered solutions for cubic equations. Gerolamo Cardano published them in his 1545 book Ars Magna, together with a solution for the quartic equations, discovered by his student Lodovico Ferrari. In 1572 Rafael Bombelli published his L'Algebra in which he showed how to deal with the imaginary quantities that could appear in Cardano's formula for solving cubic equations.
Simon Stevin's book De Thiende ('the art of tenths'), first published in Dutch in 1585, contained the first systematic treatment of decimal notation, which influenced all later work on the real number system.
Driven by the demands of navigation and the growing need for accurate maps of large areas, trigonometry grew to be a major branch of mathematics. Bartholomaeus Pitiscus was the first to use the word, publishing his Trigonometria in 1595. Regiomontanus's table of sines and cosines was published in 1533.
During the Renaissance the desire of artists to represent the natural world realistically, together with the rediscovered philosophy of the Greeks, led artists to study mathematics. They were also the engineers and architects of that time, and so had need of mathematics in any case. The art of painting in perspective, and the developments in geometry that involved, were studied intensely.
Mathematics during the Scientific Revolution
17th century
The 17th century saw an unprecedented increase of mathematical and scientific ideas across Europe. Galileo observed the moons of Jupiter in orbit about that planet, using a telescope based on a toy imported from Holland. Tycho Brahe had gathered an enormous quantity of mathematical data describing the positions of the planets in the sky. By his position as Brahe's assistant, Johannes Kepler was first exposed to and seriously interacted with the topic of planetary motion. Kepler's calculations were made simpler by the contemporaneous invention of logarithms by John Napier and Jost Bürgi. Kepler succeeded in formulating mathematical laws of planetary motion.
The analytic geometry developed by René Descartes (1596–1650) allowed those orbits to be plotted on a graph, in Cartesian coordinates.
Building on earlier work by many predecessors, Isaac Newton discovered the laws of physics explaining Kepler's Laws, and brought together the concepts now known as calculus. Independently, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, developed calculus and much of the calculus notation still in use today. Science and mathematics had become an international endeavor, which would soon spread over the entire world.
In addition to the application of mathematics to the studies of the heavens, applied mathematics began to expand into new areas, with the correspondence of Pierre de Fermat and Blaise Pascal. Pascal and Fermat set the groundwork for the investigations of probability theory and the corresponding rules of combinatorics in their discussions over a game of gambling. Pascal, with his wager, attempted to use the newly developing probability theory to argue for a life devoted to religion, on the grounds that even if the probability of success was small, the rewards were infinite. In some sense, this foreshadowed the development of utility theory in the 18th–19th century.
18th century
The most influential mathematician of the 18th century was arguably Leonhard Euler (1707–1783). His contributions range from founding the study of graph theory with the Seven Bridges of Königsberg problem to standardizing many modern mathematical terms and notations. For example, he named the square root of minus 1 with the symbol i, and he popularized the use of the Greek letter to stand for the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter. He made numerous contributions to the study of topology, graph theory, calculus, combinatorics, and complex analysis, as evidenced by the multitude of theorems and notations named for him.
Other important European mathematicians of the 18th century included Joseph Louis Lagrange, who did pioneering work in number theory, algebra, differential calculus, and the calculus of variations, and Laplace who, in the age of Napoleon, did important work on the foundations of celestial mechanics and on statistics.
Modern
19th century
Throughout the 19th century mathematics became increasingly abstract. Carl Friedrich Gauss (1777–1855) epitomizes this trend. He did revolutionary work on functions of complex variables, in geometry, and on the convergence of series, leaving aside his many contributions to science. He also gave the first satisfactory proofs of the fundamental theorem of algebra and of the quadratic reciprocity law.
This century saw the development of the two forms of non-Euclidean geometry, where the parallel postulate of Euclidean geometry no longer holds.
The Russian mathematician Nikolai Ivanovich Lobachevsky and his rival, the Hungarian mathematician János Bolyai, independently defined and studied hyperbolic geometry, where uniqueness of parallels no longer holds. In this geometry the sum of angles in a triangle add up to less than 180°. Elliptic geometry was developed later in the 19th century by the German mathematician Bernhard Riemann; here no parallel can be found and the angles in a triangle add up to more than 180°. Riemann also developed Riemannian geometry, which unifies and vastly generalizes the three types of geometry, and he defined the concept of a manifold, which generalizes the ideas of curves and surfaces.
The 19th century saw the beginning of a great deal of abstract algebra. Hermann Grassmann in Germany gave a first version of vector spaces, William Rowan Hamilton in Ireland developed noncommutative algebra. The British mathematician George Boole devised an algebra that soon evolved into what is now called Boolean algebra, in which the only numbers were 0 and 1. Boolean algebra is the starting point of mathematical logic and has important applications in electrical engineering and computer science.
Augustin-Louis Cauchy, Bernhard Riemann, and Karl Weierstrass reformulated the calculus in a more rigorous fashion.
Also, for the first time, the limits of mathematics were explored. Niels Henrik Abel, a Norwegian, and Évariste Galois, a Frenchman, proved that there is no general algebraic method for solving polynomial equations of degree greater than four (Abel–Ruffini theorem). Other 19th-century mathematicians utilized this in their proofs that straightedge and compass alone are not sufficient to trisect an arbitrary angle, to construct the side of a cube twice the volume of a given cube, nor to construct a square equal in area to a given circle. Mathematicians had vainly attempted to solve all of these problems since the time of the ancient Greeks. On the other hand, the limitation of three dimensions in geometry was surpassed in the 19th century through considerations of parameter space and hypercomplex numbers.
Abel and Galois's investigations into the solutions of various polynomial equations laid the groundwork for further developments of group theory, and the associated fields of abstract algebra. In the 20th century physicists and other scientists have seen group theory as the ideal way to study symmetry.
In the later 19th century, Georg Cantor established the first foundations of set theory, which enabled the rigorous treatment of the notion of infinity and has become the common language of nearly all mathematics. Cantor's set theory, and the rise of mathematical logic in the hands of Peano, L.E.J. Brouwer, David Hilbert, Bertrand Russell, and A.N. Whitehead, initiated a long running debate on the foundations of mathematics.
The 19th century saw the founding of a number of national mathematical societies: the London Mathematical Society in 1865, the Société Mathématique de France in 1872, the Circolo Matematico di Palermo in 1884, the Edinburgh Mathematical Society in 1883, and the American Mathematical Society in 1888. The first international, special-interest society, the Quaternion Society, was formed in 1899, in the context of a vector controversy.
In 1897, Hensel introduced p-adic numbers.
20th century
The 20th century saw mathematics become a major profession. Every year, thousands of new Ph.D.s in mathematics were awarded, and jobs were available in both teaching and industry. An effort to catalogue the areas and applications of mathematics was undertaken in Klein's encyclopedia.
In a 1900 speech to the International Congress of Mathematicians, David Hilbert set out a list of 23 unsolved problems in mathematics. These problems, spanning many areas of mathematics, formed a central focus for much of 20th-century mathematics. Today, 10 have been solved, 7 are partially solved, and 2 are still open. The remaining 4 are too loosely formulated to be stated as solved or not.
Notable historical conjectures were finally proven. In 1976, Wolfgang Haken and Kenneth Appel proved the four color theorem, controversial at the time for the use of a computer to do so. Andrew Wiles, building on the work of others, proved Fermat's Last Theorem in 1995. Paul Cohen and Kurt Gödel proved that the continuum hypothesis is independent of (could neither be proved nor disproved from) the standard axioms of set theory. In 1998 Thomas Callister Hales proved the Kepler conjecture.
Mathematical collaborations of unprecedented size and scope took place. An example is the classification of finite simple groups (also called the "enormous theorem"), whose proof between 1955 and 2004 required 500-odd journal articles by about 100 authors, and filling tens of thousands of pages. A group of French mathematicians, including Jean Dieudonné and André Weil, publishing under the pseudonym "Nicolas Bourbaki", attempted to exposit all of known mathematics as a coherent rigorous whole. The resulting several dozen volumes has had a controversial influence on mathematical education.
Differential geometry came into its own when Albert Einstein used it in general relativity. Entirely new areas of mathematics such as mathematical logic, topology, and John von Neumann's game theory changed the kinds of questions that could be answered by mathematical methods. All kinds of structures were abstracted using axioms and given names like metric spaces, topological spaces etc. As mathematicians do, the concept of an abstract structure was itself abstracted and led to category theory. Grothendieck and Serre recast algebraic geometry using sheaf theory. Large advances were made in the qualitative study of dynamical systems that Poincaré had begun in the 1890s.
Measure theory was developed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Applications of measures include the Lebesgue integral, Kolmogorov's axiomatisation of probability theory, and ergodic theory. Knot theory greatly expanded. Quantum mechanics led to the development of functional analysis. Other new areas include Laurent Schwartz's distribution theory, fixed point theory, singularity theory and René Thom's catastrophe theory, model theory, and Mandelbrot's fractals. Lie theory with its Lie groups and Lie algebras became one of the major areas of study.
Non-standard analysis, introduced by Abraham Robinson, rehabilitated the infinitesimal approach to calculus, which had fallen into disrepute in favour of the theory of limits, by extending the field of real numbers to the Hyperreal numbers which include infinitesimal and infinite quantities. An even larger number system, the surreal numbers were discovered by John Horton Conway in connection with combinatorial games.
The development and continual improvement of computers, at first mechanical analog machines and then digital electronic machines, allowed industry to deal with larger and larger amounts of data to facilitate mass production and distribution and communication, and new areas of mathematics were developed to deal with this: Alan Turing's computability theory; complexity theory; Derrick Henry Lehmer's use of ENIAC to further number theory and the Lucas-Lehmer test; Rózsa Péter's recursive function theory; Claude Shannon's information theory; signal processing; data analysis; optimization and other areas of operations research. In the preceding centuries much mathematical focus was on calculus and continuous functions, but the rise of computing and communication networks led to an increasing importance of discrete concepts and the expansion of combinatorics including graph theory. The speed and data processing abilities of computers also enabled the handling of mathematical problems that were too time-consuming to deal with by pencil and paper calculations, leading to areas such as numerical analysis and symbolic computation. Some of the most important methods and algorithms of the 20th century are: the simplex algorithm, the fast Fourier transform, error-correcting codes, the Kalman filter from control theory and the RSA algorithm of public-key cryptography.
At the same time, deep insights were made about the limitations to mathematics. In 1929 and 1930, it was proved the truth or falsity of all statements formulated about the natural numbers plus either addition or multiplication (but not both), was decidable, i.e. could be determined by some algorithm. In 1931, Kurt Gödel found that this was not the case for the natural numbers plus both addition and multiplication; this system, known as Peano arithmetic, was in fact incompletable. (Peano arithmetic is adequate for a good deal of number theory, including the notion of prime number.) A consequence of Gödel's two incompleteness theorems is that in any mathematical system that includes Peano arithmetic (including all of analysis and geometry), truth necessarily outruns proof, i.e. there are true statements that cannot be proved within the system. Hence mathematics cannot be reduced to mathematical logic, and David Hilbert's dream of making all of mathematics complete and consistent needed to be reformulated.
One of the more colorful figures in 20th-century mathematics was Srinivasa Aiyangar Ramanujan (1887–1920), an Indian autodidact who conjectured or proved over 3000 theorems, including properties of highly composite numbers, the partition function and its asymptotics, and mock theta functions. He also made major investigations in the areas of gamma functions, modular forms, divergent series, hypergeometric series and prime number theory.
Paul Erdős published more papers than any other mathematician in history, working with hundreds of collaborators. Mathematicians have a game equivalent to the Kevin Bacon Game, which leads to the Erdős number of a mathematician. This describes the "collaborative distance" between a person and Erdős, as measured by joint authorship of mathematical papers.
Emmy Noether has been described by many as the most important woman in the history of mathematics. She studied the theories of rings, fields, and algebras.
As in most areas of study, the explosion of knowledge in the scientific age has led to specialization: by the end of the century there were hundreds of specialized areas in mathematics and the Mathematics Subject Classification was dozens of pages long. More and more mathematical journals were published and, by the end of the century, the development of the World Wide Web led to online publishing.
21st century
In 2000, the Clay Mathematics Institute announced the seven Millennium Prize Problems, and in 2003 the Poincaré conjecture was solved by Grigori Perelman (who declined to accept an award, as he was critical of the mathematics establishment).
Most mathematical journals now have online versions as well as print versions, and many online-only journals are launched. There is an increasing drive toward open access publishing, first popularized by arXiv.
Future
There are many observable trends in mathematics, the most notable being that the subject is growing ever larger, computers are ever more important and powerful, the application of mathematics to bioinformatics is rapidly expanding, and the volume of data being produced by science and industry, facilitated by computers, is expanding exponentially.
See also
Archives of American Mathematics
History of algebra
History of calculus
History of combinatorics
History of the function concept
History of geometry
History of logic
History of mathematicians
History of mathematical notation
History of measurement
History of numbers
History of number theory
History of statistics
History of trigonometry
History of writing numbers
Kenneth O. May Prize
List of important publications in mathematics
Lists of mathematicians
List of mathematics history topics
Timeline of mathematics
Notes
References
Further reading
General
Burton, David M. The History of Mathematics: An Introduction. McGraw Hill: 1997.
Kline, Morris. Mathematical Thought from Ancient to Modern Times.
Struik, D.J. (1987). A Concise History of Mathematics, fourth revised edition. Dover Publications, New York.
Books on a specific period
van der Waerden, B.L., Geometry and Algebra in Ancient Civilizations, Springer, 1983, .
Books on a specific topic
External links
Documentaries
BBC (2008). The Story of Maths.
Renaissance Mathematics, BBC Radio 4 discussion with Robert Kaplan, Jim Bennett & Jackie Stedall (In Our Time, Jun 2, 2005)
Educational material
MacTutor History of Mathematics archive (John J. O'Connor and Edmund F. Robertson; University of St Andrews, Scotland). An award-winning website containing detailed biographies on many historical and contemporary mathematicians, as well as information on notable curves and various topics in the history of mathematics.
History of Mathematics Home Page (David E. Joyce; Clark University). Articles on various topics in the history of mathematics with an extensive bibliography.
The History of Mathematics (David R. Wilkins; Trinity College, Dublin). Collections of material on the mathematics between the 17th and 19th century.
Earliest Known Uses of Some of the Words of Mathematics (Jeff Miller). Contains information on the earliest known uses of terms used in mathematics.
Earliest Uses of Various Mathematical Symbols (Jeff Miller). Contains information on the history of mathematical notations.
Mathematical Words: Origins and Sources (John Aldrich, University of Southampton) Discusses the origins of the modern mathematical word stock.
Biographies of Women Mathematicians (Larry Riddle; Agnes Scott College).
Mathematicians of the African Diaspora (Scott W. Williams; University at Buffalo).
Notes for MAA minicourse: teaching a course in the history of mathematics. (2009) (V. Frederick Rickey & Victor J. Katz).
Bibliographies
A Bibliography of Collected Works and Correspondence of Mathematicians archive dated 2007/3/17 (Steven W. Rockey; Cornell University Library).
Organizations
International Commission for the History of Mathematics
Journals
Historia Mathematica
Convergence, the Mathematical Association of America's online Math History Magazine
History of Mathematics Math Archives (University of Tennessee, Knoxville)
History/Biography The Math Forum (Drexel University)
History of Mathematics (Courtright Memorial Library).
History of Mathematics Web Sites (David Calvis; Baldwin-Wallace College)
Historia de las Matemáticas (Universidad de La La guna)
História da Matemática (Universidade de Coimbra)
Using History in Math Class
Mathematical Resources: History of Mathematics (Bruno Kevius)
History of Mathematics (Roberta Tucci)
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14223 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HSK | HSK | HSK may refer to:
H. S. Krishnaswamy Iyengar
Hanyu Shuiping Kaoshi or Chinese Proficiency Test
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Homoserine kinase, an enzyme
Horrendous Space Kablooie, a Calvin and Hobbes reference to the Big Bang
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14225 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen%20atom | Hydrogen atom | A hydrogen atom is an atom of the chemical element hydrogen. The electrically neutral atom contains a single positively charged proton and a single negatively charged electron bound to the nucleus by the Coulomb force. Atomic hydrogen constitutes about 75% of the baryonic mass of the universe.
In everyday life on Earth, isolated hydrogen atoms (called "atomic hydrogen") are extremely rare. Instead, a hydrogen atom tends to combine with other atoms in compounds, or with another hydrogen atom to form ordinary (diatomic) hydrogen gas, H2. "Atomic hydrogen" and "hydrogen atom" in ordinary English use have overlapping, yet distinct, meanings. For example, a water molecule contains two hydrogen atoms, but does not contain atomic hydrogen (which would refer to isolated hydrogen atoms).
Atomic spectroscopy shows that there is a discrete infinite set of states in which a hydrogen (or any) atom can exist, contrary to the predictions of classical physics. Attempts to develop a theoretical understanding of the states of the hydrogen atom have been important to the history of quantum mechanics, since all other atoms can be roughly understood by knowing in detail about this simplest atomic structure.
Isotopes
The most abundant isotope, hydrogen-1, protium, or light hydrogen, contains no neutrons and is simply a proton and an electron. Protium is stable and makes up 99.985% of naturally occurring hydrogen atoms.
Deuterium contains one neutron and one proton in its nucleus. Deuterium is stable and makes up 0.0156% of naturally occurring hydrogen and is used in industrial processes like nuclear reactors and Nuclear Magnetic Resonance.
Tritium contains two neutrons and one proton in its nucleus and is not stable, decaying with a half-life of 12.32 years. Because of its short half-life, tritium does not exist in nature except in trace amounts.
Heavier isotopes of hydrogen are only created artificially in particle accelerators and have half-lives on the order of 10−22 seconds. They are unbound resonances located beyond the neutron drip line; this results in prompt emission of a neutron.
The formulas below are valid for all three isotopes of hydrogen, but slightly different values of the Rydberg constant (correction formula given below) must be used for each hydrogen isotope.
Hydrogen ion
Lone neutral hydrogen atoms are rare under normal conditions. However, neutral hydrogen is common when it is covalently bound to another atom, and hydrogen atoms can also exist in cationic and anionic forms.
If a neutral hydrogen atom loses its electron, it becomes a cation. The resulting ion, which consists solely of a proton for the usual isotope, is written as "H+" and sometimes called hydron. Free protons are common in the interstellar medium, and solar wind. In the context of aqueous solutions of classical Brønsted–Lowry acids, such as hydrochloric acid, it is actually hydronium, H3O+, that is meant. Instead of a literal ionized single hydrogen atom being formed, the acid transfers the hydrogen to H2O, forming H3O+.
If instead a hydrogen atom gains a second electron, it becomes an anion. The hydrogen anion is written as "H–" and called hydride.
Theoretical analysis
The hydrogen atom has special significance in quantum mechanics and quantum field theory as a simple two-body problem physical system which has yielded many simple analytical solutions in closed-form.
Failed classical description
Experiments by Ernest Rutherford in 1909 showed the structure of the atom to be a dense, positive nucleus with a tenuous negative charge cloud around it. This immediately raised questions about how such a system could be stable. Classical electromagnetism had shown that any accelerating charge radiates energy, as shown by the Larmor formula. If the electron is assumed to orbit in a perfect circle and radiates energy continuously, the electron would rapidly spiral into the nucleus with a fall time of:
where is the Bohr radius and is the classical electron radius. If this were true, all atoms would instantly collapse, however atoms seem to be stable. Furthermore, the spiral inward would release a smear of electromagnetic frequencies as the orbit got smaller. Instead, atoms were observed to only emit discrete frequencies of radiation. The resolution would lie in the development of quantum mechanics.
Bohr–Sommerfeld Model
In 1913, Niels Bohr obtained the energy levels and spectral frequencies of the hydrogen atom after making a number of simple assumptions in order to correct the failed classical model. The assumptions included:
Electrons can only be in certain, discrete circular orbits or stationary states, thereby having a discrete set of possible radii and energies.
Electrons do not emit radiation while in one of these stationary states.
An electron can gain or lose energy by jumping from one discrete orbit to another.
Bohr supposed that the electron's angular momentum is quantized with possible values:
where
and is Planck constant over . He also supposed that the centripetal force which keeps the electron in its orbit is provided by the Coulomb force, and that energy is conserved. Bohr derived the energy of each orbit of the hydrogen atom to be:
where is the electron mass, is the electron charge, is the vacuum permittivity, and is the quantum number (now known as the principal quantum number). Bohr's predictions matched experiments measuring the hydrogen spectral series to the first order, giving more confidence to a theory that used quantized values.
For , the value
is called the Rydberg unit of energy. It is related to the Rydberg constant of atomic physics by
The exact value of the Rydberg constant assumes that the nucleus is infinitely massive with respect to the electron. For hydrogen-1, hydrogen-2 (deuterium), and hydrogen-3 (tritium) which have finite mass, the constant must be slightly modified to use the reduced mass of the system, rather than simply the mass of the electron. This includes the kinetic energy of the nucleus in the problem, because the total (electron plus nuclear) kinetic energy is equivalent to the kinetic energy of the reduced mass moving with a velocity equal to the electron velocity relative to the nucleus. However, since the nucleus is much heavier than the electron, the electron mass and reduced mass are nearly the same. The Rydberg constant RM for a hydrogen atom (one electron), R is given by
where is the mass of the atomic nucleus. For hydrogen-1, the quantity is about 1/1836 (i.e. the electron-to-proton mass ratio). For deuterium and tritium, the ratios are about 1/3670 and 1/5497 respectively. These figures, when added to 1 in the denominator, represent very small corrections in the value of R, and thus only small corrections to all energy levels in corresponding hydrogen isotopes.
There were still problems with Bohr's model:
it failed to predict other spectral details such as fine structure and hyperfine structure
it could only predict energy levels with any accuracy for single–electron atoms (hydrogen–like atoms)
the predicted values were only correct to , where is the fine-structure constant.
Most of these shortcomings were resolved by Arnold Sommerfeld's modification of the Bohr model. Sommerfeld introduced two additional degrees of freedom, allowing an electron to move on an elliptical orbit characterized by its eccentricity and declination with respect to a chosen axis. This introduced two additional quantum numbers, which correspond to the orbital angular momentum and its projection on the chosen axis. Thus the correct multiplicity of states (except for the factor 2 accounting for the yet unknown electron spin) was found. Further, by applying special relativity to the elliptic orbits, Sommerfeld succeeded in deriving the correct expression for the fine structure of hydrogen spectra (which happens to be exactly the same as in the most elaborate Dirac theory). However, some observed phenomena, such as the anomalous Zeeman effect, remained unexplained. These issues were resolved with the full development of quantum mechanics and the Dirac equation. It is often alleged that the Schrödinger equation is superior to the Bohr–Sommerfeld theory in describing hydrogen atom. This is not the case, as most of the results of both approaches coincide or are very close (a remarkable exception is the problem of hydrogen atom in crossed electric and magnetic fields, which cannot be self-consistently solved in the framework of the Bohr–Sommerfeld theory), and in both theories the main shortcomings result from the absence of the electron spin. It was the complete failure of the Bohr–Sommerfeld theory to explain many-electron systems (such as helium atom or hydrogen molecule) which demonstrated its inadequacy in describing quantum phenomena.
Schrödinger equation
The Schrödinger equation allows one to calculate the stationary states and also the time evolution of quantum systems. Exact analytical answers are available for the nonrelativistic hydrogen atom. Before we go to present a formal account, here we give an elementary overview.
Given that the hydrogen atom contains a nucleus and an electron, quantum mechanics allows one to predict the probability of finding the electron at any given radial distance . It is given by the square of a mathematical function known as the "wavefunction," which is a solution of the Schrödinger equation. The lowest energy equilibrium state of the hydrogen atom is known as the ground state. The ground state wave function is known as the wavefunction. It is written as:
Here, is the numerical value of the Bohr radius. The probability density of finding the electron at a distance in any radial direction is the squared value of the wavefunction:
The wavefunction is spherically symmetric, and the surface area of a shell at distance is , so the total probability of the electron being in a shell at a distance and thickness is
It turns out that this is a maximum at . That is, the Bohr picture of an electron orbiting the nucleus at radius is recovered in a probabilistic sense. Actually, there is a finite probability that the electron may be found at any place , with the
probability indicated by the square of the wavefunction. Since the probability of finding the electron somewhere in the whole volume is unity, the integral of is unity. Then we say that the wavefunction is properly normalized.
As discussed below, the ground state is also indicated by the quantum numbers . The second lowest energy states, just above the ground state, are given by the quantum numbers , , and . These states all have the same energy and are known as the and states. There is one state:
and there are three states:
An electron in the or state is most likely to be found in the second Bohr orbit with energy given by the Bohr formula.
Wavefunction
The Hamiltonian of the hydrogen atom is the radial kinetic energy operator and Coulomb attraction force between the positive proton and negative electron. Using the time-independent Schrödinger equation, ignoring all spin-coupling interactions and using the reduced mass , the equation is written as:
Expanding the Laplacian in spherical coordinates:
This is a separable, partial differential equation which can be solved in terms of special functions. When the wavefunction is separated as product of functions and three independent differential functions appears with A and B being the separation constants:
radial:
polar:
azimuth:
The normalized position wavefunctions, given in spherical coordinates are:
where:
,
is the reduced Bohr radius, ,
is a generalized Laguerre polynomial of degree , and
is a spherical harmonic function of degree and order . Note that the generalized Laguerre polynomials are defined differently by different authors. The usage here is consistent with the definitions used by Messiah, and Mathematica. In other places, the Laguerre polynomial includes a factor of , or the generalized Laguerre polynomial appearing in the hydrogen wave function is instead.
The quantum numbers can take the following values:
(principal quantum number)
(azimuthal quantum number)
(magnetic quantum number).
Additionally, these wavefunctions are normalized (i.e., the integral of their modulus square equals 1) and orthogonal:
where is the state represented by the wavefunction in Dirac notation, and is the Kronecker delta function.
The wavefunctions in momentum space are related to the wavefunctions in position space through a Fourier transform
which, for the bound states, results in
where denotes a Gegenbauer polynomial and is in units of .
The solutions to the Schrödinger equation for hydrogen are analytical, giving a simple expression for the hydrogen energy levels and thus the frequencies of the hydrogen spectral lines and fully reproduced the Bohr model and went beyond it. It also yields two other quantum numbers and the shape of the electron's wave function ("orbital") for the various possible quantum-mechanical states, thus explaining the anisotropic character of atomic bonds.
The Schrödinger equation also applies to more complicated atoms and molecules. When there is more than one electron or nucleus the solution is not analytical and either computer calculations are necessary or simplifying assumptions must be made.
Since the Schrödinger equation is only valid for non-relativistic quantum mechanics, the solutions it yields for the hydrogen atom are not entirely correct. The Dirac equation of relativistic quantum theory improves these solutions (see below).
Results of Schrödinger equation
The solution of the Schrödinger equation (wave equation) for the hydrogen atom uses the fact that the Coulomb potential produced by the nucleus is isotropic (it is radially symmetric in space and only depends on the distance to the nucleus). Although the resulting energy eigenfunctions (the orbitals) are not necessarily isotropic themselves, their dependence on the angular coordinates follows completely generally from this isotropy of the underlying potential: the eigenstates of the Hamiltonian (that is, the energy eigenstates) can be chosen as simultaneous eigenstates of the angular momentum operator. This corresponds to the fact that angular momentum is conserved in the orbital motion of the electron around the nucleus. Therefore, the energy eigenstates may be classified by two angular momentum quantum numbers, and (both are integers). The angular momentum quantum number determines the magnitude of the angular momentum. The magnetic quantum number determines the projection of the angular momentum on the (arbitrarily chosen) -axis.
In addition to mathematical expressions for total angular momentum and angular momentum projection of wavefunctions, an expression for the radial dependence of the wave functions must be found. It is only here that the details of the Coulomb potential enter (leading to Laguerre polynomials in ). This leads to a third quantum number, the principal quantum number . The principal quantum number in hydrogen is related to the atom's total energy.
Note that the maximum value of the angular momentum quantum number is limited by the principal quantum number: it can run only up to , i.e., .
Due to angular momentum conservation, states of the same but different have the same energy (this holds for all problems with rotational symmetry). In addition, for the hydrogen atom, states of the same but different are also degenerate (i.e., they have the same energy). However, this is a specific property of hydrogen and is no longer true for more complicated atoms which have an (effective) potential differing from the form (due to the presence of the inner electrons shielding the nucleus potential).
Taking into account the spin of the electron adds a last quantum number, the projection of the electron's spin angular momentum along the -axis, which can take on two values. Therefore, any eigenstate of the electron in the hydrogen atom is described fully by four quantum numbers. According to the usual rules of quantum mechanics, the actual state of the electron may be any superposition of these states. This explains also why the choice of -axis for the directional quantization of the angular momentum vector is immaterial: an orbital of given and obtained for another preferred axis can always be represented as a suitable superposition of the various states of different (but same ) that have been obtained for .
Mathematical summary of eigenstates of hydrogen atom
In 1928, Paul Dirac found an equation that was fully compatible with special relativity, and (as a consequence) made the wave function a 4-component "Dirac spinor" including "up" and "down" spin components, with both positive and "negative" energy (or matter and antimatter). The solution to this equation gave the following results, more accurate than the Schrödinger solution.
Energy levels
The energy levels of hydrogen, including fine structure (excluding Lamb shift and hyperfine structure), are given by the Sommerfeld fine structure expression:
where is the fine-structure constant and is the total angular momentum quantum number, which is equal to , depending on the orientation of the electron spin relative to the orbital angular momentum. This formula represents a small correction to the energy obtained by Bohr and Schrödinger as given above. The factor in square brackets in the last expression is nearly one; the extra term arises from relativistic effects (for details, see #Features going beyond the Schrödinger solution). It is worth noting that this expression was first obtained by A. Sommerfeld in 1916 based on the relativistic version of the old Bohr theory. Sommerfeld has however used different notation for the quantum numbers.
Coherent states
The coherent states have been proposed as
which satisfies and takes the form
Visualizing the hydrogen electron orbitals
The image to the right shows the first few hydrogen atom orbitals (energy eigenfunctions). These are cross-sections of the probability density that are color-coded (black represents zero density and white represents the highest density). The angular momentum (orbital) quantum number ℓ is denoted in each column, using the usual spectroscopic letter code (s means ℓ = 0, p means ℓ = 1, d means ℓ = 2). The main (principal) quantum number n (= 1, 2, 3, ...) is marked to the right of each row. For all pictures the magnetic quantum number m has been set to 0, and the cross-sectional plane is the xz-plane (z is the vertical axis). The probability density in three-dimensional space is obtained by rotating the one shown here around the z-axis.
The "ground state", i.e. the state of lowest energy, in which the electron is usually found, is the first one, the 1s state (principal quantum level n = 1, ℓ = 0).
Black lines occur in each but the first orbital: these are the nodes of the wavefunction, i.e. where the probability density is zero. (More precisely, the nodes are spherical harmonics that appear as a result of solving the Schrödinger equation in spherical coordinates.)
The quantum numbers determine the layout of these nodes. There are:
total nodes,
of which are angular nodes:
angular nodes go around the axis (in the xy plane). (The figure above does not show these nodes since it plots cross-sections through the xz-plane.)
(the remaining angular nodes) occur on the (vertical) axis.
(the remaining non-angular nodes) are radial nodes.
Features going beyond the Schrödinger solution
There are several important effects that are neglected by the Schrödinger equation and which are responsible for certain small but measurable deviations of the real spectral lines from the predicted ones:
Although the mean speed of the electron in hydrogen is only 1/137th of the speed of light, many modern experiments are sufficiently precise that a complete theoretical explanation requires a fully relativistic treatment of the problem. A relativistic treatment results in a momentum increase of about 1 part in 37,000 for the electron. Since the electron's wavelength is determined by its momentum, orbitals containing higher speed electrons show contraction due to smaller wavelengths.
Even when there is no external magnetic field, in the inertial frame of the moving electron, the electromagnetic field of the nucleus has a magnetic component. The spin of the electron has an associated magnetic moment which interacts with this magnetic field. This effect is also explained by special relativity, and it leads to the so-called spin-orbit coupling, i.e., an interaction between the electron's orbital motion around the nucleus, and its spin.
Both of these features (and more) are incorporated in the relativistic Dirac equation, with predictions that come still closer to experiment. Again the Dirac equation may be solved analytically in the special case of a two-body system, such as the hydrogen atom. The resulting solution quantum states now must be classified by the total angular momentum number (arising through the coupling between electron spin and orbital angular momentum). States of the same and the same are still degenerate. Thus, direct analytical solution of Dirac equation predicts 2S() and 2P() levels of hydrogen to have exactly the same energy, which is in a contradiction with observations (Lamb–Retherford experiment).
There are always vacuum fluctuations of the electromagnetic field, according to quantum mechanics. Due to such fluctuations degeneracy between states of the same but different is lifted, giving them slightly different energies. This has been demonstrated in the famous Lamb–Retherford experiment and was the starting point for the development of the theory of quantum electrodynamics (which is able to deal with these vacuum fluctuations and employs the famous Feynman diagrams for approximations using perturbation theory). This effect is now called Lamb shift.
For these developments, it was essential that the solution of the Dirac equation for the hydrogen atom could be worked out exactly, such that any experimentally observed deviation had to be taken seriously as a signal of failure of the theory.
Alternatives to the Schrödinger theory
In the language of Heisenberg's matrix mechanics, the hydrogen atom was first solved by Wolfgang Pauli using a rotational symmetry in four dimensions [O(4)-symmetry] generated by the angular momentum
and the Laplace–Runge–Lenz vector. By extending the symmetry group O(4) to the dynamical group O(4,2),
the entire spectrum and all transitions were embedded in a single irreducible group representation.
In 1979 the (non-relativistic) hydrogen atom was solved for the first time within Feynman's path integral formulation
of quantum mechanics by Duru and Kleinert. This work greatly extended the range of applicability of Feynman's method.
In popular culture
In the graphic novel series Watchmen, character Doctor Manhattan places a representation of the hydrogen atom on his forehead, saying he appreciates its simplicity.
See also
Antihydrogen
Atomic orbital
Balmer series
Helium atom
Lithium atom
Hydrogen molecular ion
Proton decay
Quantum chemistry
Quantum state
Theoretical and experimental justification for the Schrödinger equation
Trihydrogen cation
List of quantum-mechanical systems with analytical solutions
References
Books
Section 4.2 deals with the hydrogen atom specifically, but all of Chapter 4 is relevant.
Kleinert, H. (2009). Path Integrals in Quantum Mechanics, Statistics, Polymer Physics, and Financial Markets, 4th edition, Worldscibooks.com, World Scientific, Singapore (also available online physik.fu-berlin.de)
External links
Physics of hydrogen atom on Scienceworld
Atoms
Quantum models
Hydrogen
Hydrogen physics
Isotopes of hydrogen
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14227 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elagabalus | Elagabalus | Elagabalus ( 204 – 11/12 March 222) ( ), also called Heliogabalus and officially known as Antoninus, was Roman emperor from 218 to 222, while he was still a teenager. His short reign was conspicuous for sex scandals and religious controversy. A close relative to the Severan dynasty, he came from a prominent Arab family in Emesa (Homs), Syria, where since his early youth he served as head priest of the sun god Elagabal. After the death of his cousin the emperor Caracalla, Elagabalus was raised to the principate at 14 years of age in an army revolt instigated by his grandmother Julia Maesa against Caracalla's short-lived successor, Macrinus. As a private citizen, he was probably named Varius Avitus Bassianus. Upon becoming emperor he took the name Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, and only posthumously became known by the Latinised name of his god.
Later historians suggest Elagabalus showed a disregard for Roman religious traditions and sexual taboos. He replaced the traditional head of the Roman pantheon, Jupiter, with the deity Elagabal, of whom he had been high priest. He forced leading members of Rome's government to participate in religious rites celebrating this deity, presiding over them in person. He married four women, including a Vestal Virgin, and lavished favours on male courtiers thought to have been his lovers. He was also reported to have prostituted himself. His behavior estranged the Praetorian Guard, the Senate, and the common people alike. Amidst growing opposition, at just 18 years of age he was assassinated and replaced by his cousin Severus Alexander in March 222. The assassination plot against Elagabalus was devised by Julia Maesa, his grandmother, and carried out by disaffected members of the Praetorian Guard.
Elagabalus developed a reputation among his contemporaries for extreme eccentricity, decadence, zealotry, and sexual promiscuity. This tradition has persisted, and among writers of the early modern age he suffered one of the worst reputations among Roman emperors. Edward Gibbon, for example, wrote that Elagabalus "abandoned himself to the grossest pleasures with ungoverned fury". According to Barthold Georg Niebuhr, "the name Elagabalus is branded in history above all others" because of his "unspeakably disgusting life". An example of a modern historian's assessment is Adrian Goldsworthy's: "Elagabalus was not a tyrant, but he was an incompetent, probably the least able emperor Rome had ever had." Despite universal condemnation of his reign, some scholars write warmly about him, including 6th century Roman chronicler John Malalas, and Warwick Ball, a modern historian who described him as innovative and "a tragic enigma lost behind centuries of prejudice".
Family and priesthood
Elagabalus was born in 203 or 204, to Sextus Varius Marcellus and Julia Soaemias Bassiana, who had probably married around the year 200 (and no later than 204). Elagabalus's full birth name was probably (Sextus) Varius Avitus Bassianus, the last name being apparently a cognomen of the Emesene dynasty. Marcellus was an equestrian, later elevated to a senatorial position. Julia Soaemias was a cousin of the emperor Caracalla, and there were rumors (which Soaemias later publicly supported) that Elagabalus was Caracalla's child. Marcellus's tombstone attests that Elagabalus had at least one brother, about whom nothing is known. Elagabalus's grandmother, Julia Maesa, was the widow of the consul Julius Avitus Alexianus, the sister of Julia Domna, and the sister-in-law of the emperor Septimius Severus. Other relatives included Elagabalus's aunt Julia Avita Mamaea and uncle Marcus Julius Gessius Marcianus and their son Severus Alexander.
Elagabalus's family held hereditary rights to the priesthood of the sun god Elagabal, of whom Elagabalus was the high priest at Emesa (modern Homs) in Roman Syria as part of the Arab Emesene dynasty. The deity's Latin name, "Elagabalus", is a Latinized version of the Arabic Ilāh al-Jabal, from ilāh ("god") and jabal ("mountain"), meaning "God of the Mountain", the Emesene manifestation of Ba'al. Initially venerated at Emesa, the deity's cult spread to other parts of the Roman Empire in the 2nd century; a dedication has been found as far away as Woerden (in the Netherlands), near the Roman limes. The god was later imported to Rome and assimilated with the sun god known as Sol Indiges in the era of the Roman Republic and as Sol Invictus during the late third century. In Greek, the sun god is Helios, hence Elagabal was later known as "Heliogabalus", a hybrid of "Helios" and "Elagabalus".
Rise to power
Herodian writes that when the emperor Macrinus came to power, he suppressed the threat to his reign from the family of his assassinated predecessor, Caracalla, by exiling them—Julia Maesa, her two daughters, and her eldest grandson Elagabalus—to their estate at Emesa in Syria. Almost upon arrival in Syria, Maesa began a plot with her advisor and Elagabalus's tutor, Gannys, to overthrow Macrinus and elevate the fourteen-year-old Elagabalus to the imperial throne.
Maesa spread a rumor, which Soaemias publicly supported, that Elagabalus was the illegitimate child of Caracalla and so deserved the loyalty of Roman soldiers and senators who had sworn allegiance to Caracalla. The soldiers of the Third Legion Gallica at Raphana, who had enjoyed greater privileges under Caracalla and resented Macrinus (and may have been impressed or bribed by Maesa's wealth), supported this claim. At sunrise on 16 May 218, Elagabalus was declared emperor by Publius Valerius Comazon, commander of the legion. To strengthen his legitimacy, Elagabalus adopted the same name Caracalla bore as emperor, Marcus Aurelius Antoninus. Cassius Dio states that some officers tried to keep the soldiers loyal to Macrinus, but they were unsuccessful.
Praetorian prefect Ulpius Julianus responded by attacking the Third Legion, most likely on Macrinus's orders (though one account says he acted on his own before Macrinus knew of the rebellion). Herodian suggests Macrinus underestimated the threat, considering the rebellion inconsequential. During the fighting, Julianus's soldiers killed their officers and joined Elagabalus's forces.
Macrinus asked the Roman Senate to denounce Elagabalus as "the False Antoninus", and they complied, declaring war on Elagabalus and his family. Macrinus made his son Diadumenian co-emperor, and attempted to secure the loyalty of the Second Legion with large cash payments. During a banquet to celebrate this at Apamea, however, a messenger presented Macrinus with the severed head of his defeated prefect Julianus. Macrinus therefore retreated to Antioch, after which the Second Legion shifted its loyalties to Elagabalus.
Elagabalus's legionaries, commanded by Gannys, defeated Macrinus and Diadumenian and their Praetorian Guard at the Battle of Antioch on 8 June 218, prevailing when Macrinus's troops broke ranks after he fled the battlefield. Macrinus made for Italy, but was intercepted near Chalcedon and executed in Cappadocia, while Diadumenian was captured at Zeugma and executed.
That month, Elagabalus wrote to the Senate, assuming the imperial titles without waiting for senatorial approval, which violated tradition but was a common practice among 3rd-century emperors. Letters of reconciliation were dispatched to Rome extending amnesty to the Senate and recognizing its laws, while also condemning the administration of Macrinus and his son.
The senators responded by acknowledging Elagabalus as emperor and accepting his claim to be the son of Caracalla. Elagabalus was made consul for the year 218 in the middle of June. Caracalla and Julia Domna were both deified by the Senate, both Julia Maesa and Julia Soaemias were elevated to the rank of Augustae, and the memory of Macrinus was expunged by the Senate. (Elagabalus's imperial artifacts assert that he succeeded Caracalla directly.) Comazon was appointed commander of the Praetorian Guard. Elagabalus was named pater patriae by the Senate before 13 July 218. On 14 July, Elagabalus was inducted into the colleges of all the Roman priesthoods, including the College of Pontiffs, of which he was named pontifex maximus.
Emperor (218–222)
Journey to Rome and political appointments
Elagabalus stayed for a time at Antioch, apparently to quell various mutinies. Dio outlines several, which historian Fergus Millar places prior to the winter of 218–219. These included one by Gellius Maximus, who commanded the Fourth Legion and was executed, and one by Verus, who commanded the Third Legion Gallica, which was disbanded once the revolt was put down.
Next, according to Herodian, Elagabalus and his entourage spent the winter of 218–219 in Bithynia at Nicomedia, and then traveled through Thrace and Moesia to Italy in the first half of 219, the year of Elagabalus's second consulship. Herodian says that Elagabalus had a painting of himself sent ahead to Rome to be hung over a statue of the goddess Victoria in the Senate House so people would not be surprised by his Eastern garb, but it is unclear if such a painting actually existed, and Dio does not mention it. If the painting was indeed hung over Victoria, it put senators in the position of seeming to make offerings to Elagabalus when they made offerings to Victoria.
On his way to Rome, Elagabalus and his allies executed several prominent supporters of Macrinus, such as Syrian governor Fabius Agrippinus and former Thracian governor C. Claudius Attalus Paterculianus. Arriving at the imperial capital in August or September 219, Elagabalus staged an adventus, a ceremonial entrance to the city. In Rome, his offer of amnesty for the Roman upper class was largely honored, though the jurist Ulpian was exiled. Elagabalus made Comazon praetorian prefect, and later consul (220) and prefect of the city (three times, 220–222), which Dio regarded as a violation of Roman norms. Elagabalus himself held a consulship for the third year in a row in 220. Herodian and the Augustan History say that Elagabalus alienated many by giving powerful positions to other allies.
Dio states that Elagabalus wanted to marry a charioteer named Hierocles and to declare him caesar, just as (Dio says) he had previously wanted to marry Gannys and name him caesar. The athlete Aurelius Zoticus is said by Dio to have been Elagabalus's lover and cubicularius (a non-administrative role), while the Augustan History says Zoticus was a husband to Elagabalus and held greater political influence.
Elagabalus's relationships to his mother Julia Soaemias and grandmother Julia Maesa were strong at first; they were influential supporters from the beginning, and Macrinus declared war on them as well as Elagabalus. Accordingly, they became the first women allowed into the Senate, and both received senatorial titles: Soaemias the established title of Clarissima, and Maesa the more unorthodox Mater Castrorum et Senatus ("Mother of the army camp and of the Senate"). They exercised influence over the young emperor throughout his reign, and are found on many coins and inscriptions, a rare honor for Roman women.
Under Elagabalus, the gradual devaluation of Roman aurei and denarii continued (with the silver purity of the denarius dropping from 58% to 46.5%), though antoniniani had a higher metal content than under Caracalla.
Religious controversy
Since the reign of Septimius Severus, sun worship had increased throughout the Empire. At the end of 220, Elagabalus instated Elagabal as the chief deity of the Roman pantheon, possibly on the date of the winter solstice. In his official titulature, Elagabalus was then entitled in . That a foreign god should be honored above Jupiter, with Elagabalus himself as chief priest, shocked many Romans.
As a token of respect for Roman religion, however, Elagabalus joined either Astarte, Minerva, Urania, or some combination of the three to Elagabal as consort. A union between Elagabal and a traditional goddess would have served to strengthen ties between the new religion and the imperial cult. There may have been an effort to introduce Elagabal, Urania, and Athena as the new Capitoline triad of Rome—replacing Jupiter, Juno, and Minerva.
He aroused further discontent when he married the Vestal Virgin Aquilia Severa, Vesta's high priestess, claiming the marriage would produce "godlike children". This was a flagrant breach of Roman law and tradition, which held that any Vestal found to have engaged in sexual intercourse was to be buried alive.
A lavish temple called the Elagabalium was built on the east face of the Palatine Hill to house Elagabal, who was represented by a black conical meteorite from Emesa. This was a baetylus. Herodian wrote "this stone is worshipped as though it were sent from heaven; on it there are some small projecting pieces and markings that are pointed out, which the people would like to believe are a rough picture of the sun, because this is how they see them".
Dio writes that in order to increase his piety as high priest of Elagabal atop a new Roman pantheon, Elagabalus had himself circumcised and swore to abstain from swine. He forced senators to watch while he danced circling the altar of Elagabal to the accompaniment of drums and cymbals. Each summer solstice he held a festival dedicated to the god, which became popular with the masses because of the free food distributed on these occasions. During this festival, Elagabalus placed the black stone on a chariot adorned with gold and jewels, which he paraded through the city:
The most sacred relics from the Roman religion were transferred from their respective shrines to the Elagabalium, including the emblem of the Great Mother, the fire of Vesta, the Shields of the Salii, and the Palladium, so that no other god could be worshipped except in association with Elagabal. Although his native cult was widely ridiculed by contemporaries, sun-worship was popular among the soldiers and would be promoted by several later emperors.
Marriages, sexuality and gender
The question of Elagabalus's sexual orientation is confused, owing to salacious and unreliable sources. Cassius Dio states that Elagabalus was married five times (twice to the same woman). His first wife was Julia Cornelia Paula, whom he married prior to 29 August 219; between then and 28 August 220, he divorced Paula, took the Vestal Virgin Julia Aquilia Severa as his second wife, divorced her, and took a third wife, who Herodian says was Annia Aurelia Faustina, a descendant of Marcus Aurelius and the widow of a man Elagabalus had recently had executed, Pomponius Bassus. In the last year of his reign, Elagabalus divorced Annia Faustina and remarried Aquilia Severa.
Dio states that another "husband of this woman [Elagabalus] was Hierocles", an ex-slave and chariot driver from Caria. The Augustan History claims that Elagabalus also married a man named Zoticus, an athlete from Smyrna, while Dio says only that Zoticus was his cubicularius. Dio says that Elagabalus prostituted himself in taverns and brothels.
Dio says Elagabalus delighted in being called Hierocles's mistress, wife, and queen. The emperor reportedly wore makeup and wigs, preferred to be called a lady and not a lord, and supposedly offered vast sums to any physician who could provide him with a vagina. For this reason, the emperor is seen by some writers as an early transgender figure and one of the first on record as seeking sex reassignment surgery.
Fall from power
By 221 Elagabalus's eccentricities, particularly his relationship with Hierocles, increasingly provoked the soldiers of the Praetorian Guard. When Elagabalus's grandmother Julia Maesa perceived that popular support for the emperor was waning, she decided that he and his mother, who had encouraged his religious practices, had to be replaced. As alternatives, she turned to her other daughter, Julia Avita Mamaea, and her daughter's son, the fifteen-year-old Severus Alexander.
Prevailing on Elagabalus, she arranged that he appoint his cousin Alexander as his heir and that the boy be given the title of caesar. Alexander was elevated to caesar in June 221, possibly on 26 June. Elagabalus and Alexander were each named consul designatus for the following year, probably on 1 July. Elagabalus took up his fourth consulship for the year of 222. Alexander shared the consulship with the emperor that year. However, Elagabalus reconsidered this arrangement when he began to suspect that the Praetorian Guard preferred his cousin to himself.
Elagabalus ordered various attempts on Alexander's life, after failing to obtain approval from the Senate for stripping Alexander of his shared title. According to Dio, Elagabalus invented the rumor that Alexander was near death, in order to see how the Praetorians would react. A riot ensued, and the Guard demanded to see Elagabalus and Alexander in the Praetorian camp.
Assassination
The emperor complied and on 11 or 12 March 222 he publicly presented his cousin along with his own mother, Julia Soaemias. On their arrival the soldiers started cheering Alexander while ignoring Elagabalus, who ordered the summary arrest and execution of anyone who had taken part in this display of insubordination. In response, members of the Praetorian Guard attacked Elagabalus and his mother:
Following his assassination, many associates of Elagabalus were killed or deposed. His lover Hierocles was executed. His religious edicts were reversed and the stone of Elagabal was sent back to Emesa. Women were again barred from attending meetings of the Senate. The practice of damnatio memoriae—erasing from the public record a disgraced personage formerly of note—was systematically applied in his case. Several images, including an over-life-size statue of him as Hercules now in Naples, were re-carved with the face of Alexander Severus.
Sources
Cassius Dio
The historian Cassius Dio, who lived from the second half of the 2nd century until sometime after 229, wrote a contemporary account of Elagabalus. Born into a patrician family, Dio spent the greater part of his life in public service. He was a senator under emperor Commodus and governor of Smyrna after the death of Septimius Severus, and then he served as suffect consul around 205, and as proconsul in Africa and Pannonia.
Dio's Roman History spans nearly a millennium, from the arrival of Aeneas in Italy until the year 229. His contemporaneous account of Elagabalus's reign is generally considered more reliable than the Augustan History or other accounts for this general time period, though by his own admission Dio spent the greater part of the relevant period outside of Rome and had to rely on second-hand information.
Furthermore, the political climate in the aftermath of Elagabalus's reign, as well as Dio's own position within the government of Severus Alexander, who held him in high esteem and made him consul again, likely influenced the truth of this part of his history for the worse. Dio regularly refers to Elagabalus as Sardanapalus, partly to distinguish him from his divine namesake, but chiefly to do his part in maintaining the damnatio memoriae and to associate him with another autocrat notorious for a dissolute life.
Historian Clare Rowan calls Dio's account a mixture of reliable information and "literary exaggeration", noting that Elagabalus's marriages and time as consul are confirmed by numismatic and epigraphic records. In other instances, Dio's account is inaccurate, as when he says Elagabalus appointed entirely unqualified officials and that Comazon had no military experience before being named to head the Praetorian Guard, when in fact Comazon had commanded the Third Legion. Dio also gives different accounts in different places of when and by whom Diadumenian (whose forces Elagabalus fought) was given imperial names and titles.
Herodian
Another contemporary of Elagabalus was Herodian, a minor Roman civil servant who lived from until 240. His work, History of the Roman Empire since Marcus Aurelius, commonly abbreviated as Roman History, is an eyewitness account of the reign of Commodus until the beginning of the reign of Gordian III. His work largely overlaps with Dio's own Roman History, and the texts, written independently of each other, agree more often than not about Elagabalus and his short but eventful reign.
Arrizabalaga writes that Herodian is in most ways "less detailed and punctilious than Dio", and he is deemed less reliable by many modern scholars, though Rowan considers his account of Elagabalus's reign more reliable than Dio's and Herodian's lack of literary and scholarly pretensions are considered to make him less biased than senatorial historians. He is considered an important source for the religious reforms which took place during the reign of Elagabalus, which have been confirmed by numismatic and archaeological evidence.
Augustan History
The source of many stories of Elagabalus's depravity is the Augustan History (Historia Augusta), which includes controversial claims. It is most likely that the Historia Augusta was written towards the end of the 4th century, during the reign of emperor Theodosius I. The account of Elagabalus in the Augustan History is of uncertain historical merit. Sections 13 to 17, relating to the fall of Elagabalus, are less controversial among historians. The author of the most scandalous stories in the Augustan History concedes that "both these matters and some others which pass belief were, I think, invented by people who wanted to depreciate Heliogabalus to win favour with Alexander."
Modern historians
For readers of the modern age, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon (1737–1794) further cemented the scandalous reputation of Elagabalus. Gibbon not only accepted and expressed outrage at the allegations of the ancient historians, but he might have added some details of his own; for example, he is the first historian known to claim that Gannys was a eunuch. Gibbon wrote:
The 20th-century anthropologist James George Frazer (author of The Golden Bough) took seriously the monotheistic aspirations of the emperor, but also ridiculed him: "The dainty priest of the Sun [was] the most abandoned reprobate who ever sat upon a throne ... It was the intention of this eminently religious but crack-brained despot to supersede the worship of all the gods, not only at Rome but throughout the world, by the single worship of Elagabalus or the Sun."
The first book-length biography was The Amazing Emperor Heliogabalus (1911) by J. Stuart Hay, "a serious and systematic study" more sympathetic than that of previous historians, which nonetheless stressed the exoticism of Elagabalus, calling his reign one of "enormous wealth and excessive prodigality, luxury and aestheticism, carried to their ultimate extreme, and sensuality in all the refinements of its Eastern habit".
Some recent historians paint a more favourable picture of the emperor's rule. Martijn Icks, in Images of Elagabalus (2008; republished as The Crimes of Elagabalus in 2011 and 2012), doubts the reliability of the ancient sources and argues that it was the emperor's unorthodox religious policies that alienated the power elite of Rome, to the point that his grandmother saw fit to eliminate him and replace him with his cousin. He described ancient stories pertaining to the emperor as “part of a long tradition of ‘character assassination’ in ancient historiography and biography.”
Leonardo de Arrizabalaga y Prado, in The Emperor Elagabalus: Fact or Fiction? (2008), is also critical of the ancient historians and speculates that neither religion nor sexuality played a role in the fall of the young emperor. He was simply the loser in a power struggle within the imperial family; the loyalty of the Praetorian Guards was up for sale, and Julia Maesa had the resources to outmaneuver and outbribe her grandson. In this version of events, once Elagabalus, his mother, and his immediate circle had been murdered, a campaign of character assassination began, resulting in a grotesque caricature that has persisted to the present day.
Warwick Ball, in his book Rome in the East, writes a very apologetic account of the emperor, arguing that the wild descriptions of his religious rites were exaggerated and should be dismissed as propaganda, similar to how pagan descriptions of Christian rites (involving cannibalism and unspeakable orgies) have since been dismissed. Ball describes the emperor's ritual processions (marriage of the gods) as sound political and religious policy; that syncretism of eastern and western deities deserves praise rather than the ridicule he received. Ultimately, he paints Elagabalus as a child forced to become emperor by his scheming grandmother, and who rightfully, as high-priest of a cult, continued his rituals even after becoming emperor, which he viewed as a secondary occupation. Finally, Ball notes the eventual victory of Elagabalus, as his deity would be welcomed by Rome in its Sol Invictus form, brought back from Emesa by Aurelian 50 years later. Sol Invictus came to influence the monotheist Christian beliefs of Constantine, being grafted into Christianity till this day.
Cultural references
Despite the attempted damnatio memoriae, stories about Elagabalus survived and figured in many works of art and literature. In Spanish, his name became a word for "glutton", heliogábalo. Due to the ancient stories about him, he often appears in literature and other creative media as a decadent figure (becoming something of an anti-hero in the Decadent movement of the late 19th century, and inspiring many famous works of art, especially by Decadents) and the epitome of a young, amoral aesthete. The most notable of these works include:
Fiction
L'Agonie (1888) by Jean Lombard, which was the inspiration for Louis Couperus's De berg van licht (The Mountain of Light) in 1905–06;
Héliogabale ou l'Anarchiste couronné (Heliogabalus or The Anarchist Crowned) by Antonin Artaud (1934), depicting the life of Elagabalus and combining essay, biography, and fiction;
historical novels Family Favourites (1960) by Alfred Duggan and Child of the Sun (1966) by Kyle Onstott and Lance Horner, in the former of which an ordinary Roman soldier witnesses the reign; and
Victor Pelevin's Sol Invictus, which depicts Elagabalus as a key unrecognized spiritual figure.
Plays
Heliogabalus: A Buffoonery in Three Acts (1920) by H. L. Mencken and George Jean Nathan
Heliogabalus: A Love Story (2002) by Sky Gilbert
Dance
Héliogabale, a modern dance choreographed by Maurice Béjart
The Legends, a dance performed by Sebastian Droste as Heliogabalus, as part of the Dances of Vice, Horror and Ecstasy performance staged by Droste and Anita Berber in 1923
Music
Eliogabalo (1667), an opera by Venetian Baroque composer Francesco Cavalli
Elagabalus is mentioned in the Major-General's Song (1879) from Gilbert and Sullivan's The Pirates of Penzance.
Heliogabale (1910), an opera by French composer Déodat de Séverac
Artaud (1973), an album released by Argentine band Pescado Rabioso, particularly the track "Cantata de Puentes Amarillos", was heavily influenced by Antonin Artaud's book, Héliogabale ou l'Anarchiste couronné, as well as the life of Heliogabalus.
Eliogabalus (1990), title of both the second album and second song by the experimental rock band Devil Doll (Slovenian band)
Heliogabalus imperator (Emperor Heliogabalus) (1972), an orchestral work by the German composer Hans Werner Henze
Six Litanies for Heliogabalus (2007), an album by American musician John Zorn
The Pale Emperor (2015), an album by American musician Marilyn Manson, was inspired by the life of Heliogabalus and more specifically Antonin Artaud's book
Paintings
Heliogabalus, High Priest of the Sun (1866), by the Pre-Raphaelite Simeon Solomon
One of the most notorious incidents laid to his account, an extravagant dinner party in which guests were smothered under a mass of "violets and other flowers" dropped from above, is immortalized in the 19th-century painting The Roses of Heliogabalus (1888), by the Anglo-Dutch academician Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema.
Antonin Artaud Heliogabalus (2010–11), by Anselm Kiefer
Poetry
Algabal (1892–1919), a collection of poems by Stefan George
In "He 'Digesteth Harde Yron American poet Marianne Moore describes a banquet at which Elagabalus served six hundred ostrich brains, a detail she found in George Jennison's book Animals for Show and Pleasure in Ancient Rome.
Television
In CBBC's adaptation of Horrible Histories, Elagabalus is portrayed by Mathew Baynton as a laddish teenager with a cruel sense of humour.
Severan dynasty family tree
Explanatory notes
References
Bibliography
Primary sources
Published on Livius.org in 2007
Historia Augusta, The Life of Elagabalus Parts 1 and 2 , Latin text with English translation.
Secondary material
Arrizabalaga y Prado, Leonardo de. "Pseudo-Eunuchs in the Court of Elagabalus: The Riddle of Gannys, Eutychianus, and Comazon" , Collected Papers in Honour of the Ninety-Fifth Anniversary of Ueno Gakuen, Tokyo, 1999, pp. 117–41.
Arrizabalaga y Prado, Leonardo de. "Varian Studies: a Definition of the Subject", opening address to the Varian Symposium, Trinity College, Cambridge, 30–31 July 2005.
Additional copy. Introduction by J. B. Bury.
Kienast, Dietmar. "Heliogabalus, a Monster on the Roman Throne: The Literary Construction of a 'Bad' Emperor," in Ineke Sluiter and Ralph M. Rosen (eds), Kakos: Badness and Anti-value in Classical Antiquity (Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2008) (Mnemosyne: Supplements. History and Archaeology of Classical Antiquity, 307.
Kienast, Dietmar. "Leonardo de Arrizabalaga y Prado: The Emperor Elagabalus" .
Kienast, Dietmar. "The 'Vices and Follies' of Elagabalus in Modern Historical Research", paper delivered at the Varian Symposium, Trinity College, Cambridge, 30–31 July 2005.
, 26 August 1997.
Varian Symposium Acta and links for a conference held at Trinity College, Cambridge, 30–31 July 2005.
Images
Wildwinds coin archive: Elagabalus . Large archive of ancient Roman and provincial coins bearing the image of Elagabalus. Retrieved on 2008-05-03.
Coinarchives coin archive: Elagabalus . Large archive of ancient Roman and provincial coins issued under Elagabalus, including coins of family members. Retrieved on 2008-05-03.
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14229 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homeopathy | Homeopathy | Homeopathy or homoeopathy is a pseudoscientific system of alternative medicine. Its practitioners, called homeopaths, believe that a substance that causes symptoms of a disease in healthy people can cure similar symptoms in sick people; this doctrine is called similia similibus curentur, or "like cures like". All relevant scientific knowledge about physics, chemistry, biochemistry and biology gained since at least the mid-19th century contradicts homeopathy. Homeopathic remedies are typically biochemically inert, and have no effect on any known disease. Its theory of disease, centered around principles Hahnemann termed miasms, is inconsistent with subsequent identification of viruses and bacteria as causes of disease. Clinical trials have been conducted and generally demonstrated no objective effect from homeopathic preparations. The fundamental implausibility of homeopathy as well as a lack of demonstrable effectiveness has led to it being characterized within the scientific and medical communities as quackery and fraud.
Homeopathic preparations are termed remedies and are made using homeopathic dilution. In this process, the selected substance is repeatedly diluted until the final product is chemically indistinguishable from the diluent. Often not even a single molecule of the original substance can be expected to remain in the product. Between each dilution homeopaths may hit and/or shake the product, claiming this makes the diluent remember the original substance after its removal. Practitioners claim that such preparations, upon oral intake, can treat or cure disease.
It was conceived in 1796 by the German physician Samuel Hahnemann. Homeopathy achieved its greatest popularity in the 19th century. It was introduced to the United States in 1825 with the first homeopathic school opening in 1835. Throughout the 19th century, dozens of homeopathic institutions appeared in Europe and the United States. During this period, homeopathy was able to appear relatively successful, as other forms of treatment could be harmful and ineffective. By the end of the century the practice began to wane, with the last exclusively homeopathic medical school in the US closing in 1920. During the 1970s, homeopathy made a significant comeback, with sales of some homeopathic products increasing tenfold. The trend corresponded with the rise of the New Age movement, and may be in part due to chemophobia, an irrational preference for "natural" products, and the longer consultation times homeopathic practitioners provided.
In the 21st century a series of meta-analyses have shown that the therapeutic claims of homeopathy lack scientific justification. As a result, national and international bodies have recommended the withdrawal of government funding for homeopathy in healthcare. National bodies from Australia, the United Kingdom, Switzerland and France, as well as the European Academies' Science Advisory Council and the Russian Academy of Sciences have all concluded that homeopathy is ineffective, and recommended against the practice receiving any further funding. The National Health Service in England no longer provides funding for homeopathic remedies and asked the Department of Health to add homeopathic remedies to the list of forbidden prescription items. France removed funding in 2021, while Spain has also announced moves to ban homeopathy and other pseudotherapies from health centers.
History
Homeopathy, the longest established alternative medicine to come out of Europe, was created in 1796 by Samuel Hahnemann. Hahnemann rejected the mainstream medicine of the late 18th century as irrational and inadvisable because it was largely ineffective and often harmful. He advocated the use of single drugs at lower doses and promoted an immaterial, vitalistic view of how living organisms function. The term homeopathy was coined by Hahnemann and first appeared in print in 1807. He also coined the expression "allopathic medicine", which was used to pejoratively refer to traditional Western medicine.
Concept
Hahnemann conceived of homeopathy while translating a medical treatise by the Scottish physician and chemist William Cullen into German. Being sceptical of Cullen's theory that cinchona cured malaria because it was bitter, Hahnemann ingested some bark specifically to investigate what would happen. He experienced fever, shivering and joint pain: symptoms similar to those of malaria itself. From this, Hahnemann came to believe that all effective drugs produce symptoms in healthy individuals similar to those of the diseases that they treat. This led to the name "homeopathy", which comes from the hómoios, "-like" and páthos, "suffering".
The doctrine that those drugs are effective which produce symptoms similar to the symptoms caused by the diseases they treat, called "the law of similars", was expressed by Hahnemann with the Latin phrase similia similibus curentur, or "like cures like". Hahnemann's law of similars is unproven and does not derive from the scientific method. An account of the effects of eating cinchona bark noted by Oliver Wendell Holmes, published in 1861, failed to reproduce the symptoms Hahnemann reported. Subsequent scientific work showed that cinchona cures malaria because it contains quinine, which kills the Plasmodium falciparum parasite that causes the disease; the mechanism of action is unrelated to Hahnemann's ideas.
Provings
Hahnemann began to test what effects various substances may produce in humans, a procedure later called "homeopathic proving". These tests required subjects to test the effects of ingesting substances by recording all their symptoms as well as the ancillary conditions under which they appeared. He published a collection of provings in 1805, and a second collection of 65 preparations appeared in his book, Materia Medica Pura (1810).
As Hahnemann believed that large doses of drugs that caused similar symptoms would only aggravate illness, he advocated for extreme dilutions. A technique was devised for making dilutions that Hahnemann claimed would preserve the substance's therapeutic properties while removing its harmful effects. Hahnemann believed that this process enhanced "the spirit-like medicinal powers of the crude substances". He gathered and published an overview of his new medical system in his book, The Organon of the Healing Art (1810), with a sixth edition published in 1921 that homeopaths still use today.
Miasms and disease
In the Organon, Hahnemann introduced the concept of "miasms" as the "infectious principles" underlying chronic disease and as "peculiar morbid derangement[s] of vital force". Hahnemann associated each miasm with specific diseases, and thought that initial exposure to miasms causes local symptoms, such as skin or venereal diseases. His assertion was that if these symptoms were suppressed by medication, the cause went deeper and began to manifest itself as diseases of the internal organs. Homeopathy maintains that treating diseases by directly alleviating their symptoms, as is sometimes done in conventional medicine, is ineffective because all "disease can generally be traced to some latent, deep-seated, underlying chronic, or inherited tendency". The underlying imputed miasm still remains, and deep-seated ailments can be corrected only by removing the deeper disturbance of the vital force.
Hahnemann's hypotheses for miasms originally presented only three local symptoms: psora (the itch), syphilis (venereal disease) or sycosis (fig-wart disease). Of these the most important was psora, described as being related to any itching diseases of the skin and was claimed to be the foundation of many further disease conditions. Hahnemann believed it to be the cause of such diseases as epilepsy, cancer, jaundice, deafness, and cataracts. Since Hahnemann's time, other miasms have been proposed, some replacing illnesses previously attributed to the psora, including tuberculosis and cancer miasms.
Hahnemann's miasm theory remains disputed and controversial within homeopathy even in modern times. The theory of miasms has been criticized as an explanation developed to preserve the system of homeopathy in the face of treatment failures, and for being inadequate to cover the many hundreds of sorts of diseases, as well as for failing to explain disease predispositions, as well as genetics, environmental factors, and the unique disease history of each patient.
19th century: rise to popularity and early criticism
Homeopathy achieved its greatest popularity in the 19th century. It was introduced to the United States in 1825 by Hans Birch Gram, a student of Hahnemann. The first homeopathic school in the United States opened in 1835 and the American Institute of Homeopathy was established in 1844. Throughout the 19th century, dozens of homeopathic institutions appeared in Europe and the United States, and by 1900, there were 22 homeopathic colleges and 15,000 practitioners in the United States.
Because medical practice of the time relied on treatments which were often ineffective and harmful, patients of homeopaths often had better outcomes than those being treated by medical practitioners. Though ineffective, homeopathic preparations are rarely detrimental, thus users are less likely to be harmed by the treatment that is supposed to be helping them. The relative success of homeopathy in the 19th century may have led to the abandonment of the ineffective and harmful treatments of bloodletting and purging and begun the move towards more effective, science-based medicine. One reason for the growing popularity of homeopathy was its apparent success in treating people suffering from infectious disease epidemics. During 19th-century epidemics of diseases such as cholera, death rates in homeopathic hospitals were often lower than in conventional hospitals, where the treatments used at the time were often harmful and did little or nothing to combat the diseases.
Even during its rise in popularity, homeopathy was criticized by scientists and physicians. Sir John Forbes, physician to Queen Victoria, said in 1843 that the extremely small doses of homeopathy were regularly derided as useless and considered it "an outrage to human reason". James Young Simpson said in 1853 of the highly diluted drugs: "No poison, however strong or powerful, the billionth or decillionth of which would in the least degree affect a man or harm a fly." 19th-century American physician and author Oliver Wendell Holmes was also a vocal critic of homeopathy and published an essay entitled Homœopathy and Its Kindred Delusions (1842). The members of the French Homeopathic Society observed in 1867 that some leading homeopaths of Europe not only were abandoning the practice of administering infinitesimal doses but were also no longer defending it. The last school in the US exclusively teaching homeopathy closed in 1920.
Revival in the 20th century
According to academics and Edzard Ernst, the Nazi regime in Germany was fond of homeopathy, and spent large sums of money on researching its mechanisms, but without gaining a positive result. Unschuld also states that homeopathy never subsequently took root in the United States, but remained more deeply established in European thinking. In the United States, the Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act of 1938 (sponsored by Royal Copeland, a Senator from New York and homeopathic physician) recognized homeopathic preparations as drugs. In the 1950s, there were only 75 solely homeopathic practitioners in the U.S. By the mid to late 1970s, homeopathy made a significant comeback and the sales of some homeopathic companies increased tenfold.
Some homeopaths credit for the revival to Greek homeopath George Vithoulkas, who conducted a "great deal of research to update the scenarios and refine the theories and practice of homeopathy" in the 1970s, but Ernst and Simon Singh consider it to be linked to the rise of the New Age movement. Bruce Hood has argued that the increased popularity of homeopathy in recent times may be due to the comparatively long consultations practitioners are willing to give their patients, and to a preference for "natural" products, which people think are the basis of homeopathic preparations.
Towards the end of the century opposition to homeopathy began to increase again; with William T. Jarvis, the President of the National Council Against Health Fraud, saying that "Homeopathy is a fraud perpetrated on the public with the government's blessing, thanks to the abuse of political power of Sen. Royal S. Copeland."
21st century: renewed criticism
Since the beginning of the 21st century, a series of meta-analyses have further shown that the therapeutic claims of homeopathy lack scientific justification. This had led to a decrease or suspension of funding by many governments. In a 2010 report, the Science and Technology Committee of the United Kingdom House of Commons recommended that homeopathy should no longer receive National Health Service (NHS) funding due its lack of scientific credibility; NHS funding for homeopathy ceased in 2017. They also asked the Department of Health in the UK to add homeopathic remedies to the list of forbidden prescription items.
In 2015, the National Health and Medical Research Council of Australia found there were "there are no health conditions for which there is reliable evidence that homeopathy is effective". The federal government only ended up accepting three of the 45 recommendations made by the 2018 review of Pharmacy Remuneration and Regulation. The same year the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) held a hearing requesting public comment on the regulation of homeopathic drugs. In 2017 the FDA announced it would strengthen regulation of homeopathic products.
The American non-profit Center for Inquiry (CFI) filed a lawsuit in 2018 against the CVS pharmacy for consumer fraud over its sale of homeopathic medicines. It claimed that CVS was selling homeopathic products on an easier-to-obtain basis than standard medication. In 2019, CFI brought a similar lawsuit against Walmart for "committing wide-scale consumer fraud and endangering the health of its customers through its sale and marketing of homeopathic medicines". They also conducted a survey in which they found consumers felt ripped off when informed of the lack of evidence for the efficacy of homeopathic remedies, such as those sold by Walmart and CVS.
In 2021, the French healthcare minister phased out social security reimbursements for homeopathic drugs. France has long had a stronger belief in the virtues of homeopathic drugs than many other countries and the world's biggest manufacturer of alternative medicine drugs, Boiron, is located in that country. Spain has also announced moves to ban homeopathy and other pseudotherapies. In 2016, the University of Barcelona cancelled its master's degree in Homeopathy citing "lack of scientific basis", after advice from the Spanish Ministry of Health. Shortly afterwards the University of Valencia announced the elimination of its Masters in Homeopathy.
Preparations and treatment
Homeopathic preparations are referred to as "homeopathic remedies". Practitioners rely on two types of reference when prescribing: Materia medica and repertories. A homeopathic materia medica is a collection of "drug pictures", organized alphabetically. A homeopathic repertory is a quick reference version of the materia medica that indexes the symptoms and then the associated remedies for each. In both cases different compilers may dispute particular inclusions in the references. The first symptomatic homeopathic materia medica was arranged by Hahnemann. The first homeopathic repertory was Georg Jahr's Symptomenkodex, published in German in 1835, and translated into English as the Repertory to the more Characteristic Symptoms of Materia Medica in 1838. This version was less focused on disease categories and was the forerunner to later works by James Tyler Kent. There are over 118 repertories published in English, with Kent's being one of the most used.
Consultation
Homeopaths generally begin with a consultation, which can be a 10-15 minute appointment or last for over an hour, where the patient describes their medical history. The patient describes the "modalities", or if their symptoms change depending on the weather and other external factors. The practitioner also solicits information on mood, likes and dislikes, physical, mental and emotional states, life circumstances, and any physical or emotional illnesses. This information (also called the "symptom picture") is matched to the "drug picture" in the materia medica or repertory and used to determine the appropriate homeopathic remedies. In classical homeopathy, the practitioner attempts to match a single preparation to the totality of symptoms (the simlilum), while "clinical homeopathy" involves combinations of preparations based on the illness's symptoms.
Preparation
Homeopathy uses animal, plant, mineral, and synthetic substances in its preparations, generally referring to them using Latin names. Examples include arsenicum album (arsenic oxide), natrum muriaticum (sodium chloride or table salt), Lachesis muta (the venom of the bushmaster snake), opium, and thyroidinum (thyroid hormone). Homeopaths say this is to ensure accuracy. In the USA the common name must be displayed, although the Latin one can also be present. Homeopathic pills are made from an inert substance (often sugars, typically lactose), upon which a drop of liquid homeopathic preparation is placed and allowed to evaporate.
Isopathy is a therapy derived from homeopathy in which the preparations come from diseased or pathological products such as fecal, urinary and respiratory discharges, blood, and tissue. They are called nosodes (from the Greek nosos, disease) with preparations made from "healthy" specimens being termed "sarcodes". Many so-called "homeopathic vaccines" are a form of isopathy. Tautopathy is a form of isopathy where the preparations are composed of drugs or vaccines that a person has consumed in the past, in the belief that this can reverse the supposed lingering damage caused by the initial use. There is no convincing scientific evidence for isopathy as an effective method of treatment.
Some modern homeopaths use preparations they call "imponderables" because they do not originate from a substance but some other phenomenon presumed to have been "captured" by alcohol or lactose. Examples include X-rays and sunlight. Another derivative is electrohomeopathy, where an electric bio-energy of therapeutic value is supposedly extracted from plants. Popular in the late nineteenth century, electrohomeopathy is extremely pseudo-scientific. In 2012, the Allahabad High Court in Uttar Pradesh, India, handed down a decree stating that electrohomeopathy was quackery and no longer recognized it as a system of medicine .
Other minority practices include paper preparations, in which the terms for substances and dilutions are written on pieces of paper and either pinned to the patients' clothing, put in their pockets, or placed under glasses of water that are then given to the patients. Radionics, the use of electromagnetic radiation such as radio waves, can also be used to manufacture preparations. Such practices have been strongly criticized by classical homeopaths as unfounded, speculative, and verging upon magic and superstition. Flower preparations are produced by placing flowers in water and exposing them to sunlight. The most famous of these are the Bach flower remedies, which were developed by Edward Bach.
Dilutions
Hahnemann claimed that undiluted doses caused reactions, sometimes dangerous ones, and thus that preparations be given at the lowest possible dose. A solution that is more dilute is described as having a higher "potency", and thus are claimed to be stronger and deeper-acting. The general method of dilution is serial dilution, where solvent is added to part of the previous mixture, but the "Korsakovian" method may also be used. In the Korsakovian method, the vessel in which the preparations are manufactured is emptied, refilled with solvent, with the volume of fluid adhering to the walls of the vessel deemed sufficient for the new batch. The Korsakovian method is sometimes referred to as K on the label of a homeopathic preparation. Another method is Fluxion, which dilutes the substance by continuously passing water through the vial. Insoluble solids, such as granite, diamond, and platinum, are diluted by grinding them with lactose ("trituration").
Three main logarithmic dilution scales are in regular use in homeopathy. Hahnemann created the "centesimal" or "C scale", diluting a substance by a factor of 100 at each stage. There is also a decimal dilution scale (notated as "X" or "D") in which the preparation is diluted by a factor of 10 at each stage. The centesimal scale was favoured by Hahnemann for most of his life, although in his last ten years Hahnemann developed a quintamillesimal (Q) scale which diluted the drug 1 part in 50,000. A 2C dilution works out to one part of the original substance in 10,000 parts of the solution. In standard chemistry, this produces a substance with a concentration of 0.01% (volume-volume percentage). A 6C dilution ends up with the original substance diluted by a factor of 100−6 (one part in one trillion). The end product is usually so diluted as to be indistinguishable from the diluent (pure water, sugar or alcohol). The greatest dilution reasonably likely to contain at least one molecule of the original substance is approximately 12C.
Hahnemann advocated dilutions of 1 part to 1060 or 30C. Hahnemann regularly used dilutions of up to 30C but opined that "there must be a limit to the matter". To counter the reduced potency at high dilutions he formed the view that vigorous shaking by striking on an elastic surface – a process termed succussion – was necessary. Homeopaths are unable to agree on the number and force of strikes needed, and there is no way that the claimed results of succussion can be tested.
Critics of homeopathy commonly emphasize the dilutions involved in homeopathy, using analogies. One mathematically correct example is that a 12C solution is equivalent to "a pinch of salt in both the North and South Atlantic Oceans". One-third of a drop of some original substance diluted into all the water on earth would produce a preparation with a concentration of about 13C. A 200C dilution of duck liver, marketed under the name Oscillococcinum, would require 10320 universes worth of molecules to contain just one original molecule in the final substance. The high dilutions characteristically used are often considered to be the most controversial and implausible aspect of homeopathy.
Provings
Homeopaths claim that they can determine the properties of their preparations by following a method which they call "proving". As performed by Hahnemann, provings involved administering various preparations to healthy volunteers. The volunteers were then observed, often for months at a time. They were made to keep extensive journals detailing all of their symptoms at specific times throughout the day. They were forbidden from consuming coffee, tea, spices, or wine for the duration of the experiment; playing chess was also prohibited because Hahnemann considered it to be "too exciting", though they were allowed to drink beer and encouraged to exercise in moderation. At first Hahnemann used undiluted doses for provings, but he later advocated provings with preparations at a 30C dilution, and most modern provings are carried out using ultra-dilute preparations.
Provings are claimed to have been important in the development of the clinical trial, due to their early use of simple control groups, systematic and quantitative procedures, and some of the first application of statistics in medicine. The lengthy records of self-experimentation by homeopaths have occasionally proven useful in the development of modern drugs: For example, evidence that nitroglycerin might be useful as a treatment for angina was discovered by looking through homeopathic provings, though homeopaths themselves never used it for that purpose at that time. The first recorded provings were published by Hahnemann in his 1796 Essay on a New Principle. His Fragmenta de Viribus (1805) contained the results of 27 provings, and his 1810 Materia Medica Pura contained 65. For James Tyler Kent's 1905 Lectures on Homoeopathic Materia Medica, 217 preparations underwent provings and newer substances are continually added to contemporary versions.
Though the proving process has superficial similarities with clinical trials, it is fundamentally different in that the process is subjective, not blinded, and modern provings are unlikely to use pharmacologically active levels of the substance under proving. As early as 1842, Oliver Holmes had noted that provings were impossibly vague, and the purported effect was not repeatable among different subjects.
Evidence and efficacy
Outside of the alternative medicine community, scientists have long considered homeopathy a sham or a pseudoscience, and the medical community regards it as quackery. There is an overall absence of sound statistical evidence of therapeutic efficacy, which is consistent with the lack of any biologically plausible pharmacological agent or mechanism. Proponents argue that homeopathic medicines must work by some, as yet undefined, biophysical mechanism. No homeopathic preparation has been shown to be different from placebo.
Lack of scientific evidence
The lack of convincing scientific evidence supporting its efficacy and its use of preparations without active ingredients have led to characterizations of homeopathy as pseudoscience and quackery, or, in the words of a 1998 medical review, "placebo therapy at best and quackery at worst". The Russian Academy of Sciences considers homeopathy a "dangerous 'pseudoscience' that does not work", and "urges people to treat homeopathy 'on a par with magic. The Chief Medical Officer for England, Dame Sally Davies, has stated that homeopathic preparations are "rubbish" and do not serve as anything more than placebos. In 2013, Mark Walport, the UK Government Chief Scientific Adviser and head of the Government Office for Science said "homeopathy is nonsense, it is non-science." His predecessor, John Beddington, also said that homeopathy "has no underpinning of scientific basis" and is being "fundamentally ignored" by the Government.
Jack Killen, acting deputy director of the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine, says homeopathy "goes beyond current understanding of chemistry and physics". He adds: "There is, to my knowledge, no condition for which homeopathy has been proven to be an effective treatment." Ben Goldacre says that homeopaths who misrepresent scientific evidence to a scientifically illiterate public, have "... walled themselves off from academic medicine, and critique has been all too often met with avoidance rather than argument". Homeopaths often prefer to ignore meta-analyses in favour of cherry picked positive results, such as by promoting a particular observational study (one which Goldacre describes as "little more than a customer-satisfaction survey") as if it were more informative than a series of randomized controlled trials.
In an article entitled "Should We Maintain an Open Mind about Homeopathy?" published in the American Journal of Medicine, Michael Baum and Edzard Ernstwriting to other physicianswrote that "Homeopathy is among the worst examples of faith-based medicine... These axioms [of homeopathy] are not only out of line with scientific facts but also directly opposed to them. If homeopathy is correct, much of physics, chemistry, and pharmacology must be incorrect...".
Plausibility of dilutions
The exceedingly low concentration of homeopathic preparations, which often lack even a single molecule of the diluted substance, has been the basis of questions about the effects of the preparations since the 19th century. The laws of chemistry give this dilution limit, which is related to Avogadro's number, as being roughly equal to 12C homeopathic dilutions (1 part in 1024). James Randi and the 10:23 campaign groups have highlighted the lack of active ingredients by taking large 'overdoses'. None of the hundreds of demonstrators in the UK, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the US were injured and "no one was cured of anything, either".
Modern advocates of homeopathy have proposed a concept of "water memory", according to which water "remembers" the substances mixed in it, and transmits the effect of those substances when consumed. This concept is inconsistent with the current understanding of matter, and water memory has never been demonstrated to have any detectable effect, biological or otherwise. Existence of a pharmacological effect in the absence of any true active ingredient is inconsistent with the law of mass action and the observed dose-response relationships characteristic of therapeutic drugs. Homeopaths contend that their methods produce a therapeutically active preparation, selectively including only the intended substance, though critics note that any water will have been in contact with millions of different substances throughout its history, and homeopaths have not been able to account for a reason why only the selected homeopathic substance would be a special case in their process.
Practitioners also hold that higher dilutions produce stronger medicinal effects. This idea is also inconsistent with observed dose-response relationships, where effects are dependent on the concentration of the active ingredient in the body. Some contend that the phenomenon of hormesis may support the idea of dilution increasing potency, but the dose-response relationship outside the zone of hormesis declines with dilution as normal, and nonlinear pharmacological effects do not provide any credible support for homeopathy.
Efficacy
No individual homeopathic preparation has been unambiguously shown by research to be different from placebo. The methodological quality of the early primary research was low, with problems such as weaknesses in study design and reporting, small sample size, and selection bias. Since better quality trials have become available, the evidence for efficacy of homeopathy preparations has diminished; the highest-quality trials indicate that the preparations themselves exert no intrinsic effect. A review conducted in 2010 of all the pertinent studies of "best evidence" produced by the Cochrane Collaboration concluded that "the most reliable evidence – that produced by Cochrane reviews – fails to demonstrate that homeopathic medicines have effects beyond placebo."
In 2009 the United Kingdom's House of Commons Science and Technology Committee concluded that there was no compelling evidence of effect other than placebo. The Australian National Health and Medical Research Council completed a comprehensive review of the effectiveness of homeopathic preparations in 2015, in which it concluded that "there were no health conditions for which there was reliable evidence that homeopathy was effective." The European Academies' Science Advisory Council (EASAC) published its official analysis in 2017 finding a lack of evidence that homeopathic products are effective, and raising concerns about quality control. In contrast a 2011 book was published, purportedly financed by the Swiss government, that concluded that homeopathy was effective and cost efficient. Although hailed by proponents as proof that homeopathy works, it was found to be scientifically, logically and ethically flawed, with most authors having a conflict of interest. The Swiss Federal Office of Public Health later released a statement saying the book was published without the consent of the Swiss government.
Meta-analyses, essential tools to summarize evidence of therapeutic efficacy, and systematic reviews have found that the methodological quality in the majority of randomized trials in homeopathy have shortcomings and that such trials were generally of lower quality than trials of conventional medicine. A major issue has been publication bias, where positive results are more likely to be published in journals. This has been particularly marked in alternative medicine journals, where few of the published articles (just 5% during the year 2000) tend to report null results. A systematic review of the available systematic reviews confirmed in 2002 that higher-quality trials tended to have less positive results, and found no convincing evidence that any homeopathic preparation exerts clinical effects different from placebo. The same conclusion was also reached in 2005 in a meta-analysis published in The Lancet. A 2017 systematic review and meta-analysis found that the most reliable evidence did not support the effectiveness of non-individualized homeopathy.
Health organizations, including the UK's National Health Service, the American Medical Association, the FASEB, and the National Health and Medical Research Council of Australia, have issued statements saying that there is no good-quality evidence that homeopathy is effective as a treatment for any health condition. In 2009, World Health Organization official Mario Raviglione criticized the use of homeopathy to treat tuberculosis; similarly, another WHO spokesperson argued there was no evidence homeopathy would be an effective treatment for diarrhoea. They warned against the use of homeopathy for serious conditions such as depression, HIV and malaria. The American College of Medical Toxicology and the American Academy of Clinical Toxicology recommend that no one use homeopathic treatment for disease or as a preventive health measure. These organizations report that no evidence exists that homeopathic treatment is effective, but that there is evidence that using these treatments produces harm and can bring indirect health risks by delaying conventional treatment.
Purported effects in other biological systems
While some articles have suggested that homeopathic solutions of high dilution can have statistically significant effects on organic processes including the growth of grain and enzyme reactions, such evidence is disputed since attempts to replicate them have failed. In 2001 and 2004, Madeleine Ennis published a number of studies that reported that homeopathic dilutions of histamine exerted an effect on the activity of basophils. In response to the first of these studies, Horizon aired a programme in which British scientists attempted to replicate Ennis' results; they were unable to do so. A 2007 systematic review of high-dilution experiments found that none of the experiments with positive results could be reproduced by all investigators.
In 1988, French immunologist Jacques Benveniste published a paper in the journal Nature while working at INSERM. The paper purported to have discovered that basophils released histamine when exposed to a homeopathic dilution of anti-immunoglobulin E antibody. Skeptical of the findings, Nature assembled an independent investigative team to determine the accuracy of the research. After investigation the team found that the experiments were "statistically ill-controlled", "interpretation has been clouded by the exclusion of measurements in conflict with the claim", and concluded, "We believe that experimental data have been uncritically assessed and their imperfections inadequately reported."
Ethics and safety
The provision of homeopathic preparations has been described as unethical. Michael Baum, Professor Emeritus of Surgery and visiting Professor of Medical Humanities at University College London (UCL), has described homeopathy as a "cruel deception". Edzard Ernst, the first Professor of Complementary Medicine in the United Kingdom and a former homeopathic practitioner, has expressed his concerns about pharmacists who violate their ethical code by failing to provide customers with "necessary and relevant information" about the true nature of the homeopathic products they advertise and sell. In 2013 the UK Advertising Standards Authority concluded that the Society of Homeopaths were targeting vulnerable ill people and discouraging the use of essential medical treatment while making misleading claims of efficacy for homeopathic products. In 2015 the Federal Court of Australia imposed penalties on a homeopathic company for making false or misleading statements about the efficacy of the whooping cough vaccine and recommending homeopathic remedies as an alternative.A 2000 review by homeopaths reported that homeopathic preparations are "unlikely to provoke severe adverse reactions". In 2012, a systematic review evaluating evidence of homeopathy's possible adverse effects concluded that "homeopathy has the potential to harm patients and consumers in both direct and indirect ways". A 2016 systematic review and meta-analysis found that, in homeopathic clinical trials, adverse effects were reported among the patients who received homeopathy about as often as they were reported among patients who received placebo or conventional medicine.
Some homeopathic preparations involve poisons such as Belladonna, arsenic, and poison ivy. In rare cases, the original ingredients are present at detectable levels. This may be due to improper preparation or intentional low dilution. Serious adverse effects such as seizures and death have been reported or associated with some homeopathic preparations. Instances of arsenic poisoning have occurred. In 2009, the FDA advised consumers to stop using three discontinued cold remedy Zicam products because it could cause permanent damage to users' sense of smell. In 2016 the FDA issued a safety alert to consumers warning against the use of homeopathic teething gels and tablets following reports of adverse events after their use. A previous FDA investigation had found that these products were improperly diluted and contained "unsafe levels of belladonna" and that the reports of serious adverse events in children using this product were "consistent with belladonna toxicity".
Patients who choose to use homeopathy rather than evidence-based medicine risk missing timely diagnosis and effective treatment, thereby worsening the outcomes of serious conditions such as cancer. The Russian Commission on Pseudoscience has said homeopathy is not safe because "patients spend significant amounts of money, buying medicines that do not work and disregard already known effective treatment." Critics have cited cases of patients failing to receive proper treatment for diseases that could have been easily managed with conventional medicine and who have died as a result. They have also condemned the "marketing practice" of criticizing and downplaying the effectiveness of medicine. Homeopaths claim that use of conventional medicines will "push the disease deeper" and cause more serious conditions, a process referred to as "suppression". In 1978, Anthony Campbell, a consultant physician at the Royal London Homeopathic Hospital, criticized statements by George Vithoulkas claiming that syphilis, when treated with antibiotics, would develop into secondary and tertiary syphilis with involvement of the central nervous system. Vithoulkas' claims echo the idea that treating a disease with external medication used to treat the symptoms would only drive it deeper into the body and conflict with scientific studies, which indicate that penicillin treatment produces a complete cure of syphilis in more than 90% of cases.
The use of homeopathy as a preventive for serious infectious diseases, called homeoprophylaxis, is especially controversial. Some homeopaths (particularly those who are non-physicians) advise their patients against immunization. Others have suggested that vaccines be replaced with homeopathic "nosodes". While Hahnemann was opposed to such preparations, modern homeopaths often use them although there is no evidence to indicate they have any beneficial effects. Promotion of homeopathic alternatives to vaccines has been characterized as dangerous, inappropriate and irresponsible. In December 2014, the Australian homeopathy supplier Homeopathy Plus! was found to have acted deceptively in promoting homeopathic alternatives to vaccines. In 2019, an investigative journalism piece by the Telegraph revealed that homeopathy practitioners were actively discouraging patients from vaccinating their children. Cases of homeopaths advising against the use of anti-malarial drugs have also been identified, putting visitors to the tropics in severe danger.
A 2006 review recommends that pharmacy colleges include a required course where ethical dilemmas inherent in recommending products lacking proven safety and efficacy data be discussed and that students should be taught where unproven systems such as homeopathy depart from evidence-based medicine.
Regulation and prevalence
Homeopathy is fairly common in some countries while being uncommon in others; is highly regulated in some countries and mostly unregulated in others. It is practiced worldwide and professional qualifications and licences are needed in most countries. A 2019 WHO report found that 100 out of 133 Member States surveyed in 2012 acknowledged that their population used homeopathy, with 22 saying the practice was regulated and 13 providing health insurance coverage. In some countries, there are no specific legal regulations concerning the use of homeopathy, while in others, licences or degrees in conventional medicine from accredited universities are required. In 2001 homeopathy had been integrated into the national health care systems of many countries, including India, Mexico, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and the United Kingdom.
Regulation
Some homeopathic treatment is covered by the public health service of several European countries, including Scotland, and Luxembourg. It used to be covered in France until 2021. In other countries, such as Belgium, homeopathy is not covered. In Austria, the public health service requires scientific proof of effectiveness in order to reimburse medical treatments and homeopathy is listed as not reimbursable, but exceptions can be made; private health insurance policies sometimes include homeopathic treatments. In 2018, Austria's Medical University of Vienna stopped teaching homeopathy. The Swiss government withdrew coverage of homeopathy and four other complementary treatments in 2005, stating that they did not meet efficacy and cost-effectiveness criteria, but following a referendum in 2009 the five therapies were reinstated for a further 6-year trial period. In Germany, homeopathic treatments are covered by 70 percent of government medical plans, and available in almost every pharmacy.
The English NHS recommended against prescribing homeopathic preparations in 2017. In 2018 prescriptions worth £55,000 were written in defiance of the guidelines, representing less than 0.001% of the total NHS prescribing budget. In 2016 the UK's Committee of Advertising Practice compliance team wrote to homeopaths in the UK to "remind them of the rules that govern what they can and can't say in their marketing materials". The letter told homeopaths to "ensure that they do not make any direct or implied claims that homeopathy can treat medical conditions" and asks them to review their marketing communications "including websites and social media pages" to ensure compliance. Homeopathic services offered at Bristol Homeopathic Hospital in the UK ceased in October 2015,
Member states or the European Union are required to ensure that homeopathic products are registered, although this process does not require any proof of efficacy. In Spain the Association for the protection of patients from pseudo-scientific therapies is lobbying to get rid of the easy registration procedure for homeopathic remedies. In Bulgaria, Hungary, Latvia, Romania and Slovenia homeopathy, by law, can only be practiced by medical practitioners. However, in Slovenia if doctors practice homeopathy their medical license will be revoked. In Germany, to become a homeopathic physician, one must attend a three-year training program, while France, Austria and Denmark mandate licences to diagnose any illness or dispense of any product whose purpose is to treat any illness. Homeopaths in the UK are under no legal regulations, meaning anyone can call themselves homeopaths and administer homeopathic remedies.
The Indian government recognizes homeopathy as one of its national systems of medicine and they are sold with medical claims. It has established the Department of Ayurveda, Yoga and Naturopathy, Unani, Siddha and Homoeopathy (AYUSH) under the Ministry of Health & Family Welfare. The south Indian state of Kerala also has a cabinet-level AYUSH department. The Central Council of Homoeopathy was established in 1973 to monitor higher education in homeopathy, and the National Institute of Homoeopathy in 1975. Principals and standards for homeopathic products are covered by the Homoeopathic pharmacopoeia of India. A minimum of a recognized diploma in homeopathy and registration on a state register or the Central Register of Homoeopathy is required to practice homeopathy in India.
Some medical schools in Pakistan, India, and Bangladesh, offer an undergraduate degree programme in homeopathy. Upon completion the college may award a (B.H.M.S.).
In the United States each state is responsible for the laws and licensing requirements for homeopathy. In 2015, the FDA held a hearing on homeopathic product regulation. Representatives from the Center for Inquiry and the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry gave a testimonial which summarized the harm that is done to the general public from homeopathics and proposed regulatory actions: In 2016 the United States Federal Trade Commission (FTC) issued an "Enforcement Policy Statement Regarding Marketing Claims for Over-the-Counter Homeopathic Drugs" which specified that the FTC will apply the same standard to homeopathic drugs that it applies to other products claiming similar benefits. A related report concluded that claims of homeopathy effectiveness "are not accepted by most modern medical experts and do not constitute competent and reliable scientific evidence that these products have the claimed treatment effects." In 2019 the FDA removed an enforcement policy that permitted unapproved homeopathics to be sold. Currently no homeopathic products are approved by the FDA.
Homeopathic remedies are regulated as natural health products in Canada. Ontario became the first province in the country to regulate the practice of homeopathy, a move that was widely criticized by scientists and doctors. Health Canada requires all products to have a licence before being sold and applicants have to submit evidence on "the safety, efficacy and quality of a homeopathic medicine". In 2015 the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation tested the system by applying for and then receiving a government approved licence for a made-up drug aimed at kids.
In Australia, the sale of homeopathic products is regulated by the Therapeutic Goods Administration. In 2015, the National Health and Medical Research Council of Australia concluded that there is "no reliable evidence that homeopathy is effective and should not be used to treat health conditions that are chronic, serious, or could become serious". They recommended anyone considering using homeopathy should first get advice from a registered health practitioner. A 2017 review into Pharmacy Remuneration and Regulation recommended that products be banned from pharmacies; while noting the concerns the government did not adopt the recommendation. In New Zealand there are no regulations specific to homeopathy and the New Zealand Medical Association does not oppose the use of homeopathy, a stance that has been called unethical by some doctors.
Prevalence
Homeopathy is one of the most commonly used forms of alternative medicines and it has a large worldwide market. The exact size is uncertain, but information available on homeopathic sales suggests it forms a large share of the medical market.
In 1999, about 1000 UK doctors practiced homeopathy, most being general practitioners who prescribe a limited number of remedies. A further 1500 homeopaths with no medical training are also thought to practice. Over ten thousand German and French doctors use homeopathy. In the United States a National Health Interview Survey estimated 5 million adults and 1 million children used homeopathy in 2011. An analysis of this survey concluded that most cases were self-prescribed for colds and musculoskeletal pain. Major retailers like Walmart, CVS, and Walgreens sell homeopathic products that are packaged to resemble conventional medicines.
The homeopathic drug market in Germany is worth about 650 million euro with a 2014 survey finding that 60 percent of Germans reported trying homeopathy. A 2009 survey found that only 17 percent of respondents knew how homeopathic medicine was made. France spent more than US$408 million on homeopathic products in 2008. In the United States the homeopathic market is worth about $3 billion-a-year; with 2.9 billion spent in 2007. Australia spent US$7.3 million on homeopathic medicines in 2008.
In India, a 2014 national health survey found that homeopathy was used by about 3% of the population. Homeopathy is used in China, although it arrived a lot later than in many other countries, partly due to the restriction on foreigners that persisted until late in the nineteenth century. Throughout Africa there is a high reliance on traditional medicines, which can be attributed to the cost of modern medicines and the relative prevalence of practitioners. Many African countries do not have any official training facilities.
Veterinary use
The idea of using homeopathy as a treatment for animals is termed "veterinary homeopathy" and dates back to the inception of homeopathy; Hahnemann himself wrote and spoke of the use of homeopathy in animals other than humans. The use of homeopathy in the organic farming industry is heavily promoted. Given that homeopathy's effects in humans are due to the placebo effect and the counseling aspects of the consultation, such treatments are even less effective in animals. Studies have also found that giving animals placebos can play active roles in influencing pet owners to believe in the effectiveness of the treatment when none exists. This means that animals given homeopathic remedies will continue to suffer, resulting in animal welfare concerns.
Little existing research on the subject is of a high enough scientific standard to provide reliable data on efficacy. A 2016 review of peer-reviewed articles from 1981 to 2014 by scientists from the University of Kassel, Germany, concluded that there is not enough evidence to support homeopathy as an effective treatment of infectious diseases in livestock. The UK's Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) has adopted a robust position against use of "alternative" pet preparations including homeopathy. The British Veterinary Association's position statement on alternative medicines says that it "cannot endorse" homeopathy, and the Australian Veterinary Association includes it on its list of "ineffective therapies".
See also
Fringe science
List of topics characterized as pseudoscience
Scientific skepticism
References
External links
Homeopathy (NHS Choices, UK)
Pseudoscience
Obsolete medical theories
1796 introductions
Consumer fraud | [
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14231 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hairpin | Hairpin | A hairpin or hair pin is a long device used to hold a person's hair in place. It may be used simply to secure long hair out of the way for convenience or as part of an elaborate hairstyle or coiffure. The earliest evidence for dressing the hair may be seen in carved "Venus figurines" such as the Venus of Brassempouy and the Venus of Willendorf. The creation of different hairstyles, especially among women, seems to be common to all cultures and all periods and many past, and current, societies use hairpins.
Hairpins made of metal, ivory, bronze, carved wood, etc. were used in ancient Assyria and Egypt for securing decorated hairstyles. Such hairpins suggest, as graves show, that many were luxury objects among the Egyptians and later the Greeks, Etruscans, and Romans. Major success came in 1901 with the invention of the spiral hairpin by New Zealand inventor Ernest Godward. This was a predecessor of the hair clip.
The hairpin may be decorative and encrusted with jewels and ornaments, or it may be utilitarian, and designed to be almost invisible while holding a hairstyle in place. Some hairpins are a single straight pin, but modern versions are more likely to be constructed from different lengths of wire that are bent in half with a u-shaped end and a few kinks along the two opposite portions. The finished pin may vary from two to six inches in last length. The length of the wires enables placement in several designs of hairstyles to hold the nature in place. The kinks enable retaining the pin during normal movements.
A hairpin patent was issued to Kelly Chamandy in 1925.
Hairpins in Chinese culture
Hairpins (generally known as ; ) are an important symbol in Chinese culture. In ancient China, hairpins were worn by men as well as women, and they were essential items for everyday hairstyling, mainly for securing and decorating a hair bun. Furthermore, hairpins worn by women could also represent their social status.
In Han Chinese culture, when young girls reached the age of fifteen, they were allowed to take part in a rite of passage known as (), or "hairpin initiation”. This ceremony marked the coming of age of young women. Particularly, before the age of fifteen, girls did not use hairpins as they wore their hair in braids, and they were considered as children. When they turned fifteen, they could be considered as young women after the ceremony, and they started to style their hair as buns secured and embellished by hairpins. This practice indicated that these young women could now enter into marriage. However, if a young woman had not been consented to marriage before age twenty, or she had not yet participated in a coming of age ceremony, she would attend a ceremony when she turned twenty.
In comparison with , the male equivalent known as () or "hat initiation", usually took place five years later, at the age of twenty. In the 21st century hanfu movement, an attempt to revive the traditional Han Chinese coming-of-age ceremonies has been made, and the ideal age to attend the ceremony is twenty years old for all genders.
While hairpins can symbolize the transition from childhood to adulthood, they were closely connected to the concept of marriage as well. At the time of an engagement, the fiancée may take a hairpin from her hair and give it to her fiancé as a pledge: this can be seen as a reversal of the Western tradition, in which the future groom presents an engagement ring to his betrothed. After the wedding ceremony, the husband should put the hairpin back into his spouse's hair.
Hair has always carried many psychological, philosophical, romantic, and cultural meanings in Chinese culture. In Han culture, people call the union between two people (), literally "tying hair". During the wedding ceremony, some Chinese couples exchange a lock of hair as a pledge, while others break a hairpin into two parts, and then, each of the betrothed take one part with them for keeping. If this couple were ever to get separated in the future, when they reunite, they can piece the two halves together, and the completed hairpin would serve as a proof of their identities as well as a symbol of their reunion. In addition, a married couple is sometimes referred to as (), an idiom which implies the relationship between the pair is very intimate and happy, just like how their hair has been tied together.
Gallery
See also
Bobby pin
Hair stick
Hatpin
Hair clip
References
External links
Fasteners
Hairdressing
Types of jewellery | [
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14233 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hate%20speech | Hate speech | Hate speech is defined by the Cambridge Dictionary as "public speech that expresses hate or encourages violence towards a person or group based on something such as race, religion, sex, or sexual orientation". Hate speech is "usually thought to include communications of animosity or disparagement of an individual or a group on account of a group characteristic such as race, colour, national origin, sex, disability, religion, or sexual orientation". Legal definitions of hate speech varies from country to country.
There has been much debate over freedom of speech, hate speech, and hate speech legislation. The laws of some countries describe hate speech as speech, gestures, conduct, writing, or displays that incite violence or prejudicial actions against a group or individuals on the basis of their membership in the group, or that disparage or intimidate a group or individuals on the basis of their membership in the group. The law may identify a group based on certain characteristics. In some countries, hate speech is not a legal term. Additionally, in some countries, including the United States, much of what falls under the category of "hate speech" is constitutionally protected. In other countries, a victim of hate speech may seek redress under civil law, criminal law, or both.
Theories of hate speech
In this section, the term “theories of hate speech” is being used as an umbrella term describing the ways in which different thinkers throughout history have defined hate speech and have provided frameworks for understanding its impact.
One theory on the merits of freedom of speech, and consequently hate speech, is the view that public discourse ought to serve as a marketplace of ideas. This perspective, often attributed to mid-19th century philosopher John Stewart Mill, claims that hate speech is an unavoidable part of the wider current of free speech. Within this theory, there exists no partial truth; everything must be debated in order to determine what is true and what is false. This theory privileges the community’s progression over individual desires. Mill writes in On Liberty “They [an individual] have no authority to decide the question for all mankind, and exclude every other person from the means of judging… All silencing of discussion is an assumption of infallibility”. Here, Mill asserts the necessity of hate speech as a stepping stone to truth. Denying others the ability to evaluate statements because one believes those words to be offensive is to make a unilateral decision that is ultimately harmful to the collective good. Although these thinkers believe speech can and should be limited in certain contexts, they firmly contend that all speech, including hate speech, is a part of the growth and development of the community.
Starting in the 1940s and 50s, different civil rights groups responded to the atrocities of World War II by advocating for restrictions on hateful speech targeting groups on the basis of race and religion. These organizations used group libel as a legal framework for describing the violence of hate speech and addressing its harm. In his discussion of the history of criminal libel, scholar Jeremy Waldron states that these laws helped “vindicate public order, not just by preempting violence, but by upholding against attack a shared sense of the basic elements of each person’s status, dignity, and reputation as a citizen or member of society in good standing”. A key legal victory for civil rights groups came in 1952 when group libel law was affirmed by the supreme court in Beauharnais v. Illinois. However, the group libel approach lost ground due to a rise in support for individual rights within civil rights movements during the 60s. Critiques of group defamation laws are not limited to defenders of individual rights. Some legal theorists such as Richard Delgado support legal limits on hate speech, but claim that defamation is too narrow a category to fully counter hate speech. Ultimately, Delgado advocates a legal strategy that would establish a specific section of tort law for responding to racist insults, citing the difficulty of receiving redress under the existing legal system.
Often cited in the 1970s Feminist Sex Wars, a third framework for conceptualizing hate speech claims that speech can restructure social norms in violently subordinating ways. In this model, hate speech does not incite violence, but rather is itself a violent act that changes the power relations between speakers and across group hierarchies. This branch of thought, termed Speech-Act Theory, has been used by Catharine A. MacKinnon to argue that pornography, as speech, is inherently violent to women because it silences them and acts to subordinate them both through its creation and its consumption. This theory has been expanded on by Mary Kate McGowan to include the role of authority in words performing acts. Essentially, truth becomes truth because it is said to be true by a legitimate authority. McGowan provides the example of an umpire’s call to illustrate this point. If an umpire calls a play as safe, the play may or may not be safe, but it is designated as so because of the authority of the umpire. This relates to Speech-Act Theory because words are able to do, to produce new meaning and reality. In the case of hate speech, those ostensibly with authority and power are able to tangibly alter the social location or life experience of others when they utter demeaning or derogatory words.
Hate speech laws
International human rights laws from the United Nations Humans Rights Committee have been protecting freedom of expression, and one of the most fundamental documents is the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) drafted by the U.N. General Assembly in 1948. In Article 19 of the UDHR, it states that “Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.”
Even though there are fundamental laws protecting freedom of expression, there are multiple international laws that expand on the UDHR and pose limitations and restrictions, specifically concerning the safety and protection of individuals.
The Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) was the first to address hate speech and the need to establish legislation prohibiting inflammatory types of language.
The CERD addresses hate speech through the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD) and monitors its implementation by State parties.
Article 19(3) of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) permits restrictions on the human right of freedom of expression when speech is provided by law, for the protection of legitimate interest, and necessary to protect that interest.
Article 20(2) of the ICCPR prohibits national, religious, or racial hatred that incites violence, discrimination, or hostility.
A majority of developed democracies have laws that restrict hate speech, including Australia, Denmark, France, Germany, India, South Africa, Sweden, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom. In the United Kingdom, Article 10 of the Human Rights Act 1998 expands on the UDHR, stating that restrictions on freedom of expression would be permitted when it threatens national security, incites racial or religious hatred, causes individual harm on health or morals, or threatens the rights and reputations on individuals. The United States does not have hate speech laws, since the U.S. Supreme Court has repeatedly ruled that laws criminalizing hate speech violate the guarantee to freedom of speech contained in the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
Laws against hate speech can be divided into two types: those intended to preserve public order and those intended to protect human dignity. The laws designed to protect public order require that a higher threshold be violated, so they are not often enforced. For example, a 1992 study found that only one person was prosecuted in Northern Ireland in the preceding 21 years for violating a law against incitement to religious violence. The laws meant to protect human dignity have a much lower threshold for violation, so those in Canada, Denmark, France, Germany and the Netherlands tend to be more frequently enforced.
State-sanctioned hate speech
A few states, including Saudi Arabia, Iran, Rwanda Hutu factions, actors in the Yugoslav Wars and Ethiopia have been described as spreading official hate speech or incitement to genocide.
Internet
On 31 May 2016, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, and Twitter, jointly agreed to a European Union code of conduct obligating them to review "[the] majority of valid notifications for removal of illegal hate speech" posted on their services within 24 hours.
Prior to this in 2013, Facebook, with pressure from over 100 advocacy groups including the Everyday Sexism Project, agreed to change their hate speech policies after data released regarding content that promoted domestic and sexual violence against women led to the withdrawal of advertising by 15 large companies.
Companies that have hate speech policies include Facebook and YouTube. In 2018 a post containing a section of the United States Declaration of Independence that labels Native Americans "merciless Indian savages" was labeled hate speech by Facebook and removed from its site. In 2019, video-sharing platform YouTube demonetized channels, such as U.S. radio host Jesse Lee Peterson, under their hate speech policy.
Commentary
Several activists and scholars have criticized the practice of limiting hate speech. Civil liberties activist Nadine Strossen says that, while efforts to censor hate speech have the goal of protecting the most vulnerable, they are ineffective and may have the opposite effect: disadvantaged and ethnic minorities being charged with violating laws against hate speech. Kim Holmes, Vice President of the conservative Heritage Foundation and a critic of hate speech theory, has argued that it "assumes bad faith on the part of people regardless of their stated intentions" and that it "obliterates the ethical responsibility of the individual". Rebecca Ruth Gould, a professor of Islamic and Comparative Literature at the University of Birmingham, argues that laws against hate speech constitute viewpoint discrimination (prohibited by First Amendment jurisprudence in the United States) as the legal system punishes some viewpoints but not others, however other scholars such as Gideon Elford argue instead that "insofar as hate speech regulation targets the consequences of speech that are contingently connected with the substance of what is expressed then it is viewpoint discriminatory in only an indirect sense." John Bennett argues that restricting hate speech relies on questionable conceptual and empirical foundations and is reminiscent of efforts by totalitarian regimes to control the thoughts of their citizens.
Michael Conklin argues that there are positive benefits to hate speech that are often overlooked. He contends that allowing hate speech provides a more accurate view of the human condition, provides opportunities to change people's minds, and identifies certain people that may need to be avoided in certain circumstances. According to one psychological research study, a high degree of psychopathy is "a significant predictor" for involvement in online hate activity, while none of the other 7 criteria examined were found to have statistical significance.
Political philosopher Jeffrey W. Howard considers the popular framing of hate speech as "free speech vs. other political values" as a mischaracterization. He refers to this as the "balancing model", and says it seeks to weigh the benefit of free speech against other values such as dignity and equality for historically marginalized groups. Instead, he believes that the crux of debate should be whether or not freedom of expression is inclusive of hate speech. Research indicates that when people support censoring hate speech, they are motivated more by concerns about the effects the speech has on others than they are about its effects on themselves. Women are somewhat more likely than men to support censoring hate speech due to greater perceived harm of hate speech, which researchers believe may be due to gender differences in empathy towards targets of hate speech.
See also
Allport's Scale
Anti-LGBT rhetoric
Blasphemy laws
Criminal speech
Hate crime
Ethnic joke
Ethnic slur
Gay bashing
Stanton's 10 Stages of Genocide
Graphic pejoratives in written Chinese
Hate mail
Historical negationism
Holocaust denial
Incitement to ethnic or racial hatred
Insulting Turkishness
Laws against Holocaust denial
List of symbols designated by the Anti-Defamation League as hate symbols
Political correctness
Prejudice
Xenophobia
References
External links
TANDIS (Tolerance and Non-Discrimination Information System), developed by the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights
Reconciling Rights and Responsibilities of Colleges and Students: Offensive Speech, Assembly, Drug Testing and Safety
From Discipline to Development: Rethinking Student Conduct in Higher Education
Sexual Minorities on Community College Campuses
The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education
Activities to tackle Hate speech
Survivor bashing - bias motivated hate crimes
"Striking the right balance" by Agnès Callamard, for Article 19
Hate speech, a factsheet by the European Court of Human Rights, 2015
Recommendation No. R (97) 20 Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe 1997
Censorship
LGBT and society
Harassment
Hate crime
Freedom of speech
Political terminology
Racism
Sexism
Homophobia
Linguistic controversies
Ethically disputed political practices
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14236 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henrik%20Ibsen | Henrik Ibsen | Henrik Johan Ibsen (; ; 20 March 1828 – 23 May 1906) was a Norwegian playwright and theatre director. As one of the founders of modernism in theatre, Ibsen is often referred to as "the father of realism" and one of the most influential playwrights of his time. His major works include Brand, Peer Gynt, An Enemy of the People, Emperor and Galilean, A Doll's House, Hedda Gabler, Ghosts, The Wild Duck, When We Dead Awaken, Rosmersholm, and The Master Builder. Ibsen is the most frequently performed dramatist in the world after Shakespeare, and A Doll's House was the world's most performed play in 2006.
Ibsen's early poetic and cinematic play Peer Gynt has strong surreal elements. After Peer Gynt Ibsen abandoned verse and wrote in realistic prose. Several of his later dramas were considered scandalous to many of his era, when European theatre was expected to model strict morals of family life and propriety. Ibsen's later work examined the realities that lay behind the façades, revealing much that was disquieting to a number of his contemporaries. He had a critical eye and conducted a free inquiry into the conditions of life and issues of morality. In many critics' estimates The Wild Duck and Rosmersholm are "vying with each other as rivals for the top place among Ibsen's works"; Ibsen himself regarded Emperor and Galilean as his masterpiece.
Ibsen is often ranked as one of the most distinguished playwrights in the European tradition, and is widely regarded as the foremost playwright of the nineteenth century. He influenced other playwrights and novelists such as George Bernard Shaw, Oscar Wilde, Arthur Miller, Marguerite Yourcenar, James Joyce, Eugene O'Neill, and Miroslav Krleža. Ibsen was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1902, 1903, and 1904.
Ibsen wrote his plays in Danish (the common written language of Denmark and Norway during his lifetime) and they were published by the Danish publisher Gyldendal. Although most of his plays are set in Norway—often in places reminiscent of Skien, the port town where he grew up—Ibsen lived for 27 years in Italy and Germany, and rarely visited Norway during his most productive years. Ibsen's dramas were informed by his own background in the merchant elite of Skien, and he often modelled or named characters after family members. He was the father of Prime Minister Sigurd Ibsen. Ibsen's dramas had a strong influence upon contemporary culture.
Early life and background
Family and childhood
Henrik Johan Ibsen was born on 20 March 1828 in Stockmanngården into an affluent merchant family in the prosperous port town of Skien in Bratsberg. He was the son of the merchant Knud Plesner Ibsen (1797–1877) and Marichen Cornelia Martine Altenburg (1799–1869). Both parents' belonged to the city's and county's elite; Ibsen's ancestors were primarily merchants and shipowners in large cities, or members of the "aristocracy of officials" of Upper Telemark. Henrik Ibsen later wrote that "my parents were members on both sides of the most respected families in Skien" and that he was closely related to "just about all the patrician families who then dominated the place and its surroundings." He was baptised at home in the Lutheran state church—membership of which was mandatory—on 28 March and the baptism was confirmed in Christian's Church on 19 June. When Ibsen was born, Skien had for centuries been one of Norway's most important and internationally oriented cities, and a centre of seafaring, timber exports and early industrialization that had made Norway the developed and prosperous part of Denmark–Norway.
His parents, though not closely related by blood, had been reared as social first cousins, sometimes described as near-siblings in a social sense. Knud Ibsen's father, ship's captain and merchant Henrich Johan Ibsen (1765–1797), died at sea when he was newborn in 1797 and his mother Johanne Plesner (1770–1847) married captain Ole Paus (1766–1855) the following year; Knud grew up as a member of the Paus family. His stepfather Ole Paus was a descendant of the "aristocracy of officials" in Upper Telemark; as a child Paus had been taken in by a relative, Skien merchant Christopher Blom, and he had become a ship's captain and shipowner in Skien, acquiring the burghership in 1788. Like Henrich Johan Ibsen before him Paus became the brother-in-law of one of Norway's wealthiest men, Diderik von Cappelen, whose first wife Maria Plesner was Johanne's sister. In 1799 Ole Paus sold the Ibsen House in Skien's Løvestrædet (Lion's Street), which he had inherited from his wife's first husband, and bought the estate Rising outside Skien from a sister of his brother-in-law von Cappelen. Knud grew up at Rising with most of his many half-siblings, among them the later governor Christian Cornelius Paus and the shipowner Christopher Blom Paus. In the 1801 census the Paus family of Rising had seven servants.
Marichen grew up in the large, stately Altenburggården building in central Skien as the daughter of the wealthy merchant Johan Andreas Altenburg (1763–1824) and (1763–1848), who was the sister of Knud's stepfather. Altenburg was a shipowner, timber merchant and owned a liquor distillery at Lundetangen and a farm outside of town; after his death in 1824 the widow Hedevig, Henrik's grandmother, took over the businesses. During Henrik's childhood the families of Ole and Hedevig Paus were very close: Ole's oldest son, Knud's half-brother Henrik Johan Paus was raised in Hedevig's home, and the children of the Paus siblings, including Knud and Marichen, spent much of their childhood together. Older Ibsen scholars have claimed that Henrik Ibsen was fascinated by his parents’ “strange, almost incestuous marriage,” and he would treat the subject of incestuous relationships in several plays, notably his masterpiece Rosmersholm. On the other hand, Jørgen Haave points out that his parents' close relationship wasn't that unusual among the Skien elite.
In 1825 Henrik's father Knud acquired the burghership of Skien and established an independent business as a timber and luxury goods merchant there with his younger brother Christopher Blom Paus, then aged 15, as his apprentice. The two brothers moved into the Stockmanngården building, where they rented a part of the building and lived with a maid. On the first floor the brothers sold foreign wines and a variety of luxury items, while also engaging in wholesale export of timber in cooperation with their first cousin Diderik von Cappelen (1795–1866). On 1 December 1825 Knud married his stepfather's niece Marichen, who then moved in with them. Henrik was born there in 1828. In 1830 Marichen's mother Hedevig left Altenburggården and her properties and business ventures to her son-in-law Knud, and the Ibsen family moved to Marichen's childhood home in 1831. During the 1820s and 1830s Knud was a wealthy young merchant in Skien, and he was the city's 16th largest taxpayer in 1833.
In his unfinished biography From Skien to Rome Henrik Ibsen wrote about the Skien of his childhood:
When Henrik Ibsen was around seven years old, his father's fortunes took a turn for the worse, and in 1835 the family was forced to sell Altenburggården. The following year they moved to their stately summer house, , outside of the city. They were still relatively affluent, had servants and socialised with other members of the Skien elite, e.g. through lavish parties; their closest neighbours on Southern Venstøp were former shipowner and mayor of Skien Ulrich Frederik Cudrio and his family, who also had been forced to sell their townhouse. In 1843, after Henrik left home, the Ibsen family moved to a townhouse at Snipetorp, owned by Knud Ibsen's half-brother and former apprentice Christopher, who had established himself as an independent merchant in Skien in 1836 and who eventually become one of the city's leading shipowners. Knud continued to struggle to maintain his business and had some success in the 1840s, but in the 1850s his business ventures and professional activities came to an end, and he became reliant on the support from his successful younger half-brothers.
Myths and reassessment
Older Ibsen historiography has often claimed that Knud Ibsen experienced financial ruin and became an alcoholic tyrant, that the family lost contact with the elite it had belonged to, and that this had a strong influence on Henrik Ibsen's biography and work. Newer Ibsen scholarship, in particular Jørgen Haave's book Familien Ibsen [The Ibsen Family], has refuted such claims and Haave has pointed out that older biographical works have uncritically repeated numerous unfounded myths about both of Ibsen's parents, and about the playwright's childhood and background in general.
Haave points out that Knud Ibsen's economic problems in the 1830s were mainly the result of the difficult times and something the Ibsen family had in common with most members of the bourgeoisie; Haave further argues that Henrik Ibsen had a happy and comfortable childhood as a member of the upper class, even after the family moved to Venstøp, and that they were able to maintain their lifestyle and patrician identity with the help of their extended family and accumulated cultural capital. Contrary to the incorrect claims that Ibsen had been born in a small or remote town, Haave points out that Skien had been Eastern Norway's leading commercial city for centuries, and a centre of seafaring, timber exports and early industrialization that had made Norway the developed and prosperous part of Denmark–Norway.
Haave points out that virtually all of Ibsen's ancestors had been wealthy burghers and higher government officials, and members of the local and regional elites in the areas they lived, often of continental European ancestry. He argues that "the Ibsen family belonged to an elite that distanced itself strongly from the common farmer population, and considered itself part of an educated European culture" and that "it was this patrician class that formed his cultural identity and upbringing." Haave points to many examples of both Henrik Ibsen and other members of his family having a condescending attitude towards common Norwegian farmers, viewing them as "some sort of primitive indigenous population," and being very conscious of their own identity as members of the sophisticated upper class; Haave describes Henrik as a boy who was pampered by his father, who liked to be creative in solitude, and who provoked peers with his superiority and arrogance. Haave points out that the Ibsen family—Knud, Marichen and Henrik's siblings—disintegrated financially and socially in the 1850s, but that it happened after Henrik had left home, at a time when he was establishing himself as a successful man of theatre, while his extended family, such as his uncles Paus, were firmly established in Skien's elite. Haave argues that the story of the Ibsen family is the story of the slow collapse of a patrician merchant family amid the emergence of a new democratic society in the 19th century, and that Henrik Ibsen, like others of his class, had to find new opportunities to maintain his social position.
Literary influence of his childhood
Many Ibsen scholars have compared characters and themes in his plays to his family and upbringing; his themes often deal with issues of financial difficulty as well as moral conflicts stemming from dark secrets hidden from society. Ibsen himself confirmed that he both modelled and named characters in his plays after his own family. However, Haave criticizes the uncritical use of Ibsen's dramas as biographical sources and the "naive" readings of them as reflections of his family members.
Early career
Grimstad years
At fifteen, Ibsen left school. He moved to the small town of Grimstad to become an apprentice pharmacist. At that time he began writing plays. In 1846, when Ibsen was 18, he had a liaison with Else Sophie Jensdatter Birkedalen which produced a son, Hans Jacob Hendrichsen Birkdalen, whose upbringing Ibsen paid for until the boy was fourteen, though Ibsen never saw Hans Jacob. Ibsen went to Christiania (later spelled Kristiania and then renamed Oslo) intending to matriculate at the university. He soon rejected the idea (his earlier attempts at entering university were blocked as he did not pass all his entrance exams), preferring to commit himself to writing. His first play, the tragedy Catilina (1850), was published under the pseudonym "Brynjolf Bjarme", when he was only 22, but it was not performed. His first play to be staged, The Burial Mound (1850), received little attention. Still, Ibsen was determined to be a playwright, although the numerous plays he wrote in the following years remained unsuccessful. Ibsen's main inspiration in the early period, right up to Peer Gynt, was apparently the Norwegian author Henrik Wergeland and the Norwegian folk tales as collected by Peter Christen Asbjørnsen and Jørgen Moe. In Ibsen's youth, Wergeland was the most acclaimed, and by far the most read, Norwegian poet and playwright.
Ibsen as a theatre director
He spent the next several years employed at Det norske Theater (Bergen), where he was involved in the production of more than 145 plays as a writer, director, and producer. During this period, he published five new, though largely unremarkable, plays. Despite Ibsen's failure to achieve success as a playwright, he gained a great deal of practical experience at the Norwegian Theater, experience that was to prove valuable when he continued writing.
Ibsen returned to Christiania in 1858 to become the creative director of the Christiania Theatre. He married Suzannah Thoresen on 18 June 1858 and she gave birth to their only child Sigurd on 23 December 1859. The couple lived in difficult financial circumstances and Ibsen became very disenchanted with life in Norway.
Years in exile
In 1864, he left Christiania and went to Sorrento in Italy in self-imposed exile. He spent the next 27 years in Italy and Germany and would only visit Norway a few times.
His next play, Brand (1865), brought him the critical acclaim he sought, along with a measure of financial success, as did the following play, Peer Gynt (1867), to which Edvard Grieg famously composed incidental music and songs. Although Ibsen read excerpts of the Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard and traces of the latter's influence are evident in Brand, it was not until after Brand that Ibsen came to take Kierkegaard seriously. Initially annoyed with his friend Georg Brandes for comparing Brand to Kierkegaard, Ibsen nevertheless read Either/Or and Fear and Trembling. Ibsen's next play Peer Gynt was consciously informed by Kierkegaard.
With success, Ibsen became more confident and began to introduce more and more of his own beliefs and judgements into the drama, exploring what he termed the "drama of ideas". His next series of plays are often considered his Golden Age, when he entered the height of his power and influence, becoming the center of dramatic controversy across Europe.
Ibsen moved from Italy to Dresden, Germany, in 1868, where he spent years writing the play he regarded as his main work, Emperor and Galilean (1873), dramatizing the life and times of the Roman emperor Julian the Apostate. Although Ibsen himself always looked back on this play as the cornerstone of his entire works, very few shared his opinion, and his next works would be much more acclaimed. Ibsen moved to Munich in 1875 and began work on his first contemporary realist drama The Pillars of Society, first published and performed in 1877. A Doll's House followed in 1879. This play is a scathing criticism of the marital roles accepted by men and women which characterized Ibsen's society.
Ibsen was already in his fifties when A Doll’s House was published. He himself saw his latter plays as a series. At the end of his career, he described them as “that series of dramas which began with A Doll’s House and which is now completed with When We Dead Awaken”. Furthermore, it was the reception of A Doll’s House which brought Ibsen international acclaim.
Ghosts followed in 1881, another scathing commentary on the morality of Ibsen's society, in which a widow reveals to her pastor that she had hidden the evils of her marriage for its duration. The pastor had advised her to marry her fiancé despite his philandering, and she did so in the belief that her love would reform him. But his philandering continued right up until his death, and his vices are passed on to their son in the form of syphilis. The mention of venereal disease alone was scandalous, but to show how it could poison a respectable family was considered intolerable.
In An Enemy of the People (1882), Ibsen went even further. In earlier plays, controversial elements were important and even pivotal components of the action, but they were on the small scale of individual households. In An Enemy, controversy became the primary focus, and the antagonist was the entire community. One primary message of the play is that the individual, who stands alone, is more often "right" than the mass of people, who are portrayed as ignorant and sheeplike. Contemporary society's belief was that the community was a noble institution that could be trusted, a notion Ibsen challenged. In An Enemy of the People, Ibsen chastised not only the conservatism of society, but also the liberalism of the time. He illustrated how people on both sides of the social spectrum could be equally self-serving. An Enemy of the People was written as a response to the people who had rejected his previous work, Ghosts. The plot of the play is a veiled look at the way people reacted to the plot of Ghosts. The protagonist is a physician in a vacation spot whose primary draw is a public bath. The doctor discovers that the water is contaminated by the local tannery. He expects to be acclaimed for saving the town from the nightmare of infecting visitors with disease, but instead he is declared an 'enemy of the people' by the locals, who band against him and even throw stones through his windows. The play ends with his complete ostracism. It is obvious to the reader that disaster is in store for the town as well as for the doctor.
As audiences by now expected, Ibsen's next play again attacked entrenched beliefs and assumptions; but this time, his attack was not against society's mores, but against overeager reformers and their idealism. Always an iconoclast, Ibsen saw himself as an objective observer of society, “like a lone franc tireur in the outposts”, playing a lone hand, as he put it. Ibsen, perhaps more than any of his contemporaries, relied upon immediate sources such as newspapers and second-hand report for his contact with intellectual thought. He claimed to be ignorant of books, leaving them to his wife and son, but, as Georg Brandes described, "he seemed to stand in some mysterious correspondence with the fermenting, germinating ideas of the day."
The Wild Duck (1884) is by many considered Ibsen's finest work, and it is certainly one of the most complex, alongside Rosmersholm. It tells the story of Gregers Werle, a young man who returns to his hometown after an extended exile and is reunited with his boyhood friend Hjalmar Ekdal. Over the course of the play, the many secrets that lie behind the Ekdals' apparently happy home are revealed to Gregers, who insists on pursuing the absolute truth, or the "Summons of the Ideal". Among these truths: Gregers' father impregnated his servant Gina, then married her off to Hjalmar to legitimize the child. Another man has been disgraced and imprisoned for a crime the elder Werle committed. Furthermore, while Hjalmar spends his days working on a wholly imaginary "invention", his wife is earning the household income.
Ibsen displays masterly use of irony: despite his dogmatic insistence on truth, Gregers never says what he thinks but only insinuates, and is never understood until the play reaches its climax. Gregers hammers away at Hjalmar through innuendo and coded phrases until he realizes the truth: that Gina's daughter, Hedvig, is not his child. Blinded by Gregers' insistence on absolute truth, he disavows the child. Seeing the damage he has wrought, Gregers determines to repair things, and suggests to Hedvig that she sacrifice the wild duck, her wounded pet, to prove her love for Hjalmar. Hedvig, alone among the characters, recognizes that Gregers always speaks in code, and looking for the deeper meaning in the first important statement Gregers makes which does not contain one, kills herself rather than the duck in order to prove her love for him in the ultimate act of self-sacrifice. Only too late do Hjalmar and Gregers realize that the absolute truth of the "ideal" is sometimes too much for the human heart to bear.
Late in his career, Ibsen turned to a more introspective drama that had much less to do with denunciations of society's moral values and more to do with the problems of individuals. In such later plays as Hedda Gabler (1890) and The Master Builder (1892), Ibsen explored psychological conflicts that transcended a simple rejection of current conventions. Many modern readers, who might regard anti-Victorian didacticism as dated, simplistic or hackneyed, have found these later works to be of absorbing interest for their hard-edged, objective consideration of interpersonal confrontation. Hedda Gabler and A Doll’s House are regularly cited as Ibsen's most popular and influential plays, with the title role of Hedda regarded as one of the most challenging and rewarding for an actress even in the present day.
Ibsen had completely rewritten the rules of drama with a realism which was to be adopted by Chekhov and others and which we see in the theatre to this day. From Ibsen forward, challenging assumptions and directly speaking about issues has been considered one of the factors that makes a play art rather than entertainment. His works were brought to an English-speaking audience, largely thanks to the efforts of William Archer and Edmund Gosse. These in turn had a profound influence on the young James Joyce who venerates him in his early autobiographical novel Stephen Hero. Ibsen returned to Norway in 1891, but it was in many ways not the Norway he had left. Indeed, he had played a major role in the changes that had happened across society. Modernism was on the rise, not only in the theatre, but across public life.. Michael Meyer's translations in the 1950s were welcomed by actors and directors as playable, rather than academic. As The Times newspaper put it, 'This, one may think, is how Ibsen might have expressed himself in English'.
Ibsen intentionally obscured his influences. However, asked later what he had read when he wrote Catiline, Ibsen replied that he had read only the Danish Norse saga-inspired Romantic tragedian Adam Oehlenschläger and Ludvig Holberg, "the Scandinavian Molière".
Critical reception
At the time when Ibsen was writing, literature was emerging as a formidable force in 19th century society. With the vast increase in literacy towards the end of the century, the possibilities of literature being used for subversion struck horror into the heart of the Establishment. Ibsen's plays, from A Doll’s House onwards, caused an uproar: not just in Norway, but throughout Europe, and even across the Atlantic in America. No other artist, apart from Richard Wagner, had such an effect internationally, inspiring almost blasphemous adoration and hysterical abuse.
After the publication of Ghosts, he wrote: “while the storm lasted, I have made many studies and observations and I shall not hesitate to exploit them in my future writings.” Indeed, his next play An Enemy of the People was initially regarded by the critics to be simply his response to the violent criticism which had greeted Ghosts. Ibsen expected criticism: as he wrote to his publisher: “Ghosts will probably cause alarm in some circles, but it can’t be helped. If it did not, there would have been no necessity for me to have written it.”
Ibsen didn't just read the critical reaction to his plays, he actively corresponded with critics, publishers, theatre directors and newspaper editors on the subject. The interpretation of his work, both by critics and directors, concerned him greatly. He often advised directors on which actor or actress would be suitable for a particular role. (An example of this is a letter he wrote to Hans Schroder in November 1884, with detailed instructions for the production of The Wild Duck.)
Ibsen's plays initially reached a far wider audience as read plays rather than in performance. It was 20 years, for instance, before the authorities would allow Ghosts to be performed in Norway. Each new play that Ibsen wrote, from 1879 onwards, had an explosive effect on intellectual circles. This was greatest for A Doll’s House and Ghosts, and it did lessen with the later plays, but the translation of Ibsen's works into German, French and English during the decade following the initial publication of each play and frequent new productions as and when permission was granted, meant that Ibsen remained a topic of lively conversation throughout the latter decades of the 19th century. When A Doll’s House was published, it had an explosive effect: it was the centre of every conversation at every social gathering in Christiania. One hostess even wrote on the invitations to her soirée, “You are politely requested not to mention Mr Ibsen’s new play”.
Death
On 23 May 1906, Ibsen died in his home at Arbins gade 1 in Kristiania (now Oslo) after a series of strokes in March 1900. When, on 22 May, his nurse assured a visitor that he was a little better, Ibsen spluttered his last words "On the contrary" ("Tvertimod!"). He died the following day at 2:30 pm.
Ibsen was buried in Vår Frelsers gravlund ("The Graveyard of Our Savior") in central Oslo.
Centenary
The 100th anniversary of Ibsen's death in 2006 was commemorated with an "Ibsen year" in Norway and other countries. In 2006, the homebuilding company Selvaag also opened Peer Gynt Sculpture Park in Oslo, Norway, in Henrik Ibsen's honour, making it possible to follow the dramatic play Peer Gynt scene by scene. Will Eno's adaptation of Ibsen's Peer Gynt, titled Gnit, had its world premiere at the 37th Humana Festival of New American Plays in March 2013.
On 23 May 2006, The Ibsen Museum in Oslo re-opened, to the public, the house where Ibsen had spent his last eleven years, completely restored with the original interior, colours, and decor.
Legacy
Ivo de Figueiredo argues that "today, Ibsen belongs to the world. But it is impossible to understand [Ibsen's] path out there without knowing the Danish cultural sphere from which he sprang, from which he liberated himself and which he ended up shaping. Ibsen developed as a person and artist in a dialogue with Danish theater and literature that was anything but smooth."
The social questions which concerned Ibsen belonged unequivocally to the 19th century. From a modern perspective, the aspects of his writing that appeal most are the psychological issues which he explored. The social issues, taken up so prominently in his own day, have become dated, as has the late-Victorian middle-class setting of his plays. The fact that, whether read and staged, they still possess a compelling power is testament to his enduring quality as a thinker and a dramatist.
On the occasion of the 100th anniversary of Ibsen's death in 2006, the Norwegian government organised the Ibsen Year, which included celebrations around the world. The NRK produced a miniseries on Ibsen's childhood and youth in 2006, An Immortal Man. Several prizes are awarded in the name of Henrik Ibsen, among them the International Ibsen Award, the Norwegian Ibsen Award and the Ibsen Centennial Commemoration Award.
Every year, since 2008, the annual "Delhi Ibsen Festival", is held in Delhi, India, organized by the Dramatic Art and Design Academy (DADA) in collaboration with The Royal Norwegian Embassy in India. It features plays by Ibsen, performed by artists from various parts of the world in varied languages and styles.
The Ibsen Society of America (ISA) was founded in 1978 at the close of the Ibsen Sesquicentennial Symposium held in New York City to mark the 150th anniversary of Henrik Ibsen's birth. Distinguished Ibsen translator and critic Rolf Fjelde, Professor of Literature at Pratt Institute and the chief organizer of the Symposium, was elected Founding President. In December 1979, the ISA was certified as a non-profit corporation under the laws of the State of New York. Its purpose is to foster through lectures, readings, performances, conferences, and publications an understanding of Ibsen's works as they are interpreted as texts and produced on stage and in film and other media. An annual newsletter Ibsen News and Comment is distributed to all members.
Ancestry
Ibsen's ancestry has been a much studied subject, due to his perceived foreignness and due to the influence of his biography and family on his plays. Ibsen often made references to his family in his plays, sometimes by name, or by modelling characters after them.
The oldest documented member of the Ibsen family was ship's captain Rasmus Ibsen (1632–1703) from Stege, Denmark. His son, ship's captain Peder Ibsen became a burgher of Bergen in Norway in 1726. Henrik Ibsen had Danish, German, Norwegian and some distant Scottish ancestry. Most of his ancestors belonged to the merchant class of original Danish and German extraction, and many of his ancestors were ship's captains.
Ibsen's biographer Henrik Jæger famously wrote in 1888 that Ibsen did not have a drop of Norwegian blood in his veins, stating that "the ancestral Ibsen was a Dane". This, however, is not completely accurate; notably through his grandmother Hedevig Paus, Ibsen was descended from one of the very few families of the patrician class of original Norwegian extraction, known since the 15th century. Ibsen's ancestors had mostly lived in Norway for several generations, even though many had foreign ancestry.
The name Ibsen is originally a patronymic, meaning "son of Ib" (Ib is a Danish variant of Jacob). The patronymic became "frozen", i.e. it became a permanent family name, in the 17th century. The phenomenon of patronymics becoming frozen started in the 17th century in bourgeois families in Denmark, and the practice was only widely adopted in Norway from around 1900.
Descendants
From his marriage with Suzannah Thoresen, Ibsen had one son, lawyer, government minister, and Norwegian Prime Minister Sigurd Ibsen. Sigurd Ibsen married Bergljot Bjørnson, the daughter of Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson. Their son was Tancred Ibsen, who became a film director and was married to Lillebil Ibsen; their only child was diplomat Tancred Ibsen, Jr. Sigurd Ibsen's daughter, Irene Ibsen, married Josias Bille, a member of the Danish ancient noble Bille family; their son was Danish actor Joen Bille.
Honours
Ibsen was decorated Knight in 1873, Commander in 1892, and with the Grand Cross of the Order of St. Olav in 1893. He received the Grand Cross of the Danish Order of the Dannebrog, and the Grand Cross of the Swedish Order of the Polar Star, and was Knight, First Class of the Order of Vasa.
Well known stage directors in Austria and Germany as Theodor Lobe (1833–1905), Paul Barnay (1884–1960), Max Burckhard (1854–1912), Otto Brahm (1956–1912), Carl Heine (1861–1927), Paul Albert Glaeser-Wilken (1874–1942), Victor Barnowsky (1875–1952), Eugen Robert (1877–1944), Leopold Jessner (1878–1945), Ludwig Barnay (1884–1960), Alfred Rotter (1886–1933), Fritz Rotter (1888–1939), (1900–1973) and Peter Zadek (1926–2009) performed the work of Ibsen.
In 1995, the asteroid 5696 Ibsen was named in his memory.
Works
Plays
Plays entirely or partly in verse are marked v.
1850 Catiline (Catilina)v
1850 The Burial Mound also known as The Warrior's Barrow (Kjæmpehøjen)v
1852 St. John's Eve (Sancthansnatten)v
1854 Lady Inger of Oestraat (Fru Inger til Østeraad)
1855 The Feast at Solhaug (Gildet paa Solhaug)v
1856 Olaf Liljekrans (Olaf Liljekrans)v
1858 The Vikings at Helgeland (Hærmændene paa Helgeland)
1862 Love's Comedy (Kjærlighedens Komedie)v
1863 The Pretenders (Kongs-Emnerne)v
1866 Brand (Brand)v
1867 Peer Gynt (Peer Gynt)v
1869 The League of Youth (De unges Forbund)
1873 Emperor and Galilean (Kejser og Galilæer)
1877 Pillars of Society (Samfundets Støtter)
1879 A Doll's House (Et Dukkehjem)
1881 Ghosts (Gengangere)
1882 An Enemy of the People (En Folkefiende)
1884 The Wild Duck (Vildanden)
1886 Rosmersholm (Rosmersholm)
1888 The Lady from the Sea (Fruen fra Havet)
1890 Hedda Gabler (Hedda Gabler)
1892 The Master Builder (Bygmester Solness)
1894 Little Eyolf (Lille Eyolf)
1896 John Gabriel Borkman (John Gabriel Borkman)
1899 When We Dead Awaken (Når vi døde vaagner)
Other works
1851 Norma or a Politician's Love (Norma eller en Politikers Kjaerlighed), an eight-page political parody
1871 Digte – only released collection of poetry, included Terje Vigen (written in 1862 but published in Digte from 1871)
English translations
Major translation projects include:
The Collected Works of Henrik Ibsen, in twelve volumes, edited by William Archer (Heinemann, 1906-1912). 21 plays.
The Oxford Ibsen, edited by James McFarlane (Oxford, 1960-1977). The most comprehensive version available.
Michael Meyer's translations (1960-1986). Fourteen plays.
Ibsen: The Complete Major Prose Plays, translated by Rolf G. Fjelde (Plume, 1978). Twelve plays.
Eight Plays, translated by Eva Le Gallienne (Modern Library, 1982).
Ibsen's Selected Plays: A Norton Critical Edition, edited by Brian Johnston, with translations by Brian Johnston and Rick Davis (W. W. Norton, 2004). Five plays.
Ibsen – 3 Plays (Kenneth McLeish & Stephen Mulrine, translators (Nick Hern Books, 2005)
The New Penguin Ibsen, in four volumes, edited by Tore Rem, with translations by Anne-Marie Stanton-Ife, Barbara Haveland, Deborah Dawkin, Erik Skuggevik and Geoffrey Hill (Penguin, 2014-2019). Fourteen plays.
See also
Centre for Ibsen Studies
Ibsen Studies
Norwegian Ibsen Award
Naturalism (theatre)
Nineteenth-century theatre
Problem play
Notes
References
Further reading
Boyesen, Hjalmar Hjorth, A Commentary on the Works of Henrik Ibsen (New York: Macmillan, 1894)
Ferguson, Robert (2001) Henrik Ibsen: A New Biography. New York: Dorset Press.
Goldman, Michael, Ibsen: The Dramaturgy of Fear, Columbia University Press, 1998
Haugan, Jørgen, Henrik Ibsens Metode:Den Indre Utvikling Gjennem Ibsens Dramatikk (Norwegian: Gyldendal Norsk Forlag. 1977)
Haave, Jørgen, Familien Ibsen, Museumsforlaget, 2017, .
Jensen, Morten Høi, "Escape Artist" (review of Ivo de Figueiredo, Henrik Ibsen: The Man and the Mask, translated from the Norwegian by Robert Ferguson, Yale University Press, 694 pp.), The New York Review of Books, vol. LXVI, no. 17 (7 November 2019), pp. 26–28.
Johnston, Brian: The Ibsen Cycle, Pennsylvania State University Press 1992
Johnston, Brian, To the Third Empire: Ibsen's Early Plays, University of Minnesota Press (1980)
Johnston, Brian, Text and Supertext in Ibsen's Drama, Pennsylvania State Press (1988)
Koht, Halvdan. The Life of Ibsen translated by Ruth Lima McMahon and Hanna Astrup Larsen. W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., New York, 1931
Krys, Svitlana, A Comparative Feminist Reading of Lesia Ukrainka’s and Henrik Ibsen’s Dramas. Canadian Review of Comparative Literature 34.4 (Dec. 2007 [Sept 2008]): pp. 389–409
Lucas, F. L. The Drama of Ibsen and Strindberg, Cassell, London, 1962. (A useful introduction, giving the biographical background to each play and detailed play-by-play summaries and discussion for the theatre-goer, including the less well-known plays)
Meyer, Michael. Ibsen. History Press Ltd., Stroud, reprinted 2004
Moi, Toril (2006) Henrik Ibsen and the Birth of Modernism: Art, Theater, Philosophy. Oxford and New York: Oxford UP.
Shaw, George Bernard. The Quintessence of Ibsenism (1891). The classic introduction, setting the playwright in his time and place.
Sprinchorn, Evert, Ibsen's Kingdom: The Man and His Works, Yale University Press, 2021. ISBN 9780300228663
External links
Digital collections
Multilingual edition of all Ibsen Plays in the Bibliotheca Polyglotta
Digitized books and manuscripts by Ibsen in the National Library of Norway
Scholarly work
Ibsen Studies: The only international academic journal devoted to Ibsen
Online course by Ibsen scholar Brian Johnston author of The Ibsen Cycle and To the Third Empire: Ibsen's Early Drama
"Ibsen and His Discontents" – a critical, conservative view of Ibsen's works, written by Theodore Dalrymple
Henrik Ibsen: Critical Studies by Georg Brandes (1899). Retrieved 5 January 2017.
Ibsen's Kingdom: The Man and His Works - a review of the book of that title, as well as discussions of "Brand", "A Doll's House", and "Ghosts".
Other biographies
(the biography by Edmund Gosse)
Henrik Ibsen – A Bibliography of Criticism and Biography, by Ina Ten Eyck Firkins, from Project Gutenberg
Other links
The Ibsen Society of America Official Website
ibsen.nb.no
Extensive resource in several languages from the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs
Ibsen's Influence on Hitler
Ibsen Museum – Former home of the famous playwright is situated in Henrik Ibsen's gate 26, across from the Royal Palace
1828 births
1906 deaths
19th-century Norwegian dramatists and playwrights
19th-century Norwegian writers
Burials at the Cemetery of Our Saviour
The Four Greats
Henrik
Modernist theatre
Norwegian male dramatists and playwrights
Norwegian people of Danish descent
Paus family
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14240 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawaiian%20language | Hawaiian language | Hawaiian (, ) is a Polynesian language of the Austronesian language family that takes its name from Hawaii, the largest island in the tropical North Pacific archipelago where it developed. Hawaiian, along with English, is an official language of the US state of Hawaii. King Kamehameha III established the first Hawaiian-language constitution in 1839 and 1840.
For various reasons, including territorial legislation establishing English as the official language in schools, the number of native speakers of Hawaiian gradually decreased during the period from the 1830s to the 1950s. Hawaiian was essentially displaced by English on six of seven inhabited islands. In 2001, native speakers of Hawaiian amounted to less than 0.1% of the statewide population. Linguists were unsure if Hawaiian and other endangered languages would survive.
Nevertheless, from around 1949 to the present day, there has been a gradual increase in attention to and promotion of the language. Public Hawaiian-language immersion preschools called Pūnana Leo were established in 1984; other immersion schools followed soon after that. The first students to start in immersion preschool have now graduated from college and many are fluent Hawaiian speakers. The federal government has acknowledged this development. For example, the Hawaiian National Park Language Correction Act of 2000 changed the names of several national parks in Hawaii, observing the Hawaiian spelling. However, the language is still classified as critically endangered by UNESCO.
A creole language, Hawaiian Pidgin (or Hawaii Creole English, HCE), is more commonly spoken in Hawaii than Hawaiian. Some linguists, as well as many locals, argue that Hawaiian Pidgin is a dialect of American English. Born from the increase of immigrants from Japan, China, Puerto Rico, Korea, Portugal, Spain and the Philippines, the pidgin creole language was a necessity in the plantations. Hawaiian and immigrant laborers as well as the white luna, or overseers, found a way to communicate amongst themselves. Pidgin eventually made its way off the plantation and into the greater community, where it is still used to this day.
The Hawaiian alphabet has 13 letters: five vowels: a e i o u (each with a long pronunciation and a short one) and eight consonants: he ke la mu nu pi we, including a glottal stop called okina.
Name
The Hawaiian language takes its name from the largest island in the Hawaiian state, Hawaii ( in the Hawaiian language). The island name was first written in English in 1778 by British explorer James Cook and his crew members. They wrote it as "Owhyhee" or "Owhyee". It is written "Oh-Why-hee" on the first map of Sandwich Islands engraved by in 1781. Explorers Mortimer (1791) and Otto von Kotzebue (1821) used that spelling.
The initial "O" in the name is a reflection of the fact that Hawaiian predicates unique identity by using a copula form, o, immediately before a proper noun. Thus, in Hawaiian, the name of the island is expressed by saying , which means "[This] is Hawaii." The Cook expedition also wrote "Otaheite" rather than "Tahiti."
The spelling "why" in the name reflects the pronunciation of wh in 18th-century English (still used in parts of the English-speaking world). Why was pronounced . The spelling "hee" or "ee" in the name represents the sounds , or .
Putting the parts together, O-why-(h)ee reflects , a reasonable approximation of the native pronunciation, .
American missionaries bound for Hawaii used the phrases "Owhihe Language" and "Owhyhee language" in Boston prior to their departure in October 1819 and during their five-month voyage to Hawaii. They still used such phrases as late as March 1822. However, by July 1823, they had begun using the phrase "Hawaiian Language."
In Hawaiian, the language is called , since adjectives follow nouns.
Family and origin
Hawaiian is a Polynesian member of the Austronesian language family. It is closely related to other Polynesian languages, such as Samoan, Marquesan, Tahitian, Māori, Rapa Nui (the language of Easter Island) and Tongan.
According to Schütz (1994), the Marquesans colonized the archipelago in roughly 300 CE followed by later waves of immigration from the Society Islands and Samoa-Tonga. Their languages, over time, became the Hawaiian language within the Hawaiian Islands. Kimura and Wilson (1983) also state: Linguists agree that Hawaiian is closely related to Eastern Polynesian, with a particularly strong link in the Southern Marquesas, and a secondary link in Tahiti, which may be explained by voyaging between the Hawaiian and Society Islands.
Methods of proving Hawaiian's linguistic relationships
The genetic history of the Hawaiian language is demonstrated primarily through the application of lexicostatistics, which involves quantitative comparison of lexical cognates, and the comparative method. Both the number of cognates and the phonological similarity of cognates are measures of language relationship.
The following table provides a limited lexicostatistical data set for ten numbers. The asterisk (*) is used to show that these are hypothetical, reconstructed forms. In the table, the year date of the modern forms is rounded off to 2000 CE to emphasize the 6000-year time lapse since the PAN era.
Note: For the number "10", the Tongan form in the table is part of the word ('ten'). The Hawaiian cognate is part of the word ('ten days'); however, the more common word for "10" used in counting and quantifying is , a different root.
Application of the lexicostatistical method to the data in the table will show the four languages to be related to one another, with Tagalog having 100% cognacy with PAN, while Hawaiian and Tongan have 100% cognacy with each other, but 90% with Tagalog and PAN. This is because the forms for each number are cognates, except the Hawaiian and Tongan words for the number "1", which are cognate with each other, but not with Tagalog and PAN. When the full set of 200 meanings is used, the percentages will be much lower. For example, Elbert found Hawaiian and Tongan to have 49% (98 ÷ 200) shared cognacy. This points out the importance of data-set size for this method, where less data leads to cruder results, while more data leads to better results.
Application of the comparative method will show partly different genetic relationships. It will point out sound changes, such as:
the loss of all PAN word-final consonants in Tongan and Hawaiian;
lowering of PAN to Tagalog in word-final syllables;
retention of PAN in word-initial and word-medial position in Tagalog and Tongan, but shift to in Hawaiian;
retention of PAN in Tagalog, but shift to in Tongan and in Hawaiian.
This method will recognize sound change #1 as a shared innovation of Hawaiian and Tongan. It will also take the Hawaiian and Tongan cognates for "1" as another shared innovation. Due to these exclusively shared features, Hawaiian and Tongan are found to be more closely related to one another than either is to Tagalog or Amis.
The forms in the table show that the Austronesian vowels tend to be relatively stable, while the consonants are relatively volatile. It is also apparent that the Hawaiian words for "3", "5", and "8" have remained essentially unchanged for 6000 years.
Mutual intelligibility
Jack H. Ward (1962) conducted a study using basic words and short utterances to determine the level of comprehension between different Polynesian languages. The mutual intelligibility of Hawaiian was found to be 41.2% with Marquesan, 37.5% with Tahitian, 25.5% with Samoan and 6.4% with Tongan.
History
First European contact
In 1778, British explorer James Cook made Europe's initial, recorded first contact with Hawaiʻi, beginning a new phase in the development of Hawaiian. During the next forty years, the sounds of Spanish (1789), Russian (1804), French (1816), and German (1816) arrived in Hawaii via other explorers and businessmen. Hawaiian began to be written for the first time, largely restricted to isolated names and words, and word lists collected by explorers and travelers.
The early explorers and merchants who first brought European languages to the Hawaiian islands also took on a few native crew members who brought the Hawaiian language into new territory. Hawaiians took these nautical jobs because their traditional way of life changed due to plantations, and although there were not enough of these Hawaiian-speaking explorers to establish any viable speech communities abroad, they still had a noticeable presence. One of them, a boy in his teens known as Obookiah (), had a major impact on the future of the language. He sailed to New England, where he eventually became a student at the Foreign Mission School in Cornwall, Connecticut. He inspired New Englanders to support a Christian mission to Hawaii, and provided information on the Hawaiian language to the American missionaries there prior to their departure for Hawaii in 1819. Adelbert von Chamisso too might have consulted with a native speaker of Hawaiian in Berlin, Germany, before publishing his grammar of Hawaiian () in 1837.
Folk tales
Like all natural spoken languages, the Hawaiian language was originally an oral language. The native people of the Hawaiian language relayed religion, traditions, history, and views of their world through stories that were handed down from generation to generation. One form of storytelling most commonly associated with the Hawaiian islands is hula. Nathaniel B. Emerson notes that "It kept the communal imagination in living touch with the nation's legendary past".
The islanders' connection with their stories is argued to be one reason why Captain James Cook received a pleasant welcome. Marshall Sahlins has observed that Hawaiian folktales began bearing similar content to those of the Western world in the eighteenth century. He argues this was caused by the timing of Captain Cook's arrival, which was coincidentally when the indigenous Hawaiians were celebrating the Makahiki festival, which is the annual celebration of the harvest in honor of the god Lono. The celebration lasts for the entirety of the “rainy season”. It is a time of peace with much emphasis on amusements, food, games, and dancing. The islanders' story foretold of the god Lono's return at the time of the Makahiki festival. The arrival of Captain Cook on the Endeavor with its massive white sails, unlike anything any Hawaiians had ever seen, seemed like the god Lono arriving on his floating island with white flags as it had been foretold.
Written Hawaiian
In 1820, Protestant missionaries from New England arrived in Hawaii, and in a few years converted the chiefs to Congregational Protestantism, who in turn converted their subjects. To the missionaries, the thorough Christianization of the kingdom necessitated a complete translation of the Bible to Hawaiian, a previously unwritten language, and therefore the creation of a standard spelling that should be as easy to master as possible. The orthography created by the missionaries was so straightforward that literacy spread very quickly among the adult population; at the same time, the Mission set more and more schools for children.
In 1834, the first Hawaiian-language newspapers were published by missionaries working with locals. The missionaries also played a significant role in publishing a vocabulary (1836) grammar (1854) and dictionary (1865) of Hawaiian. The Hawaiian Bible was fully completed in 1839; by then, the Mission had such a wide-reaching school network that, when in 1840 it handed it over to the Hawaiian government, the Hawaiian Legislature mandated compulsory state-funded education for all children under 14 years of age, including girls, twelve years before any similar compulsory education law was enacted for the first time in any of the United States.
Literacy in Hawaiian was so widespread that in 1842 a law mandated that people born after 1819 had to be literate to be allowed to marry. In his Report to the Legislature for the year 1853 Richard Armstrong, the minister of Public Instruction, bragged that 75% of the adult population could read. Use of the language among the general population might have peaked around 1881. Even so, some people worried, as early as 1854, that the language was "soon destined to extinction."
When Hawaiian King David Kalākaua took a trip around the world, he brought his native language with him. When his wife, Queen Kapiolani, and his sister, Princess (later Queen) Liliuokalani, took a trip across North America and on to the British Islands, in 1887, Liliuokalani's composition Aloha Oe was already a famous song in the U.S.
Suppression of Hawaiian
The decline of the Hawaiian language was accelerated by the coup that overthrew the Hawaiian monarchy and dethroned the existing Hawaiian queen. Thereafter, a law was instituted that required English as the main language of school instruction. The law cited is identified as Act 57, sec. 30 of the 1896 Laws of the Republic of Hawaii:
This law established English as the medium of instruction for the government-recognized schools both "public and private". While it did not ban or make illegal the Hawaiian language in other contexts, its implementation in the schools had far-reaching effects. Those who had been pushing for English-only schools took this law as licence to extinguish the native language at the early education level. While the law did not make Hawaiian illegal (it was still commonly spoken at the time), many children who spoke Hawaiian at school, including on the playground, were disciplined. This included corporal punishment and going to the home of the offending child to advise them strongly to stop speaking it in their home. Moreover, the law specifically provided for teaching languages "in addition to the English language," reducing Hawaiian to the status of an extra language, subject to approval by the Department. Hawaiian was not taught initially in any school, including the all-Hawaiian Kamehameha Schools. This is largely because when these schools were founded, like Kamehameha Schools founded in 1887 (nine years before this law), Hawaiian was being spoken in the home. Once this law was enacted, individuals at these institutions took it upon themselves to enforce a ban on Hawaiian. Beginning in 1900, Mary Kawena Pukui, who was later the co-author of the Hawaiian–English Dictionary, was punished for speaking Hawaiian by being rapped on the forehead, allowed to eat only bread and water for lunch, and denied home visits on holidays. Winona Beamer was expelled from Kamehameha Schools in 1937 for chanting Hawaiian. Due in part to this systemic surpression of the language after the overthrow, Hawaiian is still considered a critically endangered language.
However, informal coercion to drop Hawaiian wouldn't have worked by itself. Just as important was the fact that, in the same period, native Hawaiians were becoming a minority in their own land on account of the growing influx of foreign labourers and their children. Whereas in 1890 pure Hawaiian students made 56% of school enrollment, in 1900 their numbers were down to 32% and, in 1910, to 16.9%. At the same time, Hawaiians were very prone to intermarriage: the number of "Part-Hawaiian" students (i.e., children of mixed Caucasian-Hawaiian marriages) grew from 1573 in 1890 to 3718 in 1910. In such mixed households, the low prestige of Hawaiian lead to the adoption of English as the family language. Moreover, Hawaiians lived mostly in the cities or scattered across the countryside, in direct contact with other ethnic groups and without any stronghold (with the exception of Niʻihau). Thus, even pure Hawaiian children would converse daily with their schoolmates of diverse mother tongues in English, which was now not just the teachers' language but also the common language needed for everyday communication among friends and neighbours out of school as well. In only a generation English (or rather Pidgin) would become the primary and dominant language of all children, despite the efforts of Hawaiian and immigrant parents to maintain their ancestral languages within the family.
1949 to present
In 1949, the legislature of the Territory of Hawaii commissioned Mary Pukui and Samuel Elbert to write a new dictionary of Hawaiian, either revising the Andrews-Parker work or starting from scratch. Pukui and Elbert took a middle course, using what they could from the Andrews dictionary, but making certain improvements and additions that were more significant than a minor revision. The dictionary they produced, in 1957, introduced an era of gradual increase in attention to the language and culture.
Language revitalization and Hawaiian culture has seen a major revival since the Hawaiian renaissance in the 1970's. Forming in 1983, the ʻAha Pūnana Leo, meaning "language nest" in Hawaiian, opened its first center in 1984. It was a privately-funded Hawaiian preschool program that invited native Hawaiian elders to speak to children in Hawaiian every day. Efforts to promote the language have increased in recent decades. Hawaiian-language "immersion" schools are now open to children whose families want to reintroduce Hawaiian language for future generations. The Aha Pūnana Leo’s Hawaiian language preschools in Hilo, Hawaii, have received international recognition. The local National Public Radio station features a short segment titled "Hawaiian word of the day" and a Hawaiian language news broadcast. Honolulu television station KGMB ran a weekly Hawaiian language program, Āhai Ōlelo Ola, as recently as 2010. Additionally, the Sunday editions of the Honolulu Star-Advertiser, the largest newspaper in Hawaii, feature a brief article called Kauakukalahale written entirely in Hawaiian by teachers, students, and community members.
Today, the number of native speakers of Hawaiian, which was under 0.1% of the statewide population in 1997, has risen to 2,000, out of 24,000 total who are fluent in the language, according to the US 2011 census. On six of the seven permanently inhabited islands, Hawaiian has been largely displaced by English, but on Niihau, native speakers of Hawaiian have remained fairly isolated and have continued to use Hawaiian almost exclusively.
Niʻihau
The isolated island of Niʻihau, located off the southwest coast of Kauai, is the one island where Hawaiian (more specifically a local dialect of Hawaiian known as Niihau dialect) is still spoken as the language of daily life.
states that "[v]ariations in Hawaiian dialects have not been systematically studied", and that "[t]he dialect of Niʻihau is the most aberrant and the one most in need of study". They recognized that Niʻihauans can speak Hawaiian in substantially different ways. Their statements are based in part on some specific observations made by . (See Hawaiian phonological processes)
Friction has developed between those on Niʻihau that speak Hawaiian as a first language, and those who speak Hawaiian as a second language, especially those educated by the College of Hawaiian Language at the University of Hawaiʻi at Hilo. The University sponsors a Hawaiian Language Lexicon Committee () which coins words for concepts that historically have not existed in the language, like "computer" and "cell phone". These words are generally not incorporated into the Niʻihau dialect, which often coins its own words organically. Some new words are Hawaiianized versions of English words, and some are composed of Hawaiian roots and unrelated to English sounds.
Hawaiian in schools
Hawaiian medium schools
The Hawaiian medium education system is a combination of charter, public, and private schools. K-6 schools operate under coordinated governance of the Department of Education and the charter school, while the preK-12 laboratory system is governed by the Department of Education, the ʻAha Pūnana Leo, and the charter school. Over 80% of graduates from these laboratory schools attend college, some of which include Ivy-League schools. Hawaiian is now an authorized course in the Department of Education language curriculum, though not all schools offer the language.
There are two kinds of Hawaiian-immersion medium schools: k-12 total Hawaiian-immersion schools, and grades 7-12 partial Hawaiian immersion schools, the later having some classes are taught in English and others are taught in Hawaiian. One of the main focuses of Hawaiian-medium schools is to teach the form and structure of the Hawaiian language by modeling sentences as a "pepeke", meaning squid in Hawaiian. In this case the pepeke is a metaphor that features the body of a squid with the three essential parts: the poʻo (head), the ʻawe (tentacles) and the piko (where the poʻo and ʻawe meet) representing how a sentence is structured. The poʻo represents the predicate, the piko representing the subject and the ʻawe representing the object. Hawaiian immersion schools teach content that both adheres to state standards and stresses Hawaiian culture and values. The existence of immersion schools in Hawaiʻi have developed the opportunity for intergenerational transmission of Hawaiian at home.
Higher education
The Ka Haka ʻUla O Keʻelikōlani College of Hawaiian Language is a college at the University of Hawaii at Hilo dedicated to providing courses and programs entirely in Hawaiian. It educates and provides training for teachers and school administers of Hawaiian medium schools. It is the only college in the United States of America that offers a master's and doctorate's degree in an Indigenous language. Programs offered at The Ka Haka ʻUla O Keʻelikōlani College of Hawaiian Language are known collectively as the "Hilo model" and has been imitated by the Cherokee immersion program and several other Indigenous revitalization programs.
Since 1921, the University of Hawaiʻi at Manoa and all of the University of Hawaiʻi Community Colleges also offers Hawaiian language courses to students for credit. The University now also offers free online courses not for credit, along with a few other websites and apps such as Duolingo.
Orthography
Hawaiians had no written language prior to Western contact, except for petroglyph symbols.
The modern Hawaiian alphabet, ka pīāpā Hawaii, is based on the Latin script. Hawaiian words end only in vowels, and every consonant must be followed by a vowel. The Hawaiian alphabetical order has all of the vowels before the consonants, as in the following chart.
Origin
This writing system was developed by American Protestant missionaries during 1820–1826. It was the first thing they ever printed in Hawaii, on January 7, 1822, and it originally included the consonants B, D, R, T, and V, in addition to the current ones (H, K, L, M, N, P, W), and it had F, G, S, Y and Z for "spelling foreign words". The initial printing also showed the five vowel letters (A, E, I, O, U) and seven of the short diphthongs (AE, AI, AO, AU, EI, EU, OU).
In 1826, the developers voted to eliminate some of the letters which represented functionally redundant allophones (called "interchangeable letters"), enabling the Hawaiian alphabet to approach the ideal state of one-symbol-one-phoneme, and thereby optimizing the ease with which people could teach and learn the reading and writing of Hawaiian. For example, instead of spelling one and the same word as pule, bule, pure, and bure (because of interchangeable p/b and l/r), the word is spelled only as pule.
Interchangeable B/P. B was dropped, P was kept.
Interchangeable L/R. R and D were dropped, L was kept.
Interchangeable K/T. T was dropped, K was kept.
Interchangeable V/W. V was dropped, W was kept.
However, hundreds of words were very rapidly borrowed into Hawaiian from English, Greek, Hebrew, Latin, and Syriac. Although these loan words were necessarily Hawaiianized, they often retained some of their "non-Hawaiian letters" in their published forms. For example, Brazil fully Hawaiianized is Palakila, but retaining "foreign letters" it is Barazila. Another example is Gibraltar, written as Kipalaleka or Gibaraleta. While and are not regarded as Hawaiian sounds, , , and were represented in the original alphabet, so the letters (b, r, and t) for the latter are not truly "non-Hawaiian" or "foreign", even though their post-1826 use in published matter generally marked words of foreign origin.
Glottal stop
ʻOkina (oki 'cut' + -na '-ing') is the modern Hawaiian name for the symbol (a letter) that represents the glottal stop. It was formerly known as uina ("snap").
For examples of the okina, consider the Hawaiian words Hawaii and Oahu (often simply Hawaii and Oahu in English orthography). In Hawaiian, these words are pronounced and , and are written with an okina where the glottal stop is pronounced.
Elbert & Pukui's Hawaiian Grammar says "The glottal stop, ‘, is made by closing the glottis or space between the vocal cords, the result being something like the hiatus in English oh-oh."
History
As early as 1823, the missionaries made some limited use of the apostrophe to represent the glottal stop, but they did not make it a letter of the alphabet. In publishing the Hawaiian Bible, they used it to distinguish kou ('my') from kou ('your'). In 1864, William DeWitt Alexander published a grammar of Hawaiian in which he made it clear that the glottal stop (calling it "guttural break") is definitely a true consonant of the Hawaiian language. He wrote it using an apostrophe. In 1922, the Andrews-Parker dictionary of Hawaiian made limited use of the opening single quote symbol, then called "reversed apostrophe" or "inverse comma", to represent the glottal stop. Subsequent dictionaries and written material associated with the Hawaiian language revitalization have preferred to use this symbol, the okina, to better represent spoken Hawaiian. Nonetheless, excluding the okina may facilitate interface with English-oriented media, or even be preferred stylistically by some Hawaiian speakers, in homage to 19th century written texts. So there is variation today in the use of this symbol.
Electronic encoding
The okina is written in various ways for electronic uses:
turned comma: , Unicode hex value 02BB (decimal 699). This does not always have the correct appearance because it is not supported in some fonts.
opening single quote, a.k.a. left single quotation mark: ‘ Unicode hex value 2018 (decimal 8216). In many fonts this character looks like either a left-leaning single quotation mark or a quotation mark thicker at the bottom than at the top. In more traditional serif fonts such as Times New Roman it can look like a very small "6" with the circle filled in black: ‘.
Because many people who want to write the ʻokina are not familiar with these specific characters and/or do not have access to the appropriate fonts and input and display systems, it is sometimes written with more familiar and readily available characters:
the ASCII apostrophe ', Unicode hex value 27 (decimal 39), following the missionary tradition.
the ASCII grave accent (often called "backquote" or "backtick") `, Unicode hex value 60 (decimal 96)
the right single quotation mark, or "curly apostrophe" ’, Unicode hex value 2019 (decimal 8217)
Macron
A modern Hawaiian name for the macron symbol is kahakō (kaha 'mark' + kō 'long'). It was formerly known as mekona (Hawaiianization of macron). It can be written as a diacritical mark which looks like a hyphen or dash written above a vowel, i.e., ā ē ī ō ū and Ā Ē Ī Ō Ū. It is used to show that the marked vowel is a "double", or "geminate", or "long" vowel, in phonological terms. (See: Vowel length)
As early as 1821, at least one of the missionaries, Hiram Bingham, was using macrons (and breves) in making handwritten transcriptions of Hawaiian vowels. The missionaries specifically requested their sponsor in Boston to send them some type (fonts) with accented vowel characters, including vowels with macrons, but the sponsor made only one response and sent the wrong font size (pica instead of small pica). Thus, they could not print ā, ē, ī, ō, nor ū (at the right size), even though they wanted to.
Pronunciation
Owing to extensive allophony, Hawaiian has more than 13 phones. Although vowel length is phonemic, long vowels are not always pronounced as such, even though under the rules for assigning stress in Hawaiian, a long vowel will always receive stress.
Writing systems
Today, Hawaiian is written exclusively with the Latin alphabet. However, three constructed scripts for Hawaiian currently exist, though they have not gained traction.
Nā hōʻailona ʻōlelo is an abugida created by Isaac Meyer, based on the Phoenician writing system. Each of the components were based on concepts that were familiar to native Hawaiians, and one such character resembles a Hale, a traditional Hawaiian home. It is written right to left, in a horizontal line, and comes with its own set of punctuation. Isaac Meyer, the creator of the abugida has also created scripts for many other languages, including Hebrew adaptations for various languages.
The second script, Kākauna was constructed in 2018 by Hayyim Obadyah. Kākauna was created from the hypothesis of a native orthography existing prior to Western contact. The hypothesis also suggests ancient Hawaiians may have interpreted glottal stop not as a consonant, but as a characteristic of vowels.
The third script, Pīʻāpā Hou, was invented by Ben Norton, who also created an alternative alphabet for English, and a script for the Omaha-Ponca language. Though meant for Hawaiian, the script can also be implemented in Tahitian & Māori. Based on the Latin orthography, Pīʻāpā Hou makes use of the kahāko for long vowels, and the ‘okina for phonemic glottal stops. The shape of the script was inspired by Norton’s trip to Kauaʻi, specifically patterns found in the island’s nature. This script, by far has the most online material available for its use and documentation, with videos and fonts available.
Phonology
Consonants
Hawaiian is known for having very few consonant phonemes – eight: . It is notable that Hawaiian has allophonic variation of with , with , and (in some dialects) with . The – variation is quite unusual among the world's languages, and is likely a product both of the small number of consonants in Hawaiian, and the recent shift of historical *t to modern –, after historical *k had shifted to . In some dialects, remains as in some words. These variations are largely free, though there are conditioning factors. tends to especially in words with both and , such as in the island name Lānai (–), though this is not always the case: eleele or eneene "black". The allophone is almost universal at the beginnings of words, whereas is most common before the vowel . is also the norm after and , whereas is usual after and . After and initially, however, and are in free variation.
Vowels
Hawaiian has five short and five long vowels, plus diphthongs.
Monophthongs
Hawaiian has five pure vowels. The short vowels are , and the long vowels, if they are considered separate phonemes rather than simply sequences of like vowels, are . When stressed, short and have been described as becoming and , while when unstressed they are and . Parker Jones (2017), however, did not find a reduction of /a/ to in the phonetic analysis of a young speaker from Hilo, Hawaiʻi; so there is at least some variation in how /a/ is realised. also tends to become next to , , and another , as in Pele . Some grammatical particles vary between short and long vowels. These include a and o "of", ma "at", na and no "for". Between a back vowel or and a following non-back vowel (), there is an epenthetic , which is generally not written. Between a front vowel or and a following non-front vowel (), there is an epenthetic (a y sound), which is never written.
Diphthongs
The short-vowel diphthongs are . In all except perhaps , these are falling diphthongs. However, they are not as tightly bound as the diphthongs of English, and may be considered vowel sequences. (The second vowel in such sequences may receive the stress, but in such cases it is not counted as a diphthong.) In fast speech, tends to and tends to , conflating these diphthongs with and .
There are only a limited number of vowels which may follow long vowels, and some authors treat these sequences as diphthongs as well: .
Phonotactics
Hawaiian syllable structure is (C)V. All CV syllables occur except for wū; wu occurs only in two words borrowed from English. As shown by Schütz, Hawaiian word-stress is predictable in words of one to four syllables, but not in words of five or more syllables. Hawaiian phonological processes include palatalization and deletion of consonants, as well as raising, diphthongization, deletion, and compensatory lengthening of vowels.
Historical development
Historically, glottal stop developed from *k. Loss of intervocalic consonant phonemes has resulted in Hawaiian long vowels and diphthongs.
Grammar
Hawaiian is an analytic language with verb–subject–object word order. While there is no use of inflection for verbs, in Hawaiian, like other Austronesian personal pronouns, declension is found in the differentiation between a- and o-class genitive case personal pronouns in order to indicate inalienable possession in a binary possessive class system. Also like many Austronesian languages, Hawaiian pronouns employ separate words for inclusive and exclusive we (clusivity), and distinguish singular, dual, and plural. The grammatical function of verbs is marked by adjacent particles (short words) and by their relative positions, that indicate tense–aspect–mood.
Some examples of verb phrase patterns:
ua – perfective
e ana – imperfective
ke nei – present progressive
e – imperative
mai – negative imperative
i – purposive
ke – infinitive
Nouns can be marked with articles:
ka honu (the turtle)
nā honu (the turtles)
ka hale (the house)
ke kanaka (the person)
ka and ke are singular definite articles. ke is used before words beginning with a-, e-, o- and k-, and with some words beginning - and p-. ka is used in all other cases. nā is the plural definite article.
To show part of a group, the word kekahi is used. To show a bigger part, mau is inserted to pluralize the subject.
Examples:
kekahi pipi (one of the cows)
kekahi mau pipi (some of the cows)
Semantic domains
Hawaiian has thousands of words for elements of the natural world. According to the Hawaiian Electronic Library, there are thousands of names for different types of wind, rain, parts of the sea, peaks of mountains, and sky formations, demonstrating the importance of the natural world to Hawaiian culture. For example, "Hoʻomalumalu" means "sheltering cloud" and "Hoʻoweliweli" means "threatening cloud".
Varieties and debates
There is a marked difference between varieties of the Hawaiian language spoken by most native Hawaiian elders and the Hawaiian Language taught in education, sometimes regarded as "University Hawaiian" or "College Hawaiian". "University Hawaiian" is often so different from the language spoken by elders that Native Hawaiian children may feel scared or ashamed to speak Hawaiian at home, limiting the language's domains to academia. Language varieties spoken by elders often includes Pidgin Hawaiian, Hawaiian Pidgin, Hawaiian-infused English, or another variety of Hawaiian that is much different than the "University Hawaiian" that was standardized and documented by colonists in the 19th century.
The divide between "University Hawaiian" and varieties spoken by elders has created debate over which variety of Hawaiian should be considered "real" or "authentic", as neither "University Hawaiian" nor other varieties spoken by elders are free from foreign interference. Hawaiian cultural beliefs of divine intervention as the driving force of language formation expedites distrust in what might be seen as the mechanical nature of colonial linguistic paradigms of language and its role in the standardized variety of "University Hawaiian". Hawaiian's authenticity debate could have major implications for revitalization efforts as language attitudes and trends in existing language domains are both UNESCO factors in assessing a language's level of endangerment.
See also
The list of Hawaiian words and list of words of Hawaiian origin at Wiktionary, a free dictionary and Wikipedia sibling project
Languages of the United States
List of English words of Hawaiian origin
Pidgin Hawaiian (not to be confused with Hawaiian Pidgin)
References
References
.
Memoir 19 of the International Journal of American Linguistics.
External links
Niuolahiki Distance Learning Program (a moodle-based online study program for Hawaiian)
Ulukau – the Hawaiian electronic library, includes English to/from Hawaiian dictionary
digitized Hawaiian language newspapers published between 1834 and 1948
Hawaiian Vocabulary List (from the World Loanword Database)
Ka Haka ʻUla O Keʻelikōlani, College of Hawaiian Language
Kulaiwi – learn Hawaiian through distance learning courses
Hawaiian.saivus.org – Detailed Hawaiian Language Pronunciation Guide
Traditional and Neo Hawaiian: The Emergence of a New Form of Hawaiian Language as a Result of Hawaiian Language Regeneration
"Hale Pa'i" Article about Hawaiian language newspapers printed at Lahainaluna on Maui. Maui No Ka 'Oi Magazine Vol.12 No.3 (May 2008).
"Speak Hawaiian"' Article about Hawaiian language resource on iPhone. (May 2010).
How to Pronounce "Hawai'i", Kelley L. Ross, Ph.D, 2008
OLAC Resources in and about the Hawaiian language
" Article about Hawaiian Dictionary resource on iPhone in Honolulu Magazine. (May 2012).
Marquesic languages
Analytic languages
Endangered Austronesian languages
Endangered languages of Oceania
Verb–subject–object languages
Languages attested from the 18th century
18th-century establishments in North America | [
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14245 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second%20Polish%20Republic | Second Polish Republic | The Second Polish Republic, at the time officially known as the Republic of Poland, was a country in Central and Eastern Europe that existed between 1918 and 1939. The state was established in 1918, in the aftermath of World War I. The Second Republic ceased to exist in 1939, when Poland was invaded by Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union and the Slovak Republic, marking the beginning of the European theatre of World War II.
In 1938, the Second Republic was the sixth largest country in Europe. According to the 1921 census, the number of inhabitants was 27.2 million. By 1939, just before the outbreak of World War II, this had grown to an estimated 35.1 million. Almost a third of the population came from minority groups: 13.9% Ruthenians; 10% Ashkenazi Jews; 3.1% Belarusians; 2.3% Germans and 3.4% Czechs and Lithuanians. At the same time, a significant number of ethnic Poles lived outside the country's borders.
When, after several regional conflicts, the borders of the state were finalized in 1922, Poland's neighbors were Czechoslovakia, Germany, the Free City of Danzig, Lithuania, Latvia, Romania and the Soviet Union. It had access to the Baltic Sea via a short strip of coastline either side of the city of Gdynia, known as the Polish Corridor. Between March and August 1939, Poland also shared a border with the then-Hungarian governorate of Subcarpathia. The political conditions of the Second Republic were heavily influenced by the aftermath of World War I and conflicts with neighbouring states as well as the emergence of Nazism in Germany.
The Second Republic maintained moderate economic development. The cultural hubs of interwar PolandWarsaw, Kraków, Poznań, Wilno and Lwówbecame major European cities and the sites of internationally acclaimed universities and other institutions of higher education.
Name
The official name of the state was the Republic of Poland. In Polish language, it was referred to as Rzeczpospolita Polska (abbr. RP), with term Rzeczpospolita, being a traditional name for the republic referred to Polish states, including the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, and later, the current Third Polish Republic. In other regionally-used official languages, the state was referred to as: Republik Polen in German, Польська Республіка (transcription: Polʹsʹka Respublika) in Ukrainian, Польская Рэспубліка (transcription: Poĺskaja Respublika) in Belarusian, and Lenkijos Respublika, in Lithuanian.
Between 14 November 1918 and 13 March 1919, the state was referred to in Polish as Republika Polska, instead of Rzeczpospolita Polska. Both terms mean the Republic, however republika is general term, while Rzeczpospolita traditionally refers exclusively to Polish states. Additionally, between 8 November 1918 and 16 August 1919, the Journal of Laws of the Polish State, referred to the country as the Polish State (Polish: Państwo Polskie).
After World War II and establishment of later states of Polish People's Republic and Third Polish Republic, the state was referred to as the Second Polish Republic. In the Polish language, the country is traditionally referred to as II Rzeczpospolita, which means, the Second Republic.
Background
After more than a century of partitions between the Austrian, the Prussian, and the Russian imperial powers, Poland re-emerged as a sovereign state at the end of the First World War in Europe in 1917–1918. The victorious Allies of World War I confirmed the rebirth of Poland in the Treaty of Versailles of June 1919. It was one of the great stories of the 1919 Paris Peace Conference. Poland solidified its independence in a series of border wars fought by the newly formed Polish Army from 1918 to 1921. The extent of the eastern half of the interwar territory of Poland was settled diplomatically in 1922 and internationally recognized by the League of Nations.
End of World War I
Over the course of World War I (1914-1918), the German Empire gradually dominated the Eastern Front as the Imperial Russian Army fell back. German and Austro-Hungarian armies seized the Russian-ruled part of what became Poland. In a failed attempt to resolve the Polish question as quickly as possible, Berlin set up a German puppet state on 5 November 1916, with a governing Provisional Council of State and (from 15 October 1917) a Regency Council (Rada Regencyjna Królestwa Polskiego). The Council administered the country under German auspices (see also Mitteleuropa), pending the election of a king. A month before Germany surrendered on 11 November 1918 and the war ended, the Regency Council had dissolved the Provisional Council of State and announced its intention to restore Polish independence (7 October 1918). With the notable exception of the Marxist-oriented Social Democratic Party of the Kingdom of Poland and Lithuania (SDKPiL), most Polish political parties supported this move. On 23 October the Regency Council appointed a new government under Józef Świeżyński and began conscription into the Polish Army.
Formation of the Republic
In 1918–1919, over 100 workers' councils sprang up on Polish territories; on 5 November 1918, in Lublin, the first Soviet of Delegates was established. On 6 November socialists proclaimed the Republic of Tarnobrzeg at Tarnobrzeg in Austrian Galicia. The same day the Socialist, Ignacy Daszyński, set up a Provisional People's Government of the Republic of Poland (Tymczasowy Rząd Ludowy Republiki Polskiej) in Lublin. On Sunday, 10 November at 7 a.m., Józef Piłsudski, newly freed from 16 months in a German prison in Magdeburg, returned by train to Warsaw. Piłsudski, together with Colonel Kazimierz Sosnkowski, was greeted at Warsaw's railway station by Regent Zdzisław Lubomirski and by Colonel Adam Koc. Next day, due to his popularity and support from most political parties, the Regency Council appointed Piłsudski as Commander in Chief of the Polish Armed Forces. On 14 November, the Council dissolved itself and transferred all its authority to Piłsudski as Chief of State (Naczelnik Państwa). After consultation with Piłsudski, Daszyński's government dissolved itself and a new government formed under Jędrzej Moraczewski. In 1918 Italy became the first country in Europe to recognize Poland's renewed sovereignty.
Centers of government that formed at that time in Galicia (formerly Austrian-ruled southern Poland) included the National Council of the Principality of Cieszyn (established in November 1918), the Republic of Zakopane and the Polish Liquidation Committee (28 October). Soon afterward, the Polish–Ukrainian War broke out in Lwów (1 November 1918) between forces of the Military Committee of Ukrainians and the Polish irregular units made up of students known as the Lwów Eaglets, who were later supported by the Polish Army (see Battle of Lwów (1918), Battle of Przemyśl (1918)). Meanwhile, in western Poland, another war of national liberation began under the banner of the Greater Poland uprising (1918–1919). In January 1919 Czechoslovak forces attacked Polish units in the area of Zaolzie (see Polish–Czechoslovak War). Soon afterwards the Polish–Lithuanian War (ca 1919–1920) began, and in August 1919 Polish-speaking residents of Upper Silesia initiated a series of three Silesian Uprisings. The most critical military conflict of that period, however, the Polish–Soviet War (1919-1921), ended in a decisive Polish victory. In 1919 the Warsaw government suppressed the Republic of Tarnobrzeg and the workers' councils.
Politics and government
The Second Polish Republic was a parliamentary democracy from 1919 (see Small Constitution of 1919) to 1926, with the President having limited powers. The Parliament elected him, and he could appoint the Prime Minister as well as the government with the Sejm's (lower house's) approval, but he could only dissolve the Sejm with the Senate's consent. Moreover, his power to pass decrees was limited by the requirement that the Prime Minister and the appropriate other Minister had to verify his decrees with their signatures. Poland was one of the first countries in the world to recognize women's suffrage. Women in Poland were granted the right to vote on 28 November 1918 by a decree of Józef Piłsudski.
The major political parties at this time were the Polish Socialist Party, National Democrats, various Peasant Parties, Christian Democrats, and political groups of ethnic minorities (German: German Social Democratic Party of Poland, Jewish: General Jewish Labour Bund in Poland, United Jewish Socialist Workers Party, and Ukrainian: Ukrainian National Democratic Alliance). Frequently changing governments (see 1919 Polish legislative election, 1922 Polish legislative election) and other negative publicity the politicians received (such as accusations of corruption or 1919 Polish coup attempt), made them increasingly unpopular. Major politicians at this time, in addition to Piłsudski, included peasant activist Wincenty Witos (Prime Minister three times) and right-wing leader Roman Dmowski. Ethnic minorities were represented in the Sejm; e.g. in 1928 – 1930 there was the Ukrainian-Belarusian Club, with 26 Ukrainian and 4 Belarusian members.
After the Polish – Soviet war, Marshal Piłsudski led an intentionally modest life, writing historical books for a living. After he took power by a military coup in May 1926, he emphasized that he wanted to heal the Polish society and politics of excessive partisan politics. His regime, accordingly, was called Sanacja in Polish. The 1928 parliamentary elections were still considered free and fair, although the pro-Piłsudski Nonpartisan Bloc for Cooperation with the Government won them. The following three parliamentary elections (in 1930, 1935 and 1938) were manipulated, with opposition activists sent to Bereza Kartuska prison (see also Brest trials). As a result, the pro-government party Camp of National Unity won huge majorities in them. Piłsudski died just after an authoritarian constitution was approved in the spring of 1935. During the last four years of the Second Polish Republic, the major politicians included President Ignacy Mościcki, Foreign Minister Józef Beck and the Commander-in-Chief of the Polish Army, Edward Rydz-Śmigły. The country was divided into 104 electoral districts, and those politicians who were forced to leave Poland, founded Front Morges in 1936. The government that ruled Second Polish Republic in its final years is frequently referred to as Piłsudski's colonels.
Military
Interwar Poland had a considerably large army of 950,000 soldiers on active duty: in 37 infantry divisions, 11 cavalry brigades, and two armored brigades, plus artillery units. Another 700,000 men served in the reserves. At the outbreak of the war, the Polish army was able to put in the field almost one million soldiers, 4,300 guns, 1,280 tanks and 745 aircraft.
The training of the Polish Army was thorough. The non-commissioned officers were a competent body of men with expert knowledge and high ideals. The officers, both senior and junior, constantly refreshed their training in the field and in the lecture-hall, where modern technical achievement and the lessons of contemporary wars were demonstrated and discussed. The equipment of the Polish army was less developed technically than that of Nazi Germany and its rearmament was slowed down by confidence in Western European military support and by budget difficulties.
Economy
After regaining its independence, Poland was faced with major economic difficulties. In addition to the devastation brought by World War I, the exploitation of the Polish economy by the German and Russian occupying powers, and the sabotage performed by retreating armies, the new republic was faced with the task of economically unifying disparate economic regions, which had previously been part of different countries. Within the borders of the Republic were the remnants of three different economic systems, with five different currencies (the German mark, the Russian ruble, the Austrian crown, the Polish marka and the Ostrubel) and with little or no direct infrastructural links. The situation was so bad that neighboring industrial centers as well as major cities lacked direct railroad links, because they had been parts of different nations. For example, there was no direct railroad connection between Warsaw and Kraków until 1934. This situation was described by Melchior Wańkowicz in his book Sztafeta.
On top of this was the massive destruction left after both World War I and the Polish–Soviet War. There was also a great economic disparity between the eastern (commonly called Poland B) and western (called Poland A) parts of the country, with the western half, especially areas that had belonged to the German Empire being much more developed and prosperous. Frequent border closures and a customs war with Germany also had negative economic impacts on Poland. In 1924 Prime Minister and Economic Minister Władysław Grabski introduced the złoty as a single common currency for Poland (it replaced the Polish marka), which remained a stable currency. The currency helped Poland to control the massive hyperinflation. It was the only country in Europe able to do this without foreign loans or aid. The average annual growth rate (GDP per capita) was 5.24% in 1920–29 and 0.34% in 1929–38.
Hostile relations with neighbors were a major problem for the economy of interbellum Poland. In the year 1937, foreign trade with all neighbors amounted to only 21% of Poland's total. Trade with Germany, Poland's most important neighbour, accounted for 14.3% of Polish exchange. Foreign trade with the Soviet Union (0.8%) was virtually nonexistent. Czechoslovakia accounted for 3.9%, Latvia for 0.3%, and Romania for 0.8%. By mid-1938, after the Anschluss of Austria, Greater Germany was responsible for as much as 23% of Polish foreign trade.
The basis of Poland's gradual recovery after the Great Depression was its mass economic development plans (see Four Year Plan), which oversaw the building of three key infrastructural elements. The first was the establishment of the Gdynia seaport, which allowed Poland to completely bypass Gdańsk (which was under heavy German pressure to boycott Polish coal exports). The second was construction of the 500-kilometer rail connection between Upper Silesia and Gdynia, called Polish Coal Trunk-Line, which served freight trains with coal. The third was the creation of a central industrial district, named COP – Central Industrial Region (Centralny Okręg Przemysłowy). Unfortunately, these developments were interrupted and largely destroyed by the German and Soviet invasion and the start of World War II. Other achievements of interbellum Poland included Stalowa Wola (a brand new city, built in a forest around a steel mill), Mościce (now a district of Tarnów, with a large nitrate factory), and the creation of a central bank. There were several trade fairs, with the most popular being Poznań International Fair, Lwów's Targi Wschodnie, and Wilno's Targi Północne. Polish Radio had ten stations (see Radio stations in interwar Poland), with the eleventh one planned to be opened in the autumn of 1939. Furthermore, in 1935 Polish engineers began working on the TV services. By early 1939, experts of the Polish Radio built four TV sets. The first movie broadcast by experimental Polish TV was Barbara Radziwiłłówna, and by 1940, regular TV service was scheduled to begin operation.
Interbellum Poland was also a country with numerous social problems. Unemployment was high, and poverty in the countryside was widespread, which resulted in several cases of social unrest, such as the 1923 Kraków riot, and 1937 peasant strike in Poland. There were conflicts with national minorities, such as Pacification of Ukrainians in Eastern Galicia (1930), relations with Polish neighbors were sometimes complicated (see Soviet raid on Stołpce, Polish–Czechoslovak border conflicts, 1938 Polish ultimatum to Lithuania). On top of this, there were natural disasters, such as the 1934 flood in Poland.
Major industrial centers
Interbellum Poland was unofficially divided into two parts – better developed "Poland A" in the west, and underdeveloped "Poland B" in the east. Polish industry was concentrated in the west, mostly in Polish Upper Silesia, and the adjacent Lesser Poland's province of Zagłębie Dąbrowskie, where the bulk of coal mines and steel plants was located. Furthermore, heavy industry plants were located in Częstochowa (Huta Częstochowa, founded in 1896), Ostrowiec Świętokrzyski (Huta Ostrowiec, founded in 1837–1839), Stalowa Wola (brand new industrial city, which was built from scratch in 1937 – 1938), Chrzanów (Fablok, founded in 1919), Jaworzno, Trzebinia (oil refinery, opened in 1895), Łódź (the seat of Polish textile industry), Poznań (H. Cegielski – Poznań), Kraków and Warsaw (Ursus Factory). Further east, in Kresy, industrial centers included two major cities of the region – Lwów and Wilno (Elektrit).
Besides coal mining, Poland also had deposits of oil in Borysław, Drohobycz, Jasło and Gorlice (see Polmin), potassium salt (TESP), and basalt (Janowa Dolina). Apart from already-existing industrial areas, in the mid-1930s, an ambitious, state-sponsored project of Central Industrial Region was started under Minister Eugeniusz Kwiatkowski. One of characteristic features of Polish economy in the interbellum was gradual nationalization of major plants. This was the case of Ursus Factory (see Państwowe Zakłady Inżynieryjne), and several steelworks, such as Huta Pokój in Ruda Śląska – Nowy Bytom, Huta Królewska in Chorzów – Królewska Huta, Huta Laura in Siemianowice Śląskie, as well as Scheibler and Grohman Works in Łódź.
Transport
According to the 1939 Statistical Yearbook of Poland, the total length of railways of Poland (as of 31 December 1937) was . Rail density was per . Railways were very dense in the western part of the country, while in the east, especially Polesie, rail was non-existent in some counties. During the interbellum period, the Polish government constructed several new lines, mainly in the central part of the country (see also Polish State Railroads Summer 1939). Construction of extensive Warszawa Główna railway station was never finished due to the war, and Polish railroads were famous for their punctuality (see Luxtorpeda, Strzała Bałtyku, Latający Wilnianin).
In the interbellum, the road network of Poland was dense, but the quality of the roads was very poor – only 7% of all roads was paved and ready for automobile use, and none of the major cities were connected with each other by a good-quality highway. In 1939 the Poles built only one highway: 28 km of straight concrete road connecting the villages of Warlubie and Osiek (mid-northern Poland). It was designed by Italian engineer Piero Puricelli.
In the mid-1930s, Poland had of roads, but only 58,000 had a hard surface (gravel, cobblestone or sett), and 2,500 were modern, with an asphalt or concrete surface. In different parts of the country, there were sections of paved roads, which suddenly ended, and were followed by dirt roads. The poor condition of the roads was the result of both long-lasting foreign dominance and inadequate funding. On 29 January 1931, the Polish Parliament created the State Road Fund, the purpose of which was to collect money for the construction and conservation of roads. The government drafted a 10-year plan, with road priorities: a highway from Wilno, through Warsaw and Kraków, to Zakopane (called Marshal Piłsudski Highway), asphalt highways from Warsaw to Poznań and Łódź, as well as a Warsaw ring road. However, the plan turned out to be too ambitious, with insufficient money in the national budget to pay for it. In January 1938, the Polish Road Congress estimated that Poland would need to spend three times as much money on roads to keep up with Western Europe.
In 1939, before the outbreak of the war, LOT Polish Airlines, which was established in 1929, had its hub at Warsaw Okęcie Airport. At that time, LOT maintained several services, both domestic and international. Warsaw had regular domestic connections with Gdynia-Rumia, Danzig-Langfuhr, Katowice-Muchowiec, Kraków-Rakowice-Czyżyny, Lwów-Skniłów, Poznań-Ławica, and Wilno-Porubanek. Furthermore, in cooperation with Air France, LARES, Lufthansa, and Malert, international connections were maintained with Athens, Beirut, Berlin, Bucharest, Budapest, Helsinki, Kaunas, London, Paris, Prague, Riga, Rome, Tallinn, and Zagreb.
Agriculture
Statistically, the majority of citizens lived in the countryside (75% in 1921). Farmers made up 65% of the population. In 1929, agricultural production made up 65% of Poland's GNP. After 123 years of partitions, regions of the country were very unevenly developed. Lands of former German Empire were most advanced; in Greater Poland, Upper Silesia and Pomerelia, crops were on Western European level. The situation was much worse in parts of Congress Poland, Eastern Borderlands, and former Galicia, where agriculture was most backward and primitive, with a large number of small farms, unable to succeed in either the domestic and international market. Another problem was the overpopulation of the countryside, which resulted in chronic unemployment. Living conditions were so bad in several eastern regions, such as counties inhabited by the Hutsul minority, that there was permanent starvation. Farmers rebelled against the government (see: 1937 peasant strike in Poland), and the situation began to change in the late 1930s, due to construction of several factories for the Central Industrial Region, which gave employment to thousands of countryside residents.
German trade
Beginning in June 1925 there was a customs' war with the revanchist Weimar Republic imposing trade embargo against Poland for nearly a decade; involving tariffs, and broad economic restrictions. After 1933 the trade war ended. The new agreements regulated and promoted trade. Germany became Poland's largest trading partner, followed by Britain. In October 1938 Germany granted a credit of Rm 60,000,000 to Poland (120,000,000 zloty, or £4,800,000) which was never realized, due to the outbreak of war. Germany would deliver factory equipment and machinery in return for Polish timber and agricultural produce. This new trade was to be in addition to the existing German-Polish trade agreements.
Education and culture
In 1919, the Polish government introduced compulsory education for all children aged 7 to 14, in an effort to limit illiteracy, which was widespread especially in the former Russian Partition and the Austrian Partition of eastern Poland. In 1921, one-third of citizens of Poland remained illiterate (38% in the countryside). The process was slow, but by 1931, the illiteracy level had dropped to 23% overall (27% in the countryside) and further down to 18% in 1937. By 1939, over 90% of children attended school. In 1932, Minister of Religion and Education Janusz Jędrzejewicz carried out a major reform which introduced two main levels of education: common school (szkoła powszechna), with three levels – 4 grades + 2 grades + 1 grade; and middle school (szkoła średnia), with two levels – 4 grades of comprehensive middle school and 2 grades of specified high school (classical, humanistic, natural and mathematical). A graduate of middle school received a small matura, while a graduate of high school received a big matura, which enabled them to seek university-level education.
Before 1918, Poland had three universities: Jagiellonian University, University of Warsaw and Lwów University. Catholic University of Lublin was established in 1918; Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznań, in 1919; and finally, in 1922, after the annexation of Republic of Central Lithuania, Wilno University became the Republic's sixth university. There were also three technical colleges: the Warsaw University of Technology, Lwów Polytechnic and the AGH University of Science and Technology in Kraków, established in 1919. Warsaw University of Life Sciences was an agricultural institute. By 1939, there were around 50,000 students enrolled in further education. Women made up 28% of university students, the second highest proportion in Europe.
Polish science in the interbellum was renowned for its mathematicians gathered around the Lwów School of Mathematics, the Kraków School of Mathematics, as well as Warsaw School of Mathematics. There were world-class philosophers in the Lwów–Warsaw school of logic and philosophy. Florian Znaniecki founded Polish sociological studies. Rudolf Weigl invented a vaccine against typhus. Bronisław Malinowski counted among the most important anthropologists of the 20th century.
In Polish literature, the 1920s were marked by the domination of poetry. Polish poets were divided into two groups – the Skamanderites (Jan Lechoń, Julian Tuwim, Antoni Słonimski and Jarosław Iwaszkiewicz) and the Futurists (Anatol Stern, Bruno Jasieński, Aleksander Wat, Julian Przyboś). Apart from well-established novelists (Stefan Żeromski, Władysław Reymont), new names appeared in the interbellum – Zofia Nałkowska, Maria Dąbrowska, Jarosław Iwaszkiewicz, Jan Parandowski, Bruno Schultz, Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz, Witold Gombrowicz. Among other notable artists there were sculptor Xawery Dunikowski, painters Julian Fałat, Wojciech Kossak and Jacek Malczewski, composers Karol Szymanowski, Feliks Nowowiejski, and Artur Rubinstein, singer Jan Kiepura.
Theatre was immensely popular in the interbellum, with three main centers in the cities of Warsaw, Wilno and Lwów. Altogether, there were 103 theaters in Poland and a number of other theatrical institutions (including 100 folk theaters). In 1936, different shows were seen by 5 million people, and main figures of Polish theatre of the time were Juliusz Osterwa, Stefan Jaracz, and Leon Schiller. Also, before the outbreak of the war, there were approximately one million radios (see Radio stations in interwar Poland).
Administrative division
The administrative division of the Republic was based on a three-tier system. On the lowest rung were the gminy, local town and village governments akin to districts or parishes. These were then grouped together into powiaty (akin to counties), which, in turn, were grouped as województwa (voivodeships, akin to provinces).
Demographics
Historically, Poland was almost always a multiethnic country. This was especially true for the Second Republic, when independence was once again regained in the wake of World War I and the subsequent Polish–Soviet War ending at Peace of Riga. The census of 1921 shows 30.8% of the population consisted of ethnic minorities, compared with a share of 1.6% (solely identifying with a non-Polish ethnic group) or 3.8% (including those identifying with both the Polish ethnicity and with another ethnic group) in 2011. The first spontaneous flight of about 500,000 Poles from the Soviet Union occurred during the reconstitution of sovereign Poland. In the second wave, between November 1919 and June 1924 some 1,200,000 people left the territory of the USSR for Poland. It is estimated that some 460,000 of them spoke Polish as the first language. According to the 1931 Polish Census: 68.9% of the population was Polish, 13.9% were Ukrainian, around 10% Jewish, 3.1% Belarusian, 2.3% German and 2.8% other, including Lithuanian, Czech, Armenian, Russian, and Romani. The situation of minorities was a complex subject and changed during the period.
Poland was also a nation of many religions. In 1921, 16,057,229 Poles (approx. 62.5%) were Roman (Latin) Catholics, 3,031,057 citizens of Poland (approx. 11.8%) were Eastern Rite Catholics (mostly Ukrainian Greek Catholics and Armenian Rite Catholics), 2,815,817 (approx. 10.95%) were Greek Orthodox, 2,771,949 (approx. 10.8%) were Jewish, and 940,232 (approx. 3.7%) were Protestants (mostly Lutheran).
By 1931, Poland had the second largest Jewish population in the world, with one-fifth of all the world's Jews residing within its borders (approx. 3,136,000). The urban population of interbellum Poland was rising steadily; in 1921, only 24% of Poles lived in the cities, in the late 1930s, that proportion grew to 30%. In more than a decade, the population of Warsaw grew by 200,000, Łódź by 150,000, and Poznań – by 100,000. This was due not only to internal migration, but also to an extremely high birth rate.
Largest cities in the Second Polish Republic
Prewar population density
Status of ethnic minorities
Jews
From the 1920s the Polish government excluded Jews from receiving government bank loans, public sector employment, and obtaining business licenses. From the 1930s measures were taken against Jewish shops, Jewish export firms, Shechita as well as limitations were placed on Jewish admission to the medical and legal professions, Jews in business associations and the enrollment of Jews into universities. The political movement National Democracy (Endecja from the abbreviation "ND") often organized anti-Jewish business boycotts. Following the death of Józef Piłsudski in 1935, the Endecja intensified their efforts which triggered violence in extreme cases in smaller towns across the country. In 1937, the National Democracy movement passed resolutions that "its main aim and duty must be to remove the Jews from all spheres of social, economic, and cultural life in Poland". The government in response organized the Camp of National Unity (OZON), which in 1938 took control of the Polish Sejm and subsequently drafted anti-Semitic legislation similar to the Anti-Jewish laws in Germany, Hungary, and Romania. OZON advocated mass emigration of Jews from Poland, numerus clausus (see also Ghetto benches), and other limitation on Jewish rights. According to William W. Hagen by 1939, prior to the war, Polish Jews were threatened with conditions similar to those in Nazi Germany.
Ukrainians
The pre-war government also restricted rights of people who declared Ukrainian nationality, belonged to the Eastern Orthodox Church and inhabited the Eastern Borderlands of the Second Polish Republic. Ukrainian was restricted in every field possible, especially in governmental institutions, and the term "Ruthenian" was enforced in an attempt to ban the use of the term "Ukrainian". Ukrainians were categorized as uneducated second-class peasants or third world people and rarely settled outside the Eastern Borderland region due to the prevailing Ukrainophobia and restrictions imposed. Numerous attempts at restoring the Ukrainian state were suppressed and any existent violence or terrorism initiated by the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists was emphasized to create an image of a "brutal Eastern savage".
Geography
The Second Polish Republic was mainly flat with average elevation of above sea level, except for the southernmost Carpathian Mountains (after World War II and its border changes, the average elevation of Poland decreased to ). Only 13% of territory, along the southern border, was higher than . The highest elevation in the country was Mount Rysy, which rises in the Tatra Range of the Carpathians, approximately south of Kraków. Between October 1938 and September 1939, the highest elevation was Lodowy Szczyt (known in Slovak as Ľadový štít), which rises above sea level. The largest lake was Lake Narach.
The country's total area, after the annexation of Zaolzie, was . It extended from north to south and from east to west. On 1 January 1938, total length of boundaries was , including: of coastline (out of which were made by the Hel Peninsula), the with Soviet Union, 948 kilometers with Czechoslovakia (until 1938), with Germany (together with East Prussia), and with other countries (Lithuania, Romania, Latvia, Danzig). The warmest yearly average temperature was in Kraków among major cities of the Second Polish Republic, at in 1938; and the coldest in Wilno ( in 1938). Extreme geographical points of Poland included Przeświata River in Somino to the north (located in the Braslaw county of the Wilno Voivodeship); Manczin River to the south (located in the Kosów county of the Stanisławów Voivodeship); Spasibiorki near railway to Połock to the east (located in the Dzisna county of the Wilno Voivodeship); and Mukocinek near Warta River and Meszyn Lake to the west (located in the Międzychód county of the Poznań Voivodeship).
Waters
Almost 75% of the territory of interbellum Poland was drained northward into the Baltic Sea by the Vistula (total area of drainage basin of the Vistula within boundaries of the Second Polish Republic was , the Niemen (), the Odra () and the Daugava (). The remaining part of the country was drained southward, into the Black Sea, by the rivers that drain into the Dnieper (Pripyat, Horyn and Styr, all together ) as well as Dniester ()
German–Soviet invasion of Poland in 1939
The Second World War in 1939 ended the sovereign Second Polish Republic. The German invasion of Poland began on 1 September 1939, one week after Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union signed the secret Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact. On that day, Germany and Slovakia attacked Poland, and on 17 September the Soviets attacked eastern Poland. Warsaw fell to the Nazis on 28 September after a twenty-day siege. Open organized Polish resistance ended on 6 October 1939 after the Battle of Kock, with Germany and the Soviet Union occupying most of the country. Lithuania annexed the area of Wilno, and Slovakia seized areas along Poland's southern border - including Górna Orawa and Tatranská Javorina - which Poland had annexed from Czechoslovakia in October 1938. Poland did not surrender to the invaders, but continued fighting under the auspices of the Polish government-in-exile and of the Polish Underground State. After the signing of the German–Soviet Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Demarcation on 28 September 1939, Polish areas occupied by Nazi Germany either became directly incorporated into Nazi Germany, or became part of the General Government. The Soviet Union, following Elections to the People's Assemblies of Western Ukraine and Western Belarus (22 October 1939), annexed eastern Poland partly to the Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic, and partly to the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic (November 1939).
Polish war plans (Plan West and Plan East) failed as soon as Germany invaded in 1939. The Polish losses in combat against Germans (killed and missing in action) amounted to ca. 70,000 men. Some 420,000 of them were taken prisoners. Losses against the Red Army (which invaded Poland on 17 September) added up to 6,000 to 7,000 of casualties and MIA, 250,000 were taken prisoners. Although the Polish army – considering the inactivity of the Allies – was in an unfavorable position – it managed to inflict serious losses to the enemies: 20,000 German soldiers were killed or MIA, 674 tanks and 319 armored vehicles destroyed or badly damaged, 230 aircraft shot down; the Red Army lost (killed and MIA) about 2,500 soldiers, 150 combat vehicles and 20 aircraft. The Soviet invasion of Poland, and lack of promised aid from the Western Allies, contributed to the Polish forces defeat by 6 October 1939.
A popular myth is that Polish cavalry armed with lances charged German tanks during the September 1939 campaign. This often repeated account, first reported by Italian journalists as German propaganda, concerned an action by the Polish 18th Lancer Regiment near Chojnice. This arose from misreporting of a single clash on 1 September 1939 near Krojanty, when two squadrons of the Polish 18th Lancers armed with sabers surprised and wiped out a German infantry formation with a mounted saber charge. Shortly after midnight the 2nd (Motorized) Division was compelled to withdraw by Polish cavalry, before the Poles were caught in the open by German armored cars. The story arose because some German armored cars appeared and gunned down 20 troopers as the cavalry escaped. Even this failed to persuade everyone to reexamine their beliefs—there were some who thought Polish cavalry had been improperly employed in 1939.
Between 1939 and 1990, the Polish government-in-exile operated in Paris and later in London, presenting itself as the only legal and legitimate representative of the Polish nation. In 1990 the last president in exile, Ryszard Kaczorowski handed the presidential insignia to the newly elected President, Lech Wałęsa, signifying continuity between the Second and Third republics.
See also
History of Poland (1918–39)
1938 in Poland
1939 in Poland
Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, also known as the "First Polish Republic" and described as a "republic under the presidency of the King"
Notes
References
Further reading
Davies, Norman. God's Playground. A History of Poland. Vol. 2: 1795 to the Present. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981. pp 393–434
Latawaski, Paul. Reconstruction of Poland 1914–23 (1992)
Leslie, R. F. et al. The History of Poland since 1863. Cambridge U. Press, 1980. 494 pp.
Lukowski, Jerzy and Zawadzki, Hubert. A Concise History of Poland. Cambridge U. Press, 2nd ed 2006. 408pp. excerpts and search
Pogonowski, Iwo Cyprian. Poland: A Historical Atlas. Hippocrene, 1987. 321 pp. new designed maps
Stachura, Peter D. Poland, 1918–1945: An Interpretive and Documentary History of the Second Republic (2004) online
Stachura, Peter D. ed. Poland Between the Wars, 1918–1939 (1998) essays by scholars
Watt, Richard M. Bitter Glory: Poland and Its Fate, 1918–1939 (1998) excerpt and text search, comprehensive survey
Politics and diplomacy
Cienciala, Anna M. "The Foreign Policy of Józef Pi£sudski and Józef Beck, 1926–1939: Misconceptions and Interpretations," The Polish Review (2011) 56#1 pp. 111–151 in JSTOR; earlier version
Cienciala, Anna M. (1968), Poland the Western Powers, 1938–1939. A Study in the Interdependence of Eastern and Western Europe. PDF, Kansas U. Press.
Cienciala, Anna M., and Titus Komarnicki (1984), From Versailles to Locarno, Keys to Polish Foreign Policy, 1919–1925 PDF, Kansas U. Press.
Drzewieniecki, Walter M. "The Polish Army on the Eve of World War II," Polish Review (1981) 26#3 pp 54–64.
Garlicki, Andrzej. Józef Piłsudski, 1867–1935 (New York: Scolar Press 1995), scholarly biography; one-vol version of 4 vol Polish edition
Hetherington, Peter. Unvanquished: Joseph Pilsudski, Resurrected Poland, and the Struggle for Eastern Europe (2012) 752pp excerpt and text search
Jędrzejewicz, W. Piłsudski. A Life for Poland (1982), scholarly biography
Kantorosinski, Zbigniew. Emblem of Good Will: a Polish Declaration of Admiration and Friendship for the United States of America. Washington, DC: Library of Congress (1997)
Polonsky, A. Politics in Independent Poland, 1921–1939: The Crisis of Constitutional Government (1972)
Riekhoff, H. von. German-Polish Relations, 1918–1933 (Johns Hopkins University Press 1971)
Rothschild, J. Piłsudski's Coup d'État (New York: Columbia University Press 1966)
Wandycz, P. S. Polish Diplomacy 1914–1945: Aims and Achievements (1988)
Wandycz, P. S. Soviet-Polish Relations, 1917–1921 (Harvard University Press 1969)
Wandycz, P. S. The United States and Poland (1980)
Zamoyski, Adam. Warsaw 1920: Lenin's Failed Conquest of Europe (2008) excerpt and text search
Social and economic topics
Abramsky, C. et al. eds. The Jews in Poland (Oxford: Blackwell 1986)
Blanke, R. Orphans of Versailles. The Germans in Western Poland, 1918–1939 (1993)
Gutman, Y. et al. eds. The Jews of Poland Between Two World Wars (1989).
Landau, Z. and Tomaszewski, J. The Polish Economy in the Twentieth Century (Routledge, 1985)
Moklak, Jaroslaw. The Lemko Region in the Second Polish Republic: Political and Interdenominational Issues 1918–1939 (2013); covers Old Rusyns, Moscophiles and National Movement Activists, & the political role of the Greek Catholic and Orthodox Churches
Olszewski, A. K. An Outline of Polish Art and Architecture, 1890–1980 (Warsaw: Interpress 1989.)
Roszkowski, W. Landowners in Poland, 1918–1939 (Cambridge University Press, 1991)
Staniewicz, Witold. "The Agrarian Problem in Poland between the Two World Wars," Slavonic and East European Review (1964) 43#100 pp. 23–33 in JSTOR
Taylor, J. J. The Economic Development of Poland, 1919–1950 (Cornell University Press 1952)
Wynot, E. D. Warsaw Between the Wars. Profile of the Capital City in a Developing Land, 1918–1939 (1983)
Żółtowski, A. Border of Europe. A Study of the Polish Eastern Provinces (London: Hollis & Carter 1950)
Eva Plach, "Dogs and dog breeding in interwar Poland," Canadian Slavonic Papers 60. no 3-4
Primary sources
Small Statistical Yearbook, 1932 (Mały rocznik statystyczny 1932) complete text (in Polish)
Small Statistical Yearbook, 1939 (Mały rocznik statystyczny 1939) complete text (in Polish)
Historiography
Kenney, Padraic. "After the Blank Spots Are Filled: Recent Perspectives on Modern Poland", Journal of Modern History (2007) 79#1 pp 134–61, in JSTOR
Polonsky, Antony. "The History of Inter-War Poland Today," Survey (1970) pp143–159.
External links
Bbs.keyhole.com: Google Earth map with borders of the Second Republic of Poland
Polish Tangos: The Unique Inter-War Soundtrack to Poland's Independence
Polish Cinema's Golden Age: The Glamour & Progress Of Poland's Inter-War Films
‘Pakty i Fakty’: The Last-Ever Polish Interwar Cabaret Revue
Map of Poland (March 1920) from the Leventhal Map & Education Center at the Boston Public Library
Modern history of Poland
Former countries in Europe
Poland, Second Republic
1918 in Poland
1919 in Poland
1920s in Poland
1930s in Poland
Józef Piłsudski
Political history of Poland
States and territories established in 1918
States and territories disestablished in 1939
1918 establishments in Poland
1939 disestablishments in Poland
20th century in Poland
History of Ukraine (1918–1991)
Polish Republic, Second
Polish Republic, Second
Polish Republic, Second
Former countries | [
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14246 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedwig | Hedwig | Hedwig may refer to:
People and fictional characters
Hedwig (name), a list of people and fictional characters with the given name
Grzegorz Hedwig (born 1988), Polish slalom canoeist
Johann Hedwig, (1730–1799), German botanist
Romanus Adolf Hedwig (1772–1806), German botanist, son of Johann Hedwig
Other uses
Hedwig Fountain, a fountain in Zürich, Switzerland
Hedwig glass, a type of glass
Hedwig, code name of Red Hat Linux version 6.0, released in 1999
476 Hedwig, a main-belt asteroid
See also
Hedwig Village, Texas, United States, a city
St. Hedwig (disambiguation)
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no:Hedvig
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14251 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS%20Resolution | HMS Resolution | Several ships of the Royal Navy have borne the name HMS Resolution. However, the first English warship to bear the name Resolution was actually the first rate Prince Royal (built in 1610 and rebuilt in 1641), which was renamed Resolution in 1650 following the inauguration of the Commonwealth, and continued to bear that name until 1660, when the name Prince Royal was restored. The name Resolution was bestowed on the first of the vessels listed below:
, a 50-gun third-rate frigate launched 1654 as Tredagh; renamed Resolution 1660; destroyed after grounding by a Dutch fireship in the St James's Day Battle 4 August 1666.
, a 70-gun third-rate ship of the line launched 1667; rebuilt 1698; foundered in 1703.
, a 70-gun third rate launched 1705; run ashore to avoid capture 1707.
, a 70-gun third rate launched 1708; wrecked 1711.
, a 74-gun third rate launched 1758; run aground and lost 1759 at the Battle of Quiberon Bay.
, a 74-gun third rate launched 1770; broken up 1813.
, the vessel of Captain James Cook in his explorations.
, a cutter purchased 1779; went missing in the North Sea June 1797, presumed to have foundered.
, a in service from 1893 to 1914.
, a in service from 1915 to 1944.
, lead ship of the ballistic missile submarines in service from 1966 to 1994.
Also
Resolution was a gunboat that the garrison at Gibraltar launched in June 1782 during the Great Siege of Gibraltar. She was one of 12. Each was armed with an 18-pounder gun, and received a crew of 21 men drawn from Royal Navy vessels stationed at Gibraltar. provided Resolutions crew.
HMS Resolution, a cutter in the West Indies, date of acquisition unknown and date of loss unknown. On 10 November 1800 Captain Peter Halkett of captured the Spanish sloop of war Resolution in the West Indies. She was armed with 18 guns and had a crew of 149 men, under the command of Don Francisco Darrichena. Halkett reported that she was the former British navy cutter Resolution. Resolution was in such an irreparable state that after a few days Halkett destroyed her.
Resolution, a victualing hoy, of 75 tons, offered for sale on 22 September 1828, lying at Deptford.
HMS Resolution a fictional ship in the Jack Aubrey series of novels
Battle honours
Ships named Resolution have earned the following battle honours:
Kentish Knock, 1652
Gabbard, 1653
Scheveningen, 1653
Lowestoft, 1665
Four Days' Battle, 1666
Orfordness, 1666
Sole Bay, 1672
Schooneveld, 1673
Texel, 1673
Barfleur, 1692
Quiberon Bay, 1759
St Vincent, 1780
St Kitts, 1782
The Saints, 1782
Basque Roads, 1809
Atlantic, 1939−40
Norway, 1940
See also
, a survey ship of the Royal New Zealand Navy in service between 1997 and 2012. Named after the 1771-launched Resolution commanded by James Cook.
Citations and references
Citations
References
Drinkwater, John (1905) A History of the Siege of Gibraltar, 1779-1783: With a Description and Account of that Garrison from the Earliest Times. (J. Murray).
Royal Navy ship names | [
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14254 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helen%20Keller | Helen Keller | Helen Adams Keller (June 27, 1880 – June 1, 1968) was an American author, disability rights advocate, political activist and lecturer. Born in West Tuscumbia, Alabama, she lost her sight and hearing after a bout of illness at the age of nineteen months. She then communicated primarily using home signs until the age of seven when she met her first teacher and life-long companion Anne Sullivan, who taught her language, including reading and writing; Sullivan's first lessons involved spelling words on Keller's hand to show her the names of objects around her. She also learned how to speak and to understand other people's speech using the Tadoma method. After an education at both specialist and mainstream schools, she attended Radcliffe College of Harvard University and became the first deafblind person to earn a Bachelor of Arts degree. She worked for the American Foundation for the Blind (AFB) from 1924 until 1968, during which time she toured the United States and traveled to 35 countries around the globe advocating for those with vision loss.
Keller was a prolific author, writing 14 books and hundreds of speeches and essays on topics ranging from animals to Mahatma Gandhi. Keller campaigned for those with disabilities, for women's suffrage, labor rights, and world peace. She joined the Socialist Party of America in 1909. She was a supporter of the NAACP and an original member of the American Civil Liberties Union. In 1933, when her book How I Became a Socialist was burned by Nazi youth, she wrote an open letter to the Student Body of Germany condemning censorship and prejudice.
The story of Keller and Sullivan was made famous by Keller's 1903 autobiography, The Story of My Life, and its adaptations for film and stage, The Miracle Worker. Her birthplace is now a museum and sponsors an annual "Helen Keller Day". Her June 27 birthday is commemorated as Helen Keller Day in Pennsylvania and, in the centenary year of her birth, was recognized by a presidential proclamation from U.S. President Jimmy Carter.
She was inducted into the Alabama Women's Hall of Fame in 1971 and was one of twelve inaugural inductees to the Alabama Writers Hall of Fame on June 8, 2015.
Early childhood and illness
Keller was born on June 27, 1880, in Tuscumbia, Alabama. Her family lived on a homestead, Ivy Green, that Helen's grandfather had built decades earlier. She had four siblings: two full siblings, Mildred Campbell (Keller) Tyson and Phillip Brooks Keller, and two older half-brothers from her father's prior marriage, James McDonald Keller and William Simpson Keller.
Her father, Arthur Henley Keller (1836–1896), spent many years as an editor of the Tuscumbia North Alabamian and had served as a captain in the Confederate Army.
The family were part of the slaveholding elite before the war, but lost status later. Her mother, Catherine Everett (Adams) Keller (1856–1921), known as "Kate", was the daughter of Charles W. Adams, a Confederate general. Her paternal lineage was traced to Casper Keller, a native of Switzerland. One of Helen's Swiss ancestors was the first teacher for the deaf in Zurich. Keller reflected on this irony in her first autobiography, stating "that there is no king who has not had a slave among his ancestors, and no slave who has not had a king among his."
At 19 months old, Keller contracted an unknown illness described by doctors as "an acute congestion of the stomach and the brain", which might have been meningitis caused by the bacterium Neisseria meningitidis (meningococcus), or possibly Haemophilus influenzae (which could cause the same symptoms, but which is a less likely cause due to its 97% juvenile mortality rate at that time). Other possible infections were rubella (which generally only causes blindness or deafness in prenatal infections) or scarlet fever (which did not commonly cause blindness or deafness). The illness left her both deaf and blind. She lived, as she recalled in her autobiography, "at sea in a dense fog".
At that time, Keller was able to communicate somewhat with Martha Washington, the two-year-older daughter of the family cook, who understood her signs; by the age of seven, Keller had more than 60 home signs to communicate with her family, and could distinguish people by the vibration of their footsteps.
In 1886, Keller's mother, inspired by an account in Charles Dickens' American Notes of the successful education of another deaf and blind woman, Laura Bridgman, dispatched the young Keller, accompanied by her father, to seek out physician J. Julian Chisolm, an eye, ear, nose, and throat specialist in Baltimore, for advice.
Chisholm referred the Kellers to Alexander Graham Bell, who was working with deaf children at the time. Bell advised them to contact the Perkins Institute for the Blind, the school where Bridgman had been educated, which was then located in South Boston. Michael Anagnos, the school's director, asked a 20-year-old alumna of the school, Anne Sullivan, herself visually impaired, to become Keller's instructor. It was the beginning of a nearly 50-year-long relationship during which Sullivan evolved into Keller's governess and eventually her companion.
Sullivan arrived at Keller's house on March 5, 1887, a day Keller would forever remember as my soul's birthday. Sullivan immediately began to teach Helen to communicate by spelling words into her hand, beginning with "d-o-l-l" for the doll that she had brought Keller as a present. Keller was frustrated, at first, because she did not understand that every object had a word uniquely identifying it. When Sullivan was trying to teach Keller the word for "mug", Keller became so frustrated she broke the mug. But soon she began imitating Sullivan's hand gestures. "I did not know that I was spelling a word or even that words existed," Keller remembered. "I was simply making my fingers go in monkey-like imitation."
Keller's breakthrough in communication came the next month when she realized that the motions her teacher was making on the palm of her hand, while running cool water over her other hand, symbolized the idea of "water". Writing in her autobiography, The Story of My Life, Keller recalled the moment: "I stood still, my whole attention fixed upon the motions of her fingers. Suddenly I felt a misty consciousness as of something forgotten — a thrill of returning thought; and somehow the mystery of language was revealed to me. I knew then that w-a-t-e-r meant the wonderful cool something that was flowing over my hand. The living word awakened my soul, gave it light, hope, set it free!" Keller then nearly exhausted Sullivan, demanding the names of all the other familiar objects in her world.
Helen Keller was viewed as isolated but was very in touch with the outside world. She was able to enjoy music by feeling the beat and she was able to have a strong connection with animals through touch. She was delayed at picking up language, but that did not stop her from having a voice.
Formal education
In May 1888, Keller started attending the Perkins Institute for the Blind. In 1894, Keller and Sullivan moved to New York to attend the Wright-Humason School for the Deaf, and to learn from Sarah Fuller at the Horace Mann School for the Deaf. In 1896, they returned to Massachusetts, and Keller entered The Cambridge School for Young Ladies before gaining admittance, in 1900, to Radcliffe College of Harvard University, where she lived in Briggs Hall, South House. Her admirer, Mark Twain, had introduced her to Standard Oil magnate Henry Huttleston Rogers, who, with his wife Abbie, paid for her education. In 1904, at the age of 24, Keller graduated as a member of Phi Beta Kappa from Radcliffe, becoming the first deaf-blind person to earn a Bachelor of Arts degree. She maintained a correspondence with the Austrian philosopher and pedagogue Wilhelm Jerusalem, who was one of the first to discover her literary talent.
Determined to communicate with others as conventionally as possible, Keller learned to speak and spent much of her life giving speeches and lectures on aspects of her life. She learned to "hear" people's speech using the Tadoma method, which means using her fingers to feel the lips and throat of the speaker. She became proficient at using braille and using fingerspelling to communicate. Shortly before World War I, with the assistance of the Zoellner Quartet, she determined that by placing her fingertips on a resonant tabletop she could experience music played close by.
Example of her lectures
On January 22, 1916, Keller and Sullivan traveled to the small town of Menomonie in western Wisconsin to deliver a lecture at the Mabel Tainter Memorial Building. Details of her talk were provided in the weekly Dunn County News on January 22, 1916:
A message of optimism, of hope, of good cheer, and of loving service was brought to Menomonie Saturday—a message that will linger long with those fortunate enough to have received it. This message came with the visit of Helen Keller and her teacher, Mrs. John Macy, and both had a hand in imparting it Saturday evening to a splendid audience that filled The Memorial. The wonderful girl who has so brilliantly triumphed over the triple afflictions of blindness, dumbness and deafness, gave a talk with her own lips on "Happiness", and it will be remembered always as a piece of inspired teaching by those who heard it.
Companions
Anne Sullivan stayed as a companion to Helen Keller long after she taught her. Sullivan married John Macy in 1905, and her health started failing around 1914. Polly Thomson (February 20, 1885 – March 21, 1960) was hired to keep house. She was a young woman from Scotland who had no experience with deaf or blind people. She progressed to working as a secretary as well, and eventually became a constant companion to Keller.
Keller moved to Forest Hills, Queens, together with Sullivan and Macy, and used the house as a base for her efforts on behalf of the American Foundation for the Blind. "While in her thirties Helen had a love affair, became secretly engaged, and defied her teacher and family by attempting an elopement with the man she loved." He was the fingerspelling socialist "Peter Fagan, a young Boston Herald reporter who was sent to Helen's home to act as her private secretary when lifelong companion, Anne, fell ill."
At the time, her father had died and Sullivan was recovering in Lake Placid and Puerto Rico.
Keller had moved with her mother in Montgomery, Alabama.
Anne Sullivan died in 1936, with Keller holding her hand, after falling into a coma as a result of coronary thrombosis. Keller and Thomson moved to Connecticut. They traveled worldwide and raised funds for the blind. Thomson had a stroke in 1957 from which she never fully recovered, and died in 1960. Winnie Corbally, a nurse originally hired to care for Thomson in 1957, stayed on after Thomson's death and was Keller's companion for the rest of her life.
Political activities
Keller went on to become a world-famous speaker and author. She was an advocate for people with disabilities, amid numerous other causes. She traveled to twenty-five different countries giving motivational speeches about Deaf people's conditions. She was a suffragist, pacifist, radical socialist, birth control supporter, and opponent of Woodrow Wilson. In 1915, she and George A. Kessler founded the Helen Keller International (HKI) organization. This organization is devoted to research in vision, health, and nutrition.
In 1916, she sent money to the NAACP ashamed of the Southern un-Christian treatment of "colored people".
In 1920, she helped to found the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). Keller traveled to over 40 countries with Sullivan, making several trips to Japan and becoming a favorite of the Japanese people. Keller met every U.S. president from Grover Cleveland to Lyndon B. Johnson and was friends with many famous figures, including Alexander Graham Bell, Charlie Chaplin and Mark Twain. Keller and Twain were both considered political radicals allied with leftist politics.
Keller, who believed that the poor were "ground down by industrial oppression," wanted children born into poor families to have the same opportunities to succeed that she had enjoyed. She wrote, "I owed my success partly to the advantages of my birth and environment. I have learned that the power to rise is not within the reach of everyone."
Keller was a member of the Socialist Party and actively campaigned and wrote in support of the working class from 1909 to 1921. Many of her speeches and writings were about women's right to vote and the impacts of war; in addition, she supported causes that opposed military intervention. She had speech therapy in order to have her voice heard better by the public. When the Rockefeller-owned press refused to print her articles, she protested until her work was finally published. She supported Socialist Party candidate Eugene V. Debs in each of his campaigns for the presidency. Before reading Progress and Poverty, Helen Keller was already a socialist who believed that Georgism was a good step in the right direction. She later wrote of finding "in Henry George's philosophy a rare beauty and power of inspiration, and a splendid faith in the essential nobility of human nature".
Keller claimed that newspaper columnists who had praised her courage and intelligence before she expressed her socialist views now called attention to her disabilities. The editor of the Brooklyn Eagle wrote that her "mistakes sprung out of the manifest limitations of her development". Keller responded to that editor, referring to having met him before he knew of her political views:
Keller joined the Industrial Workers of the World (the IWW, known as the Wobblies) in 1912, saying that parliamentary socialism was "sinking in the political bog". She wrote for the IWW between 1916 and 1918. In Why I Became an IWW, Keller explained that her motivation for activism came in part from her concern about blindness and other disabilities:
The last sentence refers to prostitution and syphilis, the former a frequent cause of the latter, and the latter a leading cause of blindness. In the same interview, Keller also cited the 1912 strike of textile workers in Lawrence, Massachusetts for instigating her support of socialism.
Keller supported eugenics. In 1915, she wrote in favor of refusing life-saving medical procedures to infants with severe mental impairments or physical deformities, stating that their lives were not worthwhile and they would likely become criminals. Keller also expressed concerns about human overpopulation.
Writings
Keller wrote a total of 12 published books and several articles.
One of her earliest pieces of writing, at age 11, was The Frost King (1891). There were allegations that this story had been plagiarized from The Frost Fairies by Margaret Canby. An investigation into the matter revealed that Keller may have experienced a case of cryptomnesia, which was that she had Canby's story read to her but forgot about it, while the memory remained in her subconscious.
At age 22, Keller published her autobiography, The Story of My Life (1903), with help from Sullivan and Sullivan's husband, John Macy. It recounts the story of her life up to age 21 and was written during her time in college.
In an article Keller wrote in 1907, she brought to public attention the fact that many cases of childhood blindness could be prevented by washing the eyes of every newborn baby with a disinfectant solution. At the time, only a fraction of doctors and midwives were doing this. Thanks to Keller's advocacy, this commonsense public health measure was swiftly and widely adopted.
Keller wrote The World I Live In in 1908, giving readers an insight into how she felt about the world. Out of the Dark, a series of essays on socialism, was published in 1913.
When Keller was young, Anne Sullivan introduced her to Phillips Brooks, who introduced her to Christianity, Keller famously saying: "I always knew He was there, but I didn't know His name!"
Her spiritual autobiography, My Religion, was published in 1927 and then in 1994 extensively revised and re-issued under the title Light in My Darkness. It advocates the teachings of Emanuel Swedenborg, the Christian theologian and mystic who gave a spiritual interpretation of the teachings of the Bible and who claimed that the Second Coming of Jesus Christ had already taken place.
Keller described the core of her belief in these words:
But in Swedenborg's teaching it [Divine Providence] is shown to be the government of God's Love and Wisdom and the creation of uses. Since His Life cannot be less in one being than another, or His Love manifested less fully in one thing than another, His Providence must needs be universal ... He has provided religion of some kind everywhere, and it does not matter to what race or creed anyone belongs if he is faithful to his ideals of right living.
Overseas visits
Keller visited 35 countries from 1946 to 1957.
In 1948 she went to New Zealand and visited deaf schools in Christchurch and Auckland. She met Deaf Society of Canterbury Life Member Patty Still in Christchurch.
Later life
Keller suffered a series of strokes in 1961 and spent the last years of her life at her home.
On September 14, 1964, President Lyndon B. Johnson awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom, one of the United States' two highest civilian honors. In 1965 she was elected to the National Women's Hall of Fame at the New York World's Fair.
Keller devoted much of her later life to raising funds for the American Foundation for the Blind. She died in her sleep on June 1, 1968, at her home, Arcan Ridge, located in Easton, Connecticut, a few weeks short of her eighty-eighth birthday. A service was held in her honor at the Washington National Cathedral in Washington, D.C., her body was cremated and her ashes were buried there next to her constant companions, Anne Sullivan and Polly Thomson.
Portrayals
Keller's life has been interpreted many times. She appeared in a silent film, Deliverance (1919), which told her story in a melodramatic, allegorical style.
She was also the subject of the Academy Award-winning 1954 documentary Helen Keller in Her Story, narrated by her friend and noted theatrical actress Katharine Cornell. She was also profiled in The Story of Helen Keller, part of the Famous Americans series produced by Hearst Entertainment.
The Miracle Worker is a cycle of dramatic works ultimately derived from her autobiography, The Story of My Life. The various dramas each describe the relationship between Keller and Sullivan, depicting how the teacher led her from a state of almost feral wildness into education, activism, and intellectual celebrity. The common title of the cycle echoes Mark Twain's description of Sullivan as a "miracle worker". Its first realization was the 1957 Playhouse 90 teleplay of that title by William Gibson. He adapted it for a Broadway production in 1959 and an Oscar-winning feature film in 1962, starring Anne Bancroft and Patty Duke. It was remade for television in 1979 and 2000.”
An anime movie called The Story of Helen Keller: Angel of Love and Light was made in 1981.
In 1984, Keller's life story was made into a TV movie called The Miracle Continues. This film, a semi-sequel to The Miracle Worker, recounts her college years and her early adult life. None of the early movies hint at the social activism that would become the hallmark of Keller's later life, although a Disney version produced in 2000 states in the credits that she became an activist for social equality.
The Bollywood movie Black (2005) was largely based on Keller's story, from her childhood to her graduation.
A documentary called Shining Soul: Helen Keller's Spiritual Life and Legacy was produced by the Swedenborg Foundation in the same year. The film focuses on the role played by Emanuel Swedenborg's spiritual theology in her life and how it inspired Keller's triumph over her triple disabilities of blindness, deafness and a severe speech impediment.
On March 6, 2008, the New England Historic Genealogical Society announced that a staff member had discovered a rare 1888 photograph showing Helen and Anne, which, although previously published, had escaped widespread attention. Depicting Helen holding one of her many dolls, it is believed to be the earliest surviving photograph of Anne Sullivan Macy.
Video footage showing Helen Keller learning to mimic speech sounds also exists.
A biography of Helen Keller was written by the German Jewish author Hildegard Johanna Kaeser.
A painting titled The Advocate: Tribute to Helen Keller was created by three artists from Kerala, India as a tribute to Helen Keller. The Painting was created in association with a non-profit organization Art d'Hope Foundation, artists groups Palette People and XakBoX Design & Art Studio. This painting was created for a fundraising event to help blind students in India and was inaugurated by M. G. Rajamanikyam, IAS (District Collector Ernakulam) on Helen Keller day (June 27, 2016). The painting depicts the major events of Helen Keller's life and is one of the biggest paintings done based on Helen Keller's life.
In 2020, the documentary essay Her Socialist Smile by John Gianvito evolves around Keller's first public talk in 1913 before a general audience, when she started speaking out on behalf of progressive causes.
Posthumous honors
In 1999, Keller was listed in Gallup's Most Widely Admired People of the 20th century.
A preschool for the deaf and hard of hearing in Mysore, India, was originally named after Helen Keller by its founder, K. K. Srinivasan.
In 2003, Alabama honored its native daughter on its state quarter. The Alabama state quarter is the only circulating U.S. coin to feature braille.
The Helen Keller Hospital in Sheffield, Alabama, is dedicated to her.
Streets are named after Helen Keller in Zürich, Switzerland, in the U.S, in Getafe, Spain, in Lod, Israel, in Lisbon, Portugal, and in Caen, France.
In 1973, Helen Keller was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame.
A stamp was issued in 1980 by the United States Postal Service depicting Keller and Sullivan, to mark the centennial of Keller's birth.
On October 7, 2009, a bronze statue of Keller was added to the National Statuary Hall Collection, as a replacement for the State of Alabama's former 1908 statue of the education reformer Jabez Lamar Monroe Curry.
Archival material
Archival material of Helen Keller stored in New York was lost when the Twin Towers were destroyed in the September 11 attacks.
The Helen Keller Archives are owned by the American Foundation for the Blind.
Works
"The Frost King" (1891)
The Story of My Life (1903)
The World I Live In (1908)
Out of the Dark, a series of essays on socialism (1913)
"Uncle Sam Is Calling" (set to music by Pauline B. Story) (1917)
My Religion (1927; also called Light in My Darkness)
See also
Helen Keller Services for the Blind
Laura Bridgman
List of peace activists
Perkins School for the Blind
Ragnhild Kåta
Citations
Further reading
Einhorn, Lois J. (1998). Helen Keller, Public Speaker: Sightless But Seen, Deaf But Heard (Great American Orators)
Harrity, Richard and Martin, Ralph G. (1962). The Three Lives of Helen Keller.
Herrmann, Dorothy (1998). Helen Keller: A Life. New York: Knopf. .
Lash, Joseph P. (1980). Helen and Teacher: The Story of Helen Keller and Anne Sullivan Macy. New York: Delacorte Press. .
Brooks, Van Wyck (1956). Helen Keller Sketch for a Portrait.
Primary sources
Keller, Helen with Anne Sullivan and John A. Macy (1903). The Story of My Life. New York: Doubleday, Page & Co.
External links
Helen Keller and Anne Sullivan Collections at Perkins School for the Blind
19th-century American non-fiction writers
19th-century American short story writers
19th-century American women writers
20th-century American essayists
20th-century American short story writers
20th-century American women writers
1880 births
1968 deaths
Activists from Alabama
Alabama socialists
American anti-war activists
American birth control activists
American Christian pacifists
American Christian socialists
American Civil Liberties Union people
American eugenicists
American feminist writers
20th-century American memoirists
American people of Swiss descent
American people with disabilities
American political activists
American political writers
American socialists
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American Swedenborgians
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American women memoirists
American women short story writers
Blind writers
Burials at Washington National Cathedral
Connecticut socialists
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Non-interventionism
People from Tuscumbia, Alabama
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Proponents of Christian feminism
Radcliffe College alumni
American socialist feminists
Swedenborgian socialists
Women film pioneers
Workers' rights activists
Writers from Alabama | [
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14257 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haddocks%27%20Eyes | Haddocks' Eyes | "Haddocks' Eyes" is a term for the name of a song sung by The White Knight from Lewis Carroll's 1871 novel Through the Looking-Glass, chapter VIII.
"Haddocks' Eyes" is an example used to elaborate on the symbolic status of the concept of "name": a name as identification marker may be assigned to anything, including another name, thus introducing different levels of symbolization. It has been discussed in several works on logic and philosophy.
Naming
The White Knight explains to Alice a confusing nomenclature for the song.
To summarize:
The song's name is called Haddocks' Eyes
The song's name is The Aged Aged Man
The song is called Ways and Means
The song is A-sitting on a Gate
The complicated terminology distinguishing between 'the song, what the song is called, the name of the song, and what the name of the song is called' both uses and mentions the use–mention distinction.
The song
The White Knight sings the song to a tune he claims as his own invention, but which Alice recognises as "I give thee all, I can no more". By the time Alice heard it, she was already tired of poetry.
The song parodies the plot, but not the style or metre, of "Resolution and Independence" by William Wordsworth.
Upon the Lonely Moor
Like "Jabberwocky," another poem published in Through the Looking Glass, "Haddocks’ Eyes" appears to have been revised over the course of many years. In 1856, Carroll published the following poem anonymously under the name Upon the Lonely Moor. It bears an obvious resemblance to "Haddocks' Eyes."
See also
Nonsense verse
References
British poems
1871 poems
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
Nonsense poetry
Parodies of literature | [
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14260 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoosier | Hoosier | Hoosier is the official demonym for the people of the U.S. state of Indiana. The origin of the term remains a matter of debate, but "Hoosier" was in general use by the 1840s, having been popularized by Richmond resident John Finley's 1833 poem "The Hoosier's Nest". Anyone born in Indiana or a resident at the time is considered to be a Hoosier. Indiana adopted the nickname "The Hoosier State" more than 150 years ago.
"Hoosier" is used in the names of numerous Indiana-based businesses and organizations. "Hoosiers" is also the name of the Indiana University athletic teams. As there is no accepted embodiment of a Hoosier, the IU schools are represented through their letters and colors alone. In addition to universal acceptance by residents of Indiana, the term is also the official demonym according to the U.S. Government Publishing Office.
Origin
In addition to "The Hoosier's Nest", the term also appeared in the Indianapolis Journal's "Carrier's Address" on January 1, 1833. There are many suggestions for the derivation of the word but none is universally accepted. In 1833 the Pittsburgh Statesman said the term had been in use for "some time past" and suggested it originated from census workers calling "Who's here?". Also in 1833, former Indiana Governor James B. Ray began publishing a newspaper titled The Hoosier.
Scholarship
In 1900, Meredith Nicholson wrote The Hoosiers, an early attempt to study the etymology of the word as applied to Indiana residents. Jacob Piatt Dunn, longtime secretary of the Indiana Historical Society, published The Word Hoosier, a similar attempt, in 1907. Both chronicled some of the popular and satirical etymologies circulating at the time and focused much of their attention on the use of the word in the Upland South to refer to woodsmen, yokels, and rough people. Dunn traced the word back to the Cumbrian , meaning anything unusually large, derived from the Old English hoo (as at Sutton Hoo), meaning "high" and "hill". The importance of immigrants from northern England and southern Scotland was reflected in numerous placenames including the Cumberland Mountains, the Cumberland River, and the Cumberland Gap. Nicholson defended the people of Indiana against such an association, while Dunn concluded that the early settlers had adopted the nickname self-mockingly and that it had lost its negative associations by the time of Finley's poem.
Johnathan Clark Smith subsequently showed that Nicholson and Dunn's earliest sources within Indiana were mistaken. A letter by James Curtis cited by Dunn and others as the earliest known use of the term was actually written in 1846, not 1826. Similarly, the use of the term in an 1859 newspaper item quoting an 1827 diary entry by Sandford Cox was more likely an editorial comment and not from the original diary. Smith's earliest sources led him to argue that the word originated as a term along the Ohio River for flatboatmen from Indiana and did not acquire its pejorative meanings until 1836, after Finley's poem.
William Piersen, a history professor at Fisk University, argued for a connection to the Methodist minister Rev. Harry Hosier (–May 1806), who evangelized the American frontier at the beginning of the 19th century as part of the Second Great Awakening. "Black Harry" had been born a slave in North Carolina and sold north to Baltimore, Maryland, before gaining his freedom and beginning his ministry around the end of the American Revolution. He was a close associate and personal friend of Bishop Francis Asbury, the "Father of the American Methodist Church". Benjamin Rush said of him that "making allowances for his illiteracy, he was the greatest orator in America". His sermons called on Methodists to reject slavery and to champion the common working man. Piersen proposed that Methodist communities inspired by his example took or were given a variant spelling of his name (possibly influenced by the "yokel" slang) during the decades after his ministry.
According to Washington County newspaper reports of the time, Abraham Stover was Colonel of the Indiana Militia. He was a colorful figure in early Washington County history. Along with his son-in-law, John B. Brough, he was considered one of the two strongest men in Washington County. He was always being challenged to prove his might, and seems to have won several fights over men half his age. After whipping six or eight men in a fist fight in Louisville, Kentucky, he cracked his fists and said, "Ain't I a husher", which was changed in the news to "Hoosier", and thus originated the name of Hoosier in connection with Indiana men.
Jorge Santander Serrano, a PhD student from Indiana University, has also suggested that Hoosier might come from the French words for 'redness', , or 'red-faced', . According to this hypothesis, the early pejorative use of the word Hoosier may have a link to the color red ("rouge" in French) which is associated with indigenous peoples, pejoratively called "red men" or "red-skins", and also with poor white people by calling them "red-necks".
Folk etymologies
"Who'sh 'ere?"
Humorous folk etymologies for the term "hoosier" have a long history, as recounted by Dunn in The Word Hoosier.
One account traces the word to the necessary caution of approaching houses on the frontier. In order to avoid being shot, a traveler would call out from afar to let themselves be known. The inhabitants of the cabin would then reply "Who's here?" which in the Appalachian English of the early settlers slurred into "Who'sh 'ere?" and thence into "Hoosier?" A variant of this account had the Indiana pioneers calling out "Who'sh 'ere?" as a general greeting and warning when hearing someone in the bushes and tall grass, to avoid shooting a relative or friend in error.
The poet James Whitcomb Riley facetiously suggested that the fierce brawling that took place in Indiana involved enough biting that the expression "Whose ear?" became notable. This arose from or inspired the story of two 19th-century French immigrants brawling in a tavern in the foothills of southern Indiana. One was cut and a third Frenchman walked in to see an ear on the dirt floor of the tavern, prompting him to slur out "Whosh ear?"
Mr. Hoosier's men
Two related stories trace the origin of the term to gangs of workers from Indiana under the direction of a Mr. Hoosier.
The account related by Dunn is that a Louisville contractor named Samuel Hoosier preferred to hire workers from communities on the Indiana side of the Ohio River like New Albany rather than Kentuckians. During the excavation of the first canal around the Falls of the Ohio from 1826 to 1833, his employees became known as "Hoosier's men" and then simply "Hoosiers". The usage spread from these hard-working laborers to all of the Indiana boatmen in the area and then spread north with the settlement of the state. The story was told to Dunn in 1901 by a man who had heard it from a Hoosier relative while traveling in southern Tennessee. Dunn could not find any family of the given name in any directory in the region or anyone else in southern Tennessee who had heard the story and accounted himself dubious. This version was subsequently retold by Gov. Evan Bayh and Sen. Vance Hartke, who introduced the story into the Congressional Record in 1975, and matches the timing and location of Smith's subsequent research. However, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has been unable to find any record of a Hoosier or Hosier in surviving canal company records.
Other uses
The word "hoosier" has long been used in Greater St. Louis as a pejorative for an unintelligent or uncultured person. The word is also encountered in sea shanties. In the book Shanties from the Seven Seas by Stan Hugill, in reference to its former use to denote cotton-stowers, who would move bales of cotton to and from the holds of ships and force them in tightly by means of jackscrews.
A Hoosier cabinet, often shortened to "hoosier", is a type of free-standing kitchen cabinet popular in the early decades of the twentieth century. Almost all of these cabinets were produced by companies located in Indiana and the name derives from the largest of them, the Hoosier Manufacturing Co. of New Castle, Indiana. Other Indiana businesses include Hoosier Racing Tire and the Hoosier Bat Company, manufacturer of wooden baseball bats.
The RCA Dome, former home of the Indianapolis Colts, was known as the "Hoosier Dome" before RCA purchased the naming rights in 1994. The RCA Dome was replaced by Lucas Oil Stadium in 2008.
In popular culture
Indiana native Kurt Vonnegut's book Cat's Cradle describes this identification as an example of a granfalloon.
In the movie The Outlaw Josey Wales (starring Clint Eastwood), a shopkeeper states "I'm a Hoosier" to the disgust of an elderly customer.
The HBO miniseries The Pacific refers to PFC Bill Smith by the nickname "Hoosier", as do the two Marine memoirs on which the series is based.
Adam Savage, host of the Discovery Channel series MythBusters, often refers to co-host Jamie Hyneman as a Hoosier, the latter having been raised on a farm in Indiana, and attended Indiana University.
Serial killer Carl Panzram's last words were reportedly, "Hurry it up, you Hoosier bastard! I could kill 10 men while you're fooling around!"
In the movie We're No Angels, Sean Penn's character says when asked to wear work clothes as a disguise, "Whaddya think I am, a Hoosier or something?"
In the book Donnie Brasco: My Undercover Life in the Mafia, gangster Benjamin "Lefty Guns" Ruggiero uses Hoosier as an epithet.
Hoosiers, a 1986 sports film about a small-town Indiana high school basketball team that wins the state championship.
The Frugal Hoosier is a fictional discount grocery store depicted in the ABC sitcom The Middle, based in the fictional Indiana town of Orson.
In the NBC sitcom Parks and Recreation episode "Soulmates," a fictional online dating site called "hoosiermate.com" was the main subject. The series is set in Indiana.
The US Secret Service has designated the code name "Hoosier" for former US Vice President, former Indiana Governor, and Indiana native Mike Pence.
On his podcast, retired Indianapolis Colts punter Pat McAfee defined the term as "a human who is willing to stand up in the face of adversity, chug two beers, and do anything he can to make America a better place. That's what a Hoosier is."
In 1987, then-United States Senator Dan Quayle (originally from Indiana) requested of the Merriam-Webster dictionary to redefine the term "Hoosier" to mean "someone who is smart, resourceful, skillful, a winner, unique and brilliant." The dictionary denied the request.
In episode 14 of Chicago Fire season 7 35:02, a hardy character, Dwain, identifies himself as coming from "a long line of Hoosiers" and as made of "sand and grit", to which Bret responds: "I'm a Hoosier too", and Dwain responds says he is not surprised. Another character than asks: "What's a Hoosher"?
Notes
References
External links
"What is a Hoosier?", by the Indiana Historical Bureau
"Hoosier", by the Indiana University Alumni Association
"What is a 'Hoosier'", by Hoosier National Forest
"Explanation of 'Hoosiers'", by Dave Barry
Symbols of Indiana
Indiana culture
American regional nicknames
Pejorative terms for people
Demonyms | [
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14263 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horner%27s%20method | Horner's method | In mathematics and computer science, Horner's method (or Horner's scheme) is an algorithm for polynomial evaluation. Although named after William George Horner, this method is much older, as it has been attributed to Joseph-Louis Lagrange by Horner himself, and can be traced back many hundreds of years to Chinese and Persian mathematicians. After the introduction of computers, this algorithm became fundamental for computing efficiently with polynomials.
The algorithm is based on Horner's rule:
This allows the evaluation of a polynomial of degree with only multiplications and additions. This is optimal, since there are polynomials of degree that cannot be evaluated with fewer arithmetic operations.
Alternatively, Horner's method also refers to a method for approximating the roots of polynomials, described by Horner in 1819. It is a variant of the Newton–Raphson method made more efficient for hand calculation by the application of Horner's rule. It was widely used until computers came into general use around 1970.
Polynomial evaluation and long division
Given the polynomial
where are constant coefficients, the problem is to evaluate the polynomial at a specific value of
For this, a new sequence of constants is defined recursively as follows:
Then is the value of .
To see why this works, the polynomial can be written in the form
Thus, by iteratively substituting the into the expression,
Now, it can be proven that;
This expression constitutes Horner's practical application, as it offers a very quick way of determining the outcome of;
with b0 (which is equal to p(x0)) being the division's remainder, as is demonstrated by the examples below. if x0 is a root of p(x), then b0 = 0 (meaning the remainder is 0), which means you can factor p(x) with (x-x0).
As to finding the consecutive b-values, you start with determining bn, which is simply equal to an. You then work your way down to the other b's, using the formula;
till you arrive at b0.
Examples
Evaluate for
We use synthetic division as follows:
x0│ x3 x2 x1 x0
3 │ 2 −6 2 −1
│ 6 0 6
└────────────────────────
2 0 2 5
The entries in the third row are the sum of those in the first two. Each entry in the second row is the product of the x-value (3 in this example) with the third-row entry immediately to the left. The entries in the first row are the coefficients of the polynomial to be evaluated. Then the remainder of on division by is 5.
But by the polynomial remainder theorem, we know that the remainder is . Thus
In this example, if we can see that , the entries in the third row. So, synthetic division is based on Horner's method.
As a consequence of the polynomial remainder theorem, the entries in the third row are the coefficients of the second-degree polynomial, the quotient of on division by .
The remainder is 5. This makes Horner's method useful for polynomial long division.
Divide by :
2 │ 1 −6 11 −6
│ 2 −8 6
└────────────────────────
1 −4 3 0
The quotient is .
Let and . Divide by using Horner's method.
0.5 │ 4 -6 0 3 -5
│ 2 -2 -1 1
└───────────────────────
2 -2 -1 1 -2
The third row is the sum of the first two rows, divided by 2. Each entry in the second row is the product of 1 with the third-row entry to the left. The answer is
Efficiency
Evaluation using the monomial form of a degree-n polynomial requires at most n additions and (n2 + n)/2 multiplications, if powers are calculated by repeated multiplication and each monomial is evaluated individually. (This can be reduced to n additions and 2n − 1 multiplications by evaluating the powers of x iteratively.) If numerical data are represented in terms of digits (or bits), then the naive algorithm also entails storing approximately 2n times the number of bits of x (the evaluated polynomial has approximate magnitude xn, and one must also store xn itself). By contrast, Horner's method requires only n additions and n multiplications, and its storage requirements are only n times the number of bits of x. Alternatively, Horner's method can be computed with n fused multiply–adds. Horner's method can also be extended to evaluate the first k derivatives of the polynomial with kn additions and multiplications.
Horner's method is optimal, in the sense that any algorithm to evaluate an arbitrary polynomial must use at least as many operations. Alexander Ostrowski proved in 1954 that the number of additions required is minimal. Victor Pan proved in 1966 that the number of multiplications is minimal. However, when x is a matrix, Horner's method is not optimal.
This assumes that the polynomial is evaluated in monomial form and no preconditioning of the representation is allowed, which makes sense if the polynomial is evaluated only once. However, if preconditioning is allowed and the polynomial is to be evaluated many times, then faster algorithms are possible. They involve a transformation of the representation of the polynomial. In general, a degree-n polynomial can be evaluated using only +2 multiplications and n additions.
Parallel evaluation
A disadvantage of Horner's rule is that all of the operations are sequentially dependent, so it is not possible to take advantage of instruction level parallelism on modern computers. In most applications where the efficiency of polynomial evaluation matters, many low-order polynomials are evaluated simultaneously (for each pixel or polygon in computer graphics, or for each grid square in a numerical simulation), so it is not necessary to find parallelism within a single polynomial evaluation.
If, however, one is evaluating a single polynomial of very high order, it may be useful to break it up as follows:
More generally, the summation can be broken into k parts:
where the inner summations may be evaluated using separate parallel instances of Horner's method. This requires slightly more operations than the basic Horner's method, but allows k-way SIMD execution of most of them. Modern compilers generally evaluate polynomials this way when advantageous, although for floating-point calculations this requires enabling (unsafe) reassociative math.
Application to floating-point multiplication and division
Horner's method is a fast, code-efficient method for multiplication and division of binary numbers on a microcontroller with no hardware multiplier. One of the binary numbers to be multiplied is represented as a trivial polynomial, where (using the above notation) , and . Then, x (or x to some power) is repeatedly factored out. In this binary numeral system (base 2), , so powers of 2 are repeatedly factored out.
Example
For example, to find the product of two numbers (0.15625) and m:
Method
To find the product of two binary numbers d and m:
1. A register holding the intermediate result is initialized to d.
2. Begin with the least significant (rightmost) non-zero bit in m.
2b. Count (to the left) the number of bit positions to the next most significant non-zero bit. If there are no more-significant bits, then take the value of the current bit position.
2c. Using that value, perform a left-shift operation by that number of bits on the register holding the intermediate result
3. If all the non-zero bits were counted, then the intermediate result register now holds the final result. Otherwise, add d to the intermediate result, and continue in step 2 with the next most significant bit in m.
Derivation
In general, for a binary number with bit values () the product is
At this stage in the algorithm, it is required that terms with zero-valued coefficients are dropped, so that only binary coefficients equal to one are counted, thus the problem of multiplication or division by zero is not an issue, despite this implication in the factored equation:
The denominators all equal one (or the term is absent), so this reduces to
or equivalently (as consistent with the "method" described above)
In binary (base-2) math, multiplication by a power of 2 is merely a register shift operation. Thus, multiplying by 2 is calculated in base-2 by an arithmetic shift. The factor (2−1) is a right arithmetic shift, a (0) results in no operation (since 20 = 1 is the multiplicative identity element), and a (21) results in a left arithmetic shift.
The multiplication product can now be quickly calculated using only arithmetic shift operations, addition and subtraction.
The method is particularly fast on processors supporting a single-instruction shift-and-addition-accumulate. Compared to a C floating-point library, Horner's method sacrifices some accuracy, however it is nominally 13 times faster (16 times faster when the "canonical signed digit" (CSD) form is used) and uses only 20% of the code space.
Other applications
Horner's method can be used to convert between different positional numeral systems – in which case x is the base of the number system, and the ai coefficients are the digits of the base-x representation of a given number – and can also be used if x is a matrix, in which case the gain in computational efficiency is even greater. However, for such cases faster methods are known.
Polynomial root finding
Using the long division algorithm in combination with Newton's method, it is possible to approximate the real roots of a polynomial. The algorithm works as follows. Given a polynomial of degree with zeros make some initial guess such that . Now iterate the following two steps:
Using Newton's method, find the largest zero of using the guess .
Using Horner's method, divide out to obtain . Return to step 1 but use the polynomial and the initial guess .
These two steps are repeated until all real zeros are found for the polynomial. If the approximated zeros are not precise enough, the obtained values can be used as initial guesses for Newton's method but using the full polynomial rather than the reduced polynomials.
Example
Consider the polynomial
which can be expanded to
From the above we know that the largest root of this polynomial is 7 so we are able to make an initial guess of 8. Using Newton's method the first zero of 7 is found as shown in black in the figure to the right. Next is divided by to obtain
which is drawn in red in the figure to the right. Newton's method is used to find the largest zero of this polynomial with an initial guess of 7. The largest zero of this polynomial which corresponds to the second largest zero of the original polynomial is found at 3 and is circled in red. The degree 5 polynomial is now divided by to obtain
which is shown in yellow. The zero for this polynomial is found at 2 again using Newton's method and is circled in yellow. Horner's method is now used to obtain
which is shown in green and found to have a zero at −3. This polynomial is further reduced to
which is shown in blue and yields a zero of −5. The final root of the original polynomial may be found by either using the final zero as an initial guess for Newton's method, or by reducing and solving the linear equation. As can be seen, the expected roots of −8, −5, −3, 2, 3, and 7 were found.
Divided difference of a polynomial
Horner's method can be modified to compute the divided difference Given the polynomial (as before)
proceed as follows
At completion, we have
This computation of the divided difference is subject to less
round-off error than evaluating and separately, particularly when
. Substituting
in this method gives , the derivative of .
History
Horner's paper, titled "A new method of solving numerical equations of all orders, by continuous approximation", was read before the Royal Society of London, at its meeting on July 1, 1819, with a sequel in 1823. Horner's paper in Part II of Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London for 1819 was warmly and expansively welcomed by a reviewer in the issue of The Monthly Review: or, Literary Journal for April, 1820; in comparison, a technical paper by Charles Babbage is dismissed curtly in this review. The sequence of reviews in The Monthly Review for September, 1821, concludes that Holdred was the first person to discover a direct and general practical solution of numerical equations. Fuller showed that the method in Horner's 1819 paper differs from what afterwards became known as "Horner's method" and that in consequence the priority for this method should go to Holdred (1820).
Unlike his English contemporaries, Horner drew on the Continental literature, notably the work of Arbogast. Horner is also known to have made a close reading of John Bonneycastle's book on algebra, though he neglected the work of Paolo Ruffini.
Although Horner is credited with making the method accessible and practical, it was known long before Horner. In reverse chronological order, Horner's method was already known to:
Paolo Ruffini in 1809 (see Ruffini's rule)
Isaac Newton in 1669
the Chinese mathematician Zhu Shijie in the 14th century
the Chinese mathematician Qin Jiushao in his Mathematical Treatise in Nine Sections in the 13th century
the Persian mathematician Sharaf al-Dīn al-Ṭūsī in the 12th century (the first to use that method in a general case of cubic equation)
the Chinese mathematician Jia Xian in the 11th century (Song dynasty)
The Nine Chapters on the Mathematical Art, a Chinese work of the Han dynasty (202 BC – 220 AD) edited by Liu Hui (fl. 3rd century).
Qin Jiushao, in his Shu Shu Jiu Zhang (Mathematical Treatise in Nine Sections; 1247), presents a portfolio of methods of Horner-type for solving polynomial equations, which was based on earlier works of the 11th century Song dynasty mathematician Jia Xian; for example, one method is specifically suited to bi-quintics, of which Qin gives an instance, in keeping with the then Chinese custom of case studies. Yoshio Mikami in Development of Mathematics in China and Japan (Leipzig 1913) wrote:
Ulrich Libbrecht concluded: It is obvious that this procedure is a Chinese invention ... the method was not known in India. He said, Fibonacci probably learned of it from Arabs, who perhaps borrowed from the Chinese. The extraction of square and cube roots along similar lines is already discussed by Liu Hui in connection with Problems IV.16 and 22 in Jiu Zhang Suan Shu, while Wang Xiaotong in the 7th century supposes his readers can solve cubics by an approximation method described in his book Jigu Suanjing.
See also
Clenshaw algorithm to evaluate polynomials in Chebyshev form
De Boor's algorithm to evaluate splines in B-spline form
De Casteljau's algorithm to evaluate polynomials in Bézier form
Estrin's scheme to facilitate parallelization on modern computer architectures
Lill's method to approximate roots graphically
Ruffini's rule and synthetic division to divide a polynomial by a binomial of the form x − r
Notes
References
Read before the Southwestern Section of the American Mathematical Society on November 26, 1910.
Holdred's method is in the supplement following page numbered 45 (which is the 52nd page of the pdf version).
Directly available online via the link, but also reprinted with appraisal in D.E. Smith: A Source Book in Mathematics, McGraw-Hill, 1929; Dover reprint, 2 vols, 1959.
Reprinted from issues of The North China Herald (1852).
External links
Qiu Jin-Shao, Shu Shu Jiu Zhang (Cong Shu Ji Cheng ed.)
For more on the root-finding application see
Algebra
Polynomials
Numerical analysis | [
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14268 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hapworth%2016%2C%201924 | Hapworth 16, 1924 | "Hapworth 16, 1924" is a short story by the American author J. D. Salinger, the last original work published in his lifetime. It appeared in the June 19, 1965, edition of The New Yorker, infamously taking up almost the entire magazine. It is the "youngest" of Salinger's Glass family stories, in the sense that the narrated events happen chronologically before those in the rest of the series.
Both contemporary and later literary critics harshly panned "Hapworth 16, 1924"; writing in The New York Times, Michiko Kakutani called it "a sour, implausible and, sad to say, completely charmless story .... filled with digressions, narcissistic asides and ridiculous shaggy-dog circumlocutions." Even kind critics have regarded the work as "a long-winded sob story" that many have found "simply unreadable", and it has been speculated that this response was the reason Salinger decided to quit publishing. But Salinger is also said to have considered the story a "high point of his writing" and made tentative steps to have it reprinted, though those came to nothing.
Plot
The story is presented in the form of a letter from camp written by a seven-year-old Seymour Glass (the main character of "A Perfect Day for Bananafish"). In this respect, the plot is identical to Salinger's previous unpublished story "The Ocean Full of Bowling Balls", written 18 years earlier in 1947. In the course of requesting an inordinate quantity of reading matter from home, Seymour predicts his brother's success as a writer as well as his own death and offers critical assessments of a number of major writers.
Publishing history
After the story's appearance in The New Yorker, Salinger—who had already withdrawn to his home in New Hampshire—stopped publishing altogether. Since the story never appeared in book form, readers had to seek out that issue or find it on microfilm. Finally, with the release of The Complete New Yorker on DVD in 2005, the story was once again widely available.
In 1996, Orchises Press, a small Virginia publishing house, started a process of publishing "Hapworth" in book form. Orchises Press owner Roger Lathbury has described the effort in The Washington Post and, three months after Salinger's death, in New York magazine. According to Lathbury, Salinger was deeply concerned with the proposed book's appearance, even visiting Washington to examine the cloth for the binding. Salinger also sent Lathbury numerous "infectious and delightful and loving" letters.
Following publishing norms, Lathbury applied for Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication data, unaware of how publicly available the information would be. A writer in Seattle, researching an article on Jeff Bezos, came across the "Hapworth" publication date, and told his sister, a journalist for the Washington Business Journal, who wrote an article about the upcoming book. This led to substantial coverage in the press. Shortly before the books were to be shipped, Salinger changed his mind, and Orchises withdrew the book. New publication dates were repeatedly announced, but it never appeared. Lathbury said, "I never reached back out. I thought about writing some letters, but it wouldn't have done any good."
Citations
References
Lathbury, Roger "Betraying Salinger", New York, April 4, 2010. Retrieved on May 22, 2010.
Lundegaard, Karen M. (2010) "J. D. Salinger resurfaces ... in Alexandria?", Washington Business Journal, November 15, 1996. Retrieved on August 13, 2008.
Lundegaard, Erik (1996) Three Stories with J. D. Salinger
Noah, Timothy. "Hapworth 16, 1924: A Chatterbox Investigation", Slate, September 11, 2000. Retrieved on August 10, 2008.
External links
Abstract at The New Yorker site
Still Paging Mr. Salinger at The New York Times
"Hapworth 16, 1924" Revisited at The Satirist: America's Most Critical Journal
Short stories by J. D. Salinger
1965 short stories
Cancelled books
Works originally published in The New Yorker | [
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14269 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypnotic | Hypnotic | Hypnotic (from Greek Hypnos, sleep), or soporific drugs, commonly known as sleeping pills, are a class of psychoactive drugs whose primary function is to induce sleep (or surgical anesthesia) and to treat insomnia (sleeplessness).
This group of drugs is related to sedatives. Whereas the term sedative describes drugs that serve to calm or relieve anxiety, the term hypnotic generally describes drugs whose main purpose is to initiate, sustain, or lengthen sleep. Because these two functions frequently overlap, and because drugs in this class generally produce dose-dependent effects (ranging from anxiolysis to loss of consciousness), they are often referred to collectively as sedative-hypnotic drugs.
Hypnotic drugs are regularly prescribed for insomnia and other sleep disorders, with over 95% of insomnia patients being prescribed hypnotics in some countries. Many hypnotic drugs are habit-forming and—due to many factors known to disturb the human sleep pattern—a physician may instead recommend changes in the environment before and during sleep, better sleep hygiene, the avoidance of caffeine and alcohol or other stimulating substances, or behavioral interventions such as cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia (CBT-I), before prescribing medication for sleep. When prescribed, hypnotic medication should be used for the shortest period of time necessary.
Among individuals with sleep disorders, 13.7% are taking or prescribed nonbenzodiazepines, while 10.8% are taking benzodiazepines, as of 2010, in the USA. Early classes of drugs, such as barbiturates, have fallen out of use in most practices but are still prescribed for some patients. In children, prescribing hypnotics is not yet acceptable—unless used to treat night terrors or sleepwalking. Elderly people are more sensitive to potential side effects of daytime fatigue and cognitive impairments, and a meta-analysis found that the risks generally outweigh any marginal benefits of hypnotics in the elderly. A review of the literature regarding benzodiazepine hypnotics and Z-drugs concluded that these drugs can have adverse effects, such as dependence and accidents, and that optimal treatment uses the lowest effective dose for the shortest therapeutic time period, with gradual discontinuation in order to improve health without worsening of sleep.
Falling outside the above-mentioned categories, the neuro-hormone melatonin has a hypnotic function.
History
Hypnotica was a class of somniferous drugs and substances tested in medicine of the 1890s and later. These include Urethan, Acetal, Methylal, Sulfonal, paraldehyde, Amylenhydrate, Hypnon, Chloralurethan and Ohloralamid or Chloralimid.
Research about using medications to treat insomnia evolved throughout the last half of the 20th century. Treatment for insomnia in psychiatry dates back to 1869, when chloral hydrate was first used as a soporific. Barbiturates emerged as the first class of drugs in the early 1900s, after which chemical substitution allowed derivative compounds. Although they were the best drug family at the time (with less toxicity and fewer side effects), they were dangerous in overdose and tended to cause physical and psychological dependence.
During the 1970s, quinazolinones and benzodiazepines were introduced as safer alternatives to replace barbiturates; by the late 1970s, benzodiazepines emerged as the safer drug.
Benzodiazepines are not without their drawbacks; substance dependence is possible, and deaths from overdoses sometimes occur, especially in combination with alcohol and/or other depressants. Questions have been raised as to whether they disturb sleep architecture.
Nonbenzodiazepines are the most recent development (1990s–present). Although it is clear that they are less toxic than barbiturates, their predecessors, comparative efficacy over benzodiazepines have not been established. Such efficacy is hard to determine without longitudinal studies. However, some psychiatrists recommend these drugs, citing research suggesting they are equally potent with less potential for abuse.
Other sleep remedies that may be considered "sedative-hypnotics" exist; psychiatrists will sometimes prescribe medicines off-label if they have sedating effects. Examples of these include mirtazapine (an antidepressant), clonidine (generally prescribed to regulate blood pressure), quetiapine (an antipsychotic), and the over-the-counter sleep aid diphenhydramine (Benadryl – an antihistamine). Off-label sleep remedies are particularly useful when first-line treatment is unsuccessful or deemed unsafe (as in patients with a history of substance abuse).
Types
Barbiturate
Barbiturates are drugs that act as central nervous system depressants, and can therefore produce a wide spectrum of effects, from mild sedation to total anesthesia. They are also effective as anxiolytics, hypnotics, and anticonvulsalgesic effects; however, these effects are somewhat weak, preventing barbiturates from being used in surgery in the absence of other analgesics. They have dependence liability, both physical and psychological. Barbiturates have now largely been replaced by benzodiazepines in routine medical practice – such as in the treatment of anxiety and insomnia – mainly because benzodiazepines are significantly less dangerous in overdose. However, barbiturates are still used in general anesthesia, for epilepsy, and for assisted suicide. Barbiturates are derivatives of barbituric acid.
The principal mechanism of action of barbiturates is believed to be positive allosteric modulation of GABAA receptors.
Examples include amobarbital, pentobarbital, phenobarbital, secobarbital, and sodium thiopental.
Quinazolinones
Quinazolinones are also a class of drugs which function as hypnotic/sedatives that contain a 4-quinazolinone core. Their use has also been proposed in the treatment of cancer.
Examples of quinazolinones include cloroqualone, diproqualone, etaqualone (Aolan, Athinazone, Ethinazone), mebroqualone, Afloqualone (Arofuto), mecloqualone (Nubarene, Casfen), and methaqualone (Quaalude).
Benzodiazepines
Benzodiazepines can be useful for short-term treatment of insomnia. Their use beyond 2 to 4 weeks is not recommended due to the risk of dependence. It is preferred that benzodiazepines be taken intermittently—and at the lowest effective dose. They improve sleep-related problems by shortening the time spent in bed before falling asleep, prolonging the sleep time, and, in general, reducing wakefulness. Like alcohol, benzodiazepines are commonly used to treat insomnia in the short-term (both prescribed and self-medicated), but worsen sleep in the long-term. While benzodiazepines can put people to sleep (i.e., inhibit NREM stage 1 and 2 sleep), while asleep, the drugs disrupt sleep architecture by decreasing sleep time, delaying time to REM sleep, and decreasing deep slow-wave sleep (the most restorative part of sleep for both energy and mood).
Other drawbacks of hypnotics, including benzodiazepines, are possible tolerance to their effects, rebound insomnia, and reduced slow-wave sleep and a withdrawal period typified by rebound insomnia and a prolonged period of anxiety and agitation. The list of benzodiazepines approved for the treatment of insomnia is fairly similar among most countries, but which benzodiazepines are officially designated as first-line hypnotics prescribed for the treatment of insomnia can vary distinctly between countries. Longer-acting benzodiazepines such as nitrazepam and diazepam have residual effects that may persist into the next day and are, in general, not recommended.
It is not clear as to whether the new nonbenzodiazepine hypnotics (Z-drugs) are better than the short-acting benzodiazepines. The efficacy of these two groups of medications is similar. According to the US Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, indirect comparison indicates that side-effects from benzodiazepines may be about twice as frequent as from nonbenzodiazepines. Some experts suggest using nonbenzodiazepines preferentially as a first-line long-term treatment of insomnia. However, the UK National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) did not find any convincing evidence in favor of Z-drugs. A NICE review pointed out that short-acting Z-drugs were inappropriately compared in clinical trials with long-acting benzodiazepines. There have been no trials comparing short-acting Z-drugs with appropriate doses of short-acting benzodiazepines. Based on this, NICE recommended choosing the hypnotic based on cost and the patient's preference.
Older adults should not use benzodiazepines to treat insomnia—unless other treatments have failed to be effective. When benzodiazepines are used, patients, their caretakers, and their physician should discuss the increased risk of harms, including evidence which shows twice the incidence of traffic collisions among driving patients, as well as falls and hip fracture for all older patients.
Their mechanism of action is primarily at GABAA receptors.
Nonbenzodiazepines
Nonbenzodiazepines are a class of psychoactive drugs that are very "benzodiazepine-like" in nature. Nonbenzodiazepine pharmacodynamics are almost entirely the same as benzodiazepine drugs, and therefore entail similar benefits, side-effects and risks. Nonbenzodiazepines, however, have dissimilar or entirely different chemical structures, and therefore are unrelated to benzodiazepines on a molecular level.
Examples include zopiclone (Imovane, Zimovane), eszopiclone (Lunesta), zaleplon (Sonata), and zolpidem (Ambien, Stilnox, Stilnoct).
Research on nonbenzodiazepines is new and conflicting. A review by a team of researchers suggests the use of these drugs for people that have trouble falling asleep (but not staying asleep), as next-day impairments were minimal. The team noted that the safety of these drugs had been established, but called for more research into their long-term effectiveness in treating insomnia. Other evidence suggests that tolerance to nonbenzodiazepines may be slower to develop than with benzodiazepines. A different team was more skeptical, finding little benefit over benzodiazepines.
Others
Melatonin
Melatonin, the hormone produced in the pineal gland in the brain and secreted in dim light and darkness, among its other functions, promotes sleep in diurnal mammals.
Antihistamines
In common use, the term antihistamine refers only to compounds that inhibit action at the H1 receptor (and not H2, etc.).
Clinically, H1 antagonists are used to treat certain allergies. Sedation is a common side-effect, and some H1 antagonists, such as diphenhydramine (Benadryl) and doxylamine, are also used to treat insomnia.
Second-generation antihistamines cross the blood–brain barrier to a much lower degree than the first ones. This results in their primarily affecting peripheral histamine receptors, and therefore having a much lower sedative effect. High doses can still induce the central nervous system effect of drowsiness.
Antidepressants
Some antidepressants have sedating effects.
Examples include:
Serotonin antagonists and reuptake inhibitors
Trazodone
Tricyclic antidepressants
Amitriptyline
Doxepin
Trimipramine
Tetracyclic antidepressants
Mianserin
Mirtazapine
Antipsychotics
Examples of antipsychotics with sedation as a side effect that are occasionally used for insomnia:
First-generation
Chlorpromazine
Second-generation
Clozapine
Olanzapine
Quetiapine
Risperidone
Zotepine
Miscellaneous drugs
Alpha-adrenergic agonist
Clonidine
Guanfacine
Cannabinoids
Cannabidiol
Tetrahydrocannabinol
Orexin receptor antagonist
Suvorexant
Lemborexant
Gabapentinoids
Gabapentin
Pregabalin
Phenibut
Risks
The use of sedative medications in older people generally should be avoided. These medications are associated with poorer health outcomes, including cognitive decline.
Therefore, sedatives and hypnotics should be avoided in people with dementia, according to the clinical guidelines known as the Medication Appropriateness Tool for Comorbid Health Conditions in Dementia (MATCH-D). The use of these medications can further impede cognitive function for people with dementia, who are also more sensitive to side effects of medications.
See also
Melatonin
Sleep induction#Alcohol
Notes
References
Further reading
discusses Barbs vs. benzos
External links
Sleeping pills overview
Psychoactive drugs
Treatment of sleep disorders | [
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14273 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS%20Dunraven | HMS Dunraven | HMS Dunraven was a Q-Ship of the Royal Navy during World War I.
On 8 August 1917, 130 miles southwest of Ushant in the Bay of Biscay, disguised as the collier Boverton and commanded by Gordon Campbell, VC, Dunraven spotted , commanded by Oberleutnant zur See Reinhold Saltzwedel. Saltzwedel believed the disguised ship was a merchant vessel. The U-boat submerged and closed with Dunraven before surfacing astern at 11:43 am and opening fire at long range. Dunraven made smoke and sent off a panic party (a small number of men who "abandon ship" during an attack to continue the impersonation of a merchant).
Shells began hitting Dunraven, detonating her depth charges and setting her stern afire. Her crew remained hidden letting the fires burn. Then a 4-inch (102 mm) gun and crew were blown away revealing Dunravens identity as a warship, and UC-71 submerged. A second "panic party" abandoned ship. Dunraven was hit by a torpedo. A third "panic party" went over the side, leaving only two guns manned. UC-71 surfaced, shelled Dunraven and again submerged. Campbell replied with two torpedoes that missed, and around 3 pm, the undamaged U-boat left that area. Only one of Dunravens crew was killed, but the Q-Ship was sinking.
The British destroyer HMS Christopher picked up Dunravens survivors and took her in tow for Plymouth, but Dunraven sank at 1:30 am early on 10 August 1917 to the north of Ushant.
In recognition, two Victoria Crosses were awarded, one to the ship's First Lieutenant, Lt. Charles George Bonner RNR, and the other, by ballot, to a gunlayer, Petty Officer Ernest Herbert Pitcher.
Captain Campbell later wrote:
"It had been a fair and honest fight, and I lost it. Referring to my crew, words cannot express what I am feeling. No one let me down. No one could have done better."
Captain Campbell had been previously awarded the Victoria Cross, in February 1917, for the sinking of .
Notes and references
External links
illustrated account of Gordon Campbell, "the most famous Q-ship officer", including his time with HMS Dunraven
Q-ships of the Royal Navy
World War I shipwrecks in the Atlantic Ocean
Maritime incidents in 1917
Ships sunk by German submarines in World War I
1910 ships | [
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14275 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacker%20ethic | Hacker ethic | The hacker ethic is a philosophy and set of moral values that is common within hacker culture. Practitioners of the hacker ethic believe that sharing information and data with others is an ethical imperative. The hacker ethic is related to the concept of freedom of information, as well as the political theories of Anti-authoritarianism, socialism, liberalism, anarchism, and libertarianism.
While some tenets of the hacker ethic were described in other texts like Computer Lib/Dream Machines (1974) by Ted Nelson, the term hacker ethic is generally attributed to journalist Steven Levy, who appears to have been the first to document both the philosophy and the founders of the philosophy in his 1984 book titled Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution.
History
The hacker ethic originated at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the 1950s–1960s. The term "hacker" had long been used there to describe college pranks that MIT students would regularly devise, and was used more generally to describe a project undertaken or a product built to fulfill some constructive goal but also out of pleasure for mere involvement.
MIT housed an early IBM 704 computer inside the Electronic Accounting Machinery (EAM) room in 1959. This room became the staging grounds for early hackers, as MIT students from the Tech Model Railroad Club sneaked inside the EAM room after hours to attempt programming the 30-ton, computer.
The hacker ethic was described as a "new way of life, with a philosophy, an ethic and a dream". However, the elements of the hacker ethic were not openly debated and discussed; rather they were implicitly accepted and silently agreed upon.
The free software movement was born in the early 1980s from followers of the hacker ethic. Its founder, Richard Stallman, is referred to by Steven Levy as "the last true hacker".
Richard Stallman describes:
The hacker ethic refers to the feelings of right and wrong, to the ethical ideas this community of people had—that knowledge should be shared with other people who can benefit from it, and that important resources should be utilized rather than wasted.
and states more precisely that hacking (which Stallman defines as playful cleverness) and ethics are two separate issues:
Just because someone enjoys hacking does not mean he has an ethical commitment to treating other people properly. Some hackers care about ethics—I do, for instance—but that is not part of being a hacker, it is a separate trait. [...] Hacking is not primarily about an ethical issue. [...] hacking tends to lead a significant number of hackers to think about ethical questions in a certain way. I would not want to completely deny all connection between hacking and views on ethics.The hacker culture has been compared to early Protestantism. Protestant sectarians emphasized individualism and loneliness, similar to hackers who have been considered loners and nonjudgemental individuals. The notion of moral indifference between hackers characterized the persistent actions of computer culture in the 1970s and early 1980s. According to Kirkpatrick, author of The Hacker Ethic, the "computer plays the role of God, whose requirements took priority over the human ones of sentiment when it came to assessing one's duty to others."
According to Kirkpatrick's The Hacker Ethic:
"Exceptional single-mindedness and determination to keep plugging away at a problem until the optimal solution had been found are well-documented traits of the early hackers. Willingness to work right through the night on a single programming problem are widely cited as features of the early 'hacker' computer culture."
The hacker culture is placed in the context of 1960s youth culture when American youth culture challenged the concept of capitalism and big, centralized structures. The hacker culture was a subculture within 1960s counterculture. The hackers' main concern was challenging the idea of technological expertise and authority. The 1960s hippy period attempted to "overturn the machine." Although hackers appreciated technology, they wanted regular citizens, and not big corporations, to have power over technology "as a weapon that might actually undermine the authority of the expert and the hold of the monolithic system."
The hacker ethics
As Levy summarized in the preface of Hackers, the general tenets or principles of hacker ethic include:
Sharing
Openness
Decentralization
Free access to computers
World Improvement (foremost, upholding democracy and the fundamental laws we all live by, as a society)
In addition to those principles, Levy also described more specific hacker ethics and beliefs in chapter 2, The Hacker Ethic: The ethics he described in chapter 2 are:
1. "Access to computers—and anything which might teach you something about the way the world works—should be unlimited and total. Always yield to the Hands-On Imperative!" Levy is recounting hackers' abilities to learn and build upon pre-existing ideas and systems. He believes that access gives hackers the opportunity to take things apart, fix, or improve upon them and to learn and understand how they work. This gives them the knowledge to create new and even more interesting things. Access aids the expansion of technology.
2. "All information should be free" Linking directly with the principle of access, information needs to be free for hackers to fix, improve, and reinvent systems. A free exchange of information allows for greater overall creativity. In the hacker viewpoint, any system could benefit from an easy flow of information, a concept known as transparency in the social sciences. As Stallman notes, "free" refers to unrestricted access; it does not refer to price.
3. "Mistrust authority—promote decentralization" The best way to promote the free exchange of information is to have an open system that presents no boundaries between a hacker and a piece of information or an item of equipment that they need in their quest for knowledge, improvement, and time on-line. Hackers believe that bureaucracies, whether corporate, government, or university, are flawed systems.
4. "Hackers should be judged by their hacking, not bogus criteria such as degrees, age, race, sex, or position" Inherent in the hacker ethic is a meritocratic system where superficiality is disregarded in esteem of skill. Levy articulates that criteria such as age, sex, race, position, and qualification are deemed irrelevant within the hacker community. Hacker skill is the ultimate determinant of acceptance. Such a code within the hacker community fosters the advance of hacking and software development. In an example of the hacker ethic of equal opportunity, L Peter Deutsch, a twelve-year-old hacker, was accepted in the TX-0 community, though he was not recognized by non-hacker graduate students.
5. "You can create art and beauty on a computer" Hackers deeply appreciate innovative techniques which allow programs to perform complicated tasks with few instructions. A program's code was considered to hold a beauty of its own, having been carefully composed and artfully arranged. Learning to create programs which used the least amount of space almost became a game between the early hackers.
6. "Computers can change your life for the better" Hackers felt that computers had enriched their lives, given their lives focus, and made their lives adventurous. Hackers regarded computers as Aladdin's lamps that they could control. They believed that everyone in society could benefit from experiencing such power and that if everyone could interact with computers in the way that hackers did, then the hacker ethic might spread through society and computers would improve the world. The hackers succeeded in turning dreams of endless possibilities into realities. The hacker's primary object was to teach society that "the world opened up by the computer was a limitless one" (Levy 230:1984)
Sharing
From the early days of modern computing through to the 1970s, it was far more common for computer users to have the freedoms that are provided by an ethic of open sharing and collaboration. Software, including source code, was commonly shared by individuals who used computers. Most companies had a business model based on hardware sales, and provided or bundled the associated software free of charge. According to Levy's account, sharing was the norm and expected within the non-corporate hacker culture. The principle of sharing stemmed from the open atmosphere and informal access to resources at MIT. During the early days of computers and programming, the hackers at MIT would develop a program and share it with other computer users.
If the hack was deemed particularly good, then the program might be posted on a board somewhere near one of the computers. Other programs that could be built upon it and improved it were saved to tapes and added to a drawer of programs, readily accessible to all the other hackers. At any time, a fellow hacker might reach into the drawer, pick out the program, and begin adding to it or "bumming" it to make it better. Bumming referred to the process of making the code more concise so that more can be done in fewer instructions, saving precious memory for further enhancements.
In the second generation of hackers, sharing was about sharing with the general public in addition to sharing with other hackers. A particular organization of hackers that was concerned with sharing computers with the general public was a group called Community Memory. This group of hackers and idealists put computers in public places for anyone to use. The first community computer was placed outside of Leopold's Records in Berkeley, California.
Another sharing of resources occurred when Bob Albrecht provided considerable resources for a non-profit organization called the People's Computer Company (PCC). PCC opened a computer center where anyone could use the computers there for fifty cents per hour.
This second generation practice of sharing contributed to the battles of free and open software. In fact, when Bill Gates' version of BASIC for the Altair was shared among the hacker community, Gates claimed to have lost a considerable sum of money because few users paid for the software. As a result, Gates wrote an Open Letter to Hobbyists. This letter was published by several computer magazines and newsletters, most notably that of the Homebrew Computer Club where much of the sharing occurred.
According to Brent K. Jesiek in "Democratizing Software: Open Source, the Hacker Ethic, and Beyond," technology is being associated with social views and goals. Jesiek refers to Gisle Hannemyr's views on open source vs. commercialized software. Hannemyr concludes that when a hacker constructs software, the software is flexible, tailorable, modular in nature and is open-ended. A hacker's software contrasts mainstream hardware which favors control, a sense of being whole, and be immutable (Hannemyr, 1999).
Furthermore, he concludes that 'the difference between the hacker’s approach and those of the industrial programmer is one of outlook: between an agoric, integrated and holistic attitude towards the creation of artifacts and a proprietary, fragmented and reductionist one' (Hannemyr, 1999). As Hannemyr’s analysis reveals, the characteristics of a given piece of software frequently reflect the attitude and outlook of the programmers and organizations from which it emerges."
Copyright and patents
As copyright and patent laws limit the ability to share software, opposition to software patents is widespread in the hacker and free software community.
Hands-On Imperative
Many of the principles and tenets of hacker ethic contribute to a common goal: the Hands-On Imperative. As Levy described in Chapter 2, "Hackers believe that essential lessons can be learned about the systems—about the world—from taking things apart, seeing how they work, and using this knowledge to create new and more interesting things."
Employing the Hands-On Imperative requires free access, open information, and the sharing of knowledge. To a true hacker, if the Hands-On Imperative is restricted, then the ends justify the means to make it unrestricted so that improvements can be made. When these principles are not present, hackers tend to work around them. For example, when the computers at MIT were protected either by physical locks or login programs, the hackers there systematically worked around them in order to have access to the machines. Hackers assumed a "willful blindness" in the pursuit of perfection.
This behavior was not malicious in nature: the MIT hackers did not seek to harm the systems or their users. This deeply contrasts with the modern, media-encouraged image of hackers who crack secure systems in order to steal information or complete an act of cyber-vandalism.
Community and collaboration
Throughout writings about hackers and their work processes, a common value of community and collaboration is present. For example, in Levy's Hackers, each generation of hackers had geographically based communities where collaboration and sharing occurred. For the hackers at MIT, it was the labs where the computers were running. For the hardware hackers (second generation) and the game hackers (third generation) the geographic area was centered in Silicon Valley where the Homebrew Computer Club and the People's Computer Company helped hackers network, collaborate, and share their work.
The concept of community and collaboration is still relevant today, although hackers are no longer limited to collaboration in geographic regions. Now collaboration takes place via the Internet. Eric S. Raymond identifies and explains this conceptual shift in The Cathedral and the Bazaar:
Before cheap Internet, there were some geographically compact communities where the culture encouraged Weinberg's egoless programming, and a developer could easily attract a lot of skilled kibitzers and co-developers. Bell Labs, the MIT AI and LCS labs, UC Berkeley: these became the home of innovations that are legendary and still potent.
Raymond also notes that the success of Linux coincided with the wide availability of the World Wide Web. The value of community is still in high practice and use today.
Levy's "true hackers"
Levy identifies several "true hackers" who significantly influenced the hacker ethic. Some well-known "true hackers" include:
Bill Gosper: Mathematician and hacker
Richard Greenblatt: Programmer and early designer of LISP machines
John McCarthy: Co-founder of the MIT Artificial Intelligence Lab and Stanford AI Laboratory
Jude Milhon: Founder of the cypherpunk movement, senior editor at Mondo 2000, and co-founder of Community Memory
Richard Stallman: Programmer and political activist who is well known for GNU, Emacs and the Free Software Movement
Levy also identified the "hardware hackers" (the "second generation", mostly centered in Silicon Valley) and the "game hackers" (or the "third generation"). All three generations of hackers, according to Levy, embodied the principles of the hacker ethic. Some of Levy's "second-generation" hackers include:
Steve Dompier: Homebrew Computer Club member and hacker who worked with the early Altair 8800
John Draper: A legendary figure in the computer programming world. He wrote EasyWriter, the first word processor.
Lee Felsenstein: A hardware hacker and co-founder of Community Memory and Homebrew Computer Club; a designer of the Sol-20 computer
Bob Marsh: A designer of the Sol-20 computer
Fred Moore: Activist and founder of the Homebrew Computer Club
Steve Wozniak: One of the founders of Apple Computer
Levy's "third generation" practitioners of hacker ethic include:
John Harris: One of the first programmers hired at On-Line Systems (which later became Sierra Entertainment)
Ken Williams: Along with wife Roberta, founded On-Line Systems after working at IBM – the company would later achieve mainstream popularity as Sierra
Other descriptions
In 2001, Finnish philosopher Pekka Himanen promoted the hacker ethic in opposition to the Protestant work ethic. In Himanen's opinion, the hacker ethic is more closely related to the virtue ethics found in the writings of Plato and of Aristotle. Himanen explained these ideas in a book, The Hacker Ethic and the Spirit of the Information Age, with a prologue contributed by Linus Torvalds and an epilogue by Manuel Castells.
In this manifesto, the authors wrote about a hacker ethic centering on passion, hard work, creativity and joy in creating software. Both Himanen and Torvalds were inspired by the Sampo in Finnish mythology. The Sampo, described in the Kalevala saga, was a magical artifact constructed by Ilmarinen, the blacksmith god, that brought good fortune to its holder; nobody knows exactly what it was supposed to be. The Sampo has been interpreted in many ways: a world pillar or world tree, a compass or astrolabe, a chest containing a treasure, a Byzantine coin die, a decorated Vendel period shield, a Christian relic, etc. Kalevala saga compiler Lönnrot interpreted it to be a "quern" or mill of some sort that made flour, salt, and wealth.
See also
Hacks at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Hacker (programmer subculture)
Hacker (term)
Hacktivism
Tech Model Railroad Club
The Cathedral and the Bazaar
Free software movement
Free software philosophy
Footnotes
References
Further reading
External links
Gabriella Coleman, an anthropologist at McGill University, studies hacker cultures and has written extensively on the hacker ethic and culture
Tom Chance's essay on The Hacker Ethic and Meaningful Work
Hacker ethic from the Jargon file
Directory of free software
ITERATIVE DISCOURSE AND THE FORMATION OF NEW SUBCULTURES by Steve Mizrach describes the hacker terminology, including the term cracker.
Richard Stallman's Personal Website
Is there a Hacker Ethic for 90s Hackers? by Steven Mizrach
The Hacker's Ethics by the Cyberpunk Project
Computing and society
Hacker culture
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14276 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hotel | Hotel | A hotel is an establishment that provides paid lodging on a short-term basis. Facilities provided inside a hotel room may range from a modest-quality mattress in a small room to large suites with bigger, higher-quality beds, a dresser, a refrigerator and other kitchen facilities, upholstered chairs, a flat screen television, and en-suite bathrooms. Small, lower-priced hotels may offer only the most basic guest services and facilities. Larger, higher-priced hotels may provide additional guest facilities such as a swimming pool, business centre (with computers, printers, and other office equipment), childcare, conference and event facilities, tennis or basketball courts, gymnasium, restaurants, day spa, and social function services. Hotel rooms are usually numbered (or named in some smaller hotels and B&Bs) to allow guests to identify their room. Some boutique, high-end hotels have custom decorated rooms. Some hotels offer meals as part of a room and board arrangement. In Japan, capsule hotels provide a tiny room suitable only for sleeping and shared bathroom facilities.
The precursor to the modern hotel was the inn of medieval Europe. For a period of about 200 years from the mid-17th century, coaching inns served as a place for lodging for coach travelers. Inns began to cater to richer clients in the mid-18th century. One of the first hotels in a modern sense was opened in Exeter in 1768. Hotels proliferated throughout Western Europe and North America in the early 19th century, and luxury hotels began to spring up in the later part of the 19th century.
Hotel operations vary in size, function, complexity, and cost. Most hotels and major hospitality companies have set industry standards to classify hotel types. An upscale full-service hotel facility offers luxury amenities, full-service accommodations, an on-site restaurant, and the highest level of personalized service, such as a concierge, room service, and clothes pressing staff. Full-service hotels often contain upscale full-service facilities with many full-service accommodations, an on-site full-service restaurant, and a variety of on-site amenities. Boutique hotels are smaller independent, non-branded hotels that often contain upscale facilities. Small to medium-sized hotel establishments offer a limited amount of on-site amenities. Economy hotels are small to medium-sized hotel establishments that offer basic accommodations with little to no services. Extended stay hotels are small to medium-sized hotels that offer longer-term full-service accommodations compared to a traditional hotel.
Timeshare and destination clubs are a form of property ownership involving ownership of an individual unit of accommodation for seasonal usage. A motel is a small-sized low-rise lodging with direct access to individual rooms from the car park. Boutique hotels are typically hotels with a unique environment or intimate setting. A number of hotels have entered the public consciousness through popular culture, such as the Ritz Hotel in London. Some hotels are built specifically as destinations in themselves, for example casinos and holiday resorts.
Most hotel establishments are run by a general manager who serves as the head executive (often referred to as the "hotel manager"), department heads who oversee various departments within a hotel (e.g., food service), middle managers, administrative staff, and line-level supervisors. The organizational chart and volume of job positions and hierarchy varies by hotel size, function and class, and is often determined by hotel ownership and managing companies.
Etymology
The word hotel is derived from the French hôtel (coming from the same origin as hospital), which referred to a French version of a building seeing frequent visitors, and providing care, rather than a place offering accommodation. In contemporary French usage, hôtel now has the same meaning as the English term, and hôtel particulier is used for the old meaning, as well as "hôtel" in some place names such as Hôtel-Dieu (in Paris), which has been a hospital since the Middle Ages. The French spelling, with the circumflex, was also used in English, but is now rare. The circumflex replaces the 's' found in the earlier hostel spelling, which over time took on a new, but closely related meaning. Grammatically, hotels usually take the definite article – hence "The Astoria Hotel" or simply "The Astoria."
History
Facilities offering hospitality to travellers featured in early civilizations. In Greco-Roman culture and in ancient Persia, hospitals for recuperation and rest were built at thermal baths. Guinness World Records officially recognised Japan's Nishiyama Onsen Keiunkan, founded in 705, as the oldest hotel in the world. During the Middle Ages, various religious orders at monasteries and abbeys would offer accommodation for travellers on the road.
The precursor to the modern hotel was the inn of medieval Europe, possibly dating back to the rule of Ancient Rome. These would provide for the needs of travellers, including food
and lodging, stabling and fodder for the traveller's horses and fresh horses for mail coaches. Famous London examples of inns include the George and the Tabard. A typical layout of an inn featured an inner court with bedrooms on the two sides, with the kitchen and parlour at the front and the stables at the back.
For a period of about 200 years from the mid-17th century, coaching inns served as a place for lodging for coach travellers (in other words, a roadhouse). Coaching inns stabled teams of horses for stagecoaches and mail coaches and replaced tired teams with fresh teams. Traditionally they were seven miles apart, but this depended very much on the terrain.
Some English towns had as many as ten such inns and rivalry between them became intense, not only for the income from the stagecoach operators but for the revenue from the food and drink supplied to the wealthy passengers. By the end of the century, coaching inns were being run more professionally, with a regular timetable being followed and fixed menus for food.
Inns began to cater to richer clients in the mid-18th century, and consequently grew in grandeur and in the level of service provided. Sudhir Andrews traces "the birth of an organised hotel industry" to Europe's chalets and small hotels which catered primarily to aristocrats.
One of the first hotels in a modern sense, the Royal Clarence, opened in Exeter in 1768, although the idea only really caught on in the early-19th century. In 1812 Mivart's Hotel opened its doors in London, later changing its name to Claridge's.
Hotels proliferated throughout Western Europe and North America in the 19th century. Luxury hotels, including the 1829 Tremont House in Boston, the 1836 Astor House in New York City, the 1889 Savoy Hotel in London, and the Ritz chain of hotels in London and Paris in the late 1890s, catered to an ever more-wealthy clientele.
International scale
Hotels cater to travelers from many countries and languages, since no one country dominates the travel industry.
Types
Hotel operations vary in size, function, and cost. Most hotels and major hospitality companies that operate hotels have set widely accepted industry standards to classify hotel types. General categories include the following:
International luxury
International luxury hotels offer high-quality amenities, full-service accommodations, on-site full-service restaurants, and the highest level of personalized and professional service in major or capital cities. International luxury hotels are classified with at least a Five Diamond rating or Five Star hotel rating depending on the country and local classification standards. Example brands include: Grand Hyatt, Conrad, InterContinental, Sofitel, Mandarin Oriental, Four Seasons, The Peninsula, Rosewood, JW Marriott and The Ritz-Carlton.
Lifestyle luxury resorts
Lifestyle luxury resorts are branded hotels that appeal to a guest with lifestyle or personal image in specific locations. They are typically full-service and classified as luxury. A key characteristic of lifestyle resorts is focus on providing a unique guest experience as opposed to simply providing lodging. Lifestyle luxury resorts are classified with a Five Star hotel rating depending on the country and local classification standards. Example brands include: Waldorf Astoria, St. Regis, Shangri-La, Oberoi, Belmond, Jumeirah, Aman, Taj Hotels, Hoshino, Raffles, Fairmont, Banyan Tree, Regent and Park Hyatt.
Upscale full-service
Upscale full-service hotels often provide a wide array of guest services and on-site facilities. Commonly found amenities may include: on-site food and beverage (room service and restaurants), meeting and conference services and facilities, fitness center, and business center. Upscale full-service hotels range in quality from upscale to luxury. This classification is based upon the quality of facilities and amenities offered by the hotel. Examples include: W Hotels, Sheraton, Langham, Kempinski,
Kimpton Hotels, Hilton, Lotte, Renaissance, Marriott and Hyatt Regency brands.
Boutique
Boutique hotels are smaller independent non-branded hotels that often contain mid-scale to upscale facilities of varying size in unique or intimate settings with full-service accommodations. These hotels are generally 100 rooms or fewer.
Focused or select service
Small to medium-sized hotel establishments that offer a limited number of on-site amenities that only cater and market to a specific demographic of travelers, such as the single business traveler. Most focused or select service hotels may still offer full-service accommodations but may lack leisure amenities such as an on-site restaurant or a swimming pool. Examples include Hyatt Place, Holiday Inn, Courtyard by Marriott and Hilton Garden Inn.
Economy and limited service
Small to medium-sized hotel establishments that offer a very limited number of on-site amenities and often only offer basic accommodations with little to no services, these facilities normally only cater and market to a specific demographic of travelers, such as the budget-minded traveler seeking a "no frills" accommodation. Limited service hotels often lack an on-site restaurant but in return may offer a limited complimentary food and beverage amenity such as on-site continental breakfast service. Examples include Ibis Budget, Hampton Inn, Aloft, Holiday Inn Express, Fairfield Inn, and Four Points by Sheraton.
Extended stay
Extended stay hotels are small to medium-sized hotels that offer longer-term full-service accommodations compared to a traditional hotel. Extended stay hotels may offer non-traditional pricing methods such as a weekly rate that caters towards travelers in need of short-term accommodations for an extended period of time. Similar to limited and select service hotels, on-site amenities are normally limited and most extended stay hotels lack an on-site restaurant. Examples include Staybridge Suites, Candlewood Suites, Homewood Suites by Hilton, Home2 Suites by Hilton, Residence Inn by Marriott, Element, and Extended Stay America.
Timeshare and destination clubs
Timeshare and destination clubs are a form of property ownership also referred to as a vacation ownership involving the purchase and ownership of an individual unit of accommodation for seasonal usage during a specified period of time. Timeshare resorts often offer amenities similar that of a full-service hotel with on-site restaurants, swimming pools, recreation grounds, and other leisure-oriented amenities. Destination clubs on the other hand may offer more exclusive private accommodations such as private houses in a neighborhood-style setting. Examples of timeshare brands include Hilton Grand Vacations, Marriott Vacation Club International, Westgate Resorts, Disney Vacation Club, and Holiday Inn Club Vacations.
Motel
A motel, an abbreviation for "motor hotel", is a small-sized low-rise lodging establishment similar to a limited service, lower-cost hotel, but typically with direct access to individual rooms from the car park. Motels were built to serve road travellers, including travellers on road trip vacations and workers who drive for their job (travelling salespeople, truck drivers, etc.). Common during the 1950s and 1960s, motels were often located adjacent to a major highway, where they were built on inexpensive land at the edge of towns or along stretches of freeway.
New motel construction is rare in the 2000s as hotel chains have been building economy-priced, limited-service franchised properties at freeway exits which compete for largely the same clientele, largely saturating the market by the 1990s. Motels are still useful in less populated areas for driving travelers, but the more populated an area becomes, the more hotels move in to meet the demand for accommodation. While many motels are unbranded and independent, many of the other motels which remain in operation joined national franchise chains, often rebranding themselves as hotels, inns or lodges. Some examples of chains with motels include EconoLodge, Motel 6, Super 8, and Travelodge.
Motels in some parts of the world are more often regarded as places for romantic assignations where rooms are often rented by the hour. This is fairly common in parts of Latin America.
Microstay
Hotels may offer rooms for microstays, a type of booking for less than 24 hours where the customer chooses the check in time and the length of the stay. This allows the hotel increased revenue by reselling the same room several times a day.
Management
Hotel management is a globally accepted professional career field and academic field of study. Degree programs such as hospitality management studies, a business degree, and/or certification programs formally prepare hotel managers for industry practice.
Most hotel establishments consist of a general manager who serves as the head executive (often referred to as the "hotel manager"), department heads who oversee various departments within a hotel, middle managers, administrative staff, and line-level supervisors. The organizational chart and volume of job positions and hierarchy varies by hotel size, function, and is often determined by hotel ownership and managing companies.
Unique and specialty hotels
Historic inns and boutique hotels
Boutique hotels are typically hotels with a unique environment or intimate setting.
Some hotels have gained their renown through tradition, by hosting significant events or persons, such as Schloss Cecilienhof in Potsdam, Germany, which derives its fame from the Potsdam Conference of the World War II allies Winston Churchill, Harry Truman and Joseph Stalin in 1945. The Taj Mahal Palace & Tower in Mumbai is one of India's most famous and historic hotels because of its association with the Indian independence movement. Some establishments have given name to a particular meal or beverage, as is the case with the Waldorf Astoria in New York City, United States where the Waldorf Salad was first created or the Hotel Sacher in Vienna, Austria, home of the Sachertorte. Others have achieved fame by association with dishes or cocktails created on their premises, such as the Hotel de Paris where the crêpe Suzette was invented or the Raffles Hotel in Singapore, where the Singapore Sling cocktail was devised.
A number of hotels have entered the public consciousness through popular culture, such as the Ritz Hotel in London, through its association with Irving Berlin's song, 'Puttin' on the Ritz'. The Algonquin Hotel in New York City is famed as the meeting place of the literary group, the Algonquin Round Table, and Hotel Chelsea, also in New York City, has been the subject of a number of songs and the scene of the stabbing of Nancy Spungen (allegedly by her boyfriend Sid Vicious).
Resort hotels
Some hotels are built specifically as a destination in itself to create a captive trade, example at casinos, amusement parks and holiday resorts. Though hotels have always been built in popular destinations, the defining characteristic of a resort hotel is that it exists purely to serve another attraction, the two having the same owners.
On the Las Vegas Strip there is a tradition of one-upmanship with luxurious and extravagant hotels in a concentrated area. This trend now has extended to other resorts worldwide, but the concentration in Las Vegas is still the world's highest: nineteen of the world's twenty-five largest hotels by room count are on the Strip, with a total of over 67,000 rooms.
Other speciality hotels
The Burj al-Arab hotel in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, built on an artificial island, is structured in the shape of a boat's sail.
The Library Hotel in New York City, is unique in that each of its ten floors is assigned one category from the Dewey Decimal System.
The Jailhotel Löwengraben in Lucerne, Switzerland is a converted prison now used as a hotel.
The Luxor, a hotel and casino on the Las Vegas Strip in Paradise, Nevada, United States is unusual due to its pyramidal structure.
The Liberty Hotel in Boston used to be the Charles Street Jail.
Hotel Kakslauttanen in Finland, a collection of glass igloos in Lapland that allow you to watch the Northern Lights
Built in Scotland and completed in 1936, The former ocean liner in Long Beach, California, United States uses its first-class staterooms as a hotel, after retiring in 1967 from Transatlantic service.
The Wigwam Motels used patented novelty architecture in which each motel room was a free-standing concrete wigwam or teepee.
Various Caboose Motel or Red Caboose Inn properties are built from decommissioned rail cars.
Throughout the world there are several hotels built from converted airliners.
Bunker hotels
The Null Stern Hotel in Teufen, Appenzellerland, Switzerland and the Concrete Mushrooms in Albania are former nuclear bunkers transformed into hotels.
Cave hotels
The Cuevas Pedro Antonio de Alarcón (named after the author) in Guadix, Spain, as well as several hotels in Cappadocia, Turkey, are notable for being built into natural cave formations, some with rooms underground. The Desert Cave Hotel in Coober Pedy, South Australia is built into the remains of an opal mine.
Cliff hotels
Located on the coast but high above sea level, these hotels offer unobstructed panoramic views and a great sense of privacy without the feeling of total isolation. Some examples from around the globe are the Riosol Hotel in Gran Canaria, Caruso Belvedere Hotel in Amalfi Coast (Italy), Aman Resorts Amankila in Bali, Birkenhead House in Hermanus (South Africa), The Caves in Jamaica and Caesar Augustus in Capri.
Capsule hotels
Capsule hotels are a type of economical hotel first introduced in Japan, where people sleep in stacks of rectangular containers.
Day room hotels
Some hotels fill daytime occupancy with day rooms, for example, Rodeway Inn and Suites near Port Everglades in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Day rooms are booked in a block of hours typically between 8 am and 5 pm, before the typical night shift. These are similar to transit hotels in that they appeal to travelers, however, unlike transit hotels, they do not eliminate the need to go through Customs.
Garden hotels
Garden hotels, famous for their gardens before they became hotels, include Gravetye Manor, the home of garden designer William Robinson, and Cliveden, designed by Charles Barry with a rose garden by Geoffrey Jellicoe.
Ice, snow and igloo hotels
The Ice Hotel in Jukkasjärvi, Sweden, was the first ice hotel in the world; first built in 1990, it is built each winter and melts every spring. The Hotel de Glace in Duschenay, Canada, opened in 2001 and it's North America's only ice hotel. It is redesigned and rebuilt in its entirety every year.
Ice hotels can also be included within larger ice complexes; for example, the Mammut Snow Hotel in Finland is located within the walls of the Kemi snow castle; and the Lainio Snow Hotel is part of a snow village near Ylläs, Finland. There is an arctic snowhotel in Rovaniemi in Lapland, Finland, along with glass igloos. The first glass igloos were built in 1999 in Finland, they became the Kakslauttanen Arctic Resort with 65 buildings, 53 small ones for two people and 12 large ones for four people. Glass igloos, with their roof made of thermal glass, allow guests to admire auroras comfortably from their beds.
Love hotels
A love hotel (also 'love motel', especially in Taiwan) is a type of short-stay hotel found around the world, operated primarily for the purpose of allowing guests privacy for sexual activities, typically for one to three hours, but with overnight as an option. Styles of premises vary from extremely low-end to extravagantly appointed. In Japan, love hotels have a history of over 400 years.
Referral hotel
A referral hotel is a hotel chain that offers branding to independently operated hotels; the chain itself is founded by or owned by the member hotels as a group. Many former referral chains have been converted to franchises; the largest surviving member-owned chain is Best Western.
Railway hotels
The first recorded purpose-built railway hotel was the Great Western Hotel, which opened adjacent to Reading railway station in 1844, shortly after the Great Western Railway opened its line from London. The building still exists, and although it has been used for other purposes over the years, it is now again a hotel and a member of the Malmaison hotel chain.
Frequently, expanding railway companies built grand hotels at their termini, such as the Midland Hotel, Manchester next to the former Manchester Central Station, and in London the ones above St Pancras railway station and Charing Cross railway station. London also has the Chiltern Court Hotel above Baker Street tube station, there are also Canada's grand railway hotels. They are or were mostly, but not exclusively, used by those traveling by rail.
Straw bale hotels
The Maya Guesthouse in Nax Mont-Noble in the Swiss Alps, is the first hotel in Europe built entirely with straw bales. Due to the insulation values of the walls it needs no conventional heating or air conditioning system, although the Maya Guesthouse is built at an altitude of in the Alps.
Transit hotels
Transit hotels are short stay hotels typically used at international airports where passengers can stay while waiting to change airplanes. The hotels are typically on the airside and do not require a visa for a stay or re-admission through security checkpoints.
Treehouse hotels
Some hotels are built with living trees as structural elements, for example the Treehotel near Piteå, Sweden, the Costa Rica Tree House near the Jairo Mora Sandoval Gandoca-Manzanillo Mixed Wildlife Refuge, Costa Rica; the Treetops Hotel in Aberdare National Park, Kenya; the Ariau Towers near Manaus, Brazil, on the Rio Negro in the Amazon; and Bayram's Tree Houses in Olympos, Turkey.
Underwater hotels
Some hotels have accommodation underwater, such as Utter Inn in Lake Mälaren, Sweden. Hydropolis, project in Dubai, would have had suites on the bottom of the Persian Gulf, and Jules' Undersea Lodge in Key Largo, Florida requires scuba diving to access its rooms.
Overwater hotels
A resort island is an island or an archipelago that contains resorts, hotels, overwater bungalows, restaurants, tourist attractions and its amenities. Maldives has the most overwater bungalows resorts.
Records
Largest
In 2006, Guinness World Records listed the First World Hotel in Genting Highlands, Malaysia, as the world's largest hotel with a total of 6,118 rooms (and which has now expanded to 7,351 rooms). The Izmailovo Hotel in Moscow has the most beds, with 7,500, followed by The Venetian and The Palazzo complex in Las Vegas (7,117 rooms) and MGM Grand Las Vegas complex (6,852 rooms).
Oldest
According to the Guinness Book of World Records, the oldest hotel in operation is the Nisiyama Onsen Keiunkan in Yamanashi, Japan. The hotel, first opened in AD 707, has been operated by the same family for forty-six generations. The title was held until 2011 by the Hoshi Ryokan, in the Awazu Onsen area of Komatsu, Japan, which opened in the year 718, as the history of the Nisiyama Onsen Keiunkan was virtually unknown.
Highest
The Rosewood Guangzhou located on the top floors of the 108-story Guangzhou CTF Finance Centre in Tianhe District, Guangzhou, China. Soaring to 530-meters at its highest point, earns the singular status as the world's highest hotel.
Most expensive purchase
In October 2014, the Anbang Insurance Group, based in China, purchased the Waldorf Astoria New York in Manhattan for US$1.95 billion, making it the world's most expensive hotel ever sold.
Long term residence
A number of public figures have notably chosen to take up semi-permanent or permanent residence in hotels.
Fashion designer Coco Chanel lived in the Hôtel Ritz, Paris, on and off for more than 30 years.
Inventor Nikola Tesla lived the last ten years of his life at the New Yorker Hotel until he died in his room in 1943.
Larry Fine (of The Three Stooges) and his family lived in hotels, due to his extravagant spending habits and his wife's dislike for housekeeping. They first lived in the President Hotel in Atlantic City, New Jersey, where his daughter Phyllis was raised, then the Knickerbocker Hotel in Hollywood. Not until the late 1940s did Fine buy a home in the Los Feliz area of Los Angeles.
The Waldorf-Astoria Hotel and its affiliated Waldorf Towers has been the home of many famous persons over the years including former President Herbert Hoover who lived there from the end of his presidency in 1933 until his death in 1964. General Douglas MacArthur lived his last 14 years in the penthouse of the Waldorf Towers. Composer Cole Porter spent the last 25 years of his life in an apartment at the Waldorf Towers.
Billionaire Howard Hughes lived in hotels during the last ten years of his life (1966–76), primarily in Las Vegas, as well as Acapulco, Beverly Hills, Boston, Freeport, London, Managua, Nassau, Vancouver, and others.
Vladimir Nabokov and his wife Vera lived in the Montreux Palace Hotel in Montreux, Switzerland from 1961 until his death in 1977.
Actor Richard Harris lived at the Savoy Hotel while in London. Hotel archivist Susan Scott recounts an anecdote that, when he was being taken out of the building on a stretcher shortly before his death in 2002, he raised his hand and told the diners "it was the food."
Egyptian actor Ahmed Zaki lived his last 15 years in Ramses Hilton Hotel – Cairo.
British entrepreneur Jack Lyons lived in the Hotel Mirador Kempinski in Switzerland for several years until his death in 2008.
American actress Elaine Stritch lived in the Savoy Hotel in London for over a decade.
Uruguayan-Argentinian tango composer Horacio Ferrer lived almost 40 years, from 1976 until his death in 2014, in an apartment inside the Alvear Palace Hotel, in Buenos Aires, one of the most exclusive hotels in the city.
See also
Lists of hotels
List of chained-brand hotels
List of defunct hotel chains
Casino hotel
List of casino hotels
Niche tourism markets
Resort
Industry and careers
Bellhop
Concierge
Front desk clerk, a type of clerk
General manager
GOPPAR, RevPAR, TRevPAR – hotel profitability equations.
Hospitality industry
Hotel rating
Innkeeper
Night auditor
Property caretaker
Tourism
Human habitation types
Apartment hotel
Boutique hotel
Caravanserai
Cruise ship
Dharamshala
Dak bungalow
Eco hotel
Guest house
Glamping
Homestay
Hostal
Human habitats
Inn
Serviced apartment
Vacation rental
Pop-up hotel
References
Further reading
External links
Buildings and structures by type
Hospitality occupations
Tourist accommodations | [
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14277 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hebrew%20mythology | Hebrew mythology | Hebrew mythology may refer to:
Ancient Canaanite religion
Jewish mythology
See also
Middle Eastern mythology (disambiguation)
Religion and mythology
Ancient Semitic religion
Panbabylonism | [
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14279 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugh%20Hefner | Hugh Hefner | Hugh Marston Hefner (April 9, 1926 – September 27, 2017) was an American magazine publisher. He was the founder and editor-in-chief of Playboy magazine, a publication with revealing photographs and articles which provoked charges of obscenity. The first issue of Playboy was published in 1953, featuring Marilyn Monroe in a nude calendar shoot; it sold over 50,000 copies.
Hefner extended the Playboy brand into a world network of Playboy Clubs. He also resided in luxury mansions where Playboy playmates shared his wild partying life, fueling keen media interest. He was a political activist in the Democratic Party and for the causes of First Amendment rights, animal rescue, and the restoration of the Hollywood Sign.
Early life
Hefner was born in Chicago on April 9, 1926, the first child of Glenn Lucius Hefner (1896–1976), an accountant, and his wife Grace Caroline (Swanson) Hefner (1895–1997) who worked as a teacher. His parents were from Nebraska. He had a younger brother, Keith (1929–2016). His mother was of Swedish ancestry, and his father was German and English.
Through his father's line, Hefner was a descendant of Plymouth governor William Bradford. He described his family as "conservative, Midwestern, [and] Methodist". His mother had wanted him to become a missionary.
He attended Sayre Elementary School and Steinmetz High School, then served from 1944 to 1946 as a U.S. Army writer for a military newspaper. Hefner graduated from the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign in 1949 with a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology and a double minor in Creative Writing and Art, having earned his degree in two and a half years. After graduation, he took a semester of graduate courses in Sociology at Northwestern University, but dropped out soon after.
Career
In January 1952, Hefner left his job as a copywriter for Esquire after he was denied a $5 raise. In 1953, he took out a mortgage loan of $600 and raised $8,000 from 45 investors (including $1,000 from his mother—"not because she believed in the venture," he told E! in 2006, "but because she believed in her son") to launch Playboy, which was initially going to be called Stag Party. The first issue was published in December 1953 and featured Marilyn Monroe from a 1949 nude calendar shoot she did under a pseudonym. That first issue sold more than 50,000 copies. (Hefner never met Monroe, but he bought the crypt next to hers at the Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery in 1992 for $75,000.)
Esquire magazine rejected Charles Beaumont's science fiction story "The Crooked Man" in 1955, so Hefner agreed to publish it in Playboy. The story highlighted straight men being persecuted in a world where homosexuality was the norm. The magazine received angry letters, so Hefner responded, "If it was wrong to persecute heterosexuals in a homosexual society then the reverse was wrong, too." In 1961, Hefner watched Dick Gregory perform at the Herman Roberts Show Bar in Chicago, and he hired Gregory to work at the Chicago Playboy Club. Gregory attributed the launch of his career to that night.
Hefner promoted a bon vivant lifestyle in his magazine and in the television shows that he hosted Playboy's Penthouse (1959–1960) and Playboy After Dark (1969–1970). He was also the chief creative officer of Playboy Enterprises, the publishing group which operates the magazine.
On June 4, 1963, Hefner was arrested for promoting obscene literature after he published an issue of Playboy featuring nude shots of Jayne Mansfield in bed with a man present. The case went to trial and resulted in a hung jury.
In the 1960s, Hefner created "private key" clubs that were racially diverse. During the civil rights movement in 1966, Hefner sent Alex Haley to interview American Nazi Party founder George Lincoln Rockwell, much to Rockwell's shock because Haley was black. Rockwell agreed to meet with Haley only after gaining assurance that he was not Jewish, although Rockwell kept a handgun on the table throughout the interview. In Roots: The Next Generations (1979), the interview was recreated with James Earl Jones as Haley and Marlon Brando as Rockwell. Haley had also interviewed Malcolm X in 1963 and Martin Luther King Jr. in 1966 for the newly established 1962 "playboy interview".
In 1970, Hefner stated that "militant feminists" are "unalterably opposed to the romantic boy-girl society that Playboy promotes" and ordered an article in his magazine against them. In the 1993 The Simpsons episode "Krusty Gets Kancelled", Hefner voiced himself. In 1999, Hefner financed the Clara Bow documentary Discovering the It Girl. "Nobody has what Clara had," he said. "She defined an era and made her mark on the nation". Hefner guest-starred as himself in the 2000 Sex and the City episode "Sex and Another City". In 2005, he guest-starred on the HBO shows Curb Your Enthusiasm and Entourage. He guest-starred as himself in a 2006 episode of Seth Green's Robot Chicken on the late-night programming block Adult Swim. In the 2007 Family Guy episode "Airport '07", he voiced himself. He has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for television and made several movie appearances as himself. In 2009, he received a "worst supporting actor" nomination for a Razzie award for his performance as himself in Miss March. On his official Twitter account, he joked about this nomination: "Maybe I didn't understand the character."
Brigitte Berman's documentary Hugh Hefner: Playboy, Activist and Rebel was released on July 30, 2010. He had previously granted full access to documentary filmmaker and television producer Kevin Burns for the A&E Biography special Hugh Hefner: American Playboy in 1996. Hefner and Burns later collaborated on numerous other television projects, most notably on The Girls Next Door, a reality series that ran for six seasons (2005–2009) and 90 episodes. Hefner also made a voice-only appearance as himself in the 2011 film Hop.
In 2012, Hefner announced that his youngest son Cooper would succeed him as the public face of Playboy.
Personal life
Hefner was known to friends and family simply as "Hef". He married Northwestern University student Mildred ("Millie") Williams in 1949, and they had a daughter named Christie (b. 1952) and a son, David (b. 1955). Before the wedding, Mildred confessed that she had an affair while he was away in the army. He called the admission "the most devastating moment of my life." A 2006 E! True Hollywood Story profile of Hefner revealed that Mildred allowed him to have sex with other women, out of guilt for her own infidelity and in the hope that it would preserve their marriage. The couple divorced in 1959.
Hefner remade himself as a bon vivant and man about town, a lifestyle that he promoted in his magazine and TV shows. He admitted to being "'involved' with maybe eleven out of twelve months' worth of Playmates" during some years. Donna Michelle, Marilyn Cole, Lillian Müller, Shannon Tweed, Barbi Benton, Karen Christy, Sondra Theodore, and Carrie Leigh were a few of his many lovers; Leigh filed a $35 million palimony suit against him. In 1971, he acknowledged that he experimented in bisexuality. Also in 1971, he established a second residence in Los Angeles with the acquisition of Playboy Mansion West, and he moved there permanently from Chicago in 1975.
On March 7, 1985, Hefner had a minor stroke at age 58, and he re-evaluated his lifestyle and made several changes. He toned down the wild, all-night parties, and daughter Christie took over the operation of Playboy's commercial operations in 1988. The following year, he married Playmate of the Year Kimberley Conrad; they were 36 years apart in age. The couple had sons Marston Glenn (b. 1990) and Cooper (b. 1991). The E! True Hollywood Story profile noted that the Playboy Mansion had been transformed into a family-friendly homestead. He and Conrad separated in 1998 and she moved into the house next door to the mansion. Hefner filed for divorce from Conrad in 2009 after an 11-year separation, citing irreconcilable differences. He stated that he only remained nominally married to her for the sake of their children, and their youngest child had just turned 18. The divorce was finalized in 2010.
Hefner became known for moving an ever-changing coterie of young women into the Playboy Mansion, including twins Mandy and Sandy Bentley. He dated as many as seven women concurrently. He also dated Brande Roderick, Izabella St. James, Tina Marie Jordan, Holly Madison, Bridget Marquardt, and Kendra Wilkinson. Madison, Wilkinson, and Marquardt appeared on The Girls Next Door depicting their lives at the Playboy Mansion. In October 2008, all three of them decided to leave the mansion.
In January 2009, Hefner began a relationship with Crystal Harris; she joined the Shannon Twins after his previous "number one girlfriend" Holly Madison had ended their seven-year relationship. On December 24, 2010, he became engaged to Harris, but she broke off their engagement on June 14, 2011, five days before their planned wedding. The July issue of Playboy reached store shelves and customer's homes within days of the wedding date; it featured Harris on the cover and in a photo spread, as well. The headline on the cover read "Introducing America's Princess, Mrs. Crystal Hefner". Hefner and Harris subsequently reconciled and married on December 31, 2012.
Hefner's brother Keith died at age 87 on April 8, 2016, one day before Hefner's 90th birthday.
Playboy Mansion
In January 2016, the Playboy Mansion was put on the market for $200 million, on condition that Hugh Hefner would continue to work and live in the mansion. Later that year it was sold to Daren Metropoulos, a principal at private equity firm Metropoulos & Company, for $100 million. Metropoulos planned to reconnect the Playboy Mansion property with a neighboring estate that he purchased in 2009, combining the two for a 7.3 acre (3-hectare) compound as his own private residence.
In May 2017, Eugena Washington was the last Playmate of the Year to be announced by Hugh Hefner at the Playboy Mansion.
Politics and philanthropy
Hefner debated The Playboy Philosophy with William F. Buckley Jr., on Firing Line in Episode 26, recorded on September 12, 1966.
The Hugh M. Hefner First Amendment Award was created by Christie Hefner "to honor individuals who have made significant contributions in the vital effort to protect and enhance First Amendment rights for Americans."
He donated and raised money for the Democratic Party. In 2011, he referred to himself as an independent due to dissatisfaction with both the Democratic and Republican parties. Nonetheless, in 2012, he supported Barack Obama's reelection campaign.
In 1978, Hefner helped organize fund-raising efforts that led to the restoration of the Hollywood Sign. He hosted a gala fundraiser at the Playboy Mansion and contributed $27,000 (or 1/9 of the total restoration costs) by purchasing the letter Y in a ceremonial auction.
Hefner donated $100,000 to the University of Southern California's School of Cinematic Arts to create a course called "Censorship in Cinema", and $2 million to endow a chair for the study of American film. In 2007, the university's audiovisual archive at the Norris Theater received a donation from Hefner and was renamed to the Hugh M. Hefner Moving Image Archive in his honor.
Both through his charitable foundation and individually, Hefner also contributed to charities and other organizations outside the sphere of politics and publishing, throwing fundraiser events for Much Love Animal Rescue as well as Generation Rescue, an anti-vaccinationist campaign organization supported by Jenny McCarthy.
On November 18, 2010, Children of the Night founder and president Dr. Lois Lee presented Hefner with the organization's first-ever Founder's Hero of the Heart Award in appreciation for his unwavering dedication, commitment and generosity.
On April 26, 2010, Hefner donated the last $900,000 sought by a conservation group for a land purchase needed to stop the development of the vista of the Hollywood Sign. Sylvilagus palustris hefneri, an endangered subspecies of marsh rabbit, is named after him in honor of financial support that he provided.
The Barbi Twins, who are among a notable cohort of celebrity Playmates, including Pamela Anderson and Hefner's third wife Crystal Harris, praised the publishing icon for providing centerfolds and extended members of the Playboy family with a platform for activism and advocacy on behalf of animal populations in need.
Hefner supported legalizing same-sex marriage, calling it "a fight for all our rights. Without it, we will turn back the sexual revolution and return to an earlier, puritanical time."
Death
Hefner died at the Playboy Mansion on September 27, 2017, at the age of 91. The cause was sepsis brought on by an E. coli infection.
He is interred at Westwood Memorial Park in Los Angeles, in the crypt beside Marilyn Monroe, for which he paid $75,000 in 1992. "Spending eternity next to Marilyn is an opportunity too sweet to pass up," Hefner had told the Los Angeles Times in 2009.
Reputation
Suzanne Moore wrote in The Guardian that Hefner threatened to file a lawsuit against her for calling him a "pimp". Defending her position, Moore argued that "he was a man who bought and sold women to other men". She further stated that "part of Hefner's business acumen was to make the selling of female flesh respectable and hip, to make soft porn acceptable." Julie Bindel argued in The Independent that Hefner "caused immeasurable damage by turning porn and therefore the buying and selling of women's bodies into a legitimate business." Robin Abcarian wrote in the Los Angeles Times, Quoting Wendy Hamilton, that Hefner "probably did more to mainstream the exploitation of women's bodies than any other figure in American history," adding that he "managed to convince many women that taking off their clothes for men's pleasure was not just empowering, but a worthy goal in itself." She further stated that Hefner "embodied the aesthetic notion that images of women — and women themselves — exist to please men."
Hefner's former girlfriend Holly Madison said that he "would encourage competition—and body image issues—between his multiple live-in girlfriends. His legacy is full of evidence of the exploitation of women for professional gain." Ed Stetzer wrote in Christianity Today that Hefner would have the residence systematically cleaned whenever Christie Hefner visited in order "to keep the realities from his own daughter". Stetzer further lamented the consequences of Hefner's role as a "general" of the "sexual revolution":
A 10-part television documentary series, Secrets of Playboy, debuted on A&E January 24, 2022 in which former female employess make claims of sexual misconduct and drug use at the Playboy Mansion. The PLBY group, now publicly owned, distanced itself from Hefner in a statement released shortly before the first episode was broadcast, saying, "Today's Playboy is not Hugh Hefner's Playboy. We trust and validate these women and their stories and we strongly support those individuals who have come forward to share their experience".
Depictions
The Amazon original series American Playboy: The Hugh Hefner Story was released in April 2017. It stars Matt Whelan in the title role, along with Emmett Skilton and Chelsie Preston Crayford. The first season was released on April 7, composed of ten episodes. The series is a combination of interviews, archival footage (including moments found in Hefner's vast personal collection), and cinematic re-enactments that cover the launch of the magazine as well as the next six decades of Hefner's personal life and career. The series was filmed in Auckland, New Zealand.
On October 3, 2017, Playboy Enterprises announced that a Hugh Hefner biopic directed by Brett Ratner with the screenplay by Jeff Nathanson was greenlit with Jared Leto rumored to play Hefner. It was indefinitely put on hold following sexual harassment allegations against Ratner on November 2, 2017, and Leto's representatives stated that reports of him being attached to the film at any point were false.
Books
References
Further reading
External links
Hugh M. Hefner Foundation
Hugh Hefner on Playboy.com
Hugh Hefner on Biography.com
1926 births
2017 deaths
20th-century American businesspeople
Adult magazine publishers (people)
American copy editors
American magazine editors
American magazine founders
American magazine publishers (people)
American male journalists
American people of English descent
American people of German descent
American people of Swedish descent
American political activists
American pornographers
American publishing chief executives
American socialites
Burials at Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery
Businesspeople from Chicago
California Democrats
Copywriters
Deaths from sepsis
Free speech activists
Hefner family
Infectious disease deaths in California
LGBT rights activists from the United States
Military personnel from Illinois
Nightclub owners
Northwestern University alumni
Obscenity controversies in literature
Participants in American reality television series
People from Holmby Hills, Los Angeles
Pipe smokers
Playboy people
School of the Art Institute of Chicago alumni
United States Army personnel of World War II
United States Army soldiers
University of Illinois alumni
University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign alumni | [
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14280 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hafizullah%20Amin | Hafizullah Amin | Hafizullah Amin (Pashto/; ; 1 August 192927 December 1979) was an Afghan communist revolutionary, politician and teacher. He organized the Saur Revolution of 1978 and co-founded the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan (DRA), ruling Afghanistan as General Secretary of the People's Democratic Party from September 1979 until his assassination in December 1979.
Born in the town of Paghman in Kabul Province, Amin studied at Kabul University and started his career as a teacher before he twice went to the United States to study. During this time, Amin became attracted to Marxism and became involved in radical student movements at the University of Wisconsin. Upon his return to Afghanistan, he used his teaching position to spread socialist ideologies to students, and he later joined the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA), a new far-left organization co-founded by Nur Muhammad Taraki and Babrak Karmal. He ran as a candidate in the 1965 parliamentary election but failed to secure a seat, but in 1969 became the only Khalqist elected to parliament, increasing his standing within the party.
Amin was the main organizer of the April 1978 Saur Revolution, which overthrew the government of Mohammad Daoud Khan and formed a pro-Soviet state based on socialist ideals. Being second in chief of the Democratic Republic, Amin soon became the regime's strongman, the main architect of the state's programs including mass persecution of those deemed counter-revolutionary. A growing personal struggle with General Secretary Taraki eventually led to Amin wrestling power away then successfully deposing him and later ordering his execution; on September 16, 1979, Amin named himself Chairman of the Council of Ministers (head of government), Chairman of the Revolutionary Council (head of state), and General Secretary of the PDPA Central Committee (supreme leader).
Amin's short-lived leadership featured controversies from beginning to end. His government failed to solve the problem of the population revolting against the regime as the situation rapidly worsened and army desertions and defections continued. He tried to change things with friendly overtures to Pakistan and the United States, and considered a trade-off of recognizing the Durand Line border in exchange of Pakistan halting support to anti-regime guerillas. Many Afghans held Amin responsible for the regime's harshest measures, such as ordering thousands of executions. Thousands of people disappeared without trace during his time in office. The Soviet Union under Leonid Brezhnev was dissatisfied with and mistrusted Amin; they intervened in Afghanistan, invoking the 1978 Twenty-Year Treaty of Friendship between Afghanistan and the Soviet Union. Soviet operatives assassinated Amin at the Tajbeg Palace on 27 December 1979 as part of Operation Storm-333, kickstarting the 10-year Soviet–Afghan War; he had ruled for slightly longer than three months.
Early life and career
Hafizullah Amin was born to a Ghilzai Pashtun family in the Qazi Ghel village in Paghman on 1 August 1929. His father, a civil servant, died in 1937 when he was still very young. Thanks to his brother Abdullah, a primary school teacher, Amin was able to attend both primary and secondary school, which in turn allowed him to attend Kabul University (KU). After studying mathematics there, he also graduated from the Darul Mualimeen Teachers College in Kabul, and became a teacher. Amin later became vice-principal of the Darul Mualimeen College, and then principal of the prestigious Avesina High School, and in 1957 left Afghanistan for Columbia University in New York City, where he earned MA in education. It was at Columbia that Amin became attracted to Marxism, and in 1958 he became a member of the university's Socialist Progressive Club. When he returned to Afghanistan, Amin became a teacher at Kabul University, and later, for the second time, the principal of Avesina High School. During this period Amin became acquainted with Nur Muhammad Taraki, a communist. Around this time, Amin quit his position as principal of Avesina High School to become principal of the Darul Mualimeen College.
It is alleged that Amin became radicalised during his second stay in the United States in 1962, when he enrolled in a work-study group at the University of Wisconsin. Amin studied in the doctoral programme at the Columbia University Teachers College, but started to neglect his studies in favour of politics; in 1963 he became head of the Afghan students' association at the college. When he returned to Afghanistan in the mid-1960s, the route flew to Afghanistan by way of Moscow. There, Amin met the Afghan ambassador to the Soviet Union, his old friend Ali Ahmad Popel, a previous Afghan Minister of Education. During his short stay, Amin became even more radicalised. Some people, Nabi Misdaq for instance, do not believe he travelled through Moscow, but rather West Germany and Lebanon. By the time he had returned to Afghanistan, the Communist People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) had already held its founding congress, which was in 1965. Amin ran as a candidate for the PDPA in the 1965 parliamentary election, and lost by a margin of less than fifty votes.
In 1966, when the PDPA Central Committee was expanded, Amin was elected as a non-voting member, and in the spring of 1967 he gained full membership. Amin's standing in the Khalq faction of the PDPA increased when he was the only Khalqist elected to parliament in the 1969 parliamentary election. When the PDPA split along factional lines in 1967, between Khalqists led by Nur and Parchamites led by Babrak Karmal, Amin joined the Khalqists. As a member of parliament, Amin tried to win over support from the Pashtun people in the armed forces. According to a biography about Amin, he used his position as member of parliament to fight against imperialism, feudalism, and Reactionary tendencies, and fought against the "rotten" regime, the monarchy. Amin himself said that he used his membership in parliament to pursue the class struggle against the bourgeoisie. Relations between Khalqists and Parchamites deteriorated during this period. Amin, the only Khalq member of parliament, and Babrak Karmal, the only Parcham member of parliament, did not cooperate with each other. Amin would later, during his short stint in power, mention these events with bitterness. Following the arrest of fellow PDPA members Dastagir Panjsheri and Saleh Mohammad Zeary in 1969, Amin became one of the party's leading members, and was still a pre-eminent party member by the time of their release in 1973.
The Daoud era
From 1973 until the PDPA unification in 1977, Amin was second only to Taraki in the Khalqist PDPA. When the PDPA ruled Afghanistan, their relationship was referred to as a disciple (Amin) following his mentor (Taraki). This official portrayal of the situation was misleading; their relationship was more work-oriented. Taraki needed Amin's "tactical and strategic talents"; Amin's motivations are more uncertain, but it is commonly believed that he associated with Taraki to protect his own position. Amin had attracted many enemies during his career, the most notable being Karmal. According to the official version of events, Taraki protected Amin from party members or others who wanted to hurt the PDPA and the country.
When Mohammed Daoud Khan ousted the monarchy, and established the Republic of Afghanistan, the Khalqist PDPA offered its support for the new regime if it established a National Front which presumably included the Khalqist PDPA itself. The Parchamite PDPA had already established an alliance with Daoud at the beginning of his regime, and Karmal called for the dissolution of the Khalqist PDPA. Karmal's call for dissolution only worsened relations between the Khalqist and Parchamite PDPA. However, Taraki and Amin were lucky; Karmal's alliance actually hurt the Parchamites' standing in Afghan politics. Some communists in the armed forces became disillusioned with the government of Daoud, and turned to the Khalqist PDPA because of its apparent independence. Parchamite association with the Daoud government indirectly led to the Khalqist-led PDPA coup of 1978, popularly referred to as the Saur Revolution. From 1973 until the 1978 coup, Amin was responsible for organising party work in the Afghan armed forces. According to the official version, Amin "met patriotic liaison officers day or night, in the desert or the mountains, in the fields or the forests, enlightening them on the basis of the principles of the working class ideology." Amin's success in recruiting military officers lay in the fact that Daoud "betrayed the left" soon after taking power. When Amin began recruiting military officers for the PDPA, it was not difficult for him to find disgruntled military officers. In the meantime, relations between the Parchamite and Khalqist PDPA deteriorated; in 1973 it was rumoured that Major Zia Mohammadzai, a Parchamite and head of the Republican Guard, planned to assassinate the entire Khalqist leadership. The plan, if true, failed because the Khalqists found out about it.
The assassination attempt proved to be a further blow to relations between the Parchamites and Khalqists. The Parchamites deny that they ever planned to assassinate the Khalqist leadership, but historian Beverley Male argues that Karmal's subsequent activities give credence to the Khalqist view of events. Because of the Parchamite assassination attempt, Amin pressed the Khalqist PDPA to seize power in 1976 by ousting Daoud. The majority of the PDPA leadership voted against such a move. The following year, in 1977, the Parchamites and Khalqists officially reconciled, and the PDPA was unified. The Parchamite and Khalqist PDPAs, which had separate general secretaries, politburos, central committees and other organisational structures, were officially unified in the summer of 1977. One reason for unification was that the international communist movement, represented by the Communist Party of India, Iraqi Communist Party and the Communist Party of Australia, called for party unification.
Saur Revolution
On 18 April 1978 Mir Akbar Khyber, the chief ideologue of the Parcham faction, was killed; he was commonly believed to have been assassinated by the Daoud government. Khyber's assassination initiated a chain of events which led to the PDPA taking power eleven days later, on 27 April. The assassin was never caught, but Anahita Ratebzad, a Parchamite, believed that Amin had ordered the assassination. Khyber's funeral evolved into a large anti-government demonstration. Daoud, who did not understand the significance of the events, began a mass arrest of PDPA members seven days after Khyber's funeral. Amin, who organised the subsequent revolution against Daoud, was one of the last Central Committee members to be arrested by the authorities. His late arrest can be considered as proof of the regime's lack of information; Amin was the leading revolutionary party organiser. The government's lack of awareness was proven by the arrest of Taraki – Taraki's arrest was the pre-arranged signal for the revolution to commence. When Amin found out that Taraki had been arrested, he ordered the revolution to begin at 9 am on 27 April. Amin, in contrast to Taraki, was not imprisoned, but instead put under house arrest. His son, Abdur Rahman, was still allowed freedom of movement. The revolution was successful, thanks to overwhelming support from the Afghan military; for instance, it was supported by Defence Minister Ghulam Haidar Rasuli, Aslam Watanjar the commander of the ground forces, and the Chief of Staff of the Afghan Air Force, Abdul Qadir.
PDPA rule
Khalq–Parcham break
After the Saur revolution, Taraki was appointed Chairman of the Presidium of the Revolutionary Council and Chairman of the Council of Ministers, and retained his post as PDPA general secretary. Taraki initially formed a government which consisted of both Khalqists and Parchamites; Karmal became Deputy Chairman of the Revolutionary Council while Amin became Minister of Foreign Affairs and a Deputy Prime Minister, and Mohammad Aslam Watanjar became a Deputy Prime Minister. The two Parchamites Abdul Qadir and Mohammad Rafi became Minister of National Defence and Minister of Public Works respectively. According to Angel Rasanayagam, the appointment of Amin, Karmal and Watanjar as Deputy Prime Ministers led to the establishment of three cabinets; the Khalqists were answerable to Amin, the Parchamites were answerable to Karmal, and the military officers (who were Parchamites) were answerable to Watanjar. The first conflict between the Khalqists and Parchamites arose when the Khalqists wanted to give PDPA Central Committee membership to the military officers who participated in the Saur Revolution. Amin, who had previously opposed the appointment of military officers to the PDPA leadership, switched sides; he now supported their elevation. The PDPA Politburo voted in favour of giving membership to the military officers; the victors (the Khalqists) portrayed the Parchamites as opportunists, implying that the Parchamites had ridden the revolutionary wave, but not actually participated in the revolution. To make matters worse for the Parchamites, the term Parcham was, according to Taraki, a word synonymous with factionalism.
On 27 June 1978, three months after the revolution, Amin managed to outmaneuver the Parchamites at a Central Committee meeting. The meeting decided that the Khalqists had exclusive rights to formulate and decide policy, a policy which left the Parchamites impotent. Karmal was exiled, but was able to establish a network with the remaining Parchamites in government. A coup to overthrow Amin was planned for September. Its leading members in Afghanistan were Qadir, the defence minister, and Army Chief of Staff General Shahpur Ahmedzai. The coup was planned for 4 September, on the Festival of Eid, because soldiers and officers would be off duty. The conspiracy failed when the Afghan ambassador to India told the Afghan leadership about the plan. A purge was initiated, and Parchamite ambassadors were recalled; few returned, for example Karmal and Mohammad Najibullah both stayed in their assigned countries.
Amin–Taraki break
The Afghan people revolted against the PDPA government when the government introduced several socialist reforms, including land reforms. By early 1979, twenty-five out of Afghanistan's twenty-eight provinces were unsafe because of armed resistance against the government. On 29 March 1979, the Herat uprising began; the uprising turned the revolt into an open war between the Afghan government and anti-regime resistance. It was during this period that Amin became Kabul's strongman. Shortly after the Herat uprising had been crushed, the Revolutionary Council convened to ratify the new Five-Year Plan, the Afghan–Soviet Friendship Treaty, and to vote on whether or not to reorganise the cabinet and to enhance the power of the executive (the Chairman of the Revolutionary Council). While the official version of events said that all issues were voted on democratically at the meeting, the Revolutionary Council held another meeting the following day to ratify the new Five-Year Plan and to discuss the reorganisation of the cabinet.
Alexander Puzanov, the Soviet ambassador to Afghanistan, was able to persuade Aslam Watanjar, Sayed Mohammad Gulabzoy and Sherjan Mazdoryar to become part of a conspiracy against Amin. These three men put pressure on Taraki, who by this time believed that "he really was the 'great leader'", to sack Amin from office. It is unknown if Amin knew anything about the conspiracy against him, but it was after the cabinet reorganisation that he talked about his dissatisfaction. On 26 March the PDPA Politburo and the Council of Ministers approved the extension of the powers of the executive branch, and the establishment of the Homeland Higher Defence Council (HHDC) to handle security matters. Many analysts of the day regarded Amin's appointment as Prime Minister as an increase in his powers at the expense of Taraki. However, the reorganisation of the cabinet and the strengthening of Taraki's position as Chairman of the Revolutionary Council, had reduced the authority of the Prime Minister. The Prime Minister was, due to the strengthening of the executive, now appointed by the Chairman of the Revolutionary Council. While Amin could appoint and dismiss new ministers, he needed Taraki's consent to actually do so. Another problem for Amin was that while the Council of Ministers was responsible to the Revolutionary Council and its chairman, individual ministers were only responsible to Taraki. When Amin became Prime Minister, he was responsible for planning, finance and budgetary matters, the conduct of foreign policy, and for order and security. The order and security responsibilities had been taken over by the HHDC, which was chaired by Taraki. While Amin was HHDC Deputy chairman, the majority of HHDC members were members of the anti-Amin faction. For instance, the HHDC membership included Watanjar the Minister of National Defence, Interior Minister Mazdoryar, the President of the Political Affairs of the Armed Forces Mohammad Iqbal, Mohammad Yaqub, the Chief of the General Staff, the Commander of the Afghan Air Force Nazar Mohammad and Assadullah Sarwari the head of ASGA, the Afghan secret police.
The order of precedence had been institutionalised, whereby Taraki was responsible for defence and Amin responsible for assisting Taraki in defence related matters. Amin's position was given a further blow by the democratisation of the decision-making process, which allowed its members to contribute; most of them were against Amin. Another problem for Amin was that the office of HHDC Deputy chairman had no specific functions or powers, and the appointment of a new defence minister who opposed him drastically weakened his control over the Ministry of National Defence. The reorganisation of ministers was a further blow to Amin's position; he had lost control of the defence ministry, the interior ministry and the ASGA. Amin still had allies at the top, many of them in strategically important positions, for instance, Yaqub was his brother-in-law and the Security Chief in the Ministry of Interior was Sayed Daoud Taroon, who was also later appointed to the HHDC as an ordinary member in April. Amin succeeded in appointing two more of his allies to important positions; Mohammad Sediq Alemyar as Minister of Planning and Khayal Mohammad Katawazi as Minister of Information and Culture; and Faqir Mohammad Faqir was appointed Deputy Prime Minister in April 1978. Amin's political position was not secure when Alexei Yepishev, the Head of the Main Political Directorate of the Soviet Army and Navy, visited Kabul. Yepishev met personally with Taraki on 7 April, but never met with Amin. The Soviets were becoming increasingly worried about Amin's control over the Afghan military. Even so, during Yepishev's visit Amin's position was actually strengthened; Taroon was appointed Taraki's aide-de-camp.
Soon after, at two cabinet meetings, the strengthening of the executive powers of the Chairman of the Revolutionary Council was proven. Even though Amin was Prime Minister, Taraki chaired the meetings instead of him. Amin's presence at these two meetings was not mentioned at all, and it was made clear that Taraki, through his office as Chairman of the Revolutionary Council, also chaired the Council of Ministers. Another problem facing Amin was Taraki's policy of autocracy; he tried to deprive the PDPA Politburo of its powers as a party and state decision-making organ. The situation deteriorated when Amin personally warned Taraki that "the prestige and popularity of leaders among the people has no common aspect with a personality cult."
Factionalism within the PDPA made it ill-prepared to handle the intensified counter-revolutionary activities in the country. Amin tried to win support for the communist government by depicting himself as a devout Muslim. Taraki and Amin blamed different countries for helping the counter-revolutionaries; Amin attacked the United Kingdom and the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) and played down American and Chinese involvement, while Taraki blamed American imperialism and Iran and Pakistan for supporting the uprising. Amin's criticism of the United Kingdom and the BBC fed on the traditional anti-British sentiments held by rural Afghans. In contrast to Taraki, "Amin bent over backwards to avoid making hostile reference to", China, the United States or other foreign governments. Amin's cautious behavior was in deep contrast to the Soviet Union's official stance on the situation; it seemed, according to Beverley Male, that the Soviet leadership tried to force a confrontation between Afghanistan and its enemies. Amin also tried to appease the Shia communities by meeting with their leaders; despite this, a section of the Shia leadership called for the continuation of the resistance. Subsequently, a revolt broke out in a Shia populated district in Kabul; this was the first sign of unrest in Kabul since the Saur Revolution. To add to the government's problems, Taraki's ability to lead the country was questioned – he was a heavy drinker and was not in good health. Amin on the other hand was characterised in this period by portrayals of strong self-discipline. In the summer of 1979 Amin began to disassociate himself from Taraki. On 27 June Amin became a member of the PDPA Politburo, the leading decision-making body in Afghanistan.
Rise to power
In-mid July the Soviets made their view official when Pravda wrote an article about the situation in Afghanistan; the Soviets did not wish to see Amin become leader of Afghanistan. This triggered a political crisis in Afghanistan, as Amin initiated a policy of extreme repression, which became one of the main reasons for the Soviet intervention later that year. On 28 July, a vote in the PDPA Politburo approved Amin's proposal of creating a collective leadership with collective decision-making; this was a blow to Taraki, and many of his supporters were replaced by pro-Amin PDPA members. Ivan Pavlovsky, the Commander of the Soviet Ground Forces, visited Kabul in mid-August to study the situation in Afghanistan. Amin, in a speech just a few days after Pavlovsky's arrival, said that he wanted closer relations between Afghanistan and the People's Republic of China; in the same speech he hinted that he had reservations about Soviet meddling in Afghanistan. He likened Soviet assistance to Afghanistan with Vladimir Lenin's assistance to the Hungarian Soviet Republic in 1919. Taraki, a delegate to the conference held by the Non-Aligned Movement in Havana, met personally with Andrei Gromyko, the Soviet Minister of Foreign Affairs, to discuss the Afghanistan situation on 9 September. Shah Wali, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, who was a supporter of Amin, did not participate in the meeting. This, according to Beverley Male, "suggested that some plot against Amin was in preparation".
Taraki was instructed to stop-over in Moscow, where the Soviet leaders urged him to remove Amin from power as per the KGB's decision, because Amin posed danger. Amin's trusted aid, Daoud Taroon, informed Amin of the meeting and the KGB's plan. In Kabul, Taraki's aides, the Gang of Four (consisting of Watanjar, Mazdoryar, Gulabzoi and Sarwari), planned to assassinate Amin but failed as Amin was informed of their plot. Within hours of Taraki's return to Kabul on 11 September, Taraki convened the cabinet "ostensibly to report on the Havana Summit". Instead of reporting on the summit, Taraki tried to dismiss Amin as Prime Minister. Amin, aware of the murder plot, demanded the Gang of Four to be removed from their posts, but Taraki laughed it off. Taraki sought to neutralise Amin's power and influence by requesting that he serve overseas as an ambassador. Amin turned down the proposal, shouting "You are the one who should quit! Because of drink and old age you have taken leave of your senses."
On 13 September, Taraki invited Amin to the presidential palace for lunch with him and the Gang of Four. Amin turned down the offer, stating he would prefer their resignation rather than lunching with them. Soviet ambassador Puzanov persuaded Amin to make the visit to the Presidential Palace along with Taroon, the Chief of Police, and Nawab Ali, an intelligence officer. Inside the palace on 14 September, bodyguards within the building opened fire on the visitors. Taroon was killed but Amin only sustained an injury and escaped. Amin drove to the Ministry of Defence building, put the Army on high alert and ordered Taraki's arrest. At 6:30 pm tanks from the 4th Armoured Corps entered the city and stood at government buildings. Shortly afterwards, Amin returned to the palace with a contingent of Army officers, and placed Taraki under arrest. The Gang of Four, however, had "disappeared" and sought refuge in the Soviet Embassy.
After Taraki's arrest, the Soviets tried to rescue Taraki (or, according to other sources, kidnap Amin) via the embassy or Bagram Air Base but the strength of Amin's officers repelled their decision to make a move. Amin was told by the Soviets not to punish Taraki and strip him and his comrades of their positions, but Amin ignored them. Amin reportedly discussed the incident with Leonid Brezhnev, and indirectly asked for the permission to kill Taraki, to which Brezhnev replied that it was his choice. Amin, who now believed he had the full support of the Soviets, ordered the death of Taraki. It is believed Taraki was suffocated with pillows on 8 October 1979. The Afghan media would report that the ailing Taraki had died, omitting any mention of his murder. Taraki's murder shocked and upset Brezhnev.
Leadership
Domestic policies
Following Taraki's fall from power, Amin was elected Chairman of the Presidum of the Revolutionary Council and General Secretary of the PDPA Central Committee by the PDPA Politburo. The election of Amin as PDPA General Secretary and the removal of Taraki from all party posts was unanimous. The only members of the cabinet replaced when Amin took power were the Gang of Four – Beverley Male saw this as "a clear indication that he had their [the ministers'] support". Amin's rise to power was followed by a policy of moderation, and attempts to persuade the Afghan people that the regime was not anti-Islamic. Amin's government began to invest in the reconstruction, or reparation, of mosques. He also promised the Afghan people freedom of religion. Religious groups were given copies of the Quran, and Amin began to refer to Allah in speeches. He even claimed that the Saur Revolution was "totally based on the principles of Islam". The campaign proved to be unsuccessful, and many Afghans held Amin responsible for the regime's totalitarian behavior. Amin's rise to power was officially endorsed by the Jamiatul Ulama on 20 September 1979. Their endorsement led to the official announcement that Amin was a pious Muslim – Amin thus scored a point against the counter-revolutionary propaganda which claimed the communist regime was atheist. Amin also tried to increase his popularity with tribal groups, a feat Taraki had been unable or unwilling to achieve. In a speech to tribal elders Amin was defensive about the Western way he dressed; an official biography was published which depicted Amin in traditional Pashtun clothes. During his short stay in power, Amin became committed to establishing a collective leadership; when Taraki was ousted, Amin promised "from now on there will be no one-man government..."
Attempting to pacify the population, Amin released a list of 18,000 people who had been executed, and blamed the executions on Taraki. The total number of arrested during Taraki's and Amin's combined reign number between 17,000 and 45,000. Amin was not liked by the Afghan people. During his rule, opposition to the communist regime increased, and the government lost control of the countryside. The state of the Afghan military deteriorated; due to desertions the number of military personnel in the Afghan army decreased from 100,000 in the immediate aftermath of the Saur Revolution, to somewhere between 50,000 and 70,000. Another problem Amin faced was the KGB's penetration of the PDPA, the military and the government bureaucracy. While Amin's position in Afghanistan was becoming more perilous by the day, his enemies who were exiled in the Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc were agitating for his removal. Babrak Karmal, the Parchamite leader, met several leading Eastern Bloc figures during this period, and Mohammad Aslam Watanjar, Sayed Mohammad Gulabzoy and Assadullah Sarwari wanted to exact revenge upon Amin.
Foreign policy
When Amin became leader, he tried to reduce Afghanistan's dependence on the Soviet Union. To accomplish this, he aimed to balance Afghanistan's relations with the Soviet Union by strengthening relations with Pakistan and Iran. The Soviets were concerned when they received reports that Amin had met personally with Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, one of the leading anti-communists in Afghanistan. His general untrustworthiness and his unpopularity amongst Afghans made it more difficult for Amin to find new "foreign patrons". Amin's involvement in the death of Adolph Dubs, the American Ambassador to Afghanistan, strained his relations with the United States. He tried to improve relations by reestablishing contact, met with three different American chargé d'affaires, and was interviewed by an American correspondent. But this did not improve Afghanistan's standing in the eyes of the United States Government. After the third meeting with Amin, J. Bruce Amstutz, the American Ambassador to Afghanistan from 1979 to 1980, believed the wisest thing to do was to maintain "a low profile, trying to avoid issues, and waiting to see what happens". In early December 1979, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs proposed a joint summit meeting between Amin and Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq, the President of Pakistan. The Pakistani Government, accepting a modified version of the offer, agreed to send Agha Shahi, the Pakistani foreign minister, to Kabul for talks. In the meanwhile, the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), Pakistani's secret police, continued to train Mujahideen fighters who opposed the communist regime.
Afghan-Soviet relations
Contrary to popular belief, the Soviet leadership headed by Leonid Brezhnev, Alexei Kosygin and the Politburo, were not eager to send troops to Afghanistan. The Soviet Politburo decisions were guided by a Special Commission on Afghanistan, which consisted of Yuri Andropov the KGB chairman, Andrei Gromyko the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Defence Minister Dmitriy Ustinov, and Boris Ponomarev, the head of the International Department of the Central Committee. The Politburo was opposed to the removal of Taraki and his subsequent murder. According to Brezhnev, the General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, "Events developed so swiftly in Afghanistan that essentially there was little opportunity to somehow interfere in them. Right now our mission is to determine our further actions, so as to preserve our position in Afghanistan and to secure our influence there." Although Afghan–Soviet relations deteriorated during Amin's short stint in power, he was invited on an official visit to Moscow by Alexander Puzanov, the Soviet ambassador to Afghanistan, because of the Soviet leadership's satisfaction with his party and state-building policy. Not everything went as planned, and Andropov talked about "the undesirable turn of events" taking place in Afghanistan under Amin's rule. Andropov also brought up the ongoing political shift in Afghanistan under Amin; the Soviets were afraid that Amin would move Afghanistan's foreign policy from a pro-Soviet position to a pro-United States position. By early-to-mid December 1979, the Soviet leadership had established an alliance with Babrak Karmal and Assadullah Sarwari.
Amin kept a portrait of Joseph Stalin on his desk. When Soviet officials criticized him of his brutality, Amin replied "Comrade Stalin showed us how to build socialism in a backward country."
As it turned out, the relationship between Puzanov and Amin broke down. Amin started a smear campaign to discredit Puzanov. This in turn led to an assassination attempt against Amin, in which Puzanov participated. The situation was worsened by the KGB accusing Amin of misrepresenting the Soviet position on Afghanistan in the PDPA Central Committee and the Revolutionary Council. The KGB also noted an increase in anti-Soviet agitation by the government during Amin's rule, and harassment against Soviet citizens increased under Amin. A group of senior politicians reported to the Soviet Central Committee that it was necessary to do "everything possible" to prevent a change in political orientation in Afghanistan. However, the Soviet leadership did not advocate intervention at this time, and instead called for increasing its influence in the Amin leadership to expose his "true intentions". A Soviet Politburo assessment referred to Amin as "a power-hungry leader who is distinguished by brutality and treachery". Amongst the many sins they alleged were his "insincerity and duplicity" when dealing with the Soviet Union, creating fictitious accusations against PDPA-members who opposed him, indulging in a policy of nepotism, and his tendency to conduct a more "balanced policy" towards First World countries. According to the former senior Soviet diplomat, Oleg Grinevsky, the KGB was becoming increasingly convinced that Amin couldn't be counted on to effectively deal with the insurgency and preserve the survival of the Afghan Marxist state.
By the end of October the Special Commission on Afghanistan, which consisted of Andropov, Gromyko, Ustinov and Ponomarev, wanted to end the impression that the Soviet government supported Amin's leadership and policy. The KGB's First Chief Directorate was put under orders that something had to be done about Afghanistan, and several of its personnel were assembled to deal with the task. Andropov fought hard for Soviet intervention, saying to Brezhnev that Amin's policies had destroyed the military and the government's capabilities to handle the crisis by use of mass repression. The plan, according to Andropov, was to assemble a small force to intervene and remove Amin from power and replace him with Karmal. The Soviet Union declared its plan to intervene in Afghanistan on 12 December 1979; large numbers of Soviet airborne troops landed in Kabul on December 25, with the approval of Amin who miscalculated their intentions. Soviet leadership initiated Operation Storm-333 (the first phase of the intervention) on 27 December 1979.
Attempted poisoning by Amin's chef
The leadership of the USSR had no need for Amin to remain alive. Andropov's special representative in Afghanistan, General Boris Ivanov, recommended for Amin to attend a conciliatory dinner with his political mentor, who had become an enemy of Amin, so that Amin's chef could poison Amin. The same persons arranged for this dinner as had participated in the previous failed attempted assassination by Taraki on 14 September, however, Amin miraculously survived the poisoning because the doctors at the Soviet embassy, who did not know that "special reconnaissance officers" were trying to kill Amin, mistakenly saved the severely poisoned Amin. Since Amin, who was very loyal to the USSR, had survived two attempted assassinations that had been approved by the USSR, the decision was made to eliminate him through a bloody coup at Amin's residence, the Taj Beck Palace.
Death
Amin trusted the Soviet Union until the very end, despite the deterioration of official relations, and was unaware that the tide in Moscow had turned against him since he ordered Taraki's death. When the Afghan intelligence service handed Amin a report that the Soviet Union would invade the country and topple him, Amin claimed that the report was a product of imperialism. His view can be explained by the fact that the Soviet Union, after several months, finally gave in to Amin's demands and sent troops into Afghanistan to secure the PDPA government. Contrary to common Western belief, Amin was informed of the Soviet decision to send troops into Afghanistan. General Tukharinov, commander of the 40th Army, met with Afghan Major General Babadzhan to talk about Soviet troop movements before the Soviet army's intervention. On 25 December, Dmitry Ustinov issued a formal order, stating that "[t]he state frontier of the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan is to be crossed on the ground and in the air by forces of the 40th Army and the Air Force at 1500 hrs on 25 December". This was the formal beginning of the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan.
Concerned for his safety, on 20 December Amin moved from the Presidential Palace, located in the centre of Kabul, to the Tajbeg Palace, which had previously been the headquarters of the Central Corps of the Afghan Army. The palace was formidable, with walls strong enough to withstand artillery fire. According to Rodric Braithwaite, "its defences had been carefully and intelligently organised". All roads to the palace had been mined, with the exception of one, which had heavy machine guns and artillery positioned to defend it. To make matters worse for the Soviets, the Afghans had established a second line of defence which consisted of seven posts, "each manned by four sentries armed with a machine gun, a mortar, and automatic rifles". The external defences of the palace were handled by the Presidential Guard, which consisted of 2,500 troops and three T-54 tanks. Several Soviet commanders involved in the assassination of Amin thought the plan to attack the palace was "crazy". Although the military had been informed by the Soviet leadership through their commanders, Yuri Drozdov and Vasily Kolesnik, that the leader was a "CIA agent" who had betrayed the Saur Revolution, many Soviet soldiers hesitated; despite what their commanders had told them, it seemed implausible that Amin, the leader of the PDPA government, was an American double agent. Despite several objections, the plan to assassinate Amin went ahead.
Before resorting to killing Amin by brute force, the Soviets had tried to poison him as early as 13 December (but nearly killed his nephew instead) and to kill him with a sniper shot on his way to work (this proved impossible as the Afghans had improved their security measures). They even tried to poison Amin just hours before the assault on the Presidential Palace on 27 December. Amin had organised a lunch for party members to show guests his palace and to celebrate Ghulam Dastagir Panjsheri's return from Moscow. Panjsheri's return improved the mood even further; he boasted that the Soviet divisions had already crossed the border, and that he and Gromyko always kept in contact with each other. During the meal, Amin and several of his guests lost consciousness as they had been poisoned. Amin survived his encounter with death, because the carbonation of the Coca-Cola he was drinking diluted the toxic agent. Mikhail Talybov, a KGB agent, was given responsibility for the poisonings.
The assault on the palace began shortly afterward. During the attack Amin still believed the Soviet Union was on his side, and told his adjutant, "The Soviets will help us". The adjutant replied that it was the Soviets who were attacking them; Amin initially replied that this was a lie. Only after he tried but failed to contact the Chief of the General Staff, he muttered, "I guessed it. It's all true". There are various accounts of how Amin died, but the exact details have never been confirmed. Amin was either killed by a deliberate attack or died by a "random burst of fire". Amin's son was fatally wounded and died shortly after. His daughter was wounded, but survived. It was Gulabzoy who had been given orders to kill Amin and Watanjar who later confirmed his death. The men of Amin's family were all executed either immediately or shortly thereafter (his brother Abdullah and nephew Asadullah were executed in June 1980) The women including his daughter were imprisoned at Pul-e-Charkhi prison until being released by President Najibullah in early 1992. After Amin's death on 27 December 1979, Radio Kabul broadcast Babrak Karmal's pre-recorded speech to the Afghan people, saying: "Today the torture machine of Amin has been smashed". Karmal was installed by the Soviets as the new leader while the Soviet Army began its intervention in Afghanistan that would last for nine years.
Post-death
On 2 January 1980 on the PDPA's 15th anniversary, Karmal who was now the new General Secretary called Amin a "conspirator, professional criminal and recognised spy of the U.S.", as reported in the Kabul New Times. Anahita Ratebzad, the education minister, said about Amin:
...this wrathy, cruel and criminal murderer who had made terror and suppression and crushing of every opposition force part and parcel of his way of rule, and started every day with new acts of destruction, putting opponents of his bloody regime, group by group, to places of torture, jails, and slaughterhouses.
References
Bibliography
External links
Soviet documentation gathered before the Soviet intervention
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1979 deaths
1979 murders in Asia
20th-century heads of state of Afghanistan
Communist rulers of Afghanistan
Presidents of Afghanistan
Leaders who took power by coup
Afghan Muslims
Assassinated heads of state
Assassinated Afghan politicians
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Prime Ministers of Afghanistan
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People from Kabul Province
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Teachers College, Columbia University alumni
Deaths by firearm in Afghanistan
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Afghan revolutionaries | [
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14282 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hubris | Hubris | Hubris (; ), or less frequently hybris (), describes a personality quality of extreme or excessive pride or dangerous overconfidence, often in combination with (or synonymous with) arrogance. The term arrogance comes from the Latin , meaning "to feel that one has a right to demand certain attitudes and behaviors from other people". To arrogate means "to claim or seize without justification... To make undue claims to having", or "to claim or seize without right... to ascribe or attribute without reason". The term pretension is also associated with the term hubris, but is not synonymous with it.
According to studies, hubris, arrogance, and pretension are related to the need for victory (even if it does not always mean winning) instead of reconciliation, which "friendly" groups might promote. Hubris is usually perceived as a characteristic of an individual rather than a group, although the group the offender belongs to may suffer collateral consequences from wrongful acts. Hubris often indicates a loss of contact with reality and an overestimation of one's own competence, accomplishments or capabilities. The adjectival form of the noun hubris/hybris is hubristic/hybristic.
The term hubris originated in Ancient Greek, where it had several different meanings depending on the context. In legal usage, it meant assault or sexual crimes and theft of public property, and in religious usage it meant transgression against a god.
Ancient Greek origin
Common use
In ancient Greek, hubris referred to “outrage”: actions that violated natural order, or which shamed and humiliated the victim, sometimes for the pleasure or gratification of the abuser. In some contexts, the term had a sexual connotation. Shame was frequently reflected upon the perpetrator, as well.
Legal usage
In legal terms, hubristic violations of the law included what might today be termed assault-and-battery, sexual crimes, or the theft of public or sacred property. Two well-known cases are found in the speeches of Demosthenes, a prominent statesman and orator in ancient Greece. These two examples occurred when first Midias punched Demosthenes in the face in the theatre (Against Midias), and second when (in Against Conon) a defendant allegedly assaulted a man and crowed over the victim. Yet another example of hubris appears in Aeschines' Against Timarchus, where the defendant, Timarchus, is accused of breaking the law of hubris by submitting himself to prostitution and anal intercourse. Aeschines brought this suit against Timarchus to bar him from the rights of political office and his case succeeded.
In ancient Athens, hubris was defined as the use of violence to shame the victim (this sense of hubris could also characterize rape). Aristotle defined hubris as shaming the victim, not because of anything that happened to the committer or might happen to the committer, but merely for that committer's own gratification:
to cause shame to the victim, not in order that anything may happen to you, nor because anything has happened to you, but merely for your own gratification. Hubris is not the requital of past injuries; this is revenge. As for the pleasure in hubris, its cause is this: naive men think that by ill-treating others they make their own superiority the greater.
Crucial to this definition are the ancient Greek concepts of honour (τιμή, timē) and shame (αἰδώς, aidōs). The concept of honour included not only the exaltation of the one receiving honour, but also the shaming of the one overcome by the act of hubris. This concept of honour is akin to a zero-sum game. Rush Rehm simplifies this definition of hubris to the contemporary concept of "insolence, contempt, and excessive violence".
Modern usage
In its modern usage, hubris denotes overconfident pride combined with arrogance. Hubris is often associated with a lack of humility. Sometimes a person's hubris is also associated with ignorance. The accusation of hubris often implies that suffering or punishment will follow, similar to the occasional pairing of hubris and nemesis in Greek mythology. The proverb "pride goeth (goes) before destruction, a haughty spirit before a fall" (from the biblical Book of Proverbs, 16:18) is thought to sum up the modern use of hubris. Hubris is also referred to as "pride that blinds" because it often causes a committer of hubris to act in foolish ways that belie common sense. In other words, the modern definition may be thought of as, "that pride that goes just before the fall."
Examples of hubris often appear in literature, archetypically in Greek tragedy, and arguably most famously in John Milton's Paradise Lost, in which Lucifer attempts to compel the other angels to worship him, is cast into hell by God and the innocent angels, and proclaims: "Better to reign in hell than serve in heaven." Victor in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein manifests hubris in his attempt to become a great scientist; he creates life through technological means, but comes to regret his project. Marlowe's play Doctor Faustus portrays the eponymous character as a scholar whose arrogance and pride compel him to sign a deal with the Devil, and retain his haughtiness until his death and damnation, despite the fact that he could easily have repented had he chosen to do so.
General George Armstrong Custer furnished an historical example of hubris in the decisions that culminated in the 1876 Battle of Little Big Horn; he apocryphally exclaimed: "Where did all those damned Indians come from?"
Larry Wall promoted "the three great virtues of a programmer: laziness, impatience, and hubris".
Arrogance
The Oxford English Dictionary defines "arrogance" in terms of "high or inflated opinion of one's own abilities, importance, etc., that gives rise to presumption or excessive self-confidence, or to a feeling or attitude of being superior to others [...]."
Adrian Davies sees arrogance as more generic and less severe than hubris.
Religious usage
Ancient Greece
The Greek word for sin, hamartia (ἁμαρτία), originally meant "error" in the ancient dialect, and so poets like Hesiod and Aeschylus used the word "hubris" to describe transgressions against the gods. A common way that hubris was committed was when a mortal claimed to be better than a god in a particular skill or attribute. Claims like these were rarely left unpunished, and so Arachne, a talented young weaver, was transformed into a spider when she said that her skills exceeded those of the goddess Athena. Additional examples include Icarus, Phaethon, Salmoneus, Niobe, Cassiopeia, Tantalus, and Tereus.
These events were not limited to myth, and certain figures in history were considered to be have been punished for committing hubris through their arrogance. One such person was king Xerxes as portrayed in Aeschylus's play The Persians, and who allegedly threw chains to bind the Hellespont sea as punishment for daring to destroy his fleet.
What is common to all these examples is the breaching of limits, as the Greeks believed that the Fates (Μοῖραι) had assigned each being with a particular area of freedom, an area that even the gods could not breach.
The goddess Hybris is described in the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition as having "insolent encroachment upon the rights of others".
Christianity
In the Old Testament, the "hubris is overweening pride, superciliousness or arrogance, often resulting in fatal retribution or nemesis". Proverbs 16:18 states: "Pride goes before destruction, a haughty spirit before a fall".
The word hubris as used in the New Testament parallels the Hebrew word pasha, meaning "transgression". It represents a pride that "makes a man defy God", sometimes to the degree that he considers himself an equal.
In contrast to this, the common word for "sin" was hamartia, which refers to an error and reflects the complexity of the human condition. Its result is guilt rather than direct punishment (as in the case of hubris).
C. S. Lewis wrote in Mere Christianity that pride is the "anti-God" state, the position in which the ego and the self are directly opposed to God. "Unchastity, anger, greed, drunkenness, and all that, are mere fleabites in comparison; it was through Pride that the devil became the devil; Pride leads to every other vice; it is the complete anti-God state of mind."
See also
References
Further reading
Nicolas R. E. Fisher, Hybris: A Study in the Values of Honour and Shame in Ancient Greece, Warminster, Aris & Phillips, 1992.
Michael DeWilde, The Psychological and Spiritual Roots of a Universal Affliction
Hubris on 2012's Encyclopædia Britannica
Robert A. Stebbins, From Humility to Hubris among Scholars and Politicians: Exploring Expressions of Self-Esteem and Achievement. Bingley, UK: Emerald Group Publishing, 2017.
External links
Narcissism
Barriers to critical thinking
Pride
Psychological attitude
Religious terminology
Seven deadly sins | [
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14283 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heavy%20water | Heavy water | Heavy water (deuterium oxide, , ) is a form of water that contains only deuterium ( or D, also known as heavy hydrogen) rather than the common hydrogen-1 isotope ( or H, also called protium) that makes up most of the hydrogen in normal water. The presence of the heavier hydrogen isotope gives the water different nuclear properties, and the increase of mass gives it slightly different physical and chemical properties when compared to normal water.
Explanation
Deuterium is a hydrogen isotope with a nucleus containing a neutron and a proton; the nucleus of a protium (normal hydrogen) atom consists of just a proton. The additional neutron makes a deuterium atom roughly twice as heavy as a protium atom.
A molecule of heavy water has two deuterium atoms in place of the two protium atoms of ordinary "light" water. Actually, the term heavy water as defined by the IUPAC Gold Book can also refer to water in which a higher than usual proportion of hydrogen atoms are deuterium rather than protium. For comparison, ordinary water (the "ordinary water" used for a deuterium standard) contains only about 156 deuterium atoms per million hydrogen atoms, meaning that 0.0156% of the hydrogen atoms are of the heavy type. Thus heavy water as defined by the Gold Book includes hydrogen-deuterium oxide (HDO) and other mixtures of , , and HDO in which the proportion of deuterium is greater than usual. For instance, the heavy water used in CANDU reactors is a highly enriched water mixture that contains mostly deuterium oxide , but also some hydrogen-deuterium oxide (HDO) and a smaller amount of ordinary hydrogen oxide . It is 99.75% enriched by hydrogen atom-fraction—meaning that 99.75% of the hydrogen atoms are of the heavy type; however, heavy water in the Gold Book sense need not be so highly enriched. Where this article uses heavy water, though, it means . The weight of a heavy water molecule, however, is not substantially different from that of a normal water molecule, because about 89% of the molecular weight of water comes from the single oxygen atom rather than the two hydrogen atoms.
Heavy water is not radioactive. In its pure form, it has a density about 11% greater than water, but is otherwise physically and chemically similar. Nevertheless, the various differences in deuterium-containing water (especially affecting the biological properties) are larger than in any other commonly occurring isotope-substituted compound because deuterium is unique among heavy stable isotopes in being twice as heavy as the lightest isotope. This difference increases the strength of water's hydrogen–oxygen bonds, and this in turn is enough to cause differences that are important to some biochemical reactions. The human body naturally contains deuterium equivalent to about five grams of heavy water, which is harmless. When a large fraction of water (> 50%) in higher organisms is replaced by heavy water, the result is cell dysfunction and death.
Heavy water was first produced in 1932, a few months after the discovery of deuterium. With the discovery of nuclear fission in late 1938, and the need for a neutron moderator that captured few neutrons, heavy water became a component of early nuclear energy research. Since then, heavy water has been an essential component in some types of reactors, both those that generate power and those designed to produce isotopes for nuclear weapons. These heavy water reactors have the advantage of being able to run on natural uranium without using graphite moderators that pose radiological and dust explosion hazards in the decommissioning phase. The graphite moderated Soviet RBMK design tried to avoid using either enriched uranium or heavy water (being cooled with ordinary "light" water instead) which produced the positive void coefficient that was one of a series of flaws in reactor design leading to the Chernobyl disaster. Most modern reactors use enriched uranium with ordinary water as the moderator.
Other heavy forms of water
Semiheavy water
Semiheavy water, HDO, exists whenever there is water with light hydrogen (protium, ) and deuterium (D or ) in the mix. This is because hydrogen atoms (hydrogen-1 and deuterium) are rapidly exchanged between water molecules. Water containing 50% H and 50% D in its hydrogen actually contains about 50% HDO and 25% each of and , in dynamic equilibrium.
In normal water, about 1 molecule in 3,200 is HDO (one hydrogen in 6,400 is in the form of D), and heavy water molecules () only occur in a proportion of about 1 molecule in 41 million (i.e. one in 6,4002). Thus semiheavy water molecules are far more common than "pure" (homoisotopic) heavy water molecules.
Heavy-oxygen water
Water enriched in the heavier oxygen isotopes and is also commercially available. It is "heavy water" as it is denser than normal water ( is approximately as dense as , is about halfway between and )—but is rarely called heavy water, since it does not contain the deuterium that gives D2O its unusual nuclear and biological properties. It is more expensive than D2O due to the more difficult separation of 17O and 18O. H218O is also used for production of fluorine-18 for radiopharmaceuticals and radiotracers and for positron emission tomography. Small amounts of and are naturally present in water and most processes enriching heavy water also enrich the heavier isotopes of oxygen as a side-effect. This is undesirable if the heavy water is to be used as a neutron moderator in nuclear reactors, as can undergo neutron capture, followed by emission of an alpha particle, producing radioactive . However, doubly labeled water, containing both a heavy oxygen and heavy hydrogen, is useful as a non-radioactive isotopic tracer.
Compared to the isotopic change of hydrogen atoms, the isotopic change of oxygen has a smaller effect on the physical properties.
Tritiated water
Tritiated water contains tritium (3H) in place of protium (1H) or deuterium (2H), and, as tritium itself is radioactive, tritiated water is also radioactive.
Physical properties
The physical properties of water and heavy water differ in several respects. Heavy water is less dissociated than light water at given temperature, and the true concentration of D+ ions is less than ions would be for a light water sample at the same temperature. The same is true of OD− vs. ions. For heavy water Kw D2O (25.0 °C) = 1.35 × 10−15, and [D+] must equal [OD−] for neutral water. Thus pKw D2O = p[OD−] + p[D+] = 7.44 + 7.44 = 14.87 (25.0 °C), and the p[D+] of neutral heavy water at 25.0 °C is 7.44.
The pD of heavy water is generally measured using pH electrodes giving a pH (apparent) value, or pHa, and at various temperatures a true acidic pD can be estimated from the directly pH meter measured pHa, such that pD+ = pHa (apparent reading from pH meter) + 0.41. The electrode correction for alkaline conditions is 0.456 for heavy water. The alkaline correction is then pD+ = pHa(apparent reading from pH meter) + 0.456. These corrections are slightly different from the differences in p[D+] and p[OD-] of 0.44 from the corresponding ones in heavy water.
Heavy water is 10.6% denser than ordinary water, and heavy water's physically different properties can be seen without equipment if a frozen sample is dropped into normal water, as it will sink. If the water is ice-cold the higher melting temperature of heavy ice can also be observed: it melts at 3.7 °C, and thus does not melt in ice-cold normal water.
A 1935 experiment reported not the "slightest difference" in taste between ordinary and heavy water. One study has concluded that heavy water tastes "distinctly sweeter" for humans, and is mediated by the TAS1R2/TAS1R3 taste receptor. Rats given a choice between distilled normal water and heavy water were able to avoid the heavy water based on smell, and it may have a different taste. Some people report that minerals in water affect taste, e.g. potassium lending a sweet taste to hard water, but there are many factors of a perceived taste in water besides mineral contents.
Heavy water lacks the characteristic blue color of light water; this is because the molecular vibration harmonics, which in light water cause weak absorption in the red part of the visible spectrum, are shifted into the infrared and thus heavy water does not absorb red light.
No physical properties are listed for "pure" semi-heavy water, because it is unstable as a bulk liquid. In the liquid state, a few water molecules are always in an ionised state, which means the hydrogen atoms can exchange among different oxygen atoms. Semi-heavy water could, in theory, be created via a chemical method, but it would rapidly transform into a dynamic mixture of 25% light water, 25% heavy water, and 50% semi-heavy water. However, if it were made in the gas phase and directly deposited into a solid, semi-heavy water in the form of ice could be stable. This is due to collisions between water vapor molecules being almost completely negligible in the gas phase at standard temperatures, and once crystallized, collisions between the molecules cease altogether due to the rigid lattice structure of solid ice.
History
The US scientist and Nobel laureate Harold Urey discovered the isotope deuterium in 1931 and was later able to concentrate it in water. Urey's mentor Gilbert Newton Lewis isolated the first sample of pure heavy water by electrolysis in 1933. George de Hevesy and Erich Hofer used heavy water in 1934 in one of the first biological tracer experiments, to estimate the rate of turnover of water in the human body. The history of large-quantity production and use of heavy water, in early nuclear experiments, is described below.
Emilian Bratu and Otto Redlich studied the autodissociation of heavy water in 1934.
Effect on biological systems
Different isotopes of chemical elements have slightly different chemical behaviors, but for most elements the differences are far too small to have a biological effect. In the case of hydrogen, larger differences in chemical properties among protium (light hydrogen), deuterium, and tritium occur, because chemical bond energy depends on the reduced mass of the nucleus–electron system; this is altered in heavy-hydrogen compounds (hydrogen-deuterium oxide is the most common species) more than for heavy-isotope substitution involving other chemical elements. The isotope effects are especially relevant in biological systems, which are very sensitive to even the smaller changes, due to isotopically influenced properties of water when it acts as a solvent.
Heavy water affects the period of circadian oscillations, consistently increasing the length of each cycle. The effect has been demonstrated in unicellular organisms, green plants, isopods, insects, birds, mice, and hamsters. The mechanism is unknown.
To perform their tasks, enzymes rely on their finely tuned networks of hydrogen bonds, both in the active center with their substrates, and outside the active center, to stabilize their tertiary structures. As a hydrogen bond with deuterium is slightly stronger than one involving ordinary hydrogen, in a highly deuterated environment, some normal reactions in cells are disrupted.
Particularly hard-hit by heavy water are the delicate assemblies of mitotic spindle formations necessary for cell division in eukaryotes. Plants stop growing and seeds do not germinate when given only heavy water, because heavy water stops eukaryotic cell division. The deuterium cell is larger and is a modification of the direction of division. The cell membrane also changes, and it reacts first to the impact of heavy water. In 1972, it was demonstrated that an increase in the percentage content of deuterium in water reduces plant growth. Research conducted on the growth of prokaryote microorganisms in artificial conditions of a heavy hydrogen environment showed that in this environment, all the hydrogen atoms of water could be replaced with deuterium. Experiments showed that bacteria can live in 98% heavy water. Concentrations over 50% are lethal to multicellular organisms, however a few exceptions are known such as switchgrass (Panicum virgatum) which is able to grow on 50% D2O; the plant Arabidopsis thaliana (70% D2O); the plant Vesicularia dubyana (85% D2O);
the plant Funaria hygrometrica (90% D2O); and the anhydrobiotic species of nematode Panagrolaimus superbus (nearly 100% D2O). A comprehensive study of heavy water on the fission yeast Schizosaccharomyces pombe showed that the cells displayed an altered glucose metabolism and slow growth at high concentrations of heavy water. In addition, the cells activated the heat-shock response pathway and the cell integrity pathway, and mutants in the cell integrity pathway displayed increased tolerance to heavy water.
Effect on animals
Experiments with mice, rats, and dogs have shown that a degree of 25% deuteration causes (sometimes irreversible) sterility, because neither gametes nor zygotes can develop. High concentrations of heavy water (90%) rapidly kill fish, tadpoles, flatworms, and Drosophila. The only known exception is the anhydrobiotic nematode Panagrolaimus superbus, which is able to survive and reproduce in 99.9% D2O. Mammals (for example, rats) given heavy water to drink die after a week, at a time when their body water approaches about 50% deuteration. The mode of death appears to be the same as that in cytotoxic poisoning (such as chemotherapy) or in acute radiation syndrome (though deuterium is not radioactive), and is due to deuterium's action in generally inhibiting cell division. It is more toxic to malignant cells than normal cells, but the concentrations needed are too high for regular use. As may occur in chemotherapy, deuterium-poisoned mammals die of a failure of bone marrow (producing bleeding and infections) and of intestinal-barrier functions (producing diarrhea and loss of fluids).
Despite the problems of plants and animals in living with too much deuterium, prokaryotic organisms such as bacteria, which do not have the mitotic problems induced by deuterium, may be grown and propagated in fully deuterated conditions, resulting in replacement of all hydrogen atoms in the bacterial proteins and DNA with the deuterium isotope.
In higher organisms, full replacement with heavy isotopes can be accomplished with other non-radioactive heavy isotopes (such as carbon-13, nitrogen-15, and oxygen-18), but this cannot be done for deuterium. This is a consequence of the ratio of nuclear masses between the isotopes of hydrogen, which is much greater than for any other element.
Deuterium oxide is used to enhance boron neutron capture therapy, but this effect does not rely on the biological or chemical effects of deuterium, but instead on deuterium's ability to moderate (slow) neutrons without capturing them.
Recent experimental evidence indicates that systemic administration of deuterium oxide (30% drinking water supplementation) suppresses tumor growth in a standard mouse model of human melanoma, an effect attributed to selective induction of cellular stress signaling and gene expression in tumor cells.
Toxicity in humans
Because it would take a very large amount of heavy water to replace 25% to 50% of a human being's body water (water being in turn 50–75% of body weight) with heavy water, accidental or intentional poisoning with heavy water is unlikely to the point of practical disregard. Poisoning would require that the victim ingest large amounts of heavy water without significant normal water intake for many days to produce any noticeable toxic effects.
Oral doses of heavy water in the range of several grams, as well as heavy oxygen 18O, are routinely used in human metabolic experiments. (See doubly labeled water testing.) Since one in about every 6,400 hydrogen atoms is deuterium, a human containing of body water would normally contain enough deuterium (about ) to make of pure heavy water, so roughly this dose is required to double the amount of deuterium in the body.
A loss of blood pressure may partially explain the reported incidence of dizziness upon ingestion of heavy water. However, it is more likely that this symptom can be attributed to altered vestibular function.
Heavy water radiation contamination confusion
Although many people associate heavy water primarily with its use in nuclear reactors, pure heavy water is not radioactive. Commercial-grade heavy water is slightly radioactive due to the presence of minute traces of natural tritium, but the same is true of ordinary water. Heavy water that has been used as a coolant in nuclear power plants contains substantially more tritium as a result of neutron bombardment of the deuterium in the heavy water (tritium is a health risk when ingested in large quantities).
In 1990, a disgruntled employee at the Point Lepreau Nuclear Generating Station in Canada obtained a sample (estimated as about a "half cup") of heavy water from the primary heat transport loop of the nuclear reactor, and loaded it into a cafeteria drink dispenser. Eight employees drank some of the contaminated water. The incident was discovered when employees began leaving bioassay urine samples with elevated tritium levels. The quantity of heavy water involved was far below levels that could induce heavy water toxicity, but several employees received elevated radiation doses from tritium and neutron-activated chemicals in the water. This was not an incident of heavy water poisoning, but rather radiation poisoning from other isotopes in the heavy water.
Some news services were not careful to distinguish these points, and some of the public were left with the impression that heavy water is normally radioactive and more severely toxic than it actually is. Even if pure heavy water had been used in the water cooler indefinitely, it is not likely the incident would have been detected or caused harm, since no employee would be expected to get much more than 25% of their daily drinking water from such a source.
Production
On Earth, deuterated water, HDO, occurs naturally in normal water at a proportion of about 1 molecule in 3,200. This means that 1 in 6,400 hydrogen atoms is deuterium, which is 1 part in 3,200 by weight (hydrogen weight). The HDO may be separated from normal water by distillation or electrolysis and also by various chemical exchange processes, all of which exploit a kinetic isotope effect. With the partial enrichment also occurring in natural bodies of water under particular evaporation conditions. (For more information about the isotopic distribution of deuterium in water, see Vienna Standard Mean Ocean Water.)
In theory, deuterium for heavy water could be created in a nuclear reactor, but separation from ordinary water is the cheapest bulk production process.
The difference in mass between the two hydrogen isotopes translates into a difference in the zero-point energy and thus into a slight difference in the speed of the reaction. Once HDO becomes a significant fraction of the water, heavy water becomes more prevalent as water molecules trade hydrogen atoms very frequently. Production of pure heavy water by distillation or electrolysis requires a large cascade of stills or electrolysis chambers and consumes large amounts of power, so the chemical methods are generally preferred.
The most cost-effective process for producing heavy water is the dual temperature exchange sulfide process (known as the Girdler sulfide process) developed in parallel by Karl-Hermann Geib and Jerome S. Spevack in 1943.
An alternative process, patented by Graham M. Keyser, uses lasers to selectively dissociate deuterated hydrofluorocarbons to form deuterium fluoride, which can then be separated by physical means. Although the energy consumption for this process is much less than for the Girdler sulfide process, this method is currently uneconomical due to the expense of procuring the necessary hydrofluorocarbons.
As noted, modern commercial heavy water is almost universally referred to, and sold as, deuterium oxide. It is most often sold in various grades of purity, from 98% enrichment to 99.75–99.98% deuterium enrichment (nuclear reactor grade) and occasionally even higher isotopic purity.
Argentina
Argentina is the main producer of heavy water, using an ammonia/hydrogen exchange based plant supplied by Switzerland's Sulzer company. It is also a major exporter to Canada, Germany, the US and other countries. The heavy water production facility located in Arroyito is the world's largest heavy water production facility. Argentina produces of heavy water per year using the monothermal ammonia-hydrogen isotopic exchange method.
Soviet Union
In October 1939, Soviet physicists Yakov Borisovich Zel'dovich and Yulii Borisovich Khariton concluded that heavy water and carbon were the only feasible moderators for a natural uranium reactor, and in August 1940, along with Georgy Flyorov, submitted a plan to the Russian Academy of Sciences calculating that 15 tons of heavy water were needed for a reactor. With the Soviet Union having no uranium mines at the time, young Academy workers were sent to Leningrad photographic shops to buy uranium nitrate, but the entire heavy water project was halted in 1941 when German forces invaded during Operation Barbarossa.
By 1943, Soviet scientists had discovered that all scientific literature relating to heavy water had disappeared from the West, which Flyorov in a letter warned Soviet leader Joseph Stalin about, and at which time there was only 2–3 kg of heavy water in the entire country. In late 1943, the Soviet purchasing commission in the U.S. obtained 1 kg of heavy water and a further 100 kg in February 1945, and upon World War II ending, the NKVD took over the project.
In October 1946, as part of the Russian Alsos, the NKVD deported to the Soviet Union from Germany the German scientists who had worked on heavy water production during the war, including Karl-Hermann Geib, the inventor of the Girdler sulfide process. These German scientists worked under the supervision of German physical chemist Max Volmer at the Institute of Physical Chemistry in Moscow with the plant they constructed producing large quantities of heavy water by 1948.
United States
During the Manhattan Project the United States constructed three heavy water production plants as part of the P-9 Project at Morgantown Ordnance Works, near Morgantown, West Virginia; at the Wabash River Ordnance Works, near Dana and Newport, Indiana; and at the Alabama Ordnance Works, near Childersburg and Sylacauga, Alabama. Heavy water was also acquired from the Cominco plant in Trail, British Columbia, Canada. The Chicago Pile-3 experimental reactor used heavy water as a moderator and went critical in 1944. The three domestic production plants were shut down in 1945 after producing around 20 metric tons (20,000 litres) of product. The Wabash plant resumed heavy water production in 1952.
In 1953, the United States began using heavy water in plutonium production reactors at the Savannah River Site. The first of the five heavy water reactors came online in 1953, and the last was placed in cold shutdown in 1996. The SRS reactors were heavy water reactors so that they could produce both plutonium and tritium for the US nuclear weapons program.
The U.S. developed the Girdler sulfide chemical exchange production process—which was first demonstrated on a large scale at the Dana, Indiana plant in 1945 and at the Savannah River Plant, South Carolina, in 1952. DuPont operated the SRP for the USDOE until 1 April 1989, when Westinghouse took it over.
India
India is one of the world's largest producers of heavy water through its Heavy Water Board and also exports to countries like Republic of Korea and the US. Development of heavy water process in India happened in three phases: The first phase (late 1950s to mid-1980s) was a period of technology development, the second phase was of deployment of technology and process stabilisation (mid-1980s to early 1990s) and third phase saw consolidation and a shift towards improvement in production and energy conservation.
Empire of Japan
In the 1930s, it was suspected by the United States and Soviet Union that Austrian chemist Fritz Johann Hansgirg built a pilot plant for the Empire of Japan in Japanese ruled northern Korea to produce heavy water by using a new process he had invented.
Norway
In 1934, Norsk Hydro built the first commercial heavy water plant at Vemork, Tinn, eventually producing per day. From 1940 and throughout World War II, the plant was under German control and the Allies decided to destroy the plant and its heavy water to inhibit German development of nuclear weapons. In late 1942, a planned raid called Operation Freshman by British airborne troops failed, both gliders crashing. The raiders were killed in the crash or subsequently executed by the Germans.
On the night of 27 February 1943 Operation Gunnerside succeeded. Norwegian commandos and local resistance managed to demolish small, but key parts of the electrolytic cells, dumping the accumulated heavy water down the factory drains.
On 16 November 1943, the Allied air forces dropped more than 400 bombs on the site. The Allied air raid prompted the Nazi government to move all available heavy water to Germany for safekeeping. On 20 February 1944, a Norwegian partisan sank the ferry M/F Hydro carrying heavy water across Lake Tinn, at the cost of 14 Norwegian civilian lives, and most of the heavy water was presumably lost. A few of the barrels were only half full, and therefore could float, and may have been salvaged and transported to Germany.
Recent investigation of production records at Norsk Hydro and analysis of an intact barrel that was salvaged in 2004 revealed that although the barrels in this shipment contained water of pH 14—indicative of the alkaline electrolytic refinement process—they did not contain high concentrations of D2O. Despite the apparent size of the shipment, the total quantity of pure heavy water was quite small, most barrels only containing 0.5–1% pure heavy water. The Germans would have needed a total of about 5 tons of heavy water to get a nuclear reactor running. The manifest clearly indicated that there was only half a ton of heavy water being transported to Germany. Hydro was carrying far too little heavy water for one reactor, let alone the 10 or more tons needed to make enough plutonium for a nuclear weapon. The German nuclear weapons program was much less advanced than the Manhattan project and no reactor constructed in Nazi Germany ever came close to reaching criticality. No amount of heavy water would have changed that.
Israel admitted running the Dimona reactor with Norwegian heavy water sold to it in 1959. Through re-export using Romania and Germany, India probably also used Norwegian heavy water.
Sweden
During the second World War, the company Fosfatbolaget in Ljungaverk, Sweden, produced 2,300 liters per year of heavy water. The heavy water was then sold both to Germany and to the Manhattan project in the USA for the price of 1,40 SEK per gram of heavy water.
Canada
As part of its contribution to the Manhattan Project, Canada built and operated a to per month (design capacity) electrolytic heavy water plant at Trail, British Columbia, which started operation in 1943.
The Atomic Energy of Canada Limited (AECL) design of power reactor requires large quantities of heavy water to act as a neutron moderator and coolant. AECL ordered two heavy water plants, which were built and operated in Atlantic Canada at Glace Bay, Nova Scotia (by Deuterium of Canada Limited) and Port Hawkesbury, Nova Scotia (by General Electric Canada). These plants proved to have significant design, construction and production problems. Consequently, AECL built the Bruce Heavy Water Plant (), which it later sold to Ontario Hydro, to ensure a reliable supply of heavy water for future power plants. The two Nova Scotia plants were shut down in 1985 when their production proved unnecessary.
The Bruce Heavy Water Plant (BHWP) in Ontario was the world's largest heavy water production plant with a capacity of 1600 tonnes per year at its peak (800 tonnes per year per full plant, two fully operational plants at its peak). It used the Girdler sulfide process to produce heavy water, and required 340,000 tonnes of feed water to produce one tonne of heavy water. It was part of a complex that included eight CANDU reactors, which provided heat and power for the heavy water plant. The site was located at Douglas Point/Bruce Nuclear Generating Station near Tiverton, Ontario, on Lake Huron where it had access to the waters of the Great Lakes.
AECL issued the construction contract in 1969 for the first BHWP unit (BHWP A). Commissioning of BHWP A was done by Ontario Hydro from 1971 through 1973, with the plant entering service on June 28, 1973, and design production capacity being achieved in April 1974. Due to the success of BHWP A and the large amount of heavy water that would be required for the large numbers of upcoming planned CANDU nuclear power plant construction projects, Ontario Hydro commissioned three additional heavy water production plants for the Bruce site (BHWP B, C, and D). BHWP B was placed into service in 1979. These first two plants were significantly more efficient than planned, and the number of CANDU construction projects ended up being significantly lower than originally planned, which led to the cancellation of construction on BHWP C & D. In 1984, BHWP A was shut down. By 1993 Ontario Hydro had produced enough heavy water to meet all of its anticipated domestic needs (which were lower than expected due to improved efficiency in the use and recycling of heavy water), so they shut down and demolished half of the capacity of BHWP B. The remaining capacity continued to operate in order to fulfil demand for heavy water exports until it was permanently shut down in 1997, after which the plant was gradually dismantled and the site cleared.
AECL is currently researching other more efficient and environmentally benign processes for creating heavy water. This is relevant for CANDU reactors since heavy water represented about 15–20% of the total capital cost of each CANDU plant in the 1970s and 1980s.
Iran
Since 1996 a plant for production of heavy water was being constructed at Khondab near Arak. On 26 August 2006, Iranian President Ahmadinejad inaugurated the expansion of the country's heavy-water plant. Iran has indicated that the heavy-water production facility will operate in tandem with a 40 MW research reactor that had a scheduled completion date in 2009.
Iran produced deuterated solvents in early 2011 for the first time.
The core of the IR-40 is supposed to be re-designed based on the nuclear agreement in July 2015.
Iran is permitted to store only of heavy water. Iran exports excess production after exceeding their allotment making Iran the world's third largest exporter of heavy water.
Pakistan
The 50 MWth heavy water and natural uranium research reactor at Khushab, in Punjab province, is a central element of Pakistan's program for production of plutonium, deuterium and tritium for advanced compact warheads (i.e. thermonuclear weapons). Pakistan succeeded in acquiring a tritium purification and storage plant and deuterium and tritium precursor materials from two German firms.
Other countries
Romania used to produce heavy water at the now decommissioned Drobeta Girdler sulfide plant for domestic and export purposes.
France operated a small plant during the 1950s and 1960s.
Heavy water exists in elevated concentration in the hypolimnion of Lake Tanganyika in East Africa. It is likely that similar elevated concentrations exist in lakes with similar limnology, but this is only 4% enrichment (24 vs. 28) and surface waters are usually enriched in by evaporation to an even greater extent by faster evaporation.
Applications
Nuclear magnetic resonance
Deuterium oxide is used in nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy when using water as solvent if the nuclide of interest is hydrogen. This is because the signal from light-water (1H2O) solvent molecules interferes with the signal from the molecule of interest dissolved in it. Deuterium has a different magnetic moment and therefore does not contribute to the 1H-NMR signal at the hydrogen-1 resonance frequency.
For some experiments, it may be desirable to identify the labile hydrogens on a compound, that is hydrogens that can easily exchange away as H+ ions on some positions in a molecule. With addition of D2O, sometimes referred to as a D2O shake, labile hydrogens exchange away and are substituted by deuterium (2H) atoms. These positions in the molecule then do not appear in the 1H-NMR spectrum.
Organic chemistry
Deuterium oxide is often used as the source of deuterium for preparing specifically labelled isotopologues of organic compounds. For example, C-H bonds adjacent to ketonic carbonyl groups can be replaced by C-D bonds, using acid or base catalysis. Trimethylsulfoxonium iodide, made from dimethyl sulfoxide and methyl iodide can be recrystallized from deuterium oxide, and then dissociated to regenerate methyl iodide and dimethyl sulfoxide, both deuterium labelled. In cases where specific double labelling by deuterium and tritium is contemplated, the researcher must be aware that deuterium oxide, depending upon age and origin, can contain some tritium.
Infrared spectroscopy
Deuterium oxide is often used instead of water when collecting FTIR spectra of proteins in solution. H2O creates a strong band that overlaps with the amide I region of proteins. The band from D2O is shifted away from the amide I region.
Neutron moderator
Heavy water is used in certain types of nuclear reactors, where it acts as a neutron moderator to slow down neutrons so that they are more likely to react with the fissile uranium-235 than with uranium-238, which captures neutrons without fissioning.
The CANDU reactor uses this design. Light water also acts as a moderator, but because light water absorbs more neutrons than heavy water, reactors using light water for a reactor moderator must use enriched uranium rather than natural uranium, otherwise criticality is impossible. A significant fraction of outdated power reactors, such as the RBMK reactors in the USSR, were constructed using normal water for cooling but graphite as a moderator. However, the danger of graphite in power reactors (graphite fires in part led to the Chernobyl disaster) has led to the discontinuation of graphite in standard reactor designs.
Because they do not require uranium enrichment, heavy water reactors are more of a concern in regards to nuclear proliferation. The breeding and extraction of plutonium can be a relatively rapid and cheap route to building a nuclear weapon, as chemical separation of plutonium from fuel is easier than isotopic separation of U-235 from natural uranium.
Among current and past nuclear weapons states, Israel, India, and North Korea first used plutonium from heavy water moderated reactors burning natural uranium, while China, South Africa and Pakistan first built weapons using highly enriched uranium.
The Nazi nuclear program, operating with more modest means than the contemporary Manhattan Project and hampered by many leading scientists having been driven into exile (many of them ending up working for the Manhattan Project), as well as continuous infighting, wrongly dismissed graphite as a moderator due to not recognizing the effect of impurities. Given that isotope separation of uranium was deemed too big a hurdle, this left heavy water as a potential moderator. Other problems were the ideological aversion regarding what propaganda dismissed as "Jewish physics" and the mistrust between those who had been enthusiastic Nazis even before 1933 and those who were Mitläufer or trying to keep a low profile. In part due to allied sabotage and commando raids on Norsk Hydro (then the world's largest producer of heavy water) as well as the aforementioned infighting, the German nuclear program never managed to assemble enough uranium and heavy water in one place to achieve criticality despite possessing enough of both by the end of the war.
In the U.S., however, the first experimental atomic reactor (1942), as well as the Manhattan Project Hanford production reactors that produced the plutonium for the Trinity test and Fat Man bombs, all used pure carbon (graphite) neutron moderators combined with normal water cooling pipes. They functioned with neither enriched uranium nor heavy water. Russian and British plutonium production also used graphite-moderated reactors.
There is no evidence that civilian heavy water power reactors—such as the CANDU or Atucha designs—have been used to produce military fissile materials. In nations that do not already possess nuclear weapons, nuclear material at these facilities is under IAEA safeguards to discourage any diversion.
Due to its potential for use in nuclear weapons programs, the possession or import/export of large industrial quantities of heavy water are subject to government control in several countries. Suppliers of heavy water and heavy water production technology typically apply IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) administered safeguards and material accounting to heavy water. (In Australia, the Nuclear Non-Proliferation (Safeguards) Act 1987.) In the U.S. and Canada, non-industrial quantities of heavy water (i.e., in the gram to kg range) are routinely available without special license through chemical supply dealers and commercial companies such as the world's former major producer Ontario Hydro.
Neutrino detector
The Sudbury Neutrino Observatory (SNO) in Sudbury, Ontario uses 1,000 tonnes of heavy water on loan from Atomic Energy of Canada Limited. The neutrino detector is underground in a mine, to shield it from muons produced by cosmic rays. SNO was built to answer the question of whether or not electron-type neutrinos produced by fusion in the Sun (the only type the Sun should be producing directly, according to theory) might be able to turn into other types of neutrinos on the way to Earth. SNO detects the Cherenkov radiation in the water from high-energy electrons produced from electron-type neutrinos as they undergo charged current (CC) interactions with neutrons in deuterium, turning them into protons and electrons (however, only the electrons are fast enough to produce Cherenkov radiation for detection).
SNO also detects neutrino electron scattering (ES) events, where the neutrino transfers energy to the electron, which then proceeds to generate Cherenkov radiation distinguishable from that produced by CC events. The first of these two reactions is produced only by electron-type neutrinos, while the second can be caused by all of the neutrino flavors. The use of deuterium is critical to the SNO function, because all three "flavours" (types) of neutrinos may be detected in a third type of reaction as well, neutrino-disintegration, in which a neutrino of any type (electron, muon, or tau) scatters from a deuterium nucleus (deuteron), transferring enough energy to break up the loosely bound deuteron into a free neutron and proton via a neutral current (NC) interaction.
This event is detected when the free neutron is absorbed by 35Cl− present from NaCl deliberately dissolved in the heavy water, causing emission of characteristic capture gamma rays. Thus, in this experiment, heavy water not only provides the transparent medium necessary to produce and visualize Cherenkov radiation, but it also provides deuterium to detect exotic mu type (μ) and tau (τ) neutrinos, as well as a non-absorbent moderator medium to preserve free neutrons from this reaction, until they can be absorbed by an easily detected neutron-activated isotope.
Metabolic rate testing in physiology and biology
Heavy water is employed as part of a mixture with H218O for a common and safe test of mean metabolic rate in humans and animals undergoing their normal activities.
Tritium production
Tritium is the active substance in self-powered lighting and controlled nuclear fusion, its other uses including autoradiography and radioactive labeling. It is also used in nuclear weapon design for boosted fission weapons and initiators. Tritium undergoes beta decay into Helium-3, which is a stable, but rare, isotope of Helium that is itself highly sought after. Some tritium is created in heavy water moderated reactors when deuterium captures a neutron. This reaction has a small cross-section (probability of a single neutron-capture event) and produces only small amounts of tritium, although enough to justify cleaning tritium from the moderator every few years to reduce the environmental risk of tritium escape. Given that Helium-3 is a neutron poison with orders of magnitude higher capture cross section than any component of heavy or tritiated water, its accumulation in a heavy water neutron moderator or target for tritium production must be kept to a minimum.
Producing a lot of tritium in this way would require reactors with very high neutron fluxes, or with a very high proportion of heavy water to nuclear fuel and very low neutron absorption by other reactor material. The tritium would then have to be recovered by isotope separation from a much larger quantity of deuterium, unlike production from lithium-6 (the present method), where only chemical separation is needed.
Deuterium's absorption cross section for thermal neutrons is 0.52 millibarns (5.2 × 10−32 m2; 1 barn = 10−28 m2), while those of oxygen-16 and oxygen-17 are 0.19 and 0.24 millibarns, respectively. 17O makes up 0.038% of natural oxygen, making the overall cross section 0.28 millibarns. Therefore, in D2O with natural oxygen, 21% of neutron captures are on oxygen, rising higher as 17O builds up from neutron capture on 16O. Also, 17O may emit an alpha particle on neutron capture, producing radioactive carbon-14.
See also
Cold fusion
Deuterium-depleted water
Interstellar ice
References
External links
Heavy Water and Heavy Water – Part II at The Periodic Table of Videos (University of Nottingham)
Heavy Water Production, Federation of American Scientists
Heavy Water: A Manufacturer's Guide for the Hydrogen Century
Is "heavy water" dangerous? Straight Dope Staff Report. 9 December 2003
Annotated bibliography for heavy water from the Alsos Digital Library for Nuclear Issues
Ice is supposed to float, but with a little heavy water, you can make cubes that sink
Isotopic Effects of Heavy Water in Biological Objects Oleg Mosin, Ignat Ignatov
J. Chem. Phys. 41, 1964
MOU between HWB and M/s Clearsynth MOU between HWB and M/s Clearsynth, Mumbai for sale of 20 tonnes of Heavy Water in a year for its non-nuclear applications.
Deuterated compounds
Deuterated solvents
Forms of water
Neutron moderators
Nuclear reactor coolants
Oxygen compounds | [
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14285 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History%20of%20science%20and%20technology | History of science and technology | The history of science and technology (HST) is a field of history that examines how the understanding of the natural world (science) and the ability to manipulate it (technology) have changed over the millennia and centuries. This academic discipline also studies the cultural, economic, and political impacts of scientific innovation.
Histories of science were originally written by practicing and retired scientists, starting primarily with William Whewell, as a way to communicate the virtues of science to the public. In the early 1930s, after a famous paper given by the Soviet historian Boris Hessen, was focused into looking at the ways in which scientific practices were allied with the needs and motivations of their context. After World War II, extensive resources were put into teaching and researching the discipline, with the hopes that it would help the public better understand both Science and Technology as they came to play an exceedingly prominent role in the world. In the 1960s, especially in the wake of the work done by Thomas Kuhn, the discipline began to serve a very different function, and began to be used as a way to critically examine the scientific enterprise.
Academic discipline
As an academic field, history of science and technology began with the publication of William Whewell's History of the Inductive Sciences (first published in 1837). A more formal study of the history of science as an independent discipline was launched by George Sarton's publications, Introduction to the History of Science (1927) and the Isis journal (founded in 1912). Sarton exemplified the early 20th-century view of the history of science as the history of great men and great ideas. He shared with many of his contemporaries a Whiggish belief in history as a record of the advances and delays in the march of progress. The history of science was not a recognized subfield of American history in this period, and most of the work was carried out by interested scientists and physicians rather than professional historians. With the work of I. Bernard Cohen at Harvard, the history of science became an established subdiscipline of history after 1945.
The history of mathematics, history of technology, and history of philosophy are distinct areas of research and are covered in other articles. Mathematics is closely related to but distinct from natural science (at least in the modern conception). Technology is likewise closely related to but clearly differs from the search for empirical truth.
History of science is an academic discipline, with an international community of specialists. Main professional organizations for this field include the History of Science Society, the British Society for the History of Science, and the European Society for the History of Science.
Much of the study of the history of science has been devoted to answering questions about what science is, how it functions, and whether it exhibits large-scale patterns and trends. The sociology of science in particular has focused on the ways in which scientists work, looking closely at the ways in which they "produce" and "construct" scientific knowledge. Since the 1960s, a common trend in science studies (the study of the sociology and history of science) has been to emphasize the "human component" of scientific knowledge, and to de-emphasize the view that scientific data are self-evident, value-free, and context-free. The field of Science and Technology Studies, an area that overlaps and often informs historical studies of science, focuses on the social context of science in both contemporary and historical periods.
Humboldtian science refers to the early 19th century approach of combining scientific field work with the age of Romanticism sensitivity, ethics and aesthetic ideals. It helped to install natural history as a separate field, gave base for ecology and was based on the role model of scientist, naturalist and explorer Alexander von Humboldt. The later 19th century positivism asserted that all authentic knowledge allows verification and that all authentic knowledge assumes that the only valid knowledge is scientific.
A major subject of concern and controversy in the philosophy of science has been the nature of theory change in science. Karl Popper argued that scientific knowledge is progressive and cumulative; Thomas Kuhn, that scientific knowledge moves through "paradigm shifts" and is not necessarily progressive; and Paul Feyerabend, that scientific knowledge is not cumulative or progressive and that there can be no demarcation in terms of method between science and any other form of investigation.
The mid 20th century saw a series of studies relying to the role of science in a social context, starting from Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions in 1962. It opened the study of science to new disciplines by suggesting that the evolution of science was in part sociologically determined and that positivism did not explain the actual interactions and strategies of the human participants in science. As Thomas Kuhn put it, the history of science may be seen in more nuanced terms, such as that of competing paradigms or conceptual systems in a wider matrix that includes intellectual, cultural, economic and political themes outside of science. "Partly by selection and partly by distortion, the scientists of earlier ages are implicitly presented as having worked upon the same set of fixed problems and in accordance with the same set of fixed canons that the most recent revolution in scientific theory and method made seem scientific."
Further studies, e.g. Jerome Ravetz 1971 Scientific Knowledge and its Social Problems referred to the role of the scientific community, as a social construct, in accepting or rejecting (objective) scientific knowledge. The Science wars of the 1990s were about the influence of especially French philosophers, which denied the objectivity of science in general or seemed to do so. They described as well differences between the idealized model of a pure science and the actual scientific practice; while scientism, a revival of the positivism approach, saw in precise measurement and rigorous calculation the basis for finally settling enduring metaphysical and moral controversies. However, more recently some of the leading critical theorists have recognized that their postmodern deconstructions have at times been counter-productive, and are providing intellectual ammunition for reactionary interests. Bruno Latour noted that "dangerous extremists are using the very same argument of social construction to destroy hard-won evidence that could save our lives. Was I wrong to participate in the invention of this field known as science studies? Is it enough to say that we did not really mean what we meant?"
Universities with HST programs
Argentina
Buenos Aires Institute of Technology, Argentina, has been offering courses on History of the Technology and the Science.
National Technological University, Argentina, has a complete history program on its offered careers.
Australia
The University of Sydney offers both undergraduate and postgraduate programmes in the History and Philosophy of Science, run by the Unit for the History and Philosophy of Science, within the Science Faculty. Undergraduate coursework can be completed as part of either a Bachelor of Science or a Bachelor of Arts Degree. Undergraduate study can be furthered by completing an additional Honours year. For postgraduate study, the Unit offers both coursework and research based degrees. The two course-work based postgraduate degrees are the Graduate Certificate in Science (HPS) and the Graduate Diploma in Science (HPS). The two research based postgraduate degrees are a Master of Science (MSc) and Doctor of Philosophy (PhD).
Belgium
University of Liège, has a Department called Centre d'histoire des Sciences et Techniques.
Canada
Carleton University Ottawa offer courses in Ancient Science and Technology in its Technology, Society and Environment program.
University of Toronto has a program in History and Philosophy of Science and Technology.
University of King's College in Halifax, Nova Scotia has a History of Science and Technology Program.
France
Nantes University has a dedicated Department called Centre François Viète.
Paris Diderot University (Paris 7) has a Department of History and Philosophy of Science.
A CNRS research center in History and Philosophy of Science SPHERE, affiliated with Paris Diderot University, has a dedicated history of technology section.
Pantheon-Sorbonne University (Paris 1) has a dedicated Institute of History and Philosophy of Science and Technics.
The École Normale Supérieure de Paris has a history of science Department.
Germany
Technische Universität Berlin, has a program in the History of Science and Technology.
Greece
The University of Athens has a Department of Philosophy and History of Science
India
History of science and technology is a well developed field in India. At least three generations of scholars can be identified.
The first generation includes D.D.Kosambi, Dharmpal, Debiprasad Chattopadhyay and Rahman. The second generation mainly consists of Ashis Nandy, Deepak Kumar, Dhruv Raina, S. Irfan Habib, Shiv Visvanathan, Gyan Prakash, Stan Lourdswamy, V.V. Krishna, Itty Abraham, Richard Grove, Kavita Philip, Mira Nanda and Rob Anderson. There is an emergent third generation that includes scholars like Abha Sur and Jahnavi Phalkey.
Departments and Programmes
The National Institute of Science, Technology and Development Studies had a research group active in the 1990s which consolidated social history of science as a field of research in India.
Currently there are several institutes and university departments offering HST programmes.
Jawaharlal Nehru University has an Mphil-PhD program that offer specialisation in Social History of Science. It is at the History of Science and Education group of the Zakir Husain Centre for Educational Studies (ZHCES) in the School of Social Sciences. Renowned Indian science historians Deepak Kumar and Dhruv Raina teach here. Also, *Centre for Studies in Science Policy has an Mphil-PhD program that offers specialization in Science, Technology, and Society along with various allied subdisciplines.
Central University of Gujarat has an MPhil-PhD programme in Studies in Science, Technology & Innovation Policy at the Centre for Studies in Science, Technology & Innovation Policy (CSSTIP), where Social History of Science and Technology in India is a major emphasis for research and teaching.
Banaras Hindu University has programs: one in History of Science and Technology at the Faculty of Science and one in Historical and Comparative Studies of the Sciences and the Humanities at the Faculty of Humanities.
Andhra University has now set History of Science and Technology as a compulsory subject for all the First year B-Tech students.
Israel
Tel Aviv University. The Cohn Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Ideas is a research and graduate teaching institute within the framework of the School of History of Tel Aviv University.
Bar-Ilan University has a graduate program in Science, Technology, and Society.
Japan
Kyoto University has a program in the Philosophy and History of Science.
Tokyo Institute of Technology has a program in the History, Philosophy, and Social Studies of Science and Technology.
The University of Tokyo has a program in the History and Philosophy of Science.
Netherlands
Utrecht University, has two co-operating programs: one in History and Philosophy of Science at the Faculty of Natural Sciences and one in Historical and Comparative Studies of the Sciences and the Humanities at the Faculty of Humanities.
Russia
Spain
University of the Basque Country, offers a master's degree and PhD programme in History and Philosophy of Science and runs since 1952 THEORIA. International Journal for Theory, History and Foundations of Science. The university also sponsors the Basque Museum of the History of Medicine and Science, the only open museum of History of Science of Spain, that in the past offered also PhD courses.
Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, offers a master's degree and PhD programme in HST together with the Universitat de Barcelona.
Universitat de València, offers a master's degree and PhD programme in HST together with the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas.
Sweden
Linköpings universitet, has a Science, Technology, and Society program which includes HST.
Switzerland
University of Bern, has an undergraduate and a graduate program in the History and Philosophy of Science.
Ukraine
State University of Infrastructure and Technologies, has a Department of Philosophy and History of Science and technology.
United Kingdom
University of Kent has a Centre for the History of the Sciences, which offers Masters programmes and undergraduate modules.
University College London's Department of Science and Technology Studies offers undergraduate programme in History and Philosophy of Science, including two BSc single honour degrees (UCAS V550 and UCAS L391), plus both major and minor streams in history, philosophy and social studies of science in UCL's Natural Sciences programme. The department also offers MSc degrees in History and Philosophy of Science and in the study of contemporary Science, Technology, and Society. An MPhil/PhD research degree is offered, too. UCL also contains a Centre for the History of Medicine. This operates a small teaching programme in History of Medicine.
University of Oxford has a one-year graduate course in 'History of Science: Instruments, Museums, Science, Technology' associated with the Museum of the History of Science.
University of Leeds has both undergraduate and graduate programmes in History and Philosophy of Science in the Department of Philosophy.
University of Manchester offers undergraduate modules and postgraduate study in History of Science, Technology and Medicine and is sponsored by the Wellcome Trust.
University of Bristol has a masters and PhD program in the Philosophy and History of Science.
University of Cambridge has an undergraduate course and a large masters and PhD program in the History and Philosophy of Science (including the History of Medicine).
University of Durham has several undergraduate History of Science modules in the Philosophy department, as well as Masters and PhD programs in the discipline.
London Centre for the History of Science, Medicine, and Technology - this Centre closes in 2013. It was formed in 1987 and ran a taught MSc programme, jointly taught by University College London's Department of Science and Technology Studies and Imperial College London. The Masters programme transferred to UCL.
United States
Academic study of the history of science as an independent discipline was launched by George Sarton at Harvard with his book Introduction to the History of Science (1927) and the Isis journal (founded in 1912). Sarton exemplified the early 20th century view of the history of science as the history of great men and great ideas. He shared with many of his contemporaries a Whiggish belief in history as a record of the advances and delays in the march of progress. The History of Science was not a recognized subfield of American history in this period, and most of the work was carried out by interested Scientists and Physicians rather than professional Historians. With the work of I. Bernard Cohen at Harvard, the history of Science became an established subdiscipline of history after 1945.
Arizona State University's Center for Biology and Society offers several paths for MS or PhD students who are interested in issues surrounding the history and philosophy of the science, particularly biological sciences. The strength of the center has much to do with the success of its director Jane Maienschein. With a concentration in Biology and Society one can focus on History and Philosophy of Science, Bioscience Ethics, Policy and Law, or Ecology, Economics, and Ethics of the Environment.
Brown University has a program in Science and Technology Studies and the History of Mathematics. (This program is in the process of being phased out. There are no longer any full-time faculty, and no new students are being admitted to the program.)
California Institute of Technology offers courses in the History and Philosophy of Science to fulfill its core humanities requirements.
Case Western Reserve University has an undergraduate interdisciplinary program in the History and Philosophy of Science and a graduate program in the History of Science, Technology, Environment, and Medicine (STEM).
Cornell University offers a variety of courses within the Science and Technology course. One notable course is called Science and Technology History, taught currently by Professor Peter Dear, which centers upon the development of Science and Technology History from the Newtonian era up to the Einsteinian revolution. This class is one of the longest running classes at Cornell University and is offered by the College of Arts and Sciences and caters to students who want to learn more about the development of modern science.
Georgia Institute of Technology has an undergraduate and graduate program in the History of Technology and Society.
Harvard has a large undergraduate and graduate program in History of Science, and is one of the largest departments currently in the world.
Indiana University offers undergraduate courses and a masters and PhD program in the History and Philosophy of Science.
Johns Hopkins University has an undergraduate and graduate program in the History of Science, Medicine, and Technology.
University of Kings College has a degree program in History of Science and Technology
Lehigh University offers an undergraduate level STS concentration (founded in 1972) and a graduate program with emphasis on the History of Industrial America.
Massachusetts Institute of Technology has a Science, Technology, and Society program which includes HST.
Michigan State University offers an undergraduate major and minor in History, Philosophy, and Sociology of Science through its Lyman Briggs College.
New Jersey Institute of Technology has a Science, Technology, and Society program which includes the History of Science and Technology
Oregon State University offers a Masters and Ph.D. in History of Science through its Department of History.
Princeton University has a program in the History of Science.
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute has a Science and Technology Studies department
Rutgers has a graduate Program in History of Science, Technology, Environment, and Health.
Stanford has a History and Philosophy of Science and Technology program.
Stevens Institute of Technology has an undergraduate and graduate program in the History of Science.
University of California, Berkeley offers a graduate degree in HST through its History program, and maintains a separate sub-department for the field.
University of California, Los Angeles has a relatively large group History of Science and Medicine faculty and graduate students within its History department, and also offers an undergraduate minor in the History of Science.
University of California, Santa Barbara has an interdisciplinary graduate program emphasis in Technology & Society through the Center for Information Technology & Society. The history department is affiliated with the emphasis.
University of Chicago offers a B.A. program in the History, Philosophy, and Social Studies of Science and Medicine as well as M.A. and Ph.D. degrees through its Committee on the Conceptual and Historical Studies of Science. The graduate program "has a special focus on the history of the human sciences" while also "differ[ing] from other programs in the history and philosophy of science in its emphasis on the importance of training in science."
University of Florida has a Graduate Program in 'History of Science, Technology, and Medicine' at the University of Florida provides undergraduate and graduate degrees.
University of Minnesota has a Ph.D. program in History of Science, Technology, and Medicine as well as undergraduate courses in these fields. The Minnesota model "integrates" historians of science, technology, and medicine within the various science departments they study, each holding a joint appointment.
University of Oklahoma has an undergraduate minor and a graduate degree program in History of Science.
University of Pennsylvania has a program in History and Sociology of Science.
University of Pittsburgh's Department of History and Philosophy of Science offers graduate and undergraduate courses.
University of Puget Sound has a Science, Technology, and Society program, which includes the history of Science and Technology.
University of Wisconsin–Madison has one of the largest programs in History of Science, Medicine and Technology, with particular strength in Medical History, History of Biology, History of Science and Religion, and Environmental History. This program was the first to exist as an independent academic department. It offers M.A. and Ph.D. degrees as well as an undergraduate major.
Wesleyan University has a Science in Society program.
Yale University has a program in the History of Science and Medicine.
Prominent historians of the field
Wiebe Bijker
Peter J. Bowler
Janet Browne
Stephen G. Brush
James Burke
Edwin Arthur Burtt (1892–1989)
Johann Beckmann (1739–1811)
Jim Bennett
Herbert Butterfield (1900–1979)
Martin Campbell-Kelly
Georges Canguilhem (1904–1995)
Allan Chapman
I. Bernard Cohen (1914–2003)
A. C. Crombie (1915–1996)
E. J. Dijksterhuis (1892–1965)
Pierre Duhem (1861–1916)
A. Hunter Dupree (1921–2019)
George Dyson
Jacques Ellul (1912–1994)
Eugene S. Ferguson (1916–2004)
Peter Galison
Sigfried Giedion
Charles Coulston Gillispie
Robert Gunther (1869–1940)
Paul Forman
Donna Haraway
Peter Harrison
Ahmad Y Hassan
John L. Heilbron
Boris Hessen
Reijer Hooykaas
David A. Hounshell
Thomas P. Hughes
Evelyn Fox Keller
Daniel Kevles
Alexandre Koyré (1892–1964)
Melvin Kranzberg
Thomas Kuhn
Deepak Kumar
Gilbert LaFreniere
Bruno Latour
David C. Lindberg
G. E. R. Lloyd
Jane Maienschein
Anneliese Maier
Leo Marx
Lewis Mumford (1895–1990)
John E. Murdoch (1927-2010)
Otto Neugebauer (1899–1990)
William R. Newman
David Noble
Ronald Numbers
David E. Nye
Abraham Pais (1918–2000)
Trevor Pinch
Theodore Porter
Lawrence M. Principe
Raúl Rojas
Michael Ruse
A. I. Sabra
Jan Sapp
George Sarton (1884–1956)
Simon Schaffer
Howard Segal (1948–2020)
Steven Shapin
Wolfgang Schivelbusch
Charles Singer (1876–1960)
Merritt Roe Smith
Stephen Snobelen
M. Norton Wise
Frances A. Yates (1899–1981)
Journals and periodicals
Annals of Science
The British Journal for the History of Science
Centaurus
Dynamis
History and Technology (magazine)
History of Science and Technology (journal)
History of Technology (book series)
Historical Studies in the Physical and Biological Sciences (HSPS)
Historical Studies in the Natural Sciences (HSNS)
ICON
IEEE Annals of the History of Computing
Isis
Journal of the History of Biology
Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences
Notes and Records of the Royal Society
Osiris
Science & Technology Studies
Science in Context
Science, Technology, & Human Values
Social History of Medicine'Social Studies of ScienceTechnology and CultureTransactions of the Newcomen SocietyHistoria MathematicaBulletin of the Scientific Instrument SocietySee also
History of science
History of technology
Ancient Egyptian technology
History of science and technology in China
History of science and technology in Japan
History of science and technology in France
History of science and technology in the Indian subcontinent
Mesopotamian science
Productivity improving technologies (historical)
Science and technology in Argentina
Science and technology in Canada
Science and technology in Iran
Science and technology in the United States
Science in the medieval Islamic world
Science tourism
Technology
Technological and industrial history of the United States
Timeline of science and engineering in the Islamic world
Professional societies
The British Society for the History of Science (BSHS)
History of Science Society (HSS)
Newcomen Society
Society for the History of Technology (SHOT)
Society for the Social Studies of Science (4S)
Scientific Instrument Society
References
Bibliography
Historiography of science
H. Floris Cohen, The Scientific Revolution: A Historiographical Inquiry, University of Chicago Press 1994 - Discussion on the origins of modern science has been going on for more than two hundred years. Cohen provides an excellent overview.
Ernst Mayr, The Growth of Biological Thought, Belknap Press 1985
Michel Serres,(ed.), A History of Scientific Thought, Blackwell Publishers 1995Companion to Science in the Twentieth Century, John Krige (Editor), Dominique Pestre (Editor), Taylor & Francis 2003, 941pp
The Cambridge History of Science, Cambridge University Press
Volume 4, Eighteenth-Century Science, 2003
Volume 5, The Modern Physical and Mathematical Sciences, 2002
History of science as a discipline
J. A. Bennett, 'Museums and the Establishment of the History of Science at Oxford and Cambridge', British Journal for the History of Science 30, 1997, 29–46
Dietrich von Engelhardt, Historisches Bewußtsein in der Naturwissenschaft : von der Aufklärung bis zum Positivismus'', Freiburg [u.a.] : Alber, 1979
A.-K. Mayer, 'Setting up a Discipline: Conflicting Agendas of the Cambridge History of Science Committee, 1936–1950.' Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, 31, 2000
Science and technology
Technological change
Technology
Technology systems | [
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14286 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holographic%20principle | Holographic principle | The holographic principle is a tenet of string theories and a supposed property of quantum gravity that states that the description of a volume of space can be thought of as encoded on a lower-dimensional boundary to the region—such as a light-like boundary like a gravitational horizon. First proposed by Gerard 't Hooft, it was given a precise string-theory interpretation by Leonard Susskind, who combined his ideas with previous ones of 't Hooft and Charles Thorn. Leonard Susskind said, “The three-dimensional world of ordinary experience––the universe filled with galaxies, stars, planets, houses, boulders, and people––is a hologram, an image of reality cited on a distant two-dimensional (2D) surface." As pointed out by Raphael Bousso, Thorn observed in 1978 that string theory admits a lower-dimensional description in which gravity emerges from it in what would now be called a holographic way. The prime example of holography is the AdS/CFT correspondence.
The holographic principle was inspired by black hole thermodynamics, which conjectures that the maximal entropy in any region scales with the radius squared, and not cubed as might be expected. In the case of a black hole, the insight was that the informational content of all the objects that have fallen into the hole might be entirely contained in surface fluctuations of the event horizon. The holographic principle resolves the black hole information paradox within the framework of string theory.
However, there exist classical solutions to the Einstein equations that allow values of the entropy larger than those allowed by an area law, hence in principle larger than those of a black hole. These are the so-called "Wheeler's bags of gold". The existence of such solutions conflicts with the holographic interpretation, and their effects in a quantum theory of gravity including the holographic principle are not fully understood yet.
Sabine Hossenfelder has demonstrated that the holographic principle is compatible with Loop Quantum Gravity as well.
The AdS/CFT correspondence
The anti-de Sitter/conformal field theory correspondence, sometimes called Maldacena duality or gauge/gravity duality, is a conjectured relationship between two kinds of physical theories. On one side are anti-de Sitter spaces (AdS) which are used in theories of quantum gravity, formulated in terms of string theory or M-theory. On the other side of the correspondence are conformal field theories (CFT) which are quantum field theories, including theories similar to the Yang–Mills theories that describe elementary particles.
The duality represents a major advance in our understanding of string theory and quantum gravity. This is because it provides a non-perturbative formulation of string theory with certain boundary conditions and because it is the most successful realization of the holographic principle.
It also provides a powerful toolkit for studying strongly coupled quantum field theories. Much of the usefulness of the duality results from the fact that it is a strong-weak duality: when the fields of the quantum field theory are strongly interacting, the ones in the gravitational theory are weakly interacting and thus more mathematically tractable. This fact has been used to study many aspects of nuclear and condensed matter physics by translating problems in those subjects into more mathematically tractable problems in string theory.
The AdS/CFT correspondence was first proposed by Juan Maldacena in late 1997. Important aspects of the correspondence were elaborated in articles by Steven Gubser, Igor Klebanov, and Alexander Markovich Polyakov, and by Edward Witten. By 2015, Maldacena's article had over 10,000 citations, becoming the most highly cited article in the field of high energy physics.
Black hole entropy
An object with relatively high entropy is microscopically random, like a hot gas. A known configuration of classical fields has zero entropy: there is nothing random about electric and magnetic fields, or gravitational waves. Since black holes are exact solutions of Einstein's equations, they were thought not to have any entropy either.
But Jacob Bekenstein noted that this leads to a violation of the second law of thermodynamics. If one throws a hot gas with entropy into a black hole, once it crosses the event horizon, the entropy would disappear. The random properties of the gas would no longer be seen once the black hole had absorbed the gas and settled down. One way of salvaging the second law is if black holes are in fact random objects with an entropy that increases by an amount greater than the entropy of the consumed gas.
Bekenstein assumed that black holes are maximum entropy objects—that they have more entropy than anything else in the same volume. In a sphere of radius R, the entropy in a relativistic gas increases as the energy increases. The only known limit is gravitational; when there is too much energy the gas collapses into a black hole. Bekenstein used this to put an upper bound on the entropy in a region of space, and the bound was proportional to the area of the region. He concluded that the black hole entropy is directly proportional to the area of the event horizon. Gravitational time dilation causes time, from the perspective of a remote observer, to stop at the event horizon. Due to the natural limit on maximum speed of motion, this prevents falling objects from crossing the event horizon no matter how close they get to it. Since any change in quantum state requires time to flow, all objects and their quantum information state stay imprinted on the event horizon. Bekenstein concluded that from the perspective of any remote observer, the black hole entropy is directly proportional to the area of the event horizon.
Stephen Hawking had shown earlier that the total horizon area of a collection of black holes always increases with time. The horizon is a boundary defined by light-like geodesics; it is those light rays that are just barely unable to escape. If neighboring geodesics start moving toward each other they eventually collide, at which point their extension is inside the black hole. So the geodesics are always moving apart, and the number of geodesics which generate the boundary, the area of the horizon, always increases. Hawking's result was called the second law of black hole thermodynamics, by analogy with the law of entropy increase, but at first, he did not take the analogy too seriously.
Hawking knew that if the horizon area were an actual entropy, black holes would have to radiate. When heat is added to a thermal system, the change in entropy is the increase in mass-energy divided by temperature:
(Here the term δM c2 is substituted for the thermal energy added to the system, generally by non-integrable random processes, in contrast to dS, which is a function of a few "state variables" only, i.e. in conventional thermodynamics only of the Kelvin temperature T and a few additional state variables as, e.g., the pressure.)
If black holes have a finite entropy, they should also have a finite temperature. In particular, they would come to equilibrium with a thermal gas of photons. This means that black holes would not only absorb photons, but they would also have to emit them in the right amount to maintain detailed balance.
Time-independent solutions to field equations do not emit radiation, because a time-independent background conserves energy. Based on this principle, Hawking set out to show that black holes do not radiate. But, to his surprise, a careful analysis convinced him that they do, and in just the right way to come to equilibrium with a gas at a finite temperature. Hawking's calculation fixed the constant of proportionality at 1/4; the entropy of a black hole is one quarter its horizon area in Planck units.
The entropy is proportional to the logarithm of the number of microstates, the enumerated ways a system can be configured microscopically while leaving the macroscopic description unchanged. Black hole entropy is deeply puzzling – it says that the logarithm of the number of states of a black hole is proportional to the area of the horizon, not the volume in the interior.
Later, Raphael Bousso came up with a covariant version of the bound based upon null sheets.
Black hole information paradox
Hawking's calculation suggested that the radiation which black holes emit is not related in any way to the matter that they absorb. The outgoing light rays start exactly at the edge of the black hole and spend a long time near the horizon, while the infalling matter only reaches the horizon much later. The infalling and outgoing mass/energy interact only when they cross. It is implausible that the outgoing state would be completely determined by some tiny residual scattering.
Hawking interpreted this to mean that when black holes absorb some photons in a pure state described by a wave function, they re-emit new photons in a thermal mixed state described by a density matrix. This would mean that quantum mechanics would have to be modified because, in quantum mechanics, states which are superpositions with probability amplitudes never become states which are probabilistic mixtures of different possibilities.
Troubled by this paradox, Gerard 't Hooft analyzed the emission of Hawking radiation in more detail. He noted that when Hawking radiation escapes, there is a way in which incoming particles can modify the outgoing particles. Their gravitational field would deform the horizon of the black hole, and the deformed horizon could produce different outgoing particles than the undeformed horizon. When a particle falls into a black hole, it is boosted relative to an outside observer, and its gravitational field assumes a universal form. 't Hooft showed that this field makes a logarithmic tent-pole shaped bump on the horizon of a black hole, and like a shadow, the bump is an alternative description of the particle's location and mass. For a four-dimensional spherical uncharged black hole, the deformation of the horizon is similar to the type of deformation which describes the emission and absorption of particles on a string-theory world sheet. Since the deformations on the surface are the only imprint of the incoming particle, and since these deformations would have to completely determine the outgoing particles, 't Hooft believed that the correct description of the black hole would be by some form of string theory.
This idea was made more precise by Leonard Susskind, who had also been developing holography, largely independently. Susskind argued that the oscillation of the horizon of a black hole is a complete description of both the infalling and outgoing matter, because the world-sheet theory of string theory was just such a holographic description. While short strings have zero entropy, he could identify long highly excited string states with ordinary black holes. This was a deep advance because it revealed that strings have a classical interpretation in terms of black holes.
This work showed that the black hole information paradox is resolved when quantum gravity is described in an unusual string-theoretic way assuming the string-theoretical description is complete, unambiguous and non-redundant. The space-time in quantum gravity would emerge as an effective description of the theory of oscillations of a lower-dimensional black-hole horizon, and suggest that any black hole with appropriate properties, not just strings, would serve as a basis for a description of string theory.
In 1995, Susskind, along with collaborators Tom Banks, Willy Fischler, and Stephen Shenker, presented a formulation of the new M-theory using a holographic description in terms of charged point black holes, the D0 branes of type IIA string theory. The matrix theory they proposed was first suggested as a description of two branes in 11-dimensional supergravity by Bernard de Wit, Jens Hoppe, and Hermann Nicolai. The later authors reinterpreted the same matrix models as a description of the dynamics of point black holes in particular limits. Holography allowed them to conclude that the dynamics of these black holes give a complete non-perturbative formulation of M-theory. In 1997, Juan Maldacena gave the first holographic descriptions of a higher-dimensional object, the 3+1-dimensional type IIB membrane, which resolved a long-standing problem of finding a string description which describes a gauge theory. These developments simultaneously explained how string theory is related to some forms of supersymmetric quantum field theories.
Limit on information density
Information content is defined as the logarithm of the reciprocal of the probability that a system is in a specific microstate, and the information entropy of a system is the expected value of the system's information content. This definition of entropy is equivalent to the standard Gibbs entropy used in classical physics. Applying this definition to a physical system leads to the conclusion that, for a given energy in a given volume, there is an upper limit to the density of information (the Bekenstein bound) about the whereabouts of all the particles which compose matter in that volume. In particular, a given volume has an upper limit of information it can contain, at which it will collapse into a black hole.
This suggests that matter itself cannot be subdivided infinitely many times and there must be an ultimate level of fundamental particles. As the degrees of freedom of a particle are the product of all the degrees of freedom of its sub-particles, were a particle to have infinite subdivisions into lower-level particles, the degrees of freedom of the original particle would be infinite, violating the maximal limit of entropy density. The holographic principle thus implies that the subdivisions must stop at some level.
The most rigorous realization of the holographic principle is the AdS/CFT correspondence by Juan Maldacena. However, J.D. Brown and Marc Henneaux had rigorously proved already in 1986, that the asymptotic symmetry of 2+1 dimensional gravity gives rise to a Virasoro algebra, whose corresponding quantum theory is a 2-dimensional conformal field theory.
High-level summary
The physical universe is widely seen to be composed of "matter" and "energy". In his 2003 article published in Scientific American magazine, Jacob Bekenstein speculatively summarized a current trend started by John Archibald Wheeler, which suggests scientists may "regard the physical world as made of information, with energy and matter as incidentals". Bekenstein asks "Could we, as William Blake memorably penned, 'see a world in a grain of sand', or is that idea no more than 'poetic license'?", referring to the holographic principle.
Unexpected connection
Bekenstein's topical overview "A Tale of Two Entropies" describes potentially profound implications of Wheeler's trend, in part by noting a previously unexpected connection between the world of information theory and classical physics. This connection was first described shortly after the seminal 1948 papers of American applied mathematician Claude E. Shannon introduced today's most widely used measure of information content, now known as Shannon entropy. As an objective measure of the quantity of information, Shannon entropy has been enormously useful, as the design of all modern communications and data storage devices, from cellular phones to modems to hard disk drives and DVDs, rely on Shannon entropy.
In thermodynamics (the branch of physics dealing with heat), entropy is popularly described as a measure of the "disorder" in a physical system of matter and energy. In 1877, Austrian physicist Ludwig Boltzmann described it more precisely in terms of the number of distinct microscopic states that the particles composing a macroscopic "chunk" of matter could be in, while still looking like the same macroscopic "chunk". As an example, for the air in a room, its thermodynamic entropy would equal the logarithm of the count of all the ways that the individual gas molecules could be distributed in the room, and all the ways they could be moving.
Energy, matter, and information equivalence
Shannon's efforts to find a way to quantify the information contained in, for example, a telegraph message, led him unexpectedly to a formula with the same form as Boltzmann's. In an article in the August 2003 issue of Scientific American titled "Information in the Holographic Universe", Bekenstein summarizes that "Thermodynamic entropy and Shannon entropy are conceptually equivalent: the number of arrangements that are counted by Boltzmann entropy reflects the amount of Shannon information one would need to implement any particular arrangement" of matter and energy. The only salient difference between the thermodynamic entropy of physics and Shannon's entropy of information is in the units of measure; the former is expressed in units of energy divided by temperature, the latter in essentially dimensionless "bits" of information.
The holographic principle states that the entropy of ordinary mass (not just black holes) is also proportional to surface area and not volume; that volume itself is illusory and the universe is really a hologram which is isomorphic to the information "inscribed" on the surface of its boundary.
Experimental tests
The Fermilab physicist Craig Hogan claims that the holographic principle would imply quantum fluctuations in spatial position that would lead to apparent background noise or "holographic noise" measurable at gravitational wave detectors, in particular GEO 600. However these claims have not been widely accepted, or cited, among quantum gravity researchers and appear to be in direct conflict with string theory calculations.
Analyses in 2011 of measurements of gamma ray burst GRB 041219A in 2004 by the INTEGRAL space observatory launched in 2002 by the European Space Agency shows that Craig Hogan's noise is absent down to a scale of 10−48 meters, as opposed to the scale of 10−35 meters predicted by Hogan, and the scale of 10−16 meters found in measurements of the GEO 600 instrument. Research continues at Fermilab under Hogan as of 2013.
Jacob Bekenstein also claimed to have found a way to test the holographic principle with a tabletop photon experiment.
See also
Bekenstein bound
Beyond black holes
Bousso's holographic bound
Brane cosmology
Digital physics
Entropic gravity
Implicate and explicate order
Margolus–Levitin theorem
Physical cosmology
Quantum foam
Notes
References
Citations
Sources
. 't Hooft's original paper.
External links
Alfonso V. Ramallo: Introduction to the AdS/CFT correspondence, , pedagogical lecture. For the holographic principle: see especially Fig. 1.
UC Berkeley's Raphael Bousso gives an introductory lecture on the holographic principle - Video.
Scientific American article on holographic principle by Jacob Bekenstein
Theoretical physics
Black holes
Quantum information science
Holography | [
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14288 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamilton%2C%20Ontario | Hamilton, Ontario | Hamilton is a port city in the Canadian province of Ontario. Hamilton has a population of 536,917, and its census metropolitan area, which includes Burlington and Grimsby, has a population of 767,000. The city is southwest of Toronto in the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area (GTHA).
Prior to European settlement, the land on which Hamilton stands was inhabited by the Neutral and Mississauga nations. Conceived by George Hamilton when he purchased the Durand farm shortly after the War of 1812, the town of Hamilton became the centre of a densely populated and industrialized region at the west end of Lake Ontario known as the Golden Horseshoe. On January 1, 2001, the current boundaries of Hamilton were created through the amalgamation of the original city with other municipalities of the Regional Municipality of Hamilton–Wentworth. Residents of the city are known as Hamiltonians.
Traditionally, the local economy has been led by the steel and heavy manufacturing industries. Within the last decade, there has been a shift towards the service sector, like health and sciences. Hamilton is home to the Royal Botanical Gardens, the Canadian Warplane Heritage Museum, the Bruce Trail, McMaster University, Redeemer University College and Mohawk College. McMaster University is ranked 4th in Canada and 69th in the world by Times Higher Education Rankings 2021.
History
In pre-colonial times, the Neutral First Nation used much of the land. They were gradually driven out by the Five (later Six) Nations (Iroquois) who were allied with the British against the Huron and their French allies. The hamlet of Westover was built in an area that was originally a Seneca Iroquois tribal village, Tinawatawa, which was first visited by the French in September 1699.
After the American Revolutionary War, about 10,000 United Empire Loyalists left the United States to settle in Upper Canada, now southern Ontario. In 1792, the Crown purchased the land on which Hamilton now stands from the Mississaugas in Treaty 3, also known as the Between the Lakes Purchase. The Crown granted the Loyalists lands from this purchase to encourage settlement in the region. These new settlers were soon followed by many more Americans, attracted by the availability of inexpensive, arable land. At the same time, large numbers of Iroquois who had allied with Britain arrived from the United States and were settled on reserves west of Lake Ontario as compensation for lands they lost in what was now the United States. During the War of 1812, British regulars and Canadian militia defeated invading American troops at the Battle of Stoney Creek, fought in what is now a park in eastern Hamilton.
The town of Hamilton was conceived by George Hamilton (a son of a Queenston entrepreneur and founder, Robert Hamilton), when he purchased farm holdings of James Durand, the local Member of the Legislative Assembly of Upper Canada, shortly after the War of 1812. Nathaniel Hughson, a property owner to the north, cooperated with George Hamilton to prepare a proposal for a courthouse and jail on Hamilton's property. Hamilton offered the land to the crown for the future site. Durand was empowered by Hughson and Hamilton to sell property holdings which later became the site of the town. As he had been instructed, Durand circulated the offers at York during a session of the Legislative Assembly, which established a new Gore District, of which the Hamilton townsite was a member.
Initially, this town was not the most important centre of the Gore District. An early indication of Hamilton's sudden prosperity occurred in 1816, when it was chosen over Ancaster, Ontario to be the new Gore District's administrative centre. Another dramatic economic turnabout for Hamilton occurred in 1832 when a canal was finally cut through the outer sand bar that enabled Hamilton to become a major port. A permanent jail was not constructed until 1832, when a cut-stone design was completed on Prince's Square, one of the two squares created in 1816. Subsequently, the first police board and the town limits were defined by statute on February 13, 1833. Official city status was achieved on June 9, 1846, by an act of Parliament of the Province of Canada.
By 1845, the population was 6,475. In 1846, there were useful roads to many communities as well as stagecoaches and steamboats to Toronto, Queenston, and Niagara. Eleven cargo schooners were owned in Hamilton. Eleven churches were in operation. A reading room provided access to newspapers from other cities and from England and the U.S. In addition to stores of all types, four banks, tradesmen of various types, and sixty-five taverns, industry in the community included three breweries, ten importers of dry goods and groceries, five importers of hardware, two tanneries, three coachmakers, and a marble and a stone works.
As the city grew, several prominent buildings were constructed in the late 19th century, including the Grand Lodge of Canada in 1855, West Flamboro Methodist Church in 1879 (later purchased by Dufferin Masonic Lodge in 1893), a public library in 1890, and the Right House department store in 1893. The first commercial telephone service in Canada, the first telephone exchange in the British Empire, and the second telephone exchange in all of North America were each established in the city between 1877–78. The city had several interurban electric street railways and two inclines, all powered by the Cataract Power Co.
Though suffering through the Hamilton Street Railway strike of 1906, with industrial businesses expanding, Hamilton's population doubled between 1900 and 1914. Two steel manufacturing companies, Stelco and Dofasco, were formed in 1910 and 1912, respectively. Procter & Gamble and the Beech-Nut Packing Company opened manufacturing plants in 1914 and 1922, respectively, their first outside the US. Population and economic growth continued until the 1960s. In 1929 the city's first high-rise building, the Pigott Building, was constructed; in 1930 McMaster University moved from Toronto to Hamilton, in 1934 the second Canadian Tire store in Canada opened here; in 1940 the airport was completed; and in 1948, the Studebaker assembly line was constructed. Infrastructure and retail development continued, with the Burlington Bay James N. Allan Skyway opening in 1958, and the first Tim Hortons store in 1964.
Since then, many of the large industries have moved or shut down operations in a restructuring that also affected the United States. In 1997, there was a devastating fire at the Plastimet plastics plant. Approximately 300 firefighters battled the blaze, and many sustained severe chemical burns and inhaled volatile organic compounds when at least 400 tonnes of PVC plastic were consumed in the fire.
On January 1, 2001, the new city of Hamilton was formed from the amalgamation of Hamilton and its five neighbouring municipalities: Ancaster, Dundas, Flamborough, Glanbrook, and Stoney Creek. Before amalgamation, the "old" City of Hamilton had 331,121 residents and was divided into 100 neighbourhoods. The former region of Hamilton-Wentworth had a population of 490,268. The amalgamation created a single-tier municipal government ending subsidization of its suburbs. The new amalgamated city had 519,949 people in more than 100 neighbourhoods, and surrounding communities.
The city was impacted by a widespread blackout in 2003 and a tornado in 2005. In 2007, the Red Hill Valley Parkway opened after extensive delays. The Stelco mills were idled in 2010 and permanently closed in 2013. This closure capped a significant shift in the city's economy: the percentage of the population employed in manufacturing declined from 22 to 12 percent between 2003 and 2013.
Geography
Hamilton is in Southern Ontario on the western end of the Niagara Peninsula and wraps around the westernmost part of Lake Ontario; most of the city, including the downtown section, is on the south shore. Hamilton is in the geographic centre of the Golden Horseshoe. Its major physical features are Hamilton Harbour, marking the northern limit of the city, and the Niagara Escarpment running through the middle of the city across its entire breadth, bisecting the city into "upper" and "lower" parts. The maximum high point is 250m (820') above the level of Lake Ontario.
According to all records from local historians, this district was called Attiwandaronia by the native Neutral people. The first Indigenous peoples to settle in the Hamilton area called the bay Macassa, meaning "beautiful waters". Hamilton is one of 11 cities showcased in the book, Green City: People, Nature & Urban Places by Quebec author Mary Soderstrom, which examines the city as an example of an industrial powerhouse co-existing with nature. Soderstrom credits Thomas McQuesten and family in the 1930s who "became champions of parks, greenspace and roads" in Hamilton.
Hamilton Harbour is a natural harbour with a large sandbar called the Beachstrip. This sandbar was deposited during a period of higher lake levels during the last ice age, and extends southeast through the central lower city to the escarpment. Hamilton's deep sea port is accessed by ship canal through the beach strip into the harbour and is traversed by two bridges, the QEW's Burlington Bay James N. Allan Skyway and the lower Canal Lift Bridge.
Between 1788 and 1793, the townships at the Head-of-the-Lake were surveyed and named. The area was first known as The Head-of-the-Lake for its location at the western end of Lake Ontario. John Ryckman, born in Barton township (where present day downtown Hamilton is), described the area in 1803 as he remembered it: "The city in 1803 was all forest. The shores of the bay were difficult to reach or see because they were hidden by a thick, almost impenetrable mass of trees and undergrowth".
George Hamilton, a settler and local politician, established a town site in the northern portion of Barton Township in 1815. He kept several east–west roads which were originally Indian trails, but the north–south streets were on a regular grid pattern. Streets were designated "East" or "West" if they crossed James Street or Highway 6. Streets were designated "North" or "South" if they crossed King Street or Highway 8. The townsite's design, likely conceived in 1816, was commonplace. George Hamilton employed a grid street pattern used in most towns in Upper Canada and throughout the American frontier. The eighty original lots had frontages of fifty feet; each lot faced a broad street and backed onto a twelve-foot lane. It took at least a decade to sell all the original lots, but the construction of the Burlington Canal in 1823, and a new court-house in 1827 encouraged Hamilton to add more blocks around 1828–9. At this time he included a market square in an effort to draw commercial activity on to his lands, but the town's natural growth occurred to the north of Hamilton's plot.
The Hamilton Conservation Authority owns, leases or manages about of land with the city operating of parkland at 310 locations. Many of the parks are along the Niagara Escarpment, which runs from Tobermory at the tip of the Bruce Peninsula in the north, to Queenston at the Niagara River in the south, and provides views of the cities and towns at Lake Ontario's western end. The hiking path Bruce Trail runs the length of the escarpment. Hamilton is home to more than 100 waterfalls and cascades, most of which are on or near the Bruce Trail as it winds through the Niagara Escarpment. Visitors can often be seen swimming in the waterfalls during the summertime, although it is strongly recommended to stay away from the water: much of the watershed of the Chedoke and Red Hill creeks originates in storm sewers running beneath neighbourhoods atop the Niagara escarpment, and water quality in many of Hamilton's waterfalls is seriously degraded. High e. coli counts are regularly observed through testing by McMaster University near many of Hamilton's waterfalls, sometimes exceeding the provincial limits for recreational water use by as much as 400 times. The storm sewers in upstream neighbourhoods carry polluted runoff from streets and parking lots, as well as occasional raw sewage from sanitary lines that were improperly connected to the storm sewers instead of the separate sanitary sewer system. Notably, in March 2020, it was revealed that as much as 24 billion litres of untreated wastewater has been leaking into the Chedoke creek and Cootes' Paradise areas since at least 2014 due to insufficiencies in the city's sewerage and storm water management systems.
Climate
Hamilton's climate is humid-continental, characterized by changeable weather patterns. In the Köppen classification, Hamilton it is on the Dfb/Dfa border found in southern Ontario because the average temperature in July is . However, its climate is moderate compared with most of Canada. Hamilton's location on an embayment at the southwestern corner of Lake Ontario with an escarpment that divides the city's upper and lower parts results in noticeable disparities in weather over short distances. This is also the case with pollution levels, which depending on localized winds patterns or low clouds can be high in certain areas mostly originating from the city's steel industry mixed with regional vehicle pollution. With a July average of exactly , the lower city is in a pocket of the Dfa climate zone found at the southwestern end of Lake Ontario (between Hamilton and Toronto and eastward into the Niagara Peninsula), but this does not always include the immediate lakeshore cooled off by lake water incluence, while the upper reaches of the city fall into the Dfb climate zone.
The airport's open, rural location and higher altitude results in lower temperatures, generally windier conditions, and higher snowfall amounts than lower, built-up areas of the city. The highest temperature ever recorded in Hamilton was 41.1 °C (106 °F) on July 14, 1868. The coldest temperature ever recorded was -30.6 °C (-23 °F) on January 25, 1884.
Economy
Manufacturing is important to Ontario's economy, and the Toronto–Hamilton region is Canada's most industrialized area. The area from Oshawa, Ontario around the west end of Lake Ontario to Niagara Falls, with Hamilton at its centre, is known as the Golden Horseshoe and had a population of approximately 8.1 million people in 2006.
With sixty percent of Canada's steel produced in Hamilton by Stelco and Dofasco, the city has become known as the Steel Capital of Canada. After nearly declaring bankruptcy, Stelco returned to profitability in 2004. On August 26, 2007 United States Steel Corporation acquired Stelco for C$38.50 in cash per share, owning more than 76 percent of Stelco's outstanding shares. On September 17, 2014, US Steel Canada announced it was applying for bankruptcy protection and it would close its Hamilton operations.
A stand-alone subsidiary of Arcelor Mittal, the world's largest steel producer, Dofasco produces products for the automotive, construction, energy, manufacturing, pipe and tube, appliance, packaging, and steel distribution industries. It has approximately 7,300 employees at its Hamilton plant, and the four million tons of steel it produces each year is about 30% of Canada's flat-rolled sheet steel shipments. Dofasco was North America's most profitable steel producer in 1999, the most profitable in Canada in 2000, and a long-time member of the Dow Jones Sustainability World Index. Ordered by the U.S. Department of Justice to divest itself of the Canadian company, Arcelor Mittal has been allowed to retain Dofasco provided it sells several of its American assets.
Demographics
As per the 2016 Canadian census, 24.69% of the city's population was not born in Canada. Hamilton is home to 26,330 immigrants who arrived in Canada between 2001 and 2010 and 13,150 immigrants who arrived between 2011 and 2016. In February 2014, the city's council voted to declare Hamilton a sanctuary city, offering municipal services to undocumented immigrants at risk of deportation.
Hamilton maintains significant Italian, English, Scottish, German and Irish ancestry. 130,705 Hamiltonians claim English heritage, while 98,765 indicate their ancestors arrived from Scotland, 87,825 from Ireland, 62,335 from Italy, 50,400 from Germany. The top countries of birth for the newcomers living in Hamilton in the 1990s were: former Yugoslavia, Poland, India, China, the Philippines, and Iraq.
Hamilton also has a notable French community for which provincial services are offered in French. In Ontario, urban centres where there are at least 5000 Francophones are designated areas where bilingual provincial services have to be offered. As per the 2016 census, the Francophone community maintains a population of 6,760, while 30,530 residents, or 5.8% of the city's population, have knowledge of both official languages. The Franco-Ontarian community of Hamilton boasts two school boards, the public Conseil scolaire Viamonde and the Catholic Conseil scolaire catholique MonAvenir, which operate five schools (2 secondary and 3 elementary). Additionally, the city maintains a Francophone community health centre that is part of the LHIN (Centre de santé communautaire Hamilton/Niagara), a cultural centre (Centre français Hamilton), three daycare centres, a provincially funded employment centre (Options Emploi), a community college site (Collège Boréal) and a community organization that supports the development of the francophone community in Hamilton (ACFO Régionale Hamilton).
Children aged 14 years and under accounted for 16.23% of the city's population, a decline of 1.57% from the 2011 census. Hamiltonians aged 65 years and older constituted 17.3% of the population, an increase of 2.4% since 2011. The city's average age is 41.3 years. 54.9% of Hamiltonians are married or in a common-law relationship, while 6.4% of city residents are divorced. Same-sex couples (married or in common-law relationships) constitute 0.8% (2,710 individuals) of the partnered population in Hamilton.
The most described religion in Hamilton is Christianity although other religions brought by immigrants are also growing. The 2011 census indicates 67.6% of the population adheres to a Christian denomination, with Catholics being the largest at 34.3% of the city's population. The Christ the King Cathedral is the seat of the Diocese of Hamilton. Other denominations include the United Church (6.5%), Anglican (6.4%), Presbyterian (3.1%), Christian Orthodox (2.9%), and other denominations (9.8%). Other religions with significant populations include Islam (3.7%), Buddhist (0.9%), Sikh (0.8%), Hindu (0.8%), and Jewish (0.7%). Those with no religious affiliation accounted for 24.9% of the population.
Environics Analytics, a geodemographic marketing firm that created 66 different "clusters" of people complete with profiles of how they live, what they think and what they consume, sees a future Hamilton with younger upscale Hamiltonians—who are tech savvy and university educated—choosing to live in the downtown and surrounding areas rather than just visiting intermittently. More two and three-storey townhouses and apartments will be built on downtown lots; small condos will be built on vacant spaces in areas such as Dundas, Ainslie Wood and Westdale to accommodate newly retired seniors; and more retail and commercial zones will be created.
Government
Citizens of Hamilton are represented at all three levels of Canadian government - federal, provincial, and municipal. Hamilton is represented in the Parliament of Canada by five Members of Parliament. As of the 2021 federal election, Hamilton has been represented by Filomena Tassi (Liberal - Hamilton West—Ancaster—Dundas), Matthew Green (NDP - Hamilton Centre), Chad Collins (Liberal - Hamilton East—Stoney Creek), Lisa Hepfner - (Liberal - Hamilton Mountain), and Dan Muys (Conservative - Flamborough—Glanbrook).
Provincially, there are five elected Members of Provincial Parliament who serve in the Legislature of Ontario. Leader of the Ontario New Democratic Party and Leader of the Official Opposition, Andrea Horwath, represents Hamilton Centre, Paul Miller (NDP) represents Hamilton East-Stoney Creek, Monique Taylor (NDP) represents Hamilton Mountain, Sandy Shaw (NDP) represents Hamilton West—Ancaster—Dundas, and Progressive Conservative Donna Skelly represents Flamborough—Glanbrook.
Hamilton's municipal government has a mayor, elected citywide, and 15 city councillors - one per each city wards - to serve on the Hamilton City Council. The province grants the Hamilton City Council authority to govern through the Municipal Act of Ontario. Hamilton's current mayor is Fred Eisenberger, elected on October 22, 2018 to a third term. Hamilton's next municipal election is in 2022.
Hamilton is served by four school boards: the English language Hamilton-Wentworth District School Board and Hamilton-Wentworth Catholic District School Board and the French language Conseil scolaire Viamonde and Conseil scolaire catholique MonAvenir. Each school board is governed by trustees. The English language school boards are represented by trustees elected from wards in Hamilton. The HWDSB has 11 trustees and the HWCDB has 9 trustees. The French language school boards are represented by one trustee each from Hamilton and the surrounding area.
The Canadian Military maintains a presence in Hamilton, with the John Weir Foote Armoury in the downtown core on James Street North, housing the Royal Hamilton Light Infantry as well as the 11th Field Hamilton-Wentworth Battery and the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders of Canada. The Hamilton Reserve Barracks on Pier Nine houses the naval reserve division , 23 Service Battalion and the 23 Field Ambulance.
Crime
The Criminal Code of Canada is the chief piece of legislation defining criminal conduct and penalty. The Hamilton Police Service is chiefly responsible for the enforcement of federal and provincial law. Although the Hamilton Police Service has authority to enforce, bylaws passed by the Hamilton City Council are mainly enforced by Provincial Offences Officers employed by the City of Hamilton.
The homicide rate in Hamilton in 2019 was 1.83 per 100,000 population. Hamilton ranked first in Canada for police-reported hate crimes in 2016, with 12.5 hate crimes per 100,000 population. Organized crime also has a notable presence in Hamilton with three centralized Mafia organizations in Hamilton, the Luppino crime family, the Papalia crime family, and the Musitano crime family.
Culture
Hamilton's local attractions include the Canadian Warplane Heritage Museum, the National Historic Site, Dundurn Castle (the residence of an Allan MacNab, the 8th Premier of Canada West), the Royal Botanical Gardens, the Canadian Football Hall of Fame, the African Lion Safari Park, the Cathedral of Christ the King, the Workers' Arts and Heritage Centre, and the Hamilton Museum of Steam & Technology.
, there are 40 pieces in the city's Public Art Collection. The works are owned and maintained by the city.Information and the locations of each piece in Public Art Collection can be viewed on this interactive map. Founded in 1914, the Art Gallery of Hamilton is Ontario's third largest public art gallery. The gallery has over 9,000 works in its permanent collection that focus on three areas: 19th-century European, Historical Canadian and Contemporary Canadian. The McMaster Museum of Art (MMA), founded at McMaster University in 1967, houses and exhibits the university's art collection of more than 7,000 objects.
Supercrawl is a large community arts and music festival that takes place in September in the James Street North area of the city. In 2018, Supercrawl celebrated its 10th anniversary with over 220,000 visitors. In March 2015, Hamilton was host to the JUNO Awards.
Growth in the arts and culture sector has garnered media attention for Hamilton. A 2006 article in The Globe and Mail, entitled "Go West, Young Artist", focused on the Hamilton's growing art scene. The Factory: Hamilton Media Arts Centre, opened a new home on James Street North in 2006. Art galleries have sprung up on streets across the city: James Street, King William Street, Locke Street and King Street.The opening of the Downtown Arts Centre on Rebecca Street has spurred creative activities in the core. The Community Centre for Media Arts (CCMA) continues to operate in downtown Hamilton. The CCMA works with marginalized populations and combines new media services with arts education and skills development programming.
Sports
Hamilton hosted Canada's first major international athletic event, the first Commonwealth Games (then called the British Empire Games) in 1930. Hamilton bid for the Commonwealth Games in 2010 but lost to New Delhi. On November 7, 2009, in Guadalajara, Mexico, it was announced Toronto would host the 2015 Pan Am Games after beating out two rival South American cities, Lima, Peru and Bogotá, Colombia. The city of Hamilton co-hosted the Games with Toronto. Hamilton Mayor Fred Eisenberger said "the Pan Am Games will provide a 'unique opportunity for Hamilton to renew major sport facilities giving Hamiltonians a multi-purpose stadium, a 50-metre swimming pool, and an international-calibre velodrome to enjoy for generations to come'." Hamilton's major sports complexes include Tim Hortons Field and FirstOntario Centre.
Hamilton is represented by the Tiger-Cats in the Canadian Football League. The team traces their origins to the 1869 "Hamilton Foot Ball Club". Hamilton is also home to the Canadian Football Hall of Fame museum. The museum hosts an annual induction event in a week-long celebration that includes school visits, a golf tournament, a formal induction dinner and concludes with the Hall of Fame game involving the local CFL Hamilton Tiger-Cats at Tim Hortons Field. The 109th championship game of the Canadian Football League, the Grey Cup, is scheduled to be played in Hamilton in 2021.
In 2019, Forge FC debuted as Hamilton's soccer team in the Canadian Premier League. The team plays at Tim Hortons Field and share the venue with the Tiger-Cats. They finished their inaugural season as champions of the league.
In 2019, the Hamilton Honey Badgers debuted as Hamilton's basketball team in the Canadian Elite Basketball League. The team plays its home games at the FirstOntario Centre.
The Around the Bay Road Race circumnavigates Hamilton Harbour. Although it is not a marathon distance, it is the longest continuously held long distance foot race in North America. The local newspaper also hosts the amateur Spectator Indoor Games.
In addition to team sports, Hamilton is home to an auto race track, Flamboro Speedway and Canada's fastest half-mile harness horse racing track, Flamboro Downs. Another auto race track, Cayuga International Speedway, is near Hamilton in the Haldimand County community of Nelles Corners, between Hagersville and Cayuga.
Education
Hamilton is home to several post-secondary institutions.
McMaster University moved to the city in 1930 and now has some 30,000 students, of which almost two-thirds come from outside the Hamilton region. Brock University of St. Catharines, Ontario has a satellite campus used primarily for teacher education in Hamilton.
McMaster Divinity College, a Christian seminary affiliated with the Baptist Convention of Ontario and Quebec since 1957. It is located on the McMaster University campus and it is affiliated with the university.
Mohawk College of Applied Arts and Technology since 1967 with 10,000 full-time, 40,000 part-time, and 3,000 apprentice students.
Redeemer University, a private Christian liberal arts and science university opened in 1982.
Three school boards administer public education for students from kindergarten through high school. The Hamilton-Wentworth District School Board manages 114 public schools, while the Hamilton-Wentworth Catholic District School Board operates 55 schools in the greater Hamilton area. The Conseil scolaire Viamonde operates one elementary and one secondary school (École secondaire Georges-P.-Vanier), and the Conseil scolaire de district catholique Centre-Sud operates two elementary schools and one secondary school.
Calvin Christian School, Providence Christian School and Timothy Christian School are independent Christian elementary schools. Hamilton District Christian High School, Rehoboth Christian High School and Guido de Bres Christian High School are independent Christian high schools in the area. Both HDCH and Guido de Brès participate in the city's interscholastic athletics. Hillfield Strathallan College is on the West Hamilton mountain and is a CAIS member, non-profit school for children from early Montessori ages through grade twelve and has around 1,300 students. Columbia International College is Canada's largest private boarding high school, with 1,700 students from 73 countries.
The Dundas Valley School of Art is an independent art school founded in 1964. In 1998, a new full-time diploma programme was launched as a joint venture with McMaster University. The Hamilton Conservatory for the Arts is home to many of the area's young actors, dancers, musicians, singers and visual artists. The school has a keyboard studio, dance studios, art and sculpting studios, gallery space and a 300-seat recital hall.
Hamilton is home to two think tanks, the Centre for Cultural Renewal and Cardus, which deals with social architecture, culture, urbanology, economics and education and also publishes the LexView Policy Journal and Comment Magazine.
Infrastructure
Transportation
The primary highways serving Hamilton are Highway 403 and the QEW. Other highways connecting Hamilton include Highway 5, Highway 6 and Highway 8. Public transportation is provided by the Hamilton Street Railway, which operates an extensive local bus system. Hamilton and Metrolinx will build a provincially-funded LRT line (Hamilton LRT) in the early 2020s.
Intercity public transportation, including frequent service to Toronto, is provided by GO Transit. The Hamilton GO Centre, formerly the Toronto, Hamilton and Buffalo Railway station, is a commuter rail station on the Lakeshore West line of GO Transit. While Hamilton is not directly served by intercity rail, the Lakeshore West line does offer an off-peak bus connection and a peak-hours rail connection to Aldershot station in Burlington, which doubles as the VIA Rail station for both Burlington and Hamilton.
In the 1940s, the John C. Munro Hamilton International Airport was a wartime air force training station. Today, managed by TradePort International Corporation, passenger traffic at the Hamilton terminal has grown from 90,000 in 1996 to approximately 900,000 in 2002 with mostly domestic and vacation destinations in the United States, Mexico and Central America. The airport's mid-term growth target for its passenger service is five million air travelers annually. The airport's air cargo sector has 24–7 operational capability and strategic geographic location, allowing its capacity to increase by 50% since 1996; 91,000 metric tonnes (100,000 tons) of cargo passed through the airport in 2002. Courier companies with operations at the airport include United Parcel Service and Cargojet Canada. In 2003, the city began developing a 30-year growth management strategy which called, in part, for a massive aerotropolis industrial park centred on Hamilton Airport. Advocates of the aerotropolis proposal, now known as the Airport Employment Growth District, tout it as a solution to the city's shortage of employment lands. The closest other international airport to Hamilton is Toronto Pearson International Airport, located northeast of the city in Mississauga.
A report by Hemson Consulting identified an opportunity to develop of greenfields (the size of the Royal Botanical Gardens) that could create an estimated 90,000 jobs by 2031. A proposed aerotropolis industrial park at Highway 6 and 403, has been debated at City Hall for years. Opponents feel the city needs to do more investigation about the cost to taxpayers.
Hamilton also plays a major role in Ontario's marine shipping industry as the Port of Hamilton is Ontario's busiest port handling between 9 to 12 million tonnes of cargo annually.
Health
The city is served by the Hamilton Health Sciences hospital network of five hospitals with more than 1,100 beds: Hamilton General Hospital, Juravinski Hospital, McMaster University Medical Centre (which includes McMaster Children's Hospital), St. Peter's Hospital and West Lincoln Memorial Hospital. Other buildings under Hamilton Health Sciences include Juravinski Cancer Centre, Regional Rehabilitation Centre, Ron Joyce Children's Health Centre, and the West End Clinic and Urgent Care Centre. Hamilton Health Sciences is the largest employer in the Hamilton area and serves as academic teaching hospital affiliated with McMaster University and Mohawk College. The only hospital in Hamilton not under Hamilton Health Sciences is St. Joseph's Healthcare Hamilton, which has 777 beds and three campuses. This healthcare group provides inpatient and outpatient services, and mental illness or addiction help.
See also
Hamilton City Council
Auchmar (Hamilton, Ontario)
List of people from Hamilton, Ontario
Notes
References
External links
1810s establishments in Canada
Cities in Ontario
Niagara Escarpment
Populated places established in the 1810s
Populated places on Lake Ontario in Canada
Port settlements in Ontario
Single-tier municipalities in Ontario
Royal Hamilton Light Infantry (Wentworth Regiment) | [
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14291 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hussites | Hussites | The Hussites ( or Kališníci; "Chalice People") were a Czech Proto-Protestant Christian movement that followed the teachings of reformer Jan Hus, who became the best known representative of the Bohemian Reformation.
The Hussite movement began in the Kingdom of Bohemia and quickly spread throughout the remaining Lands of the Bohemian Crown, including Moravia and Silesia. It also made inroads into the northern parts of the Kingdom of Hungary (now Slovakia), but was rejected and gained infamy for the plundering behavior of the Hussite soldiers. There were also very small temporary communities in Poland-Lithuania and Transylvania which moved to Bohemia after being confronted with religious intolerance. It was a regional movement that failed to expand anywhere farther. Hussites emerged as a majority Utraquist movement with a significant Taborite faction, and smaller regional ones that included Adamites, Orebites and Orphans. Major Hussite theologians included Petr Chelčický, Jerome of Prague, and others. A number of Czech national heroes were Hussite, including Jan Žižka, who led a fierce resistance to five consecutive crusades proclaimed on Hussite Bohemia by the Papacy. Hussites were one of the most important forerunners of the Protestant Reformation. This predominantly religious movement was propelled by social issues and strengthened Czech national awareness.
After the Council of Constance lured Jan Hus in with a letter of indemnity, then tried him for heresy and put him to death at the stake on 6 July 1415, the Hussites fought the Hussite Wars (1420–1434) for their religious and political cause. After the Hussite Wars ended, the Catholic-supported Utraquist side came out victorious from conflict with the Taborites and became the most common representation of the Hussite faith in Bohemia. Catholics and Utraquists were emancipated in Bohemia after the religious peace of Kutná Hora in 1485.
Bohemia and Moravia, or what is now the territory of the Czech Republic, remained majority Hussite for two centuries until Roman Catholicism was reimposed by the Holy Roman Emperor after the 1620 Battle of White Mountain during the Thirty Years' War. That event and centuries of Habsburg persecution caused Hussite traditions to be merely represented in the Moravian Church, Unity of the Brethren and the refounded Czechoslovak Hussite churches among present-day Christians.
Impact of Hus's death on Bohemia
The arrest of Hus in 1414 caused considerable resentment in Czech lands. The authorities of both countries appealed urgently and repeatedly to King Sigismund to release Jan Hus.
When news of his death at the Council of Constance in 6. of June 1415 arrived, disturbances broke out, directed primarily against the clergy and especially against the monks. Even the Archbishop narrowly escaped from the effects of this popular anger. The treatment of Hus was felt to be a disgrace inflicted upon the whole country and his death was seen as a criminal act. King Wenceslaus IV., prompted by his grudge against Sigismund, at first gave free vent to his indignation at the course of events in Constance. His wife openly favoured the friends of Hus. Avowed Hussites stood at the head of the government.
A league was formed by certain lords, who pledged themselves to protect the free preaching of the Gospel upon all their possessions and estates and to obey the power of the Bishops only where their orders accorded with the injunctions of the Bible. The university would arbitrate any disputed points. The entire Hussite nobility joined the league. Other than verbal protest of the council's treatment of Hus, there was little evidence of any actions taken by the nobility until 1417. At that point several of the lesser nobility and some barons, signatories of the 1415 protest letter, removed Catholic priests from their parishes, replacing them with priests willing to give communion in both wine and bread. The chalice of wine became the central identifying symbol of the Hussite movement. If the king had joined, its resolutions would have received the sanction of the law; but he refused, and approached the newly formed Roman Catholic League of lords, whose members pledged themselves to support the king, the Catholic Church, and the Council. The prospect of a civil war began to emerge.
Pope Martin V as Cardinal Otto of Colonna had attacked Hus with relentless severity. He energetically resumed the battle against Hus's teaching after the enactments of the Council of Constance. He wished to eradicate completely the doctrine of Hus, for which purpose the co-operation of King Wenceslaus had to be obtained. In 1418, Sigismund succeeded in winning his brother over to the standpoint of the council by pointing out the inevitability of a religious war if the heretics in Bohemia found further protection. Hussite statesmen and army leaders had to leave the country and Roman Catholic priests were reinstated. These measures caused a general commotion which hastened the death of King Wenceslaus by a paralytic stroke in 1419. His heir was Sigismund.
Factions of the Hussites
Hussitism organised itself during the years 1415–1419. From the beginning, there formed two parties, with a smaller number of people withdrawing from both parties around the pacifist Petr Chelčický, whose teachings would form the foundation of the Unitas Fratrum.
The moderate party, who followed Hus more closely, sought to conduct reform while leaving the whole hierarchical and liturgical order of the Church untouched.
The more radical party identified itself more boldly with the doctrines of John Wycliffe, sharing his passionate hatred of the monastic clergy, and his desire to return the Church to its supposed condition during the time of the apostles. This required the removal of the existing hierarchy and the secularisation of ecclesiastical possessions. The radicals preached the "sufficientia legis Christi"—the divine law (i.e. the Bible) is the sole rule and canon for human society, not only in the church, but also in political and civil matters. They rejected therefore, as early as 1416, everything that they believed had no basis in the Bible, such as the veneration of saints and images, fasts, superfluous holidays, the oath, intercession for the dead, auricular Confession, indulgences, the sacraments of Confirmation and the Anointing of the Sick and chose their own priests. But above all they clung to Wycliffe's doctrine of the Lord's Supper, denying transubstantiation, and this is the principal point by which they are distinguished from the moderate party.
Four Articles of Prague
The programme of the more conservative Hussites (the moderate party) is contained in the Four Articles of Prague, which were written by Jacob of Mies and agreed upon in July 1420, promulgated in the Latin, Czech, and German languages. The full text is about two pages long, but they are often summarized as:
Freedom to preach the word of God
Celebration of the communion under both kinds (bread and wine to priests and laity alike)
Poverty of the clergy and expropriation of church property;
Punishment for mortal sins regardless of stature.
Calixtines (or Utraquists) and Taborites
The views of the moderate Hussites were widely represented at the University and among the citizens of Prague; they were therefore called the Prague Party, but also Calixtines (Latin calix chalice) or Utraquists (Latin utraque both), because they emphasized the second article of Prague, and the chalice became their emblem.
The radicals (the radical party) had their gathering-places all around the country. Their first armed assault fell on the small town of Ústí, on the river Lužnice, south of Prague (today's Sezimovo Ústí). However, as the place did not prove to be defensible, they settled in the remains of an older town upon a hill not far away and founded a new town, which they named Tábor (a play on words, as "Tábor" not only meant "camp" or "encampment" in Czech, but is also the traditional name of the mountain on which Jesus was expected to return; see Mark 13); hence they were called Táborité (Taborites). They comprised the essential force of the radical Hussites. Their aim was to destroy the enemies of the law of God, and to defend his kingdom (which had been expected to come in a short time) by the sword. Their end-of-world visions did not come true. In order to preserve their settlement and spread their ideology, they waged bloody wars; in the beginning they observed a strict regime, inflicting the severest punishment equally for murder, as for less severe faults as adultery, perjury and usury, and also tried to apply rigid Biblical standards to the social order of the time. The Taborites usually had the support of the Orebites (later called Orphans), an eastern Bohemian sect of Hussitism based in Hradec Králové.
Factions/groups
Hussites were not a unitary movement, but a diverse one with multiple factions that held different views and opposed each other in the Hussite Wars.
Hussites can be divided into:
Moderate Hussites
Prague Hussites
Bohemian Hussite nobility
Hussites of Žatec and Louny
other Utraquists/Calixtines
Radical Hussites
Taborites
Orebites
Adamites
Orphans
other Radical Hussites
History
Hussite Wars (1419–1434)
The news of the death of King Wenceslaus in 1419 produced a great commotion among the people of Prague. A revolution swept over the country: churches and monasteries were destroyed, and church property was seized by the Hussite nobility. It was then, and remained till much later, in question whether Bohemia was a hereditary or an elective monarchy, especially as the line through which Sigismund claimed the throne had accepted that the Kingdom of Bohemia was an elective monarchy elected by the nobles, and thus the regent of the kingdom (Čeněk of Wartenberg) also explicitly stated that Sigismund had not been elected as reason for Sigismund's claim to not be accepted. Sigismund could get possession of "his" kingdom only by force of arms. Pope Martin V called upon Catholics of the West to take up arms against the Hussites, declaring a crusade, and there followed twelve years of warfare.
The Hussites initially campaigned defensively, but after 1427 they assumed the offensive. Apart from their religious aims, they fought for the national interests of the Czechs. The moderate and radical parties were united, and they not only repelled the attacks of the army of crusaders but crossed the borders into neighboring countries. On March 23, 1430, Joan of Arc dictated a letter that threatened to lead a crusading army against the Hussites unless they returned to the Catholic faith, but her capture by English and Burgundian troops two months later would keep her from carrying out this threat.
The Council of Basel and Compacta of Prague
Eventually, the opponents of the Hussites found themselves forced to consider an amicable settlement. They invited a Bohemian embassy to appear at the Council of Basel. The discussions began on 10 January 1432, centering chiefly on the four articles of Prague. No agreement emerged. After repeated negotiations between the Basel Council and Bohemia, a Bohemian–Moravian state assembly in Prague accepted the "Compacta" of Prague on 30 November 1433. The agreement granted communion in both kinds to all who desired it, but with the understanding that Christ was entirely present in each kind. Free preaching was granted conditionally: the Church hierarchy had to approve and place priests, and the power of the bishop must be considered. The article which prohibited the secular power of the clergy was almost reversed.
The Taborites refused to conform. The Calixtines united with the Roman Catholics and destroyed the Taborites at the Battle of Lipany on 30 May 1434. From that time, the Taborites lost their importance, though the Hussite movement would continue in Poland for another five years, until the Royalist forces of Poland defeated the Polish Hussites at the Battle of Grotniki. The state assembly of Jihlava in 1436 confirmed the "Compacta" and gave them the sanction of law. This accomplished the reconciliation of Bohemia with Rome and the Western Church, and at last Sigismund obtained possession of the Bohemian crown. His reactionary measures caused a ferment in the whole country, but he died in 1437. The state assembly in Prague rejected Wyclif's doctrine of the Lord's Supper, which was obnoxious to the Utraquists, as heresy in 1444. Most of the Taborites now went over to the party of the Utraquists; the rest joined the "Brothers of the Law of Christ" () (see history of the Moravian Church).
Hussite Bohemia, Luther and the Reformation (1434–1618)
In 1462, Pope Pius II declared the "Compacta" null and void, prohibited communion in both kinds, and acknowledged King George of Podebrady as king on condition that he would promise an unconditional harmony with the Roman Church. This he refused, but his successor, King Vladislaus II, favored the Roman Catholics and proceeded against some zealous clergymen of the Calixtines. The troubles of the Utraquists increased from year to year. In 1485, at the Diet of Kutná Hora, an agreement was made between the Roman Catholics and Utraquists that lasted for thirty-one years. It was only later, at the Diet of 1512, that the equal rights of both religions were permanently established. The appearance of Martin Luther was hailed by the Utraquist clergy, and Luther himself was astonished to find so many points of agreement between the doctrines of Hus and his own. But not all Utraquists approved of the German Reformation; a schism arose among them, and many returned to the Roman doctrine, while other elements had organised the "Unitas Fratrum" already in 1457.
Bohemian Revolt and harsh persecution under the Habsburgs (1618–1918)
Under Emperor Maximilian II, the Bohemian state assembly established the "Confessio Bohemica", upon which Lutherans, Reformed, and Bohemian Brethren agreed. From that time forward Hussitism began to die out. After the Battle of White Mountain on 8 November 1620 the Roman Catholic Faith was re-established with vigour, which fundamentally changed the religious conditions of the Czech lands.
Leaders and members of Unitas Fratrum were forced to choose to either leave the many and varied southeastern principalities of what was the Holy Roman Empire (mainly Austria, Hungary, Bohemia, Moravia and parts of Germany and its many states), or to practice their beliefs secretly. As a result, members were forced underground and dispersed across northwestern Europe. The largest remaining communities of the Brethren were located in Lissa (Leszno) in Poland, which had historically strong ties with the Czechs, and in small, isolated groups in Moravia. Some, among them Jan Amos Comenius, fled to western Europe, mainly the Low Countries. A settlement of Hussites in Herrnhut, Saxony, now Germany, in 1722 caused the emergence of the Moravian Church.
Post-Habsburg era and modern times (1918–present)
In 1918, as a result of World War I, the Czech lands regained independence from Austria-Hungary controlled by the Habsburg monarchy as Czechoslovakia (due to Masaryk and Czechoslovak legions with Hussite tradition, in the name of the troops).
Today, the Czechoslovak Hussite Church claims to be the modern successor of the Hussite tradition.
See also
Arnoldists
Hussite Bible
Lollards
Pavel Kravař
Restorationism
Waldensians
Jistebnice hymn book
References
Bibliography
Michael Van Dussen and Pavel Soukup (eds.). 2020. A Companion to the Hussites. Brill.
Kaminsky, H. (1967) A History of the Hussite Revolution University of California Press: Los Angeles.
Fudge, Thomas A. (1998) The Magnificent Ride: The First Reformation in Hussite Bohemia, Ashgate.
Fudge, Thomas A. (2002) The Crusade against Heretics in Bohemia, Ashgate.
Ondřej, Brodu, "Traktát mistra Ondřeje z Brodu o původu husitů" (), Muzem husitského revolučního hnutí, Tábor, 1980, in with introduction in
Mathies, Christiane, "Kurfürstenbund und Königtum in der Zeit der Hussitenkriege: die kurfürstliche Reichspolitik gegen Sigmund im Kraftzentrum Mittelrhein," Selbstverlag der Gesellschaft für Mittelrheinische Kirchengeschichte, Mainz, 1978, in
Bezold, Friedrich von, "König Sigmund und die Reichskriege gegen die Husiten," G. Olms, Hildesheim, 1978, in
Denis, Ernest, "Huss et la Guerre des Hussites," AMS Press, New York, 1978, in
Klassen, John (1998) "Hus, the Hussites, and Bohemia" in New Cambridge Medieval History Cambridge University Press: Cambridge.
Macek, Josef, "Jean Huss et les Traditions Hussites: XVe–XIXe siècles," Plon, Paris, 1973, in
External links
Hussite Museum, Tabor
Protestantism in the Czech Republic
Jan Hus | [
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14292 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS%20Ark%20Royal | HMS Ark Royal | Five ships of the Royal Navy have borne the name HMS Ark Royal:
, the flagship of the English fleet during the Spanish Armada campaign of 1588
, planned as freighter, built as seaplane carrier during the First World War, renamed Pegasus in 1934
, British aircraft carrier launched in 1937 that participated in the Second World War and was sunk by a U-boat in 1941
, an launched in 1950, decommissioned in 1979
, an , launched in 1981, decommissioned in 2011
Battle honours
Armada 1588
Cádiz 1596
Dardanelles 1915
Norway 1940
Spartivento 1940
Mediterranean 1940–1941
Bismarck 1941
Malta Convoys 1941
Al Faw 2003
References
Royal Navy ship names | [
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14293 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herman%20of%20Alaska | Herman of Alaska | Herman of Alaska (; 1750s – November 15, 1836) was a Russian Orthodox monk and missionary to Alaska, which was then part of Russian America. His gentle approach and ascetic life earned him the love and respect of both the native Alaskans and the Russian colonists. He is considered by many Orthodox Christians as the patron saint of North America.
Early life
Biographers disagree about Herman's early life. His official biography, which Valaam Monastery published in 1867, said that his pre-monastic name was unknown, but that Herman was born into a merchant's family in Serpukhov, a city in Moscow Governorate. He was said to later become a novice at the Trinity-St. Sergius Hermitage near St. Petersburg before going to Valaam to complete his training and receive full tonsure as a monk. But, modern biographer Sergei Korsun found this account to be based on erroneous information provided by Semyon Yanovsky, an administrator from 1818 through part of 1820 of the Russian-American Company (RAC) in Alaska. He confused Herman's biographical information with that of another monk, Joseph (Telepnev).
Another former RAC Chief Manager, Ferdinand von Wrangel, stated Herman was originally from a prosperous peasant family in the Voronezh Governorate and served in the military. He then entered monastic life as a novice at Sarov Monastery. This concurred with testimony of Archimandrite Theophan (Sokolov), and a letter written by Herman himself. These agree that Herman began his monastic life as a novice at Sarov, and later received the full tonsure at Valaam. A young military clerk named Egor Ivanovich Popov, from the Voronezh Governorate, was tonsured with the name 'Herman' at Valaam in 1782.
All biographers agree that at Valaam, Herman studied under Abbot Nazarius, previously of Sarov Monastery. The abbot had been influenced by the hesychastic tradition of Paisius Velichkovsky. Herman undertook various obediences and was well-liked by the brethren, but wanted a more solitary life. He became a hermit with Abbot Nazarius' blessing. His hermitage, which later became known as "Herman's field" or Germanovo, was two kilometers from the monastery. Metropolitan Gabriel of St. Petersburg offered to ordain Herman to the priesthood and twice offered to send him to lead the Russian Orthodox Mission in China, but he refused, preferring the solitary life and remaining a simple monk. Years after he left for North America, Herman continued to keep in touch with his spiritual home. In a letter to Abbot Nazarius, he wrote, "in my mind I imagine my beloved Valaam, and constantly behold it across the great ocean."
Mission in Alaska
The Russian colonization of the Americas began when Vitus Bering and Aleksei Chirikov discovered Alaska on behalf of the Russian Empire in 1741. The expedition harvested 1,500 sea otter pelts, which Chinese merchants bought for 1,000 rubles each at their trading post near Lake Baikal. This spurred a "fur rush" from 1741 to 1798 in which frontiersmen known as promyshlenniki explored Alaska and the Aleutian Islands and alternately fought and intermarried with the native peoples. Grigory Shelikhov, a fur-trader, subjugated the native population of Kodiak Island and with Ivan Golikov founded a fur-trading company which eventually received a monopoly from the Imperial government and became the Russian-American Company. Shelikhov founded a school for the natives, of whom many were converted to Russian Orthodox Christianity.
The Shelikhov-Golikov Company appealed to the Most Holy Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church to provide a priest for the natives. Catherine the Great decided instead to send an entire mission to America. She entrusted the task of recruiting missionaries to Metropolitan Gabriel of St. Petersburg, who sent ten monks from Valaam, including Herman. The missionaries arrived on Kodiak on September 24, 1794.
Herman and the other missionaries encountered a harsh reality at Kodiak that did not correspond to Shelikhov's rosy descriptions. The native Kodiak population, called "Americans" by the Russian settlers, were subject to harsh treatment by the Russian-American Company, which was being overseen by Shelikhov's manager Alexander Baranov who later became the first governor of the colony. The men were forced to hunt for sea otter even during harsh weather, and women and children were abused. The monks were also shocked at the widespread alcoholism in the Russian population, and the fact that most of the settlers had taken native mistresses. The monks themselves were not given the supplies that Shelikhov promised them, and had to till the ground with wooden implements. Despite these difficulties, the monks managed to baptize over 7,000 natives in the Kodiak region, and set about building a church and monastery. Herman was assigned in the bakery and acted as the mission's steward (ekonom).
The monks became the defenders of the native Kodiak population. Herman was especially noted for his zeal in protecting them from the excessive demands of the RAC, and Baranov disparaged him in a letter as a "hack writer and chatterer." A contemporary historian compares him to Bartolomé de las Casas, the Roman Catholic friar who defended the rights of native South Americans against the Spanish.
After over a decade spent in Alaska, Herman became the head of the mission in 1807, although he was not ordained to the priesthood. The local population loved and respected him, and he even had good relations with Baranov. Herman ran the mission school, where he taught church subjects such as singing and catechism alongside reading and writing. He also taught agriculture on Spruce Island. However, because he longed for the life of a hermit he soon retired from active duty in the mission and moved to Spruce Island.
Life on Spruce Island
Herman moved to Spruce Island around 1811 to 1817. The island is separated from Kodiak by a mile-wide strait, making it ideal for eremitic life. Herman named his hermitage "New Valaam." He wore simple clothes and slept on a bench covered with a deerskin. When asked how he could bear to be alone in the forest, he replied, "I am not alone. God is here, as God is everywhere."
Despite his solitary life, he soon gained a following. He received many visitors—especially native Aleuts—on Sundays and church feasts. Soon his hermitage had next to it a chapel and guesthouse, and then a school for orphans. Herman had a few disciples, including the Creole orphan Gerasim Ivanovich Zyrianov, a young Aleut woman named Sofia Vlasova, and others. Entire families moved in order to be closer to the Elder, who helped to sort out their disputes. Herman had a deep love for the native Aleuts: he stood up for them against the excesses of the Russian-American Company, and once during an epidemic he was the only Russian to visit them, working tirelessly to care for the sick and console the dying. Herman spent the rest of his life on Spruce Island, where he died on November 15, 1836.
Sainthood
On March 11, 1969, the bishops of the Orthodox Church in America (OCA) formally declared their intention to canonize Herman, "as a sublime example of the Holy Life, for our spiritual benefit, inspiration, comfort, and the confirmation of our Faith." On August 9, 1970, Metropolitan Ireney (Bekish) of the OCA along with Archbishop Paul (Olmari) of Finland and other hierarchs and clergy presided over the canonization service, which was held at Holy Resurrection Cathedral on Kodiak Island. His relics were transferred from his grave underneath the Sts. Sergius and Herman of Valaam Chapel (i.e., the Saints Sergius and Herman of Valaam Chapel), on Spruce Island, to the Holy Resurrection Cathedral.
On the same date, the bishops of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia also canonized Herman at the Holy Virgin Cathedral ("Joy of All Who Sorrow") in San Francisco. At the all-night vigil, the canon to Herman was read for the first time by Gleb Podmoshensky, one of the founding brothers of the St. Herman of Alaska Serbian Orthodox Brotherhood in 1963. He, Eugene (Seraphim) Rose, and Lawrence Campbell gathered material for the Synod of Bishops in order to support the glorification of Herman, and also helped compose the liturgical service in his honor.
There are several feast days throughout the year on which Saint Herman of Alaska is commemorated. Since there are two different calendars currently in use among various Orthodox churches, two dates are listed: the first date is the date on the traditional Julian Calendar, the second date, after the slash, is the same day on the modern Gregorian Calendar:
July 27/August 9—Glorification: This is the anniversary of the joint-glorification (canonization) of Herman of Alaska as a saint in 1970.
November 15/28—Repose: This is the anniversary of the actual death of Herman.
December 13/26—Repose: Due to an error in record keeping, this was originally thought to be the day of Herman's death, and because of the long-established tradition of celebrating his memory on this day, it has remained a feast day. It is more likely that this is the day he was buried. For those Orthodox Christians who follow the Julian Calendar, this day falls on December 25 of the Gregorian Calendar.
Second Sunday after Pentecost:, as one of the saints commemorated on the Synaxis of the Saints of North America—this is a moveable feast of the ecclesiastical year, and the date of its observance will change from year to year.
The major portion of his relics are preserved at Holy Resurrection Cathedral in Kodiak, Alaska, while his burial site at the Sts. Sergius and Herman Chapel, Spruce Island, Alaska is an important pilgrimage site, where the devout will often take soil from his grave and water from the spring named in his honour. A portion of his relics are enshrined at the St. Ignatius Chapel at the Antiochan Village in Pennsylvania, a conference and retreat center of the Antiochian Orthodox Christian Archdiocese of North America, where he is regarded as one of their patron saints.
In 1963, with the blessing of John Maximovitch, Archbishop of Shanghai and San Francisco, a community of Orthodox booksellers and publishers called the St. Herman of Alaska Brotherhood was formed to publish Orthodox missionary information in English. One of the founders was Father Seraphim Rose. The Brotherhood did much to advance the cause of Herman's glorification as a saint. Saint Herman's Orthodox Theological Seminary in Kodiak, Alaska is named in his honor, as are numerous parish churches throughout the world.
On Tuesday, August 4, 1970, the 91st Congress of the United States acknowledged the glorification of Herman of Alaska with a speech in the Senate, and his biography was formally entered into the Congressional Record.
In 1993, Patriarch Alexis II visited Kodiak to venerate the relics of Saint Herman. He left as a gift an ornate lampada (oil lamp) which burns constantly over the reliquary. Pilgrims from all over the world are anointed with holy oil from this lampada.
Herman is also honored with a feast day on the liturgical calendar of the Episcopal Church (USA) on August 9.
Finnish Orthodox Espoo Church in Tapiola, Espoo, is dedicated to St. Herman of Alaska.
See also
Nikolai Velimirovich
Innocent of Alaska
Patriarch Tikhon of Moscow
Jacob Netsvetov
Sebastian Dabovich
Mardarije Uskokovich
Alexander Hotovitzky
Alexis Toth
Anatole Kamensky
Seraphim of Uglich
Bogoljub Gakovich
Teofan Beatovich
Matej Stijačić
Varnava Nastić
Justin Popovich
Peter the Aleut
Notes
References
External links
– A documentary about St. Herman.
The Life of Our Holy Father Saint Herman of Alaska
Life of Monk Herman of Valaam, American Missionary (Russian, 1894)
Life of Monk Herman of Valaam, American Missionary (English translation of above, 1997)
1756 births
1837 deaths
19th-century Christian saints
American saints of the Eastern Orthodox Church
Anglican saints
Christian missionaries in Alaska
Eastern Orthodox missionaries
Eastern Orthodox monks
Eastern Orthodoxy in Alaska
Russian America
Russian saints of the Eastern Orthodox Church
Russian explorers
Starets
Wonderworkers
18th-century Christian monks
19th-century Christian monks | [
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14294 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hausdorff%20dimension | Hausdorff dimension | In mathematics, Hausdorff dimension is a measure of roughness, or more specifically, fractal dimension, that was first introduced in 1918 by mathematician Felix Hausdorff. For instance, the Hausdorff dimension of a single point is zero, of a line segment is 1, of a square is 2, and of a cube is 3. That is, for sets of points that define a smooth shape or a shape that has a small number of corners—the shapes of traditional geometry and science—the Hausdorff dimension is an integer agreeing with the usual sense of dimension, also known as the topological dimension. However, formulas have also been developed that allow calculation of the dimension of other less simple objects, where, solely on the basis of their properties of scaling and self-similarity, one is led to the conclusion that particular objects—including fractals—have non-integer Hausdorff dimensions. Because of the significant technical advances made by Abram Samoilovitch Besicovitch allowing computation of dimensions for highly irregular or "rough" sets, this dimension is also commonly referred to as the Hausdorff–Besicovitch dimension.
More specifically, the Hausdorff dimension is a dimensional number associated with a metric space, i.e. a set where the distances between all members are defined. The dimension is drawn from the extended real numbers, , as opposed to the more intuitive notion of dimension, which is not associated to general metric spaces, and only takes values in the non-negative integers.
In mathematical terms, the Hausdorff dimension generalizes the notion of the dimension of a real vector space. That is, the Hausdorff dimension of an n-dimensional inner product space equals n. This underlies the earlier statement that the Hausdorff dimension of a point is zero, of a line is one, etc., and that irregular sets can have noninteger Hausdorff dimensions. For instance, the Koch snowflake shown at right is constructed from an equilateral triangle; in each iteration, its component line segments are divided into 3 segments of unit length, the newly created middle segment is used as the base of a new equilateral triangle that points outward, and this base segment is then deleted to leave a final object from the iteration of unit length of 4. That is, after the first iteration, each original line segment has been replaced with N=4, where each self-similar copy is 1/S = 1/3 as long as the original. Stated another way, we have taken an object with Euclidean dimension, D, and reduced its linear scale by 1/3 in each direction, so that its length increases to N=SD. This equation is easily solved for D, yielding the ratio of logarithms (or natural logarithms) appearing in the figures, and giving—in the Koch and other fractal cases—non-integer dimensions for these objects.
The Hausdorff dimension is a successor to the simpler, but usually equivalent, box-counting or Minkowski–Bouligand dimension.
Intuition
The intuitive concept of dimension of a geometric object X is the number of independent parameters one needs to pick out a unique point inside. However, any point specified by two parameters can be instead specified by one, because the cardinality of the real plane is equal to the cardinality of the real line (this can be seen by an argument involving interweaving the digits of two numbers to yield a single number encoding the same information). The example of a space-filling curve shows that one can even map the real line to the real plane surjectively (taking one real number into a pair of real numbers in a way so that all pairs of numbers are covered) and continuously, so that a one-dimensional object completely fills up a higher-dimensional object.
Every space filling curve hits some points multiple times, and does not have a continuous inverse. It is impossible to map two dimensions onto one in a way that is continuous and continuously invertible. The topological dimension, also called Lebesgue covering dimension, explains why. This dimension is n if, in every covering of X by small open balls, there is at least one point where n + 1 balls overlap. For example, when one covers a line with short open intervals, some points must be covered twice, giving dimension n = 1.
But topological dimension is a very crude measure of the local size of a space (size near a point). A curve that is almost space-filling can still have topological dimension one, even if it fills up most of the area of a region. A fractal has an integer topological dimension, but in terms of the amount of space it takes up, it behaves like a higher-dimensional space.
The Hausdorff dimension measures the local size of a space taking into account the distance between points, the metric. Consider the number N(r) of balls of radius at most r required to cover X completely. When r is very small, N(r) grows polynomially with 1/r. For a sufficiently well-behaved X, the Hausdorff dimension is the unique number d such that N(r) grows as 1/rd as r approaches zero. More precisely, this defines the box-counting dimension, which equals the Hausdorff dimension when the value d is a critical boundary between growth rates that are insufficient to cover the space, and growth rates that are overabundant.
For shapes that are smooth, or shapes with a small number of corners, the shapes of traditional geometry and science, the Hausdorff dimension is an integer agreeing with the topological dimension. But Benoit Mandelbrot observed that fractals, sets with noninteger Hausdorff dimensions, are found everywhere in nature. He observed that the proper idealization of most rough shapes you see around you is not in terms of smooth idealized shapes, but in terms of fractal idealized shapes:
Clouds are not spheres, mountains are not cones, coastlines are not circles, and bark is not smooth, nor does lightning travel in a straight line.
For fractals that occur in nature, the Hausdorff and box-counting dimension coincide. The packing dimension is yet another similar notion which gives the same value for many shapes, but there are well-documented exceptions where all these dimensions differ.
Formal definition
The formal definition of the Hausdorff dimension is arrived at by defining first the Hausdorff measure, a fractional-dimension analogue of the Lebesgue measure. First, an outer measure is constructed:
Let X be a metric space. If S ⊂ X and d ∈ [0, ∞),
where the infimum is taken over all countable covers Ui of S. The Hausdorff outer measure is then defined as , and the restriction of the mapping to measurable sets justifies it as a measure, called the d-dimensional Hausdorff Measure.
Hausdorff dimension
The Hausdorff dimension of X is defined by
This is the same as the supremum of the set of d ∈ [0, ∞) such that the d-dimensional Hausdorff measure of X is infinite (except that when this latter set of numbers d is empty the Hausdorff dimension is zero).
Hausdorff content
the d-dimensional unlimited Hausdorff content of S is defined by
In other words, has the construction of the Hausdorff measure where the covering sets are allowed to have arbitrarily large sizes (Here, we use the standard convention that inf Ø = ∞). The Hausdorff measure and the Hausdorff content can both be used to determine the dimension of a set, but if the measure of the set is non-zero, their actual values may disagree.
Examples
Countable sets have Hausdorff dimension 0.
The Euclidean space ℝn has Hausdorff dimension n, and the circle S1 has Hausdorff dimension 1.
Fractals often are spaces whose Hausdorff dimension strictly exceeds the topological dimension. For example, the Cantor set, a zero-dimensional topological space, is a union of two copies of itself, each copy shrunk by a factor 1/3; hence, it can be shown that its Hausdorff dimension is ln(2)/ln(3) ≈ 0.63. The Sierpinski triangle is a union of three copies of itself, each copy shrunk by a factor of 1/2; this yields a Hausdorff dimension of ln(3)/ln(2) ≈ 1.58. These Hausdorff dimensions are related to the "critical exponent" of the Master theorem for solving recurrence relations in the analysis of algorithms.
Space-filling curves like the Peano curve have the same Hausdorff dimension as the space they fill.
The trajectory of Brownian motion in dimension 2 and above is conjectured to be Hausdorff dimension 2.
Lewis Fry Richardson has performed detailed experiments to measure the approximate Hausdorff dimension for various coastlines. His results have varied from 1.02 for the coastline of South Africa to 1.25 for the west coast of Great Britain.
Properties of Hausdorff dimension
Hausdorff dimension and inductive dimension
Let X be an arbitrary separable metric space. There is a topological notion of inductive dimension for X which is defined recursively. It is always an integer (or +∞) and is denoted dimind(X).
Theorem. Suppose X is non-empty. Then
Moreover,
where Y ranges over metric spaces homeomorphic to X. In other words, X and Y have the same underlying set of points and the metric dY of Y is topologically equivalent to dX.
These results were originally established by Edward Szpilrajn (1907–1976), e.g., see Hurewicz and Wallman, Chapter VII.
Hausdorff dimension and Minkowski dimension
The Minkowski dimension is similar to, and at least as large as, the Hausdorff dimension, and they are equal in many situations. However, the set of rational points in [0, 1] has Hausdorff dimension zero and Minkowski dimension one. There are also compact sets for which the Minkowski dimension is strictly larger than the Hausdorff dimension.
Hausdorff dimensions and Frostman measures
If there is a measure μ defined on Borel subsets of a metric space X such that μ(X) > 0 and μ(B(x, r)) ≤ rs holds for some constant s > 0 and for every ball B(x, r) in X, then dimHaus(X) ≥ s. A partial converse is provided by Frostman's lemma.
Behaviour under unions and products
If is a finite or countable union, then
This can be verified directly from the definition.
If X and Y are non-empty metric spaces, then the Hausdorff dimension of their product satisfies
This inequality can be strict. It is possible to find two sets of dimension 0 whose product has dimension 1. In the opposite direction, it is known that when X and Y are Borel subsets of Rn, the Hausdorff dimension of X × Y is bounded from above by the Hausdorff dimension of X plus the upper packing dimension of Y. These facts are discussed in Mattila (1995).
Self-similar sets
Many sets defined by a self-similarity condition have dimensions which can be determined explicitly. Roughly, a set E is self-similar if it is the fixed point of a set-valued transformation ψ, that is ψ(E) = E, although the exact definition is given below.
Theorem. Suppose
are contractive mappings on Rn with contraction constant rj < 1. Then there is a unique non-empty compact set A such that
The theorem follows from Stefan Banach's contractive mapping fixed point theorem applied to the complete metric space of non-empty compact subsets of Rn with the Hausdorff distance.
The open set condition
To determine the dimension of the self-similar set A (in certain cases), we need a technical condition called the open set condition (OSC) on the sequence of contractions ψi.
There is a relatively compact open set V such that
where the sets in union on the left are pairwise disjoint.
The open set condition is a separation condition that ensures the images ψi(V) do not overlap "too much".
Theorem. Suppose the open set condition holds and each ψi is a similitude, that is a composition of an isometry and a dilation around some point. Then the unique fixed point of ψ is a set whose Hausdorff dimension is s where s is the unique solution of
The contraction coefficient of a similitude is the magnitude of the dilation.
In general, a set E which is a fixed point of a mapping
is self-similar if and only if the intersections
where s is the Hausdorff dimension of E and Hs denotes Hausdorff measure. This is clear in the case of the Sierpinski gasket (the intersections are just points), but is also true more generally:
Theorem. Under the same conditions as the previous theorem, the unique fixed point of ψ is self-similar.
See also
List of fractals by Hausdorff dimension Examples of deterministic fractals, random and natural fractals.
Assouad dimension, another variation of fractal dimension that, like Hausdorff dimension, is defined using coverings by balls
Intrinsic dimension
Packing dimension
Fractal dimension
References
Further reading
Several selections from this volume are reprinted in See chapters 9,10,11
External links
Hausdorff dimension at Encyclopedia of Mathematics
Hausdorff measure at Encyclopedia of Mathematics
Fractals
Metric geometry
Dimension theory | [
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14296 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heckler%20%26%20Koch | Heckler & Koch | Heckler & Koch GmbH (HK; ) is a German defence manufacturing company that manufactures handguns, rifles, submachine guns, and grenade launchers. The company is located in Oberndorf am Neckar in the German state of Baden-Württemberg, and also has subsidiaries in the United Kingdom, France and the United States.
The Heckler & Koch Group comprises Heckler & Koch GmbH, Heckler & Koch Defense, NSAF Ltd., and Heckler & Koch France SAS. The company's motto is "Keine Kompromisse!" (No Compromises!). HK provides firearms for many military and paramilitary units, including the SAS, KMar, the US Navy SEALs, Delta Force, HRT, Canada's Joint Task Force 2, the German KSK and GSG 9, and many other counter-terrorist and hostage rescue teams.
Their products include the MP5, UMP submachine guns, the G3, HK417 battle rifles, the HK33, G36, HK416 assault rifles, the MG5, HK21 General-purpose machine guns, the MP7 personal defense weapon, the USP series of handguns, and the PSG1 sniper rifle. All HK firearms are named by a prefix and the official designation, with suffixes used for variants.
HK has a history of innovation in firearms, such as the use of polymers in weapon designs and the use of an integral rail for flashlights on handguns. HK also developed modern polygonal rifling, noted for its high accuracy, increased muzzle velocity and barrel life. Not all its technologically ambitious designs have become commercially successful products (for instance, the advanced but now abandoned G11 military rifle, which fired caseless high-velocity ammunition). In its extensive product range, HK has used the following operating systems for small arms: blowback operation, short-recoil, roller-delayed blowback, gas-delayed blowback, and gas operation (via Short-stroke piston).
History
With the fall of Germany at the end of World War II, Oberndorf came under French control, and the entire Waffenfabrik Mauser AG factory was dismantled by French occupying forces. All factory records were destroyed on orders of the local French Army commander. In 1948, three former Mauser engineers, Edmund Heckler, Theodor Koch, and Alex Seidel, saved what they could from the factory and used what they salvaged to start a machine tool plant in the vacant factory that became known as the Engineering Office Heckler & Co.
On December 28, 1949, the Engineering Office Heckler & Co. changed its name and was registered officially as Heckler & Koch GmbH. Initially the new company manufactured machine tools, bicycle and sewing machine parts, gauges and other precision parts.
In 1956, Heckler & Koch responded to the West German government's tender for a new infantry rifle for the Bundeswehr (German Federal Army) with the proposal of the G3 battle rifle, which was based on the Spanish CETME rifle. The German government awarded Heckler & Koch the tender and by 1959 declared the G3 the standard rifle of the Bundeswehr. Later on in 1961, Heckler & Koch developed the 7.62×51mm HK21 general-purpose machine gun, based on the G3 battle rifle.
In 1966, Heckler & Koch introduced the HK54 machine pistol, which eventually launched in 1969 as the MP5 submachine gun. Two years later, the company introduced the 5.56×45mm HK33 assault rifle, a smaller version of the G3 battle rifle chambered in 5.56mm NATO.
Diversification
In 1974, Heckler & Koch diversified into two more areas, HK Defense and Law Enforcement Technology and HK Hunting and Sports Firearms. Since then HK has designed and manufactured more than 100 different types of firearms and devices for the world's military and law enforcement organizations as well as sports shooters and hunters.
In 1990, Heckler & Koch completed two decades of development of their revolutionary caseless weapon system and produced prototypes of the Heckler & Koch G11. The company also produced prototypes of the Heckler & Koch G41 intended for the Bundeswehr. Due to the international political climate at the time (East and West Germany uniting and defense budget cuts) the company was unable to secure funded contracts from the German government to support production of either weapon system and became financially vulnerable. The next year, Heckler Koch was sold to British Aerospace's Royal Ordnance division.
During 1994 and 1995, the German government awarded Heckler & Koch contracts for producing an updated standard assault rifle and updated standard sidearm for the Bundeswehr. Heckler & Koch developed and produced the Project HK50, a lightweight carbon fibre assault rifle, which became the HK G36 assault rifle. In addition, Heckler & Koch produced the Heckler & Koch USP derived as a variant of its Universale Selbstladepistole (USP) series of handguns (which had been in production since 1989). The P8 was adopted as the standard handgun for the Bundeswehr in 1994 and the G36 in 1995.
As the result of a 1999 merger between British Aerospace and Marconi Electronic Systems, Heckler & Koch was owned by the resulting BAE Systems; it was contracted to refurbish the British Army's SA80 rifles (which had been built by Royal Ordnance) This contract entailed a modification programme to the SA80 series of rifles to address a number of reliability issues with the SA80. In 2002, BAE Systems restructured and sold Heckler & Koch to a group of private investors, who created the German group holding company HK Beteiligungs GmbH.
In 2003, HK Beteiligungs GmbH's business organization restructured as Heckler & Koch Jagd und Sportwaffen GmbH (HKJS) and its business was separated into the two business areas similar to the 1974 business mission areas, Defense and Law Enforcement and Sporting Firearms.
In 2004, Heckler & Koch was awarded a major handgun contract for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, worth a potential $26.2 million for up to 65,000 handguns. This contract ranks as the single largest handgun procurement contract in US law enforcement history.
HK was contracted by the United States Army to produce the kinetic energy subsystem (see: kinetic projectiles or kinetic energy penetrator) of the Objective Individual Combat Weapon, a planned replacement for the M16/M203 grenade launcher combination. The OICW was designed to fire 5.56 mm bullets and 25 mm grenades. The kinetic energy component was also developed separately as the XM8, though both the OICW and XM8 are now indefinitely suspended.
Heckler & Koch developed an AR-15/M4 carbine variant, marketed as the HK416. HK replaced the direct impingement system used by the Stoner design on the original M16 with a short-stroke piston operating system. The civilian models are named the MR223 and, in the US, the MR556A1.
There is no indication that the rifle will be adopted by the United States Armed Forces other than in the Marine Corps as the IAR or M27, but the elite Delta Force and other United States special operations units have fielded the HK416 in combat, and Oklahoma Senator Tom Coburn has called for "free and open competition" to determine whether the army should buy the HK416 or continue to purchase more M4 carbines. Incoming United States Secretary of the Army Pete Geren agreed in July 2007 to hold a "dust chamber" test pitting the M4 against the Heckler & Koch HK416 and XM8, as well as the rival FN SCAR design. Coburn had threatened to stop Geren's Senate confirmation if he did not agree to the test. The Heckler & Koch XM8 and FN SCAR had the fewest failures in the test, closely followed by the HK416, while the M4 had by far the most. In 2007, the Norwegian Army became the first to field the HK416 as a standard-issue rifle.
HK sells its pistols in the United States to both law enforcement and civilian markets. The company has locations in Virginia, New Hampshire, and Georgia.
Trafficking
H&K has been accused of shipping small arms to conflict regions such as Bosnia and Nepal, and has licensed its weapons for production by governments with poor human rights records such as Sudan, Thailand and Myanmar. It has been argued that the company effectively evaded EU export restrictions when these licensees sold HK weapons to conflict zones including Indonesia, Sri Lanka and Sierra Leone.
According to the newspaper Stuttgarter Nachrichten (31 August 2011), as well as the state broadcaster ARD, a large stockpile of G36 assault rifles fell into rebel hands during the August 2011 attack on Muammar Gaddafi's compound in Tripoli. It is unclear how many were exported to Libya and by whom.
Illegal arms sales to Mexico
On December 11, 2011, federal, state and local Mexican police officers used battle rifles to fire on Ayotzinapa Rural Teachers' College students and peasant organizations to disperse a blockade on Mexican Federal Highway 95D, resulting in the deaths of students Jorge Alexis Herrera and Gabriel Echeverría de Jesús. According to media reports, 7.62×51mm NATO round cases were found at the crime scene which were of the same caliber as rounds spent by H&K G3 rifles.
In Iguala and Cocula, corrupt police officers and cartelmen are known to have used H&K G36 rifles during the 2014 Iguala mass kidnapping on September 26–27, 2013. At least six teaching students were murdered by cartelmen and corrupt local police, and 43 others are missing and presumed dead. Other than the six identified persons, no other bodies have been found, and are believed to be have been incinerated.
As a result of efforts by civil society and human rights organizations in Mexico and Germany, H&K and two of its former employees were brought before the Provincial Court of Stuttgart. After ten months of trial, on February 21, 2019, the court convicted them of illegally selling arms to Mexican governmental institutions which failed to acknowledge their due observance of human rights. The two former employees (sales manager Sahlmann and administrative employee Beuter) had been found to have used fraudulent permits in the sale of 4,700 rifles and large quantities of ammunition. H&K was issued a fine of 3.7 million euros, and the two men received suspended sentences of 17 and 22 months. The spokesman of the Presidency of the Republic of Mexico, Jesús Ramírez Cuevas, said that the amount of the fine should go to the victims and their families.
On March 30, 2021, Germany's Federal Court of Justice (BGH) upheld the lower court's decision, finding that H&K employees knowingly falsified information on the nature and destination of arms sold by the company in order to attain federal export licenses.
Werknummern designations
The Werknummern system dates back to the first HK rifles. It uses two or three digits, and as such is also referred to as the "HK 3-digit system" Exceptions like the Heckler & Koch HK416 exist, but those are almost always for marketing reasons, and do actually have in-house designations that fit the system. For example, the HK416 (originally marketed as the HK M4 and HK M16) was intended to replace the M4 and M16, and so, the different models were amalgamated into simply the HK416, but internally was the HK333. The M320 Grenade Launcher Module is a designation assigned by the US military, the HK product name is the HK 269 and 279.
First digit: generation
No digit = First generation
1 = Second generation
2 = Third generation
3 = Fourth generation
4 = Fifth generation
Second digit: form factor
1 = Magazine fed machine gun
2 = Belt fed machine gun
3 = Full sized rifle
4 = Semi-automatic military rifle
5 = Select fire carbine
6 = Shoulder fired standalone grenade launcher
7 = Underbarrel mounted grenade launcher
8 = Hunting and repeating weapons for civilian market
Third digit: caliber
1 - 7.62×51mm NATO
2 - 7.62×39mm
3 - 5.56×45mm NATO
4 - 9×19mm Parabellum/.40 S&W/.45 ACP
5 - .50 BMG
6 - HK 4.6×30mm
7 - .300 AAC Blackout
8 - 37mm Grenade
9 - 40 mm grenade
Abbreviations
Format: Abbreviation = German Text ("English Text")
A = ("version")
G = ("rifle")
K = Either ("short") for pistols and submachine guns or ("Carbine") for rifles and battle rifles.
AG = Either stands for ("attached device") or ("attached grenade launcher")
GMG = Grenade Machine Gun
GMW = (automatic grenade launcher)
MG = (Machine Gun)
MP = (Machine Pistol)
PSG = ("precision sharp shooter rifle")
PSP = ("police self-loading pistol")
SD = ("sound dampener", "suppressor"); In the case of the MP5 having an integral suppressor, in the case of the USP, an extended threaded barrel for attaching a suppressor.
SG = ("sharpshooters rifle")
SK = ("sub compact")
SL = ("Autoloader")
UMP = Universal Machine Pistol
UCP = Universal Combat Pistol
USC = Universal Self-loading Carbine
USP = ("universal self-loading pistol")
VP = ("people's pistol")
ZF = '' ("telescopic sight")
Date and country codes
H&K uses a letter combination to represent the year a pistol is manufactured.
A = 0
B = 1
C = 2
D = 3
E = 4
F = 5
G = 6
H = 7
I = 8
K = 9
The letter J is not used as a date marker. If an H&K pistol has the letter combination of BH it was manufactured in 2017 or CA in 2020. The letter combination of DE represents manufacturing in the country of Germany. Pistols manufactured in Germany before 2008 and those produced at US facilities do not incorporate these letter combinations.
See also
List of Heckler & Koch products
List of modern armament manufacturers
References
External links
Official website (international)
Official website (United States)
2008 Heckler & Koch Military and LE brochure
HK information on Remtek
Companies based in Baden-Württemberg
Manufacturing companies established in 1949
Defence companies of Germany
Firearm manufacturers of Germany
German brands
Firearm manufacturers of the United States
Firearm importation companies of the United States | [
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14297 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heckler%20%26%20Koch%20MP5 | Heckler & Koch MP5 | The MP5 () is a 9x19mm Parabellum submachine gun, developed in the 1960s by a team of engineers from the German small arms manufacturer Heckler & Koch GmbH (H&K) of Oberndorf am Neckar. There are over 100 variants and clones of the MP5, including some semi-automatic versions.
The MP5 is one of the most widely used submachine guns in the world, having been adopted by 40 nations and numerous military, law enforcement, intelligence, and security organizations. It was widely used by SWAT teams in North America, but has since been supplanted by M16 rifle variants in the 21st century.
In 1999, Heckler & Koch developed the UMP, the MP5's successor. Despite its higher cost, the MP5 remained the more successful of the two options.
History
Heckler & Koch, encouraged by the success of the G3 automatic rifle, developed a family of small arms consisting of four types of firearms all based on a common G3 design layout and operating principle. The first type was chambered for 7.62×51mm NATO, the second for the 7.62×39mm M43 round, the third for the intermediate 5.56×45mm NATO caliber, and the fourth type for the 9×19mm Parabellum pistol cartridge. The MP5 was created within the fourth group of firearms and was initially known as the HK54.
Work on the MP5 began in 1964 and two years later it was adopted by the German Federal Police, border guard and army special forces, referring to as the "MP64" or later "MP5". The MP5A1 was introduced in the late '60s, which the first model to have the iconic ring front sight and the slimline handguard. In 1970, the MP5A2 and MP5A3 was introduced. In 1974, the MP5SD was introduced, which is a suppressed variant of the MP5. It was used in the Vietnam War in 1975 by the Green Berets. In 1976, the MP5K was introduced as a request for a variant for South America. In 1977, the standard 20 & 30 round, curved steel magazines were introduced for the MP5A2 and MP5A3 design. In 1978, the Tropical forearm was introduced to be produced with the MP5.
In 1980, the MP5 achieved iconic status as a result of British special forces regiment the SAS when they stormed the Iranian Embassy in London, live on television, rescuing hostages and killing five terrorists during Operation Nimrod.
The MP5 has become a mainstay of SWAT units of law enforcement agencies in the United States since then. However, in the late 1990s, as a result of the North Hollywood shootout, police special response teams replaced most MP5s with AR-15-based rifles.
The MP5 is manufactured under license in several nations including Greece (formerly at EBO – Hellenic Arms Industry, currently at ΕΑΣ – Hellenic Defense Systems), Iran (Defense Industries Organization), Mexico (SEDENA), Pakistan (Pakistan Ordnance Factories), Saudi Arabia, Sudan (Military Industry Corporation), Turkey (MKEK), and the United Kingdom (initially at Royal Ordnance, later diverted to Heckler & Koch Great Britain).
Design details
The primary version of the MP5 family is the MP5A2, which is a lightweight, air-cooled, selective fire delayed blowback operated 9×19mm Parabellum weapon with a roller-delayed bolt. It fires from a closed bolt (bolt forward) position.
The fixed, free floating, cold hammer-forged barrel has 6 right-hand grooves with a 1 in 250 mm (1:10 in) rifling twist rate and is pressed and pinned into the receiver.
Features
The first MP5 models used a double-column straight box magazine, but since 1977, slightly curved, steel magazines are used with a 15-round capacity (weighing 0.12 kg) or a 30-round capacity (0.17 kg empty).
The adjustable iron sights (closed type) consist of a rotating rear diopter drum and a front post installed in a hooded ring. The rear sight is mechanically adjustable for both windage and elevation with the use of a special tool, being adjusted at the factory for firing at with standard FMJ 9×19mm NATO ammunition. The rear sight drum provides four apertures of varying diameters used to adjust the diopter system, according to the user's preference and tactical situation. Changing between apertures does not change the point of impact down range. For accurate shooting the user should select the smallest aperture that still allows an equal circle of light between the rear sight aperture and the outside of the front sight hood ring.
The MP5 has a hammer firing mechanism. The trigger group is housed inside an interchangeable polymer trigger module (with an integrated pistol grip) and equipped with a three-position fire mode selector that serves as the manual safety toggle. The "S" or Sicher position in white denotes weapon safe, "E" or Einzelfeuer in red represents single fire, and "F" or Feuerstoß (also marked in red) designates continuous fire. The SEF symbols appear on both sides of the plastic trigger group. The selector lever is actuated with the thumb of the shooting hand and is located only on the left side of the original SEF trigger group or on both sides of the ambidextrous trigger groups. The safety/selector is rotated into the various firing settings or safety position by depressing the tail end of the lever. Tactile clicks (stops) are present at each position to provide a positive stop and prevent inadvertent rotation. The "safe" setting disables the trigger by blocking the hammer release with a solid section of the safety axle located inside the trigger housing.
The non-reciprocating cocking handle is located above the handguard and protrudes from the cocking handle tube at approximately a 45° angle. This rigid control is attached to a tubular piece within the cocking lever housing called the cocking lever support, which in turn makes contact with the forward extension of the bolt group. It is not however connected to the bolt carrier and therefore cannot be used as a forward assist to fully seat the bolt group. The cocking handle is held in a forward position by a spring detent located in the front end of the cocking lever support which engages in the cocking lever housing. The lever is locked back by pulling it fully to the rear and rotating it slightly clockwise where it can be hooked into an indent in the cocking lever tube.
Operating mechanism
The bolt rigidly engages the barrel extension—a cylindrical component welded to the receiver into which the barrel is pinned. The delay mechanism is of the same design as that used in the G3 rifle. The two-part bolt consists of a bolt head with rollers and a bolt carrier. The heavier bolt carrier lies up against the bolt head when the weapon is ready to fire and inclined planes on the front locking piece lie between the rollers and force them out into recesses in the barrel extension.
When fired, expanding propellant gases produced from the burning powder in the cartridge exert rearward pressure on the bolt head transferred through the base of the cartridge case as it is propelled out of the chamber. A portion of this force is transmitted through the rollers projecting from the bolt head, which are cammed inward against the inclined flanks of the locking recesses in the barrel extension and to the angled shoulders of the locking piece. The selected angles of the recesses and the incline on the locking piece produce a velocity ratio of about 4:1 between the bolt carrier and the bolt head. This results in a calculated delay, allowing the projectile to exit the barrel and gas pressure to drop to a safe level before the case is extracted from the chamber.
The delay results from the amount of time it takes for enough recoil energy to be transferred through to the bolt carrier in a sufficient quantity for it to be driven to the rear against the force of inertia of the bolt carrier and the forward pressure exerted against the bolt by the recoil spring. As the rollers are forced inward they displace the locking piece and propel the bolt carrier to the rear. The bolt carrier's rearward velocity is four times that of the bolt head since the cartridge remains in the chamber for a short period of time during the initial recoil impulse. After the bolt carrier has traveled rearward 4 mm, the locking piece is withdrawn fully from the bolt head and the rollers are compressed into the bolt head. Only once the locking rollers are fully cammed into the bolt head can the entire bolt group continue its rearward movement in the receiver, breaking the seal in the chamber and continuing the feeding cycle.
Since the 9×19mm Parabellum cartridge is relatively low powered, the bolt does not have an anti-bounce device like the G3, but instead the bolt carrier contains of tungsten granules that prevent the bolt group from bouncing back after impacting the barrel extension. The weapon has a fluted chamber that enhances extraction reliability by bleeding gases backwards into the shallow flutes running along the length of the chamber to prevent the cartridge case from expanding and sticking to the chamber walls (since the bolt is opened under relatively high barrel pressure). A spring extractor is installed inside the bolt head and holds the case securely until it strikes the ejector arm and is thrown out of the ejection port to the right of the receiver. The lever-type ejector is located inside the trigger housing (activated by the movement of the recoiling bolt).
Accessories
In the early 1970s, HK introduced a conversion kit for the MP5 that enables it to use rimfire ammunition (.22 LR). This unit consists of a barrel insert, a bolt group and two 20-round magazines. This modification reduces the cyclic rate to 650 rounds/min. It was sold mostly to law enforcement agencies as a way to train recruits on handling the MP5. It used ammunition that was cheaper and had a lower recoil than 9×19mm Parabellum. This reduced training costs and built up skill and confidence in the operators before transitioning them to the full-bore model.
Barrel accessories
Threading is provided at the muzzle to work with certain muzzle devices made by Heckler & Koch, including: a slotted flash suppressor, blank firing attachment (marked with a red-painted band denoting use with blank ammunition only), an adapter for launching rifle grenades (for use with rifle-style grenades with an inside diameter of 22 mm using a special grenade launching cartridge) and a cup-type attachment used to launch tear gas grenades. An optional three-lugged barrel is also available for mounting a quick-detachable suppressor.
Receiver
The receiver housing has a proprietary claw-rail mounting system that permits the attachment of a standard Heckler & Koch quick-detachable scope mount (also used with the G3, HK33 and G3SG/1). It can be used to mount daytime optical sights (telescopic 4×24), night sights, reflex sights and laser pointers. The mount features two spring-actuated bolts, positioned along the base of the mount, which exert pressure on the receiver to hold the mount in the same position at all times assuring zero retention. All versions of the quick-detachable scope mount provide a sighting tunnel through the mount so that the shooter can continue to use the fixed iron sights with the scope mount attached to the top of the receiver.
A Picatinny rail adapter can be placed on top that locks into the claw rails. This allows the mounting of STANAG scopes and has a lower profile than the claw-rail system.
Handguard
Aftermarket replacement handguards with Picatinny rails are available. Single-rail models have a Picatinny rail along the bottom and triple-rail models have rails along the bottom and sides. They allow the mounting of accessories like flashlights, laser pointers, target designators, vertical foregrips, and bipods.
Variants
The MP5A2 has a fixed buttstock (made of a synthetic polymer), whereas the compact MP5A3 has a retractable metal stock. The stockless MP5A1 has a buttcap with a sling mount for concealed carry; the MP5K series was a further development of this idea.
The MP5A4 (fixed stock) and MP5A5 (sliding stock) models, which were introduced in 1974, are available with four-position trigger groups. The pistol grips are straight, lacking the contoured grip and thumb groove of the MP5A1, MP5A2, and MP5A3. The selector lever stops are marked with bullet pictograms rather than letters or numbers (each symbol represents the number of bullets that will be fired when the trigger is pulled and held rearward with a full magazine inserted in the weapon) and are fully ambidextrous (the selector lever is present on each side of the trigger housing). The additional setting of the fire selector, one place before the fully automatic setting, enables a two or three-shot burst firing mode.
A variant with the last trigger group designated the MP5-N (N—Navy) was developed in 1986 for the United States Navy. This model has a collapsible stock, a tritium-illuminated front sight post and a threaded barrel for use with a stainless steel sound suppressor made by Knight's Armament Company together with quieter subsonic ammunition. It had ambidextrous controls, a straight pistol grip, pictogram markings, and originally had a four-position selector (Safe, Semi-Auto, 3-Round Burst, Full Auto). This was replaced with a similar three-position ambidextrous selector after an improperly-reassembled trigger group spontaneously fired during an exercise. The "Navy"-style ambidextrous trigger group later became standard, replacing the classic "SEF" trigger group.
In late 2013, Heckler & Koch unveiled the MLI (Mid Life Improvement) version of the MP5. It is fitted with a tri-rail foregrip, a quick-release-optic mount, an MP5F stock standard, and comes in with the new RAL8000 (Yellow-Brown) colour scheme.
Training
H&K offers dedicated training variants of these weapons, designated MP5A4PT and MP5A5PT (PT—Plastic Training), modified to fire a plastic 9×19mm PT training cartridge produced by Dynamit Nobel of Germany. These weapons operate like the standard MP5 but have a floating chamber and both rollers have been omitted from the bolt to function properly when firing the lighter plastic projectiles. To help identify these weapons blue dots were painted on their cocking handles and additional lettering provided. The PT variant can be configured with various buttstocks and trigger groups and was developed for the West German Police and Border Guard.
MP5SF
The MP5SFA2 (SF – single-fire) was developed in 1986 in response to the American FBI solicitation for a "9 mm Single-fire Carbine". It is the same as the MP5A2 but is fitted with an ambidextrous semi-automatic only trigger group. The MP5SFA3 is similar except it has a retractable metal stock like the MP5A3. Versions delivered after December 1991 are assembled with select-fire bolt carriers allowing fully automatic operation when used with the appropriate trigger module.
The semi-automatic "MP5SF" models are widely used by British police forces including London's Metropolitan Police Service Specialist Firearms Command, Diplomatic Protection Group, authorised firearms officers, and the Police Service of Northern Ireland to name a few.
The two-position trigger unit was used in the semi-automatic HK94 carbine that was produced specifically for the civilian market with a barrel.
MP5SD
In 1974, H&K initiated design work on a sound-suppressed variant of the MP5, designated the MP5SD (SD—Schalldämpfer, German for "sound suppressor"), which features an integral but detachable aluminium sound suppressor and a lightweight bolt. The weapon's barrel has 30 ports drilled forward of the chamber through which escaping gases are diverted to the surrounding sealed tubular casing that is screwed onto threading on the barrel's external surface just prior to the ported segment. The suppressor itself is divided into two stages; the initial segment surrounding the ported barrel serves as an expansion chamber for the propellant gases, reducing gas pressure to slow down the acceleration of the projectile. The second, decompression stage occupies the remaining length of the suppressor tube and contains a stamped metal helix separator with several compartments which increase the gas volume and decrease its temperature, deflecting the gases as they exit the muzzle, so muffling the exit report. The bullet leaves the muzzle at subsonic velocity, so it does not generate a sonic shock wave in flight. As a result of reducing the barrel's length and venting propellant gases into the suppressor, the bullet's muzzle velocity was lowered anywhere from 16% to 26% (depending on the ammunition used) while maintaining the weapon's automation and reliability. The weapon was designed to be used with standard supersonic ammunition with the suppressor on at all times.
The MP5SD is produced exclusively by H&K in several versions: the MP5SD1 and MP5SD4 (both have a receiver end cap instead of a buttstock), MP5SD2 and MP5SD5 (equipped with a fixed synthetic buttstock) and the MP5SD3 and MP5SD6 (fitted with a collapsible metal stock). The MP5SD1, MP5SD2 and MP5SD3 use a standard 'SEF' trigger group (from the MP5A2 and MP5A3), while the MP5SD4, MP5SD5, and MP5SD6 use the 'Navy' trigger group—a trigger module with a mechanically limited 3-round burst mode and ambidextrous selector controls (from the MP5A4 and MP5A5). A suppressed version was produced for the U.S. Navy—designated the MP5SD-N, which is a version of the MP5SD3 with a retractable metal stock, front sight post with tritium-illuminated dot and a stainless steel suppressor. This model has a modified cocking handle support to account for the slightly larger outside diameter of the suppressor. The design of the suppressor allows the weapon to be fired with water inside, should water enter the device during operation in or near water.
MP5K
In 1976, a shortened machine pistol version of the MP5A2 was introduced; the MP5K (K from the German word Kurz = "short") was designed for close quarters battle use by clandestine operations and special services. The MP5K does not have a shoulder stock (the receiver end was covered with a flat end cap, featuring a buffer on the inside and a sling loop on the outside), and the bolt and receiver were shortened at the rear. The resultant lighter bolt led to a higher rate of fire than the standard MP5. The barrel, cocking handle and its cover were shortened and a vertical foregrip was used to replace the standard handguard. The barrel ends at the base of the front sight, which prevents the use of any sort of muzzle device.
The MP5K is produced (by Heckler & Koch and under license in Iran and Turkey) in four different versions: the MP5K, MP5KA4, MP5KA1, MP5KA5, where the first two variants have adjustable, open-type iron sights (with a notched rotary drum), and the two remaining variants – fixed open sights; however, the front sight post was changed and a notch was cut into the receiver top cover. The MP5K retained the capability to use optical sights through the use of an adapter.
A civilian semiautomatic derivative of the MP5K known as the SP89 was produced that had a foregrip with a muzzle guard in place of the vertical grip.
In 1991, a further variant of the MP5K was developed, designated the MP5K-PDW (PDW—Personal Defense Weapon) that retained the compact dimensions of the MP5K but restored the fire handling characteristics of the full-size MP5A2. The MP5K-PDW uses a side-folding synthetic shoulder stock (made by the U.S. company Choate Machine and Tool), a "Navy" trigger group, a front sight post with a built-in tritium insert and a slightly lengthened threaded, three-lug barrel (analogous to the MP5-N). The stock can be removed and replaced with a receiver endplate; a rotary drum with apertures from the MP5A2 can also be used.
Larger caliber
In 1992, Heckler & Koch introduced the MP5/10 (chambered in 10mm Auto) and MP5/40 (chambered for the .40 S&W cartridge), which are based on the MP5A4 and MP5A5. These weapons were assembled in fixed and retractable stock configurations (without a separate designation) and are fed from translucent 30-round polymer box magazines. These weapons include a bolt hold-open device, which captures the bolt group in its rear position after expending the last cartridge from the magazine. The bolt is then released by pressing a lever positioned on the left side of the receiver. Both weapons use a barrel with 6 right-hand grooves and a 380 mm (1:15 in) twist rate, and like the MP5-N, both have a 3-lugged muzzle device and a tritium-illuminated front sight aiming dot.
Problems with the MP5/10 and MP5/40 led to their discontinuation in 2000, although Heckler & Koch continues to provide support and spare parts.
List
HK54: The original model that was produced in 1964. The 54 designation is from the Heckler & Koch company's old system that indicates that it is a submachine gun/assault carbine (5-) chambered for the 9×19mm cartridge (-4). It had a charcoal-gray phosphated finish rather than the matte-black lacquered finish used on later models and had narrow slotted metal handguards. Its major differences were that it had a longer and heavier bolt carrier than the MP5 and a flip up "ladder"-style rear sight (like the early G3 rifle) rather than the MP5's aperture sight. Its original 15- or 30-round steel magazines were straight rather than curved, had a plastic follower, and were reinforced with ribs (thus their nickname of "waffle"-type magazines).
MP5: A slightly modified version of the HK54 first created in 1966. A matte-black lacquered finish instead of the grayish phosphated finish was introduced for export models in 1977. It originally had the narrow checkered metal "Slimline" handguards in the place of the HK54's narrow slotted metal ones. These were later replaced by the thicker "Tropical" handguards in 1978. The proprietary Heckler & Koch "claw mount" rails for mounting optical and electronic scopes were added around 1973. The improved 15- and 30-round magazines were adopted in 1977; they were curved, had unribbed sides, and had chromed-steel followers.
MP5A1: No buttstock (endplate/receiver cap in place of buttstock), "SEF" trigger group.
MP5A2: Fixed buttstock, "SEF" trigger group.
MP5SFA2: Fixed buttstock, single-fire (SE) trigger group.
MP5A3: Retractable buttstock, "SEF" trigger group.
MP5SFA3: Semi-automatic carbine version of MP5A3. Retractable buttstock and single-fire (SE) trigger group.
MP5A4: Fixed buttstock, 3-round burst trigger group.
MP5A5: Retractable buttstock, 3-round burst trigger group.
MP5-N: Model developed specifically for the U.S. Navy. Ambidextrous "Navy" trigger group, 3-lug/threaded barrel for attaching a sound suppressor; rubber-padded retractable stock.
MP5F: Model developed in 1999 specifically for the French military. Rubber-padded retractable stock, ambidextrous sling loops/bolts and internal modifications to handle high-pressure ammunition.
MP5K: Short (kurz) version created in 1976. It has a shortened barrel, shorter trigger group frame, and a vertical foregrip rather than a handguard. There are no MP5KA2 or MP5KA3 models because it does not come with a fixed or retractable stock.
MP5K Prototype: A stockless, cut-down MP5A2 with regular iron sights and an open vertical foregrip. It was created in 1976.
MP5KA1: MP5K with smooth upper surface and small low-profile iron sights; "SEF" trigger group.
MP5KA4: MP5K with regular iron sights; four-position 3-round burst trigger group.
MP5KA5: MP5K with smooth upper surface and small low-profile iron sights; four-position 3-round burst trigger group.
MP5K-N: MP5K with "Navy" trigger group and 3-lug/threaded barrel for mounting suppressors or other muzzle attachments.
MP5K-PDW: Personal Defense Weapon; MP5K-N variant introduced in 1991 for issue to special operations aircraft or vehicle crews. It adds a Choate side-folding stock, 5-inch 3-lug barrel for mounting a quick-detachable Qual-A-Tec suppressor, and an ambidextrous 4-position trigger group with a 3-round burst mode. A shoulder cross-draw or thigh quick-draw holster is available.
MP5K Operational Briefcase: MP5K mounted with a STANAG claw mount inside a plastic hard shell Special Briefcase (Spezialkoffer), with an external trigger mounted in the briefcase handgrip. An earlier version called the Special Bag (Spezialtasche) included a large opening in the rear of a soft side leather case to grasp the pistol grip and manually actuate the trigger. The briefcase was sold preconfigured with the MP5K as well as separately.
MP5SD: An MP5 model with an integrated suppressor (Schalldämpfer) created in 1974.
MP5SD1: No buttstock (endplate/receiver cap in place of buttstock), "SEF" trigger group, integrated suppressor
MP5SD2: Fixed buttstock, "SEF" trigger group, integrated suppressor.
MP5SD3: Retractable buttstock, "SEF" trigger group, integrated suppressor.
MP5SD4: No buttstock (endplate/receiver cap in place of buttstock), 3-round burst trigger group, integrated suppressor.
MP5SD5: Fixed buttstock, 3-round burst trigger group, integrated suppressor.
MP5SD6: Retractable buttstock, 3-round burst trigger group, integrated suppressor.
MP5SD-N1: Fixed buttstock, "Navy" trigger group, KAC stainless steel suppressor.
MP5SD-N2: Retractable buttstock, "Navy" trigger group, KAC stainless steel suppressor.
MP5/10: Chambered in 10mm Auto, available in various stock/trigger group configurations. It was produced from 1992 to 2000.
MP5/40: Chambered in .40 S&W, available in various stock/trigger group configurations. It was produced from 1992 to 2000.
Civilian
HK94: American import model of the MP5 with an exposed 16.54-inch [420mm] barrel and special SF (safe/semi-automatic) trigger group, designed for civilian use. The 94 factory designation code indicates that it is a semi-auto only Sporting Rifle (9-) chambered for the 9x19mm Parabellum cartridge (-4). A barrel-mounted vertical foregrip and a ventilated barrel shroud were available for the stock HK94. The HK94 was imported from 1983 to 1989, in three different configurations:
The HK94A2 had a fixed stock, an overall length of 34.59 inches [829 mm], and weighed 6.43 lbs. [2.92 kg.]. In 1991, the state of California imported 420 HK-94A2s, mostly for their state Department of Corrections; it was the last batch of HK-94s imported into the United States.
The HK94A3 had a retractable stock, an overall length of 27.58 inches [700 mm] collapsed and 34.05 inches [865 mm] extended and weighed 7.18 lbs. [3.26 kg].
The HK94/SG-1 (Scharfschützengewehr, "sharp-shooting rifle") was designed for short-range sniping in built-up areas like cities or prisons. It proved to be unsuitable for its designed purpose, due to its poor penetration and stopping power, and most went to target shooters and collectors. It had a fixed match stock with a rubber buttpad and an adjustable cheekpiece, folding bipod, flash hider, and a 6 × 42mm Leupold VIII Adjustable Objective scope. It had an overall length of 40.39 inches [1026mm] and a weight of 9.25 lbs. [4.2 kg]. Its mean standard retail price (MSRP) in 1986 was US$1,525; this was more than twice what a stock HK94A2 (US$650) or HK94A3 (US$720) cost. Only 50 were imported into the United States; authentic models have serial numbers running in the 43XX range.As an aftermarket modification, a PSG-1 trigger pack with target pistol grip and match trigger could be added by a gunsmith by changing the ejector and hammer spring. The 6× Leupold scope was calibrated for .223 Remington rounds, so other scopes were often substituted.
SP89: Sportpistole M1989. Semi-automatic only version of the MP5K designed for civilian use. It lacked a vertical foregrip to make it compliant with the National Firearms Act. It was made from 1989 to 1994.
SP5K: First introduced in 2016, the SP5K is an updated version of the SP89. It features a Picatinny rail mounted on the top of the receiver for mounting accessories. As with the SP89, it is semi-automatic only and the forward handguard does not have a vertical foregrip.
SP5: Introduced in 2019, the SP5 is a semi-automatic only version. With an 8.86 inch [225mm] barrel, the same length as that of the original MP5A2. It features the Navy barrel with the threaded adaptor available in the MP5K, paddle magazine release, and fluted chamber.
Manufacturers
: Norinco makes unlicensed copies of the MP5A4, as the NR-08 and NR-08A, and the MP5A5, as the CS/LS3.
: Manufactured under licence by MAS as the MP5F.
: Manufactured under licence by EAS (Ellinika Amyntika Systimata: "Hellenic Defence Systems").
: Indian Ordnance Factory makes unlicensed copies of MP5A3, known as the OFB Anamika 9mm.
: Manufactured under licence by DIO as the Tondar (MP5A3) and Tondar Light (MP5K).
: manufactured by Luxembourg Defence Technology using POF-made parts
: Manufactured under licence by SEDENA.
: Manufactured under licence by Pakistan Ordnance Factories as the MP5P and also POF-5.
: Manufactured under licence by Al Kharj Arsenal, Military Industries Corporation.
: Manufactured by Military Industry Corporation as the Tihraga (MP5A3), a clone of the Iranian Tondar.
: Manufactured under licence by Brügger & Thomet.
: Manufactured by MKEK. Their trigger groups are marked: E (Safe), T (Semi-Auto) and S (Full Auto) instead of SEF.
: Manufactured under licence by Royal Small Arms Factory – Enfield.
Users
Gallery
See also
Table of handgun and rifle cartridges
Scorpion Evo
PP-19 Vityaz
Colt M635
Vityaz-SN
FAMAE SAF
References
Bibliography
External links
Heckler & Koch—official pages: MP5A series, MP5SD, MP5-N, MP5K, MP5SF
2008 Heckler & Koch Military and LE brochure
HKPRO: MP5, MP5K, MP5SD, MP5/10 & MP5/40
REMTEK: MP5, MP5K, MP5K PDW, MP5SD, MP5/10
HECKLER & KOCH MP5 SUB MACHINE GUN FAMILY OPERATOR'S MANUAL
HK MP5 Armorers Manual
.40 S&W submachine guns
9mm Parabellum submachine guns
10mm Auto submachine guns
Cold War weapons of Germany
MP5
Personal defense weapons
Silenced firearms
Carbines
Police weapons
Roller-delayed blowback firearms
Weapons and ammunition introduced in 1966 | [
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14298 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry%20Middleton | Henry Middleton | Henry Middleton (1717 – June 13, 1784) was a planter, public official, and a Founding Father of the United States from South Carolina. A member of the colonial legislature, during the American Revolution he attended the First Continental Congress and served as that body's president for four days in 1774 after the passage of the Continental Association, which he signed. He left the Second Continental Congress before it declared independence. Back in South Carolina, he served as president of the provincial congress and senator in the newly created state government. After his capture by the British in 1780, he accepted defeat and returned to the status of a British subject until the end of the war.
Early life
Henry Middleton was born in 1717 on the family plantation, "The Oaks", near Charleston, Province of South Carolina. He was the second son of Susan (née Amory) Middleton (1690-1722) and Arthur Middleton (1681–1737), a wealthy planter who had served as an acting governor of South Carolina. His grandfather, Edward Middleton, emigrated from England via Barbados. He was educated in England before returning to South Carolina to inherit his father's plantation. He became one of the largest landowners in the colony, owning and about 800 slaves.
Public career
Middleton served in a variety of public offices in South Carolina. He was a justice of the peace and a member of the Commons House of Assembly, where he was elected speaker in 1747, 1754, and 1755. He was a member of provincial council but resigned in 1770 in opposition to British policy.
In 1774, at the outset of the American Revolution, Middleton was selected as a delegate to the Continental Congress. He served as that body's president during the last few days of the First Continental Congress, following the departure of Peyton Randolph. Middleton opposed declaring independence from Great Britain and resigned from the Second Continental Congress in February 1776 when more radical delegates began pushing for independence. He was succeeded in Congress by his son Arthur who was more radical than his father and became a signer of the Declaration of Independence.
After Middleton's return to South Carolina, he was elected president of the provincial congress and, beginning on November 16, 1775, served on the council of safety. In 1776, he and his son Arthur helped frame a temporary state constitution. In 1779, he became a state senator in the new government.
When Charleston was captured by the British at the Siege of Charleston in 1780, Middleton accepted defeat and status as a British subject. This reversal apparently did not damage his reputation in the long run, because of his previous support of the Revolution, and he did not suffer the fate of having his estates confiscated, as many Loyalists did after the war.
Personal life
In 1741, Middleton was married to Mary Baker Williams (1721–1761), the daughter of John Williams, an early South Carolina planter who began building what is today known as Middleton Place around 1730. Together, Henry and Mary were the parents of five sons and seven daughters, seven of whom survived to adulthood, including:
Arthur Middleton (1742–1787), a signer of the Declaration of Independence who married Mary Izard (1747–1814).
Henrietta Middleton (1750–1792), who married Governor Edward Rutledge.
Thomas Middleton (1753–1797), who married Anne Manigault.
Hester Middleton (1754–1789), who married Charles Drayton.
Sarah Middleton (1756–1784), who married Charles Cotesworth Pinckney.
Mary Middleton (1757-1825), who married Peter Smith.
Susannah Middleton (1760–1834), who married Continental Congressman John Parker.
After his wife's death in 1761, Middleton would go on to marry twice more. His second marriage was to Maria Henrietta Bull (1722–1772), daughter of William Bull Sr., the lieutenant governor of South Carolina, in 1762. His second wife's sister, Charlotta (née Bull) Drayton, was the mother of Continental Congressman William Henry Drayton, and her brother, William Bull II, served as governor of South Carolina before leaving the colony in 1782 when British troops were evacuated at the end of the War.
After his second wife's death in 1772, he married for the third time, although it was her fourth marriage, to Lady Mary McKenzie, the daughter of George Mackenzie, 3rd Earl of Cromartie, in 1776. Among Lady Mary's brothers were John Mackenzie, Lord MacLeod and George Mackenzie. Her father was a Scottish nobleman who followed Charles Edward Stuart, the Jacobite Pretender. The Earl of Cromartie was tried and sentenced to death, but he obtained a conditional pardon although his peerage was forfeited.
Middleton died on June 13, 1784, in Charleston. He was buried at Goosecreek Churchyard, St. James Parish, Berkeley County, South Carolina.
Descendants
His grandson, also named Henry (1770–1846), had a long career in politics. He was governor of South Carolina (1810–1812), U.S. Representative (1815–1819), and the minister to Russia (1820–1830). Henry had fourteen children, including Williams Middleton and Edward Middleton.
References
External links
Middleton Place
1717 births
1784 deaths
American people of Barbadian descent
American people of English descent
American slave owners
Continental Congressmen from South Carolina
18th-century American politicians
Middleton family
Politicians from Charleston, South Carolina
People of South Carolina in the American Revolution
South Carolina state senators
South Carolina colonial people
Signers of the Continental Association | [
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14299 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ham | Ham | Ham is pork from a leg cut that has been preserved by wet or dry curing, with or without smoking. As a processed meat, the term "ham" includes both whole cuts of meat and ones that have been mechanically formed.
Ham is made around the world, including a number of regional specialties, such as Westphalian ham and some varieties of Spanish jamón. In addition, numerous ham products have specific geographical naming protection, such as prosciutto di Parma in Europe, and Smithfield ham in the US.
History
The preserving of pork leg as ham has a long history, with Cato the Elder writing about the "salting of hams" in his De Agri Cultura tome around 160 BC.
There are claims that the Chinese were the first people to mention the production of cured ham. Larousse Gastronomique claims an origin from Gaul. It was certainly well established by the Roman period, as evidenced by an import trade from Gaul mentioned by Marcus Terentius Varro in his writings.
The modern word "ham" is derived from the Old English ham or hom meaning the hollow or bend of the knee, from a Germanic base where it meant "crooked". It began to refer to the cut of pork derived from the hind leg of a pig around the 15th century.
Because of the preservation process, ham is a compound foodstuff or ingredient, being made up of the original meat, as well as the remnants of the preserving agent(s), such as salt, but it is still recognised as a food in its own right.
Methods
Ham is produced by curing raw pork by salting, also known as dry curing, or brining, also known as wet curing. Additionally, smoking may be employed, and seasonings may be added.
Dry-cured
Traditional dry cure hams may use only salt as the curative agent, such as with San Daniele or Parma hams, although this is comparatively rare. This process involves cleaning the raw meat, covering it in salt while it is gradually pressed draining all the blood. Specific herbs and spices may be used to add flavour during this step. The hams are then washed and hung in a dark, temperature-regulated place until dry. It is then hung to air for another period of time.
The duration of the curing process varies by the type of ham, with, for example, Jinhua ham, takes approximately 8 to 10 months to complete, Serrano ham cures in 9–12 months, Parma hams takes more than 12 months, and Iberian ham can take up to 2 years to reach the desired flavor characteristics.
Most modern dry cure hams also use nitrites (either sodium nitrite or potassium nitrite), which are added along with the salt. Nitrites are used because they prevent bacterial growth and, in a reaction with the meat's myoglobin, give the product a desirable dark red color. The amount and mixture of salt and nitrites used have an effect on the shrinkage of the meat. Because of the toxicity of nitrite (the lethal dose of nitrite for humans is about 22 mg per kg body weight), some areas specify a maximum allowable content of nitrite in the final product. Under certain conditions, especially during cooking, nitrites in meat can react with degradation products of amino acids, forming nitrosamines, which are known carcinogens.
The dry curing of ham involves a number of enzymatic reactions. The enzymes involved are proteinases (cathepsins – B, D, H & L, and calpains) and exopeptidases (peptidase and aminopeptidase). These enzymes cause proteolysis of muscle tissue, which creates large numbers of small peptides and free amino acids, while the adipose tissue undergoes lipolysis to create free fatty acids. Salt and phosphates act as strong inhibitors of proteolytic activity. Animal factors influencing enzymatic activity include age, weight, and breed. During the process itself, conditions such as temperature, duration, water content, redox potential, and salt content all have an effect on the meat.
The salt content in dry-cured ham varies throughout a piece of meat, with gradients determinable through sampling and testing or non-invasively through CT scanning.
Dry-cured ham is usually eaten without being cooked.
Wet-cured
Wet-cured hams are brined, which involves the immersion of the meat in a brine, sometimes with other ingredients such as sugar also added for flavour. The meat is typically kept in the brine for around 3 to 14 days. Wet curing also has the effect of increasing volume and weight of the finished product, by about 4%.
The wet curing process can also be achieved by pumping the curing solution into the meat. This can be quicker, increase the weight of the finished product by more than immersion, and ensure a more even distribution of salt through the meat. This process is quicker than traditional brining, normally being completed in a few days.
Wet-cured ham is usually cooked, either during processing, or after ageing.
The Italian version of cooked, wet-cured ham is called prosciutto cotto, as are similar hams made outside Italy. It is first brined, then cooked in a container and finally surface pasteurized. Italian regulations allow it to contain salt, nitrites, sugar, dextrose, fructose, lactose, maltodextrin, milk protein, soy protein, natural or modified starches, spices, gelatin, and flavorings.
Smoking
Ham can also be additionally preserved through smoking, in which the meat is placed in a smokehouse (or equivalent) to be cured by the action of smoke.
The main flavor compounds of smoked ham are guaiacol, and its 4-, 5-, and 6-methyl derivatives as well as 2,6-dimethylphenol. These compounds are produced by combustion of lignin, a major constituent of wood used in the smokehouse.
Labeling
In many countries the term is now protected by statute, with a specific definition. For instance, in the United States, the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) says that "the word 'ham', without any prefix indicating the species of animal from which derived, shall be used in labeling only in connection with the hind legs of swine".
In addition to the main categories, some processing choices can affect legal labeling. For instance, in the United States, a "smoked" ham must have been smoked by hanging over burning wood chips in a smokehouse or an atomized spray of liquid smoke such that the product appearance is equivalent; a "hickory-smoked" ham must have been smoked using only hickory. However, injecting "smoke flavor" is not legal grounds for claiming the ham was "smoked"; these are labeled "smoke flavor added". Hams can only be labeled "honey-cured" if honey was at least 50% of the sweetener used, is at least 3% of the formula, and has a discernible effect on flavor. So-called "lean" and "extra lean" hams must adhere to maximum levels of fat and cholesterol per 100 grams of product.
Whole fresh pork leg can be labeled as fresh ham in the United States.
Protected designations
A number of hams worldwide have some level of protection of their unique characteristics, usually relating to their method of preservation or location of production or processing. Dependent on jurisdiction, rules may prevent any other product being sold with the particular appellation, such as through the European protected geographical indication.
Belgium
Jambon d'Ardenne – Wallonia
Bulgaria
Elenski but – Elena
China
Anfu ham- Jiangxi
Jinhua ham – Jinhua
Rugao ham – Rugao
Xuanwei ham – Xuanwei
Czech Republic
Pražká Šunka ("Prague Ham") – Prague
Croatia
Pršut
France
Bayonne ham (Jambon de Bayonne) – Bayonne
Germany
Ammerländer Schinken – Ammerland
Schwarzwälder Schinken – Black Forest
Westfälischer Schinken – Westphalia
Italy
Prosciutto di Parma – Parma
Prosciutto di San Daniele – San Daniele del Friuli
Speck Alto Adige – South Tyrol
Vallée d’Aoste Jambon de Bosses – Saint-Rhémy-en-Bosses, Aosta Valley
Luxembourg
Éisleker ham – Oesling region
Montenegro
Njeguška pršuta – Njeguši, Montenegro
Portugal
Portuguese Fiambre (not to be confused with Guatemalan fiambre)
Presunto
Jamón Ibérico
Slovenia
Kraški pršut
Spain
Jamón serrano
Jamón Ibérico, made from the Black Iberian pig breeds.
Lacón Gallego, from Galicia
United Kingdom
Wiltshire cure ham
York ham
United States
Smithfield ham – Smithfield, Virginia
Uses
Ham is typically used in its sliced form, often as a filling for sandwiches and similar foods, such as in the ham sandwich and ham and cheese sandwich. Other variations include toasted sandwiches such as the croque-monsieur and the Cubano. It is also a popular topping for pizza in the United States.
In the United Kingdom, a pork leg cut, either whole or sliced, that has been cured but requires additional cooking is known as gammon. Gammons were traditional cured before being cut from a side of pork along with bacon. When cooked, gammon is ham. Such roasts are a traditional part of British Christmas dinners.
Health effects
As a processed meat, there has been concern over the health effects of ham consumption. A meta-analysis study from 2012 has shown a statistically relevant correlation between processed meat consumption and the risk of pancreatic cancer, with an increase in consumption of per day leading to a 19% increase in risk.
This supported earlier studies, including the 2007 study "Food, Nutrition, Physical Activity and the Prevention of Cancer: a Global Perspective", by the World Cancer Research Fund and the American Institute for Cancer Research, which reviewed more than 7,000 studies published worldwide. Among the recommendations was that, except for very rare occasions, people should avoid eating ham or other processed meats – cured, smoked, salted or chemically preserved meat products such as bacon, hot dogs, sausage, salami, and pastrami. The report states that once an individual reaches the weekly limit for red meat, every of processed meat consumed a day increases cancer risk by 21%.
A European cohort study from 2013 also positively correlated processed meat consumption with higher all-cause mortality, with an estimation that 3.3% of the deaths amongst participants could have been prevented by consuming an average of less than of processed meat per day over the course of the study.
See also
Christmas ham
Ham and eggs
List of ham dishes
List of hams
List of smoked foods
Turkey ham
References
External links
Ham history
Ham and food safety at the United States Department of Agriculture
The Cook's Thesaurus: "ham"
Ancient dishes
Charcuterie
Christmas food
Cold cut
Easter food
Garde manger
Smoked meat
Thanksgiving food | [
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14300 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry%20Laurens | Henry Laurens | Henry Laurens (December 8, 1792) was an American Founding Father, merchant, slave trader, and rice planter from South Carolina who became a political leader during the Revolutionary War. A delegate to the Second Continental Congress, Laurens succeeded John Hancock as president of the Continental Congress. He was a signatory to the Articles of Confederation.
Laurens had earned great wealth as a partner in the largest slave-trading house in North America, Austin and Laurens. In the 1750s alone, this Charleston firm oversaw the sale of more than 8,000 enslaved Africans. Laurens served for a time as vice president of South Carolina and as the United States minister to the Netherlands during the Revolutionary War. He was captured at sea by the British and imprisoned for several years in the Tower of London. His oldest son, John Laurens, was an aide-de-camp to George Washington and a colonel in the Continental Army.
Early life and education
Laurens' forebears were Huguenots who fled France after the Edict of Nantes was revoked in 1685. His grandfather Andre Laurens left earlier, in 1682, and eventually made his way to America, settling first in New York City and then Charleston, South Carolina. Andre's son John married Hester (or Esther) Grasset, also a Huguenot refugee. Henry was their third child and eldest son. John Laurens became a saddler, and his business eventually grew to be the largest of its kind in the colonies.
In 1744, Laurens was sent to London to augment his business training. This took place in the company of Richard Oswald. His father died in 1747, bequeathing a considerable estate to 23-year-old Henry.
Marriage and family
Laurens married Eleanor Ball, also of a South Carolina rice planter family, on June 25, 1750. They had thirteen children, many of whom died in infancy or childhood. Eleanor died in 1770, one month after giving birth to their last child. Laurens took their three sons to England for their education, encouraging their oldest, John Laurens, to study law. Instead of completing his studies, John Laurens returned to the United States in 1776 to serve in the American Revolutionary War.
Political career
Laurens served in the militia, as did most able-bodied men in his time. He rose to the rank of lieutenant colonel in the campaigns against the Cherokee Indians in 1757–1761, during the French and Indian War (also known as the Seven Years' War).
In 1757, he was elected to the colonial assembly. Laurens was elected again every year but one until the Revolution replaced the assembly with a state convention as an interim government. The year he missed was 1773, when he visited England to arrange for his sons' educations. He was named to the colony's council in 1764 and 1768 but declined both times. In 1772, he joined the American Philosophical Society of Philadelphia and carried on extensive correspondence with other members.
As the American Revolution neared, Laurens was at first inclined to support reconciliation with the British Crown. But as conditions deteriorated, he came to fully support the American position. When Carolina began to create a revolutionary government, Laurens was elected to the Provincial Congress, which first met on January 9, 1775. He was president of the Committee of Safety and presiding officer of that congress from June until March 1776. When South Carolina installed a fully independent government, he served as the vice president of South Carolina from March 1776 to June 27, 1777. Laurens was first named a delegate to the Continental Congress on January 10, 1777. He served in the Congress until 1780. He was the president of the Continental Congress from November 1, 1777, to December 9, 1778.
In the fall of 1779, the Congress named Laurens their minister to the Netherlands. In early 1780, he took up that post and successfully negotiated Dutch support for the war. But on his return voyage to Amsterdam that fall, the British frigate intercepted his ship, the continental packet Mercury, off the banks of Newfoundland. Although his dispatches were tossed in the water, they were retrieved by the British, who discovered the draft of a possible U.S.-Dutch treaty prepared in Aix-la-Chapelle in 1778 by William Lee and the Amsterdam banker Jean de Neufville. This prompted Britain to declare war on the Dutch Republic, becoming known as the Fourth Anglo-Dutch War.
The British charged Laurens with treason, transported him to England, and imprisoned him in the Tower of London (he is the only American to have been held prisoner in the tower). His imprisonment was protested by the Americans. In the field, most captives were regarded as prisoners of war, and while conditions were frequently appalling, prisoner exchanges and mail privileges were accepted practice. During his imprisonment, Laurens was assisted by Richard Oswald, his former business partner and the principal owner of Bunce Island, a slave-trading island base in the Sierra Leone River. Oswald argued on Laurens' behalf to the British government. Finally, on December 31, 1781, he was released in exchange for General Lord Cornwallis and completed his voyage to Amsterdam. He helped raise funds for the American effort.
Laurens' oldest son, Colonel John Laurens, was killed in 1782 in the Battle of the Combahee River, as one of the last casualties of the Revolutionary War. He had supported enlisting and freeing slaves for the war effort and suggested to his father that he begin with the 40 he stood to inherit. He had urged his father to free the family's slaves, but although conflicted, Henry Laurens never manumitted his 260 slaves.
In 1783, Laurens was sent to Paris as one of the peace commissioners for the negotiations leading to the Treaty of Paris. While he was not a signatory of the primary treaty, he was instrumental in reaching the secondary accords that resolved issues related to the Netherlands and Spain. Richard Oswald, a former partner of Laurens in the slave trade, was the principal negotiator for the British during the Paris peace talks.
Laurens generally retired from public life in 1784. He was sought for a return to the Continental Congress, the Constitutional Convention in 1787 and the state assembly, but he declined all of these positions. He did serve in the state convention of 1788, where he voted to ratify the United States Constitution.
British forces, during their occupation of Charleston, had burned the Laurens home at Mepkin during the war. When Laurens and his family returned in 1784, they lived in an outbuilding while the great house was rebuilt. He lived on the estate the rest of his life, working to recover the estimated £40,000 that the revolution had cost him (equivalent to about $ in ).
Death and legacy
Laurens died on December 8, 1792, at his estate, Mepkin, in South Carolina. In his will he stated he wished to be cremated and his ashes be interred at his estate. It is reported that he was the first Caucasian cremation in the United States, which he choose because of a fear of being buried alive. Afterward, the estate passed through several hands. Large portions of the estate still exist and are used today as a Trappist abbey.
The city of Laurens, South Carolina, and its county are named for him. The town and the village of Laurens, New York, are named for him. Laurens County, Georgia, is named for his son John. General Lachlan McIntosh, who worked for Laurens as a clerk and became close friends with him, named Fort Laurens in Ohio after him.
Notes
References
</ref>
Further reading
Kelly, Joseph P. "Henry Laurens: The Southern Man of Conscience in History." South Carolina Historical Magazine (2006): 82–123. in JSTOR
Kirschke, James J., and Victor J. Sensenig. "Steps toward nationhood: Henry Laurens (1724–92) and the American Revolution in the South" Historical Research 78.200 (2005): 180–192.
; 16 vols.
McDonough, Daniel J. Christopher Gadsden and Henry Laurens: The Parallel Lives of Two American Patriots (Susquehanna University Press, 2001)
Neville, Gabriel. "The Tragedy of Henry Laurens." Journal of the American Revolution, Aug. 1, 2019.
External links
Mepkin Abbey web site
The Henry Laurens Papers, including 486 letters covering a wide variety of subjects, are available for research use at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania.
Forgotten Founders Biography site
– cenotaph
Henry Laurens Account Book, 1766-1773, Lowcountry Digial Library
1724 births
1792 deaths
Ambassadors of the United States to the Netherlands
American Revolutionary War prisoners of war held by Great Britain
American planters
American slave traders
American slave owners
Prisoners in the Tower of London
Colonial American merchants
Huguenot participants in the American Revolution
Colonial South Carolina
Continental Congressmen from South Carolina
18th-century American politicians
Businesspeople from Charleston, South Carolina
People of pre-statehood South Carolina
People of South Carolina in the American Revolution
People of South Carolina in the French and Indian War
Pre-statehood history of South Carolina
Signers of the Articles of Confederation
Cremation
Politicians from Charleston, South Carolina
18th-century Anglicans | [
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14301 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British%20Aerospace%20HOTOL | British Aerospace HOTOL | HOTOL, for Horizontal Take-Off and Landing, was a 1980s British design for a single-stage-to-orbit (SSTO) spaceplane that was to be powered by an airbreathing jet engine. Development was being conducted by a consortium led by Rolls-Royce and British Aerospace (BAe).
Designed as a single-stage-to-orbit (SSTO) reusable winged launch vehicle, HOTOL was to be fitted with a unique air-breathing engine, the RB545 or Swallow, that was under development by British engine manufacturer Rolls-Royce. The propellant for the engine technically consisted of a combination of liquid hydrogen/liquid oxygen; however, it was to employ a new means of dramatically reducing the amount of oxidizer needed to be carried on board by utilising atmospheric oxygen as the spacecraft climbed through the lower atmosphere. Since the oxidizer typically represents the majority of the takeoff weight of a rocket, HOTOL was to be considerably smaller than normal pure-rocket designs, roughly the size of a medium-haul airliner such as the McDonnell Douglas DC-9/MD-80.
While HOTOL's proof-of-concept design study was being carried out, attempts were made by both industry and the British government to establish international cooperation to develop, produce, and deploy the spacecraft. In spite of American interest in the programme, there was little appetite amongst the members of the European Space Agency (ESA), and the British government was not prepared to depart from ESA cooperation. Additionally, technical issues were encountered, and there were allegations that comparisons with alternative launch systems such as conventional rocket vehicle using similar construction techniques failed to show much advantage to HOTOL. In 1989, funding for the project ended. The termination of development work on HOTOL led to the formation of Reaction Engines Limited (REL) to develop and produce Skylon, a proposed spacecraft based on HOTOL technologies, including its air-breathing engine.
Development
Origins
The ideas behind HOTOL originated from work done by British Engineer Alan Bond in the field of pre-cooled jet engines. Bond had specifically performed this research with the intention of producing a viable engine for powering a space launch system. In 1982, British Aerospace (BAe), which was Europe's principal satellite-builder, began studying a prospective new launch system with the aim of providing launch costs that were 20 per cent of the American Space Shuttle operated by NASA. BAe became aware of work by British engine manufacturer Rolls-Royce on a suitable engine, and soon conceived of an unmanned, fully reusable single-stage-to-orbit (SSTO) winged spaceplane as a launch vehicle.
Thus, the project had soon become a joint venture between BAe and Rolls-Royce, led by John Scott-Scott and Dr Bob Parkinson. Early on, there was an ambition to 'Europeanise' the project and to involve other nations in its development and manufacture as it was recognised that an estimated £4 billion would be needed to fund full-scale development. In August 1984, BAe unveiled a public display of the HOTOL satellite launcher project and released details on its proposed operations.
In December 1984, a Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) memorandum noted that West Germany was interested in the programme, while France had adopted a critical attitude towards HOTOL, which the ministry viewed as potentially due to it being seen as a competitor to French-led projects. According to the Minister of Trade and Industry Geoffrey Pattie, French diplomatic pressure to gather support for its own proposed Hermes space vehicle had inadvertently generated support and interest amongst European Space Agency (ESA) members in the HOTOL project. Despite this climate of tentative interest and possible European support, there was a general attitude of reluctance within the British government to take the lead on a new space launcher.
American interest and design study
In March 1985, there were claims that Rolls-Royce was in the process of conducting licensing talks for HOTOL engine technology with American propulsion company Rocketdyne. In April 1985, Pattie wrote to Secretary of State for Defence Michael Heseltine to propose a two-year £3 million proof of concept study be performed under a public-private partnership arrangement, consisting of £1 million provided by the UK government and the remainder being financed by Rolls-Royce and BAe themselves. Pattie reasoned that the project would serve Britain's "strategic capability, and that tests of key technologies could foster international collaboration. According to aerospace publication Flight International, the support of the Ministry of Defense (MoD) was critical as the design of HOTOL's engine had been classified.
In July 1985, Rolls-Royce's technical director Gordon Lewis stated that the firm sought the involvement of the Royal Aircraft Establishment's (RAE) propulsion group, and that Rolls-Royce was not prepared to invest its own funds into engine development for HOTOL. By the second half of 1985, work had commenced on the two-year concept-of-proof study. Early on, there was considerable pressure to demonstrate the project's feasibility and credibility in advance of final decisions being taken by the ESA on the Hermes and what would become the Ariane 5 launch system, thus the work concentrated on the validation of critical technologies involved.
By November 1985, DTI and RAE discussions noted that Rolls-Royce were seeking American data on ramjet technology to support their work on the engine, which it referred to by the name Swallow. Reportedly, the United States Air Force were interested in the technology used in the Swallow engine for its own purposes. In November 1985, discussions between Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, Minister without portfolio David Young and US President Ronald Reagan's scientific advisor George Keyworth noted American interest in collaboration on developing hypersonic vehicles such as HOTOL, and that a prototype could be flying as early as 1990.
According to British government files, neither BAe nor the MoD were enthusiastic for the prospects of American involvement in the programme, expressing reluctance out of a belief that the outcome of such a move could result in the UK becoming a junior member in a project that it once led. There was also a belief that if Britain chose to pair up with the United States, it would find itself frozen out of work on future European launchers. However, Rolls-Royce viewed transatlantic cooperation as necessary. BAe's head of future business, Peter Conchie, stated that, if possible, HOTOL should become a part of the European space framework. In early 1986, the British government formally approved the two-year study.
Problems and criticism
In December 1984, project management consultant David Andrews issued an eight-page critique of the programme, noting that the design was optimised for the ascent while exposing itself to extended thermal loads during descent due to a low level of drag. He also claimed that the vehicle offered no capability that was not already available; BAe responded that the criticisms made had been answered. In April 1985, the Ministry of Defence's research and development department deputy controller James Barnes claimed that HOTOL lacked a justification, and that there was no defence requirement for such vehicles. He also noted that the "engineering problems are considerable" and that it was unlikely to enter service until the 2020s; Barnes also observed the HOTOL engine to be "ingenious".
In November 1985, the RAE issued an assessment of HOTOL's study proposal; the organisation believed that HOTOL would take up to 20 years to develop, rather than the 12-year timetable that had been envisioned by industry. The RAE also projected that the project would have an estimated total cost of £5 billion (as of its value in 1985), £750 million of which would be required in a six-year definition phase and an estimated £25 million in a pre-definition feasibility study.
During development, it was found that the comparatively heavy rear-mounted engine moved the centre of mass of the vehicle rearwards. This meant that the vehicle had to be designed to push the centre of drag as far rearward as possible to ensure stability during the entire flight regime. Redesign of the vehicle to do this required a large mass of hydraulic systems, which cost a significant proportion of the payload, and made the economics unclear. In particular, some of the analysis seemed to indicate that similar technology applied to a pure rocket approach would give approximately the same performance at less cost.
Shutdown
By 1989, the outlook for HOTOL had become bleak; from the onset of the project, support between the British government and industrial partners had been uneven, while the United States had emerged as the only foreign nation that showed willingness to contribute to the programme, in part because of the secrecy surrounding the program. There was little prospect for European involvement, the ESA having elected to pursue development of what would become the Ariane 5, a conventional space launch system. Rolls-Royce withdrew from the project, judging the eventual market for the engine was unlikely to be large enough to repay the development costs. The British government declined to offer further funding for HOTOL. The project was almost at the end of its design phase while much of the plans remained in a speculative state; the craft was reportedly still dogged with aerodynamic problems and operational disadvantages at this point.
Successors
A cheaper redesign, Interim HOTOL or HOTOL 2, which was to be launched from the back of a modified Antonov An-225 Mriya transport aircraft, was promoted by BAe in 1991; however, this proposal was rejected as well. The design for Interim HOTOL was to have dispensed with an air-breathing engine cycle and was designed to use a more conventional mix of LOX and liquid hydrogen as fuel instead.
In 1989, HOTOL co-creator Alan Bond and engineers John Scott-Scott and Richard Varvill formed Reaction Engines Limited (REL) which has since been working on a new air-breathing engine, SABRE, which used alternative designs to work around (and improve upon) the Rolls-Royce patents, and the Skylon vehicle intended to solve the problems of HOTOL. They first published these engine and spacecraft concepts in 1993, and have since been developing the core technologies, particularly the engine and its frost-controlled pre-cooler; initially supported by private funding, but latterly with support from the European Space Agency, the British National Space Centre, the United Kingdom Space Agency, BAe, and the Air Force Research Laboratory. REL plan to demonstrate a flight-ready pre-cooler operating under simulated flight conditions in 2018, and statically test a demonstration engine core in 2020.
Design
Overview
HOTOL was envisioned as an unmanned, fully reusable single-stage-to-orbit (SSTO) winged spaceplane. The unmanned craft was intended to put a payload of around 7 to 8 tonnes in orbit, at 300 km altitude. It was intended to take off from a runway, mounted on the back of a large rocket-boosted trolley that would help get the craft up to "working speed". The engine was intended to switch from jet propulsion to pure rocket propulsion at 26–32 km high, by which time the craft would be travelling at Mach 5 to 7. After reaching low Earth orbit (LEO), HOTOL was intended to re-enter the atmosphere and glide down to land on a conventional runway (approx 1,500 metres minimum). Only a single payload would have been carried at a time as BAe had judged this to be more economic as it removed any need for satellite interfacing and allowed for missions to be tailored to individual requirements.
During its high-altitude phase, its flight control system would have been linked to ground stations and to space-based global navigation system navigation, while radar would have been used during the take-off and landing phases. In addition to the placing of satellites into geosynchronous orbit or LOE, HOTOL was also projected as being able to also perform the retrieval of satellites and hardware from LOE. BAe promotional material depicts HOTOL docking with the International Space Station (ISS), a feat that the company claimed would have required manned operation as automated systems were not capable of performing such docking manoeuvres at that time. HOTOL was designed to conduct fully automated unmanned flights; however, it had been intended at a later stage to potentially re-introduce a pilot. Manned operations would have required the installation of a dedicated pressurised module within the payload bay.
As designed, HOTOL would have been 62 metres long, 12.8 metres high, a fuselage diameter of 5.7 metres and a wingspan of 19.7 metres. It featured a wing design that had been derived from that of Concorde; its large area resulted in relatively low wing loading, which would have resulted in lower reentry temperatures (never rising above 1,400 °C). Built out of carbon composite materials, there would have been no need for the use of insulating tiles akin to those that comprised the Space Shuttle thermal protection system. The internally stowed landing gear would have been too small to carry the weight of the fully fuelled rocket, so emergency landings would have required the fuel to be dumped.
Engine
The RB545, which was given the name "Swallow" by its manufacturer, British engine maker Rolls-Royce, was an air-breathing rocket engine. It would have functioned as an integrated dual-role powerplant, having been capable of air-breathing while operating within the atmosphere and operating in a similar manner to that of a rocket when having attained close to and within LEO. This engine would have also been capable of powering the spacecraft to hypersonic speeds. It was a crucial element of the programme, having been publicly attributed as "the heart of Hotol's very low launch costs".
The exact details of this engine were covered by the Official Secrets Act of the United Kingdom; consequently, there is relatively little public information about its development and on its operation. However, material was later declassified when government policy changed to prevent the keeping of secret patents without an attributed justification.
Within the atmosphere, air is taken in through two vertically mounted intake ramps, then the flow would be split, passing the correct amount to the pre-coolers, and the excess to spill ducts. Hydrogen from the fuel tanks would be passed through two heat exchangers to pre-cool the air prior to entering a high overall pressure-ratio turbojet-like engine cycle — the heated hydrogen driving a turbine to compress and feed the cooled air into the rocket engine, where it was combusted with some of the hydrogen used to cool the air. The majority of the remaining hot hydrogen was released from the back of the engine, with a small amount drawn off to reheat the air in the spill ducts in a ramjet arrangement to produce "negative intake momentum drag." These ramjets were typically depicted as two glowing red circles below the rocket engines in pictures of HOTOL.
To prevent the pre-coolers from icing up, the first pre-cooler cooled the air to around 10 degrees above freezing point, to liquefy the water vapour in the air. Then LOX would have been injected into the airflow to drop the temperature to flash freezing the water into microscopic ice crystals, sufficiently cold that they wouldn't melt due to kinetic heating if they struck the second pre-cooler elements. A water trap could have been added after the first pre-cooler if operating conditions resulted in an excess of moisture.
When it was no longer possible to use the atmosphere for combustion, the RB545 would switch to using on-board liquid oxygen (LOX) to burn with the hydrogen as a high-efficiency hydrogen/oxygen rocket.
See also
NASP – a scramjet vehicle with which HOTOL would have competed
Reaction Engines Skylon – a follow-on design that attempts to avoid HOTOL's shortcomings
Reaction Engines A2 – a design for a hypersonic antipodal airliner
Liquid air cycle engine – a related engine cycle that liquifies the air
References
Citations
Bibliography
(With detailed cutaway)
Notes
External links
HOTOL-related patent on jetisonable control surfaces
Listen to Dr Bob Parkinson discuss the HOTOL in an oral history interview recorded for the National Life Stories project Oral History of British Science at the British Library
HOTOL
Spaceplanes
Cancelled spacecraft
Single-stage-to-orbit
Former proposed space launch system concepts
Space programme of the United Kingdom
Tailless delta-wing aircraft | [
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14306 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hammerhead%20shark | Hammerhead shark | The hammerhead sharks are a group of sharks that form the family Sphyrnidae, so named for the unusual and distinctive structure of their heads, which are flattened and laterally extended into a "hammer" shape called a cephalofoil. Most hammerhead species are placed in the genus Sphyrna, while the winghead shark is placed in its own genus, Eusphyra. Many different, but not necessarily mutually exclusive, functions have been postulated for the cephalofoil, including sensory reception, manoeuvering, and prey manipulation. The cephalofoil gives the shark superior binocular vision and depth perception.
Hammerheads are found worldwide in warmer waters along coastlines and continental shelves. Unlike most sharks, some hammerhead species usually swim in schools during the day, becoming solitary hunters at night. Some of these schools can be found near Malpelo Island in Colombia, the Galápagos Islands in Ecuador, Cocos Island off Costa Rica, near Molokai in Hawaii, and off southern and eastern Africa.
Description
The known species range from in length and weigh from . They are usually light gray and have a greenish tint. Their bellies are white, which allows them to blend into the background when viewed from below, and sneak up on their prey. Their heads have lateral projections that give them a hammer-like shape. While overall similar, this shape differs somewhat between species; e.g., a distinct T-shape in the great hammerhead, a rounded head with a central notch in the scalloped hammerhead, and an unnotched rounded head in the smooth hammerhead.
Hammerheads have disproportionately small mouths compared to other shark species. They are also known to form schools during the day, sometimes in groups over 100. In the evening, like other sharks, they become solitary hunters. National Geographic explains that hammerheads can be found in warm, tropical waters, but during the summer, they participate in a mass migration to search for cooler waters.
Taxonomy and evolution
Since sharks do not have mineralized bones and rarely fossilize, only their teeth are commonly found as fossils. The hammerheads seem closely related to the carcharhinid sharks that evolved during the mid-Tertiary period. According to DNA studies, the ancestor of the hammerheads probably lived in the Miocene epoch about 20 million years ago.
Using mitochondrial DNA, a phylogenetic tree of the hammerhead sharks showed the winghead shark as its most basal member. As the winghead shark has proportionately the largest "hammer" of the hammerhead sharks, this suggests that the first ancestral hammerhead sharks also had large hammers.
Fossils show that hammerheads might have evolved earlier during the Paleocene.
Cephalofoil
The hammer-like shape of the head may have evolved at least in part to enhance the animal's vision. The positioning of the eyes, mounted on the sides of the shark's distinctive hammer head, allows 360° of vision in the vertical plane, meaning the animals can see above and below them at all times. They also have an increased binocular vision and depth of visual field as a result of the cephalofoil. The shape of the head was previously thought to help the shark find food, aiding in close-quarters maneuverability, and allowing sharp turning movement without losing stability. The unusual structure of its vertebrae, though, has been found to be instrumental in making the turns correctly, more often than the shape of its head, though it would also shift and provide lift. From what is known about the winghead shark, the shape of the hammerhead apparently has to do with an evolved sensory function. Like all sharks, hammerheads have electroreceptory sensory pores called ampullae of Lorenzini. The pores on the shark's head lead to sensory tubes, which detect electric fields generated by other living creatures. By distributing the receptors over a wider area, like a larger radio antenna, hammerheads can sweep for prey more effectively.
Reproduction
Reproduction occurs only once a year for hammerhead sharks, and usually occurs with the male shark biting the female shark violently until she agrees to mate with him. The hammerhead sharks exhibit a viviparous mode of reproduction with females giving birth to live young. Like other sharks, fertilization is internal, with the male transferring sperm to the female through one of two intromittent organs called claspers. The developing embryos are at first sustained by a yolk sac. When the supply of yolk is exhausted, the depleted yolk sac transforms into a structure analogous to a mammalian placenta (called a "yolk sac placenta" or "pseudoplacenta"), through which the mother delivers sustenance until birth. Once the baby sharks are born, they are not taken care of by the parents in any way. Usually, a litter consists of 12 to 15 pups, except for the great hammerhead, which gives birth to litters of 20 to 40 pups. These baby sharks huddle together and swim toward warmer water until they are old enough and large enough to survive on their own.
In 2007, the bonnethead shark was found to be capable of asexual reproduction via automictic parthenogenesis, in which a female's ovum fuses with a polar body to form a zygote without the need for a male. This was the first shark known to do this.
Diet
Hammerhead sharks eat a large range of prey such as fish (including other sharks), squid, octopus, and crustaceans. Stingrays are a particular favorite. These sharks are often found swimming along the bottom of the ocean, stalking their prey. Their unique heads are used as a weapon when hunting down prey. The hammerhead shark uses its head to pin down stingrays and eats the ray when the ray is weak and in shock. The great hammerhead, tending to be larger and more aggressive than most hammerheads, occasionally engages in cannibalism, eating other hammerhead sharks, including its own young. In addition to the typical animal prey, bonnetheads have been found to feed on seagrass, which sometimes makes up as much as half their stomach contents. They may swallow it unintentionally, but they are able to partially digest it. This is the only known case of a potentially omnivorous species of shark.
Species
Relationship with humans
According to the International Shark Attack File, humans have been subjects of 17 documented, unprovoked attacks by hammerhead sharks within the genus Sphyrna since 1580 AD. No human fatalities have been recorded.
The great and the scalloped hammerheads are listed on the World Conservation Union's (IUCN) 2008 Red List as endangered, whereas the smalleye hammerhead is listed as vulnerable. The status given to these sharks is as a result of overfishing and demand for their fins, an expensive delicacy. Among others, scientists expressed their concern about the plight of the scalloped hammerhead at the American Association for the Advancement of Science annual meeting in Boston. The young swim mostly in shallow waters along shores all over the world to avoid predators.
Shark fins are prized as a delicacy in certain countries in Asia (such as China), and overfishing is putting many hammerhead sharks at risk of extinction. Fishermen who harvest the animals typically cut off the fins and toss the remainder of the fish, which is often still alive, back into the sea. This practice, known as finning, is lethal to the shark.
In native Hawaiian culture, sharks are considered to be gods of the sea, protectors of humans, and cleaners of excessive ocean life. Some of these sharks are believed to be family members who died and have been reincarnated into shark form, but others are considered man-eaters, also known as niuhi. These sharks include great white sharks, tiger sharks, and bull sharks. The hammerhead shark, also known as mano kihikihi, is not considered a man-eater or niuhi; it is considered to be one of the most respected sharks of the ocean, an aumakua. Many Hawaiian families believe that they have an aumakua watching over them and protecting them from the niuhi. The hammerhead shark is thought to be the birth animal of some children. Hawaiian children who are born with the hammerhead shark as an animal sign are believed to be warriors and are meant to sail the oceans. Hammerhead sharks rarely pass through the waters of Maui, but many Maui natives believe that their swimming by is a sign that the gods are watching over the families, and the oceans are clean and balanced.
In captivity
The relatively small bonnethead is regular at public aquariums, as it has proven easier to keep in captivity than the larger hammerhead species, and it has been bred at a handful of facilities. Nevertheless, at up to in length and with highly specialized requirements, very few private aquarists have the experience and resources necessary to maintain a bonnethead in captivity. The larger hammerhead species can reach more than twice that size and are considered difficult, even compared to most other similar-sized sharks (such as Carcharhinus species, lemon shark, and sand tiger shark) regularly kept by public aquariums. They are particularly vulnerable during transport between facilities, may rub on surfaces in tanks, and may collide with rocks, causing injuries to their heads, so they require very large, specially adapted tanks. As a consequence, relatively few public aquaria have kept them for long periods. The scalloped hammerhead is the most frequently maintained large species, and it has been kept long term at public aquaria in most continents, but primarily in North America, Europe, and Asia. In 2014, fewer than 15 public aquaria in the world kept scalloped hammerheads. Great hammerheads have been kept at a few facilities in North America, including Atlantis Paradise Island Resort (Bahamas), Adventure Aquarium (New Jersey), Georgia Aquarium (Atlanta), Mote Marine Laboratory (Florida), and the Shark Reef at Mandalay Bay (Las Vegas). Smooth hammerheads have also been kept in the past.
Protection
In March 2013, three endangered, commercially valuable sharks, the hammerheads, the oceanic whitetip, and porbeagle, were added to Appendix II of CITES, bringing shark fishing and commerce of these species under licensing and regulation.
Cultural significance
Among Torres Strait Islanders, the hammerhead shark, known as the beizam, is a common family totem and often represented in cultural artefacts such as the elaborate headdresses worn for ceremonial dances, known as dhari (dari). They are associated with law and order. Renowned artist Ken Thaiday Snr is known for his representations of beizam in his sculptural dari and other works.
See also
List of prehistoric cartilaginous fish
List of hammerhead sharks
References
External links
Animal Diversity Web Genus Sphyrna with species sub-pages
"Electroreception in juvenile scalloped hammerhead and sandbar sharks" by Stephen M. Kajiura and Kim N. Holland, The Journal of Experimental Biology (2002). Attempts to explain the "hammer" shape.
Great hammerhead shark, Sphyrna mokarran, MarineBio.org
Hammerhead Sharks, Australian Marine Conservation Society
Hammerhead Shark - Video on Check123 - Video Encyclopedia
Vertebrate parthenogenesis
Extant Paleocene first appearances
Species endangered by use as food
Taxa named by Theodore Gill | [
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14307 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hall%20effect | Hall effect | The Hall effect is the production of a voltage difference (the Hall voltage) across an electrical conductor that is transverse to an electric current in the conductor and to an applied magnetic field perpendicular to the current. It was discovered by Edwin Hall in 1879.
A Hall effect can also occur across a void or hole in a semiconductor or metal plate, when current is injected via contacts that lie on the boundary or edge of the void or hole, and the charge flows outside the void or hole, in the metal or semiconductor. This Hall effect becomes observable in a perpendicular applied magnetic field across voltage contacts that lie on the boundary of the void on either side of a line connecting the current contacts. It exhibits apparent sign reversal in comparison to the standard "ordinary Hall effect" in the simply connected specimen, and depends only on the current injected from within the void.
Superposition may also be realized in the Hall effect: first imagine the standard Hall configuration, a simply connected (void-less) thin rectangular homogeneous Hall plate with current and voltage contacts on the (external) boundary which develops a Hall voltage in a perpendicular magnetic field. Next, imagine placing a rectangular void or hole within this standard Hall configuration, with current and voltage contacts, as mentioned above, on the interior boundary of the void. For simplicity, the current contacts on the boundary of the void may be lined up with the current contacts on the exterior boundary in the standard Hall configuration. In such a configuration, two Hall effects may be realized and observed simultaneously in the same doubly connected device: A Hall effect on the external boundary that is proportional to the current injected only via the outer boundary, and an apparently sign-reversed Hall effect on the interior boundary that is proportional to the current injected only via the interior boundary. The superposition of multiple Hall effects may be realized by placing multiple voids within the Hall element, with current and voltage contacts on the boundary of each void.
The Hall coefficient is defined as the ratio of the induced electric field to the product of the current density and the applied magnetic field. It is a characteristic of the material from which the conductor is made, since its value depends on the type, number, and properties of the charge carriers that constitute the current.
For clarity, the original effect is sometimes called the ordinary Hall effect to distinguish it from other "Hall effects", which may have additional physical mechanisms, but are built on these basics.
Discovery
The modern theory of electromagnetism was systematized by James Clerk Maxwell in the paper "On Physical Lines of Force", which was published in four parts between 1861 and 1862. While Maxwell's paper established a solid mathematical basis for electromagnetic theory, the detailed mechanisms of the theory were still being explored. One such question was about the details of the interaction between magnets and electric current, including whether magnetic fields interacted with the conductors or the electric current itself. In 1879 Edwin Hall was exploring this interaction, and discovered the Hall effect while he was working on his doctoral degree at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland. Eighteen years before the electron was discovered, his measurements of the tiny effect produced in the apparatus he used were an experimental tour de force, published under the name "On a New Action of the Magnet on Electric Currents".
Theory
The Hall effect is due to the nature of the current in a conductor. Current consists of the movement of many small charge carriers, typically electrons, holes, ions (see Electromigration) or all three. When a magnetic field is present, these charges experience a force, called the Lorentz force. When such a magnetic field is absent, the charges follow approximately straight, 'line of sight' paths between collisions with impurities, phonons, etc. However, when a magnetic field with a perpendicular component is applied, their paths between collisions are curved, thus moving charges accumulate on one face of the material. This leaves equal and opposite charges exposed on the other face, where there is a scarcity of mobile charges. The result is an asymmetric distribution of charge density across the Hall element, arising from a force that is perpendicular to both the 'line of sight' path and the applied magnetic field. The separation of charge establishes an electric field that opposes the migration of further charge, so a steady electric potential is established for as long as the charge is flowing.
In classical electromagnetism electrons move in the opposite direction of the current (by convention "current" describes a theoretical "hole flow"). In some metals and semiconductors it appears "holes" are actually flowing because the direction of the voltage is opposite to the derivation below.
For a simple metal where there is only one type of charge carrier (electrons), the Hall voltage can be derived by using the Lorentz force and seeing that, in the steady-state condition, charges are not moving in the -axis direction. Thus, the magnetic force on each electron in the -axis direction is cancelled by a -axis electrical force due to the buildup of charges. The term is the drift velocity of the current which is assumed at this point to be holes by convention. The term is negative in the -axis direction by the right hand rule.
In steady state, , so , where is assigned in the direction of the -axis, (and not with the arrow of the induced electric field as in the image (pointing in the direction), which tells you where the field caused by the electrons is pointing).
In wires, electrons instead of holes are flowing, so and . Also . Substituting these changes gives
The conventional "hole" current is in the negative direction of the electron current and the negative of the electrical charge which gives where is charge carrier density, is the cross-sectional area, and is the charge of each electron. Solving for and plugging into the above gives the Hall voltage:
If the charge build up had been positive (as it appears in some metals and semiconductors), then the assigned in the image would have been negative (positive charge would have built up on the left side).
The Hall coefficient is defined as
or
where is the current density of the carrier electrons, and is the induced electric field. In SI units, this becomes
(The units of are usually expressed as m3/C, or Ω·cm/G, or other variants.) As a result, the Hall effect is very useful as a means to measure either the carrier density or the magnetic field.
One very important feature of the Hall effect is that it differentiates between positive charges moving in one direction and negative charges moving in the opposite. In the diagram above, the Hall effect with a negative charge carrier (the electron) is presented. But consider the same magnetic field and current are applied but the current is carried inside the Hall effect device by a positive particle. The particle would of course have to be moving in the opposite direction of the electron in order for the current to be the same—down in the diagram, not up like the electron is. And thus, mnemonically speaking, your thumb in the Lorentz force law, representing (conventional) current, would be pointing the same direction as before, because current is the same—an electron moving up is the same current as a positive charge moving down. And with the fingers (magnetic field) also being the same, interestingly the charge carrier gets deflected to the left in the diagram regardless of whether it's positive or negative. But if positive carriers are deflected to the left, they would build a relatively positive voltage on the left whereas if negative carriers (namely electrons) are, they build up a negative voltage on the left as shown in the diagram. Thus for the same current and magnetic field, the polarity of the Hall voltage is dependent on the internal nature of the conductor and is useful to elucidate its inner workings.
This property of the Hall effect offered the first real proof that electric currents in most metals are carried by moving electrons, not by protons. It also showed that in some substances (especially p-type semiconductors), it is contrarily more appropriate to think of the current as positive "holes" moving rather than negative electrons. A common source of confusion with the Hall effect in such materials is that holes moving one way are really electrons moving the opposite way, so one expects the Hall voltage polarity to be the same as if electrons were the charge carriers as in most metals and n-type semiconductors. Yet we observe the opposite polarity of Hall voltage, indicating positive charge carriers. However, of course there are no actual positrons or other positive elementary particles carrying the charge in p-type semiconductors, hence the name "holes". In the same way as the oversimplistic picture of light in glass as photons being absorbed and re-emitted to explain refraction breaks down upon closer scrutiny, this apparent contradiction too can only be resolved by the modern quantum mechanical theory of quasiparticles wherein the collective quantized motion of multiple particles can, in a real physical sense, be considered to be a particle in its own right (albeit not an elementary one).
Unrelatedly, inhomogeneity in the conductive sample can result in a spurious sign of the Hall effect, even in ideal van der Pauw configuration of electrodes. For example, a Hall effect consistent with positive carriers was observed in evidently n-type semiconductors. Another source of artifact, in uniform materials, occurs when the sample's aspect ratio is not long enough: the full Hall voltage only develops far away from the current-introducing contacts, since at the contacts the transverse voltage is shorted out to zero.
Hall effect in semiconductors
When a current-carrying semiconductor is kept in a magnetic field, the charge carriers of the semiconductor experience a force in a direction perpendicular to both the magnetic field and the current. At equilibrium, a voltage appears at the semiconductor edges.
The simple formula for the Hall coefficient given above is usually a good explanation when conduction is dominated by a single charge carrier. However, in semiconductors and many metals the theory is more complex, because in these materials conduction can involve significant, simultaneous contributions from both electrons and holes, which may be present in different concentrations and have different mobilities. For moderate magnetic fields the Hall coefficient is
or equivalently
with
Here is the electron concentration, the hole concentration, the electron mobility, the hole mobility and the elementary charge.
For large applied fields the simpler expression analogous to that for a single carrier type holds.
Relationship with star formation
Although it is well known that magnetic fields play an important role in star formation, research models indicate that Hall diffusion critically influences the dynamics of gravitational collapse that forms protostars.
Quantum Hall effect
For a two-dimensional electron system which can be produced in a MOSFET, in the presence of large magnetic field strength and low temperature, one can observe the quantum Hall effect, in which the Hall conductance undergoes quantum Hall transitions to take on the quantized values.
Spin Hall effect
The spin Hall effect consists in the spin accumulation on the lateral boundaries of a current-carrying sample. No magnetic field is needed. It was predicted by Mikhail Dyakonov and V. I. Perel in 1971 and observed experimentally more than 30 years later, both in semiconductors and in metals, at cryogenic as well as at room temperatures.
Quantum spin Hall effect
For mercury telluride two dimensional quantum wells with strong spin-orbit coupling, in zero magnetic field, at low temperature, the quantum spin Hall effect has been recently observed.
Anomalous Hall effect
In ferromagnetic materials (and paramagnetic materials in a magnetic field), the Hall resistivity includes an additional contribution, known as the anomalous Hall effect (or the extraordinary Hall effect), which depends directly on the magnetization of the material, and is often much larger than the ordinary Hall effect. (Note that this effect is not due to the contribution of the magnetization to the total magnetic field.) For example, in nickel, the anomalous Hall coefficient is about 100 times larger than the ordinary Hall coefficient near the Curie temperature, but the two are similar at very low temperatures. Although a well-recognized phenomenon, there is still debate about its origins in the various materials. The anomalous Hall effect can be either an extrinsic (disorder-related) effect due to spin-dependent scattering of the charge carriers, or an intrinsic effect which can be described in terms of the Berry phase effect in the crystal momentum space (-space).
Hall effect in ionized gases
The Hall effect in an ionized gas (plasma) is significantly different from the Hall effect in solids (where the Hall parameter is always much less than unity). In a plasma, the Hall parameter can take any value. The Hall parameter, , in a plasma is the ratio between the electron gyrofrequency, , and the electron-heavy particle collision frequency, :
where
is the elementary charge (approximately )
is the magnetic field (in teslas)
is the electron mass (approximately ).
The Hall parameter value increases with the magnetic field strength.
Physically, the trajectories of electrons are curved by the Lorentz force. Nevertheless, when the Hall parameter is low, their motion between two encounters with heavy particles (neutral or ion) is almost linear. But if the Hall parameter is high, the electron movements are highly curved. The current density vector, , is no longer collinear with the electric field vector, . The two vectors and make the Hall angle, , which also gives the Hall parameter:
Applications
Hall probes are often used as magnetometers, i.e. to measure magnetic fields, or inspect materials (such as tubing or pipelines) using the principles of magnetic flux leakage.
Hall effect devices produce a very low signal level and thus require amplification. While suitable for laboratory instruments, the vacuum tube amplifiers available in the first half of the 20th century were too expensive, power consuming, and unreliable for everyday applications. It was only with the development of the low cost integrated circuit that the Hall effect sensor became suitable for mass application. Many devices now sold as Hall effect sensors in fact contain both the sensor as described above plus a high gain integrated circuit (IC) amplifier in a single package. Recent advances have further added into one package an analog-to-digital converter and I²C (Inter-integrated circuit communication protocol) IC for direct connection to a microcontroller's I/O port.
Advantages over other methods
Hall effect devices (when appropriately packaged) are immune to dust, dirt, mud, and water. These characteristics make Hall effect devices better for position sensing than alternative means such as optical and electromechanical sensing.
When electrons flow through a conductor, a magnetic field is produced. Thus, it is possible to create a non-contacting current sensor. The device has three terminals.
A sensor voltage is applied across two terminals and the third provides a voltage proportional to the current being sensed. This has several advantages; no additional resistance (a shunt, required for the most common current sensing method) need to be inserted in the primary circuit. Also, the voltage present on the line to be sensed is not transmitted to the sensor, which enhances the safety of measuring equipment.
Disadvantages compared with other methods
Magnetic flux from the surroundings (such as other wires) may diminish or enhance the field the Hall probe intends to detect, rendering the results inaccurate.
Ways to measure mechanical positions within an electromagnetic system, such as a brushless direct current motor, include (1) the Hall effect, (2) optical position encoder (e.g., absolute and incremental encoders) and (3) induced voltage by moving the amount of metal core inserted into a transformer. When Hall is compared to photo-sensitive methods, it is harder to get absolute position with Hall. Hall detection is also sensitive to stray magnetic fields.
Contemporary applications
Hall effect sensors are readily available from a number of different manufacturers, and may be used in various sensors such as rotating speed sensors (bicycle wheels, gear-teeth, automotive speedometers, electronic ignition systems), fluid flow sensors, current sensors, and pressure sensors. Common applications are often found where a robust and contactless switch or potentiometer is required. These include: electric airsoft guns, triggers of electropneumatic paintball guns, go-cart speed controls, smart phones, and some global positioning systems.
Ferrite toroid Hall effect current transducer
Hall sensors can detect stray magnetic fields easily, including that of Earth, so they work well as electronic compasses: but this also means that such stray fields can hinder accurate measurements of small magnetic fields. To solve this problem, Hall sensors are often integrated with magnetic shielding of some kind. For example, a Hall sensor integrated into a ferrite ring (as shown) can reduce the detection of stray fields by a factor of 100 or better (as the external magnetic fields cancel across the ring, giving no residual magnetic flux). This configuration also provides an improvement in signal-to-noise ratio and drift effects of over 20 times that of a bare Hall device.
The range of a given feedthrough sensor may be extended upward and downward by appropriate wiring. To extend the range to lower currents, multiple turns of the current-carrying wire may be made through the opening, each turn adding to the sensor output the same quantity; when the sensor is installed onto a printed circuit board, the turns can be carried out by a staple on the board. To extend the range to higher currents, a current divider may be used. The divider splits the current across two wires of differing widths and the thinner wire, carrying a smaller proportion of the total current, passes through the sensor.
Split ring clamp-on sensor
A variation on the ring sensor uses a split sensor which is clamped onto the line enabling the device to be used in temporary test equipment. If used in a permanent installation, a split sensor allows the electric current to be tested without dismantling the existing circuit.
Analog multiplication
The output is proportional to both the applied magnetic field and the applied sensor voltage. If the magnetic field is applied by a solenoid, the sensor output is proportional to the product of the current through the solenoid and the sensor voltage. As most applications requiring computation are now performed by small digital computers, the remaining useful application is in power sensing, which combines current sensing with voltage sensing in a single Hall effect device.
Power measurement
By sensing the current provided to a load and using the device's applied voltage as a sensor voltage it is possible to determine the power dissipated by a device.
Position and motion sensing
Hall effect devices used in motion sensing and motion limit switches can offer enhanced reliability in extreme environments. As there are no moving parts involved within the sensor or magnet, typical life expectancy is improved compared to traditional electromechanical switches. Additionally, the sensor and magnet may be encapsulated in an appropriate protective material. This application is used in brushless DC motors.
Hall effect sensors, affixed to mechanical gauges that have magnetized indicator needles, can translate the physical position or orientation of the mechanical indicator needle into an electrical signal that can be used by electronic indicators, controls or communications devices.
Automotive ignition and fuel injection
Commonly used in distributors for ignition timing (and in some types of crank and camshaft position sensors for injection pulse timing, speed sensing, etc.) the Hall effect sensor is used as a direct replacement for the mechanical breaker points used in earlier automotive applications. Its use as an ignition timing device in various distributor types is as follows. A stationary permanent magnet and semiconductor Hall effect chip are mounted next to each other separated by an air gap, forming the Hall effect sensor. A metal rotor consisting of windows and tabs is mounted to a shaft and arranged so that during shaft rotation, the windows and tabs pass through the air gap between the permanent magnet and semiconductor Hall chip. This effectively shields and exposes the Hall chip to the permanent magnet's field respective to whether a tab or window is passing through the Hall sensor. For ignition timing purposes, the metal rotor will have a number of equal-sized tabs and windows matching the number of engine cylinders. This produces a uniform square wave output since the on/off (shielding and exposure) time is equal. This signal is used by the engine computer or ECU to control ignition timing. Many automotive Hall effect sensors have a built-in internal NPN transistor with an open collector and grounded emitter, meaning that rather than a voltage being produced at the Hall sensor signal output wire, the transistor is turned on providing a circuit to ground through the signal output wire.
Wheel rotation sensing
The sensing of wheel rotation is especially useful in anti-lock braking systems. The principles of such systems have been extended and refined to offer more than anti-skid functions, now providing extended vehicle handling enhancements.
Electric motor control
Some types of brushless DC electric motors use Hall effect sensors to detect the position of the rotor and feed that information to the motor controller. This allows for more precise motor control.
Industrial applications
Applications for Hall effect sensing have also expanded to industrial applications, which now use Hall effect joysticks to control hydraulic valves, replacing the traditional mechanical levers with contactless sensing. Such applications include mining trucks, backhoe loaders, cranes, diggers, scissor lifts, etc.
Spacecraft propulsion
A Hall-effect thruster (HET) is a device that is used to propel some spacecraft, after it gets into orbit or farther out into space. In the HET, atoms are ionized and accelerated by an electric field. A radial magnetic field established by magnets on the thruster is used to trap electrons which then orbit and create an electric field due to the Hall effect. A large potential is established between the end of the thruster where neutral propellant is fed, and the part where electrons are produced; so, electrons trapped in the magnetic field cannot drop to the lower potential. They are thus extremely energetic, which means that they can ionize neutral atoms. Neutral propellant is pumped into the chamber and is ionized by the trapped electrons. Positive ions and electrons are then ejected from the thruster as a quasineutral plasma, creating thrust. The thrust produced is extremely small, with a very low mass flow rate and a very high effective exhaust velocity/specific impulse. This is achieved at the cost of very high electrical power requirements, on the order of 4 KW for a few hundred millinewtons of thrust.
The Corbino effect
The Corbino effect is a phenomenon involving the Hall effect, but a disc-shaped metal sample is used in place of a rectangular one. Because of its shape the Corbino disc allows the observation of Hall effect–based magnetoresistance without the associated Hall voltage.
A radial current through a circular disc, subjected to a magnetic field perpendicular to the plane of the disc, produces a "circular" current through the disc.
The absence of the free transverse boundaries renders the interpretation of the Corbino effect simpler than that of the Hall effect.
See also
Capacitor
Transducer
Coulomb potential between two current loops embedded in a magnetic field
Eddy current
Eric Fawcett
List of plasma (physics) articles
Nernst effect
Quantum Hall effect
Fractional quantum Hall effect
Quantum anomalous Hall effect
Senftleben–Beenakker effect
Spin Hall effect
Thermal Hall effect
References
Sources
Introduction to Plasma Physics and Controlled Fusion, Volume 1, Plasma Physics, Second Edition, 1984, Francis F. Chen
Further reading
Annraoi M. de Paor. Correction to the classical two-species Hall Coefficient using twoport network theory. International Journal of Electrical Engineering Education 43/4.
NIST The Hall Effect
University of Washington The Hall Effect
External links
Patents
, P. H. Craig, System and apparatus employing the Hall effect
, J. T. Maupin, E. A. Vorthmann, Hall effect contactless switch with prebiased Schmitt trigger
General
Understanding and Applying the Hall Effect
Hall Effect Thrusters Alta Space
Hall effect calculators
Interactive Java tutorial on the Hall effect National High Magnetic Field Laboratory
Science World (wolfram.com) article.
"The Hall Effect". nist.gov.
Table with Hall coefficients of different elements at room temperature.
Simulation of the Hall effect as a Youtube video
Hall effect in electrolytes
Condensed matter physics
Electric and magnetic fields in matter | [
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14308 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoover%20Dam | Hoover Dam | Hoover Dam is a concrete arch-gravity dam in the Black Canyon of the Colorado River, on the border between the U.S. states of Nevada and Arizona. It was constructed between 1931 and 1936 during the Great Depression and was dedicated on September 30, 1935, by President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Its construction was the result of a massive effort involving thousands of workers, and cost over one hundred lives. It was referred to as Hoover Dam after President Herbert Hoover in bills passed by Congress during its construction, but was named Boulder Dam by the Roosevelt administration. The Hoover Dam name was restored by Congress in 1947.
Since about 1900, the Black Canyon and nearby Boulder Canyon had been investigated for their potential to support a dam that would control floods, provide irrigation water and produce hydroelectric power. In 1928, Congress authorized the project. The winning bid to build the dam was submitted by a consortium called Six Companies, Inc., which began construction of the dam in early 1931. Such a large concrete structure had never been built before, and some of the techniques were unproven. The torrid summer weather and lack of facilities near the site also presented difficulties. Nevertheless, Six Companies turned the dam over to the federal government on March 1, 1936, more than two years ahead of schedule.
Hoover Dam impounds Lake Mead, the largest reservoir in the United States by volume when full. The dam is located near Boulder City, Nevada, a municipality originally constructed for workers on the construction project, about southeast of Las Vegas, Nevada. The dam's generators provide power for public and private utilities in Nevada, Arizona, and California. Hoover Dam is a major tourist attraction; nearly a million people tour the dam each year. The heavily traveled U.S. Route 93 (US 93) ran along the dam's crest until October 2010, when the Hoover Dam Bypass opened.
Background
Search for resources
As the United States developed the Southwest, the Colorado River was seen as a potential source of irrigation water. An initial attempt at diverting the river for irrigation purposes occurred in the late 1890s, when land speculator William Beatty built the Alamo Canal just north of the Mexican border; the canal dipped into Mexico before running to a desolate area Beatty named the Imperial Valley. Though water from the Imperial Canal allowed for the widespread settlement of the valley, the canal proved expensive to operate. After a catastrophic breach that caused the Colorado River to fill the Salton Sea, the Southern Pacific Railroad spent $3 million in 1906–07 to stabilize the waterway, an amount it hoped in vain would be reimbursed by the federal government. Even after the waterway was stabilized, it proved unsatisfactory because of constant disputes with landowners on the Mexican side of the border.
As the technology of electric power transmission improved, the Lower Colorado was considered for its hydroelectric-power potential. In 1902, the Edison Electric Company of Los Angeles surveyed the river in the hope of building a rock dam which could generate . However, at the time, the limit of transmission of electric power was , and there were few customers (mostly mines) within that limit. Edison allowed land options it held on the river to lapse—including an option for what became the site of Hoover Dam.
In the following years, the Bureau of Reclamation (BOR), known as the Reclamation Service at the time, also considered the Lower Colorado as the site for a dam. Service chief Arthur Powell Davis proposed using dynamite to collapse the walls of Boulder Canyon, north of the eventual dam site, into the river. The river would carry off the smaller pieces of debris, and a dam would be built incorporating the remaining rubble. In 1922, after considering it for several years, the Reclamation Service finally rejected the proposal, citing doubts about the unproven technique and questions as to whether it would, in fact, save money.
Planning and agreements
In 1922, the Reclamation Service presented a report calling for the development of a dam on the Colorado River for flood control and electric power generation. The report was principally authored by Davis, and was called the Fall-Davis report after Interior Secretary Albert Fall. The Fall-Davis report cited use of the Colorado River as a federal concern because the river's basin covered several states, and the river eventually entered Mexico. Though the Fall-Davis report called for a dam "at or near Boulder Canyon", the Reclamation Service (which was renamed the Bureau of Reclamation the following year) found that canyon unsuitable. One potential site at Boulder Canyon was bisected by a geologic fault; two others were so narrow there was no space for a construction camp at the bottom of the canyon or for a spillway. The Service investigated Black Canyon and found it ideal; a railway could be laid from the railhead in Las Vegas to the top of the dam site. Despite the site change, the dam project was referred to as the "Boulder Canyon Project".
With little guidance on water allocation from the Supreme Court, proponents of the dam feared endless litigation. Delph Carpenter, a Colorado attorney, proposed that the seven states which fell within the river's basin (California, Nevada, Arizona, Utah, New Mexico, Colorado and Wyoming) form an interstate compact, with the approval of Congress. Such compacts were authorized by Article I of the United States Constitution but had never been concluded among more than two states. In 1922, representatives of seven states met with then-Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover. Initial talks produced no result, but when the Supreme Court handed down the Wyoming v. Colorado decision undermining the claims of the upstream states, they became anxious to reach an agreement. The resulting Colorado River Compact was signed on November 24, 1922.
Legislation to authorize the dam was introduced repeatedly by two California Republicans, Representative Phil Swing and Senator Hiram Johnson, but representatives from other parts of the country considered the project as hugely expensive and one that would mostly benefit California. The 1927 Mississippi flood made Midwestern and Southern congressmen and senators more sympathetic toward the dam project. On March 12, 1928, the failure of the St. Francis Dam, constructed by the city of Los Angeles, caused a disastrous flood that killed up to 600 people. As that dam was a curved-gravity type, similar in design to the arch-gravity as was proposed for the Black Canyon dam, opponents claimed that the Black Canyon dam's safety could not be guaranteed. Congress authorized a board of engineers to review plans for the proposed dam. The Colorado River Board found the project feasible, but warned that should the dam fail, every downstream Colorado River community would be destroyed, and that the river might change course and empty into the Salton Sea. The Board cautioned: "To avoid such possibilities, the proposed dam should be constructed on conservative if not ultra-conservative lines."
On December 21, 1928, President Coolidge signed the bill authorizing the dam. The Boulder Canyon Project Act appropriated $165 million for the project along with the downstream Imperial Dam and All-American Canal, a replacement for Beatty's canal entirely on the U.S. side of the border. It also permitted the compact to go into effect when at least six of the seven states approved it. This occurred on March 6, 1929, with Utah's ratification; Arizona did not approve it until 1944.
Design, preparation and contracting
Even before Congress approved the Boulder Canyon Project, the Bureau of Reclamation was considering what kind of dam should be used. Officials eventually decided on a massive concrete arch-gravity dam, the design of which was overseen by the Bureau's chief design engineer John L. Savage. The monolithic dam would be thick at the bottom and thin near the top, and would present a convex face towards the water above the dam. The curving arch of the dam would transmit the water's force into the abutments, in this case the rock walls of the canyon. The wedge-shaped dam would be thick at the bottom, narrowing to at the top, leaving room for a highway connecting Nevada and Arizona.
On January 10, 1931, the Bureau made the bid documents available to interested parties, at five dollars a copy. The government was to provide the materials, and the contractor was to prepare the site and build the dam. The dam was described in minute detail, covering 100 pages of text and 76 drawings. A $2 million bid bond was to accompany each bid; the winner would have to post a $5 million performance bond. The contractor had seven years to build the dam, or penalties would ensue.
The Wattis Brothers, heads of the Utah Construction Company, were interested in bidding on the project, but lacked the money for the performance bond. They lacked sufficient resources even in combination with their longtime partners, Morrison-Knudsen, which employed the nation's leading dam builder, Frank Crowe. They formed a joint venture to bid for the project with Pacific Bridge Company of Portland, Oregon; Henry J. Kaiser & W. A. Bechtel Company of San Francisco; MacDonald & Kahn Ltd. of Los Angeles; and the J.F. Shea Company of Portland, Oregon. The joint venture was called Six Companies, Inc. as Bechtel and Kaiser were considered one company for purposes of Six in the name. The name was descriptive and was an inside joke among the San Franciscans in the bid, where "Six Companies" was also a Chinese benevolent association in the city. There were three valid bids, and Six Companies' bid of $48,890,955 was the lowest, within $24,000 of the confidential government estimate of what the dam would cost to build, and five million dollars less than the next-lowest bid.
The city of Las Vegas had lobbied hard to be the headquarters for the dam construction, closing its many speakeasies when the decision maker, Secretary of the Interior Ray Wilbur, came to town. Instead, Wilbur announced in early 1930 that a model city was to be built in the desert near the dam site. This town became known as Boulder City, Nevada. Construction of a rail line joining Las Vegas and the dam site began in September 1930.
Construction
Labor force
Soon after the dam was authorized, increasing numbers of unemployed people converged on southern Nevada. Las Vegas, then a small city of some 5,000, saw between 10,000 and 20,000 unemployed descend on it. A government camp was established for surveyors and other personnel near the dam site; this soon became surrounded by a squatters' camp. Known as McKeeversville, the camp was home to men hoping for work on the project, together with their families. Another camp, on the flats along the Colorado River, was officially called Williamsville, but was known to its inhabitants as "Ragtown". When construction began, Six Companies hired large numbers of workers, with more than 3,000 on the payroll by 1932 and with employment peaking at 5,251 in July 1934. "Mongolian" (Chinese) labor was prevented by the construction contract, while the number of black people employed by Six Companies never exceeded thirty, mostly lowest-pay-scale laborers in a segregated crew, who were issued separate water buckets.
As part of the contract, Six Companies, Inc. was to build Boulder City to house the workers. The original timetable called for Boulder City to be built before the dam project began, but President Hoover ordered work on the dam to begin in March 1931 rather than in October. The company built bunkhouses, attached to the canyon wall, to house 480 single men at what became known as River Camp. Workers with families were left to provide their own accommodations until Boulder City could be completed, and many lived in Ragtown. The site of Hoover Dam endures extremely hot weather, and the summer of 1931 was especially torrid, with the daytime high averaging . Sixteen workers and other riverbank residents died of heat prostration between June 25 and July 26, 1931.
The Industrial Workers of the World (IWW or "Wobblies"), though much-reduced from their heyday as militant labor organizers in the early years of the century, hoped to unionize the Six Companies workers by capitalizing on their discontent. They sent eleven organizers, several of whom were arrested by Las Vegas police. On August 7, 1931, the company cut wages for all tunnel workers. Although the workers sent the organizers away, not wanting to be associated with the "Wobblies", they formed a committee to represent them with the company. The committee drew up a list of demands that evening and presented them to Crowe the following morning. He was noncommittal. The workers hoped that Crowe, the general superintendent of the job, would be sympathetic; instead, he gave a scathing interview to a newspaper, describing the workers as "malcontents".
On the morning of the 9th, Crowe met with the committee and told them that management refused their demands, was stopping all work, and was laying off the entire work force, except for a few office workers and carpenters. The workers were given until 5 p.m. to vacate the premises. Concerned that a violent confrontation was imminent, most workers took their paychecks and left for Las Vegas to await developments. Two days later, the remainder were talked into leaving by law enforcement. On August 13, the company began hiring workers again, and two days later, the strike was called off. While the workers received none of their demands, the company guaranteed there would be no further reductions in wages. Living conditions began to improve as the first residents moved into Boulder City in late 1931.
A second labor action took place in July 1935, as construction on the dam wound down. When a Six Companies manager altered working times to force workers to take lunch on their own time, workers responded with a strike. Emboldened by Crowe's reversal of the lunch decree, workers raised their demands to include a $1-per-day raise. The company agreed to ask the Federal government to supplement the pay, but no money was forthcoming from Washington. The strike ended.
River diversion
Before the dam could be built, the Colorado River needed to be diverted away from the construction site. To accomplish this, four diversion tunnels were driven through the canyon walls, two on the Nevada side and two on the Arizona side. These tunnels were in diameter. Their combined length was nearly 16,000 ft, or more than . The contract required these tunnels to be completed by October 1, 1933, with a $3,000-per-day fine to be assessed for any delay. To meet the deadline, Six Companies had to complete work by early 1933, since only in late fall and winter was the water level in the river low enough to safely divert.
Tunneling began at the lower portals of the Nevada tunnels in May 1931. Shortly afterward, work began on two similar tunnels in the Arizona canyon wall. In March 1932, work began on lining the tunnels with concrete. First the base, or invert, was poured. Gantry cranes, running on rails through the entire length of each tunnel were used to place the concrete. The sidewalls were poured next. Movable sections of steel forms were used for the sidewalls. Finally, using pneumatic guns, the overheads were filled in. The concrete lining is thick, reducing the finished tunnel diameter to . The river was diverted into the two Arizona tunnels on November 13, 1932; the Nevada tunnels were kept in reserve for high water. This was done by exploding a temporary cofferdam protecting the Arizona tunnels while at the same time dumping rubble into the river until its natural course was blocked.
Following the completion of the dam, the entrances to the two outer diversion tunnels were sealed at the opening and halfway through the tunnels with large concrete plugs. The downstream halves of the tunnels following the inner plugs are now the main bodies of the spillway tunnels. The inner diversion tunnels were plugged at approximately one-third of their length, beyond which they now carry steel pipes connecting the intake towers to the power plant and outlet works. The inner tunnels' outlets are equipped with gates that can be closed to drain the tunnels for maintenance.
Groundworks, rock clearance and grout curtain
To protect the construction site from the Colorado River and to facilitate the river's diversion, two cofferdams were constructed. Work on the upper cofferdam began in September 1932, even though the river had not yet been diverted. The cofferdams were designed to protect against the possibility of the river's flooding a site at which two thousand men might be at work, and their specifications were covered in the bid documents in nearly as much detail as the dam itself. The upper cofferdam was high, and thick at its base, thicker than the dam itself. It contained of material.
When the cofferdams were in place and the construction site was drained of water, excavation for the dam foundation began. For the dam to rest on solid rock, it was necessary to remove accumulated erosion soils and other loose materials in the riverbed until sound bedrock was reached. Work on the foundation excavations was completed in June 1933. During this excavation, approximately of material was removed. Since the dam was an arch-gravity type, the side-walls of the canyon would bear the force of the impounded lake. Therefore, the side-walls were excavated too, to reach virgin rock, as weathered rock might provide pathways for water seepage. Shovels for the excavation came from the Marion Power Shovel Company.
The men who removed this rock were called "high scalers". While suspended from the top of the canyon with ropes, the high-scalers climbed down the canyon walls and removed the loose rock with jackhammers and dynamite. Falling objects were the most common cause of death on the dam site; the high scalers' work thus helped ensure worker safety. One high scaler was able to save a life in a more direct manner: when a government inspector lost his grip on a safety line and began tumbling down a slope towards almost certain death, a high scaler was able to intercept him and pull him into the air. The construction site had, even then, become a magnet for tourists; the high scalers were prime attractions and showed off for the watchers. The high scalers received considerable media attention, with one worker dubbed the "Human Pendulum" for swinging co-workers (and, at other times, cases of dynamite) across the canyon. To protect themselves against falling objects, some high scalers took cloth hats and dipped them in tar, allowing them to harden. When workers wearing such headgear were struck hard enough to inflict broken jaws, they sustained no skull damage. Six Companies ordered thousands of what initially were called "hard boiled hats" (later "hard hats") and strongly encouraged their use.
The cleared, underlying rock foundation of the dam site was reinforced with grout, forming a grout curtain. Holes were driven into the walls and base of the canyon, as deep as into the rock, and any cavities encountered were to be filled with grout. This was done to stabilize the rock, to prevent water from seeping past the dam through the canyon rock, and to limit "uplift"—upward pressure from water seeping under the dam. The workers were under severe time constraints due to the beginning of the concrete pour, and when they encountered hot springs or cavities too large to readily fill, they moved on without resolving the problem. A total of 58 of the 393 holes were incompletely filled. After the dam was completed and the lake began to fill, large numbers of significant leaks into the dam caused the Bureau of Reclamation to look into the situation. It found that the work had been incompletely done, and was based on less than a full understanding of the canyon's geology. New holes were drilled from inspection galleries inside the dam into the surrounding bedrock. It took nine years (1938–47) under relative secrecy to complete the supplemental grout curtain.
Concrete
The first concrete was poured into the dam on June 6, 1933, 18 months ahead of schedule. Since concrete heats and contracts as it cures, the potential for uneven cooling and contraction of the concrete posed a serious problem. Bureau of Reclamation engineers calculated that if the dam were to be built in a single continuous pour, the concrete would take 125 years to cool, and the resulting stresses would cause the dam to crack and crumble. Instead, the ground where the dam would rise was marked with rectangles, and concrete blocks in columns were poured, some as large as and high. Each five-foot form contained a set of steel pipes; cool river water would be poured through the pipes, followed by ice-cold water from a refrigeration plant. When an individual block had cured and had stopped contracting, the pipes were filled with grout. Grout was also used to fill the hairline spaces between columns, which were grooved to increase the strength of the joints.
The concrete was delivered in huge steel buckets and almost 7 feet in diameter; Crowe was awarded two patents for their design. These buckets, which weighed when full, were filled at two massive concrete plants on the Nevada side, and were delivered to the site in special railcars. The buckets were then suspended from aerial cableways which were used to deliver the bucket to a specific column. As the required grade of aggregate in the concrete differed depending on placement in the dam (from pea-sized gravel to stones), it was vital that the bucket be maneuvered to the proper column. When the bottom of the bucket opened up, disgorging of concrete, a team of men worked it throughout the form. Although there are myths that men were caught in the pour and are entombed in the dam to this day, each bucket deepened the concrete in a form by only , and Six Companies engineers would not have permitted a flaw caused by the presence of a human body.
A total of of concrete was used in the dam before concrete pouring ceased on May 29, 1935. In addition, were used in the power plant and other works. More than of cooling pipes were placed within the concrete. Overall, there is enough concrete in the dam to pave a two-lane highway from San Francisco to New York. Concrete cores were removed from the dam for testing in 1995; they showed that "Hoover Dam's concrete has continued to slowly gain strength" and the dam is composed of a "durable concrete having a compressive strength exceeding the range typically found in normal mass concrete". Hoover Dam concrete is not subject to alkali–silica reaction (ASR), as the Hoover Dam builders happened to use nonreactive aggregate, unlike that at downstream Parker Dam, where ASR has caused measurable deterioration.
Dedication and completion
With most work finished on the dam itself (the powerhouse remained uncompleted), a formal dedication ceremony was arranged for September 30, 1935, to coincide with a western tour being made by President Franklin D. Roosevelt. The morning of the dedication, it was moved forward three hours from 2 p.m. Pacific time to 11 a.m.; this was done because Secretary of the Interior Harold L. Ickes had reserved a radio slot for the President for 2 p.m. but officials did not realize until the day of the ceremony that the slot was for 2 p.m. Eastern Time. Despite the change in the ceremony time, and temperatures of , 10,000 people were present for the President's speech, in which he avoided mentioning the name of former President Hoover, who was not invited to the ceremony. To mark the occasion, a three-cent stamp was issued by the United States Post Office Department—bearing the name "Boulder Dam", the official name of the dam between 1933 and 1947. After the ceremony, Roosevelt made the first visit by any American president to Las Vegas.
Most work had been completed by the dedication, and Six Companies negotiated with the government through late 1935 and early 1936 to settle all claims and arrange for the formal transfer of the dam to the Federal Government. The parties came to an agreement and on March 1, 1936, Secretary Ickes formally accepted the dam on behalf of the government. Six Companies was not required to complete work on one item, a concrete plug for one of the bypass tunnels, as the tunnel had to be used to take in irrigation water until the powerhouse went into operation.
Construction deaths
There were 112 deaths reported as associated with the construction of the dam. The first was surveyor John Gregory ("J.G.") Tierney who drowned on December 20, 1922, in a flash flood, while looking for an ideal spot for the dam. The official list's final death occurred on December 20, 1935, when Patrick Tierney, electrician's helper and the son of J.G. Tierney, fell from one of the two Arizona-side intake towers. Included in the fatality list are three workers who took their own lives on site, one in 1932 and two in 1933. Of the 112 fatalities, 91 were Six Companies employees, three were Bureau of Reclamation employees, and one was a visitor to the site; the remainder were employees of various contractors not part of Six Companies.
Ninety-six of the deaths occurred during construction at the site. Not included in the official number of fatalities were deaths that were recorded as pneumonia. Workers alleged that this diagnosis was a cover for death from carbon monoxide poisoning (brought on by the use of gasoline-fueled vehicles in the diversion tunnels), and a classification used by Six Companies to avoid paying compensation claims. The site's diversion tunnels frequently reached , enveloped in thick plumes of vehicle exhaust gases. A total of 42 workers were recorded as having died from pneumonia and were not included in the above total; none were listed as having died from carbon monoxide poisoning. No deaths of non-workers from pneumonia were recorded in Boulder City during the construction period.
Architectural style
The initial plans for the facade of the dam, the power plant, the outlet tunnels and ornaments clashed with the modern look of an arch dam. The Bureau of Reclamation, more concerned with the dam's functionality, adorned it with a Gothic-inspired balustrade and eagle statues. This initial design was criticized by many as being too plain and unremarkable for a project of such immense scale, so Los Angeles-based architect Gordon B. Kaufmann, then the supervising architect to the Bureau of Reclamation, was brought in to redesign the exteriors. Kaufmann greatly streamlined the design and applied an elegant Art Deco style to the entire project. He designed sculpted turrets rising seamlessly from the dam face and clock faces on the intake towers set for the time in Nevada and Arizona—both states are in different time zones, but since Arizona does not observe daylight saving time, the clocks display the same time for more than half the year.
At Kaufmann's request, Denver artist Allen Tupper True was hired to handle the design and decoration of the walls and floors of the new dam. True's design scheme incorporated motifs of the Navajo and Pueblo tribes of the region. Although some were initially opposed to these designs, True was given the go-ahead and was officially appointed consulting artist. With the assistance of the National Laboratory of Anthropology, True researched authentic decorative motifs from Indian sand paintings, textiles, baskets and ceramics. The images and colors are based on Native American visions of rain, lightning, water, clouds, and local animals—lizards, serpents, birds—and on the Southwestern landscape of stepped mesas. In these works, which are integrated into the walkways and interior halls of the dam, True also reflected on the machinery of the operation, making the symbolic patterns appear both ancient and modern.
With the agreement of Kaufmann and the engineers, True also devised for the pipes and machinery an innovative color-coding which was implemented throughout all BOR projects. True's consulting artist job lasted through 1942; it was extended so he could complete design work for the Parker, Shasta and Grand Coulee dams and power plants. True's work on the Hoover Dam was humorously referred to in a poem published in The New Yorker, part of which read, "lose the spark, and justify the dream; but also worthy of remark will be the color scheme".
Complementing Kaufmann and True's work, sculptor Oskar J.W. Hansen designed many of the sculptures on and around the dam. His works include the monument of dedication plaza, a plaque to memorialize the workers killed and the bas-reliefs on the elevator towers. In his words, Hansen wanted his work to express "the immutable calm of intellectual resolution, and the enormous power of trained physical strength, equally enthroned in placid triumph of scientific accomplishment", because "[t]he building of Hoover Dam belongs to the sagas of the daring." Hansen's dedication plaza, on the Nevada abutment, contains a sculpture of two winged figures flanking a flagpole.
Surrounding the base of the monument is a terrazzo floor embedded with a "star map". The map depicts the Northern Hemisphere sky at the moment of President Roosevelt's dedication of the dam. This is intended to help future astronomers, if necessary, calculate the exact date of dedication. The bronze figures, dubbed "Winged Figures of the Republic", were both formed in a continuous pour. To put such large bronzes into place without marring the highly polished bronze surface, they were placed on ice and guided into position as the ice melted. Hansen's bas-relief on the Nevada elevator tower depicts the benefits of the dam: flood control, navigation, irrigation, water storage, and power. The bas-relief on the Arizona elevator depicts, in his words, "the visages of those Indian tribes who have inhabited mountains and plains from ages distant."
Operation
Power plant and water demands
Excavation for the powerhouse was carried out simultaneously with the excavation for the dam foundation and abutments. The excavation of this U-shaped structure located at the downstream toe of the dam was completed in late 1933 with the first concrete placed in November 1933. Filling of Lake Mead began February 1, 1935, even before the last of the concrete was poured that May. The powerhouse was one of the projects uncompleted at the time of the formal dedication on September 30, 1935; a crew of 500 men remained to finish it and other structures. To make the powerhouse roof bombproof, it was constructed of layers of concrete, rock, and steel with a total thickness of about , topped with layers of sand and tar.
In the latter half of 1936, water levels in Lake Mead were high enough to permit power generation, and the first three Allis Chalmers built Francis turbine-generators, all on the Nevada side, began operating. In March 1937, one more Nevada generator went online and the first Arizona generator by August. By September 1939, four more generators were operating, and the dam's power plant became the largest hydroelectricity facility in the world. The final generator was not placed in service until 1961, bringing the maximum generating capacity to 1,345 megawatts at the time. Original plans called for 16 large generators, eight on each side of the river, but two smaller generators were installed instead of one large one on the Arizona side for a total of 17. The smaller generators were used to serve smaller communities at a time when the output of each generator was dedicated to a single municipality, before the dam's total power output was placed on the grid and made arbitrarily distributable.
Before water from Lake Mead reaches the turbines, it enters the intake towers and then four gradually narrowing penstocks which funnel the water down towards the powerhouse. The intakes provide a maximum hydraulic head (water pressure) of as the water reaches a speed of about . The entire flow of the Colorado River usually passes through the turbines. The spillways and outlet works (jet-flow gates) are rarely used. The jet-flow gates, located in concrete structures above the river and also at the outlets of the inner diversion tunnels at river level, may be used to divert water around the dam in emergency or flood conditions, but have never done so, and in practice are used only to drain water from the penstocks for maintenance. Following an uprating project from 1986 to 1993, the total gross power rating for the plant, including two 2.4 megawatt Pelton turbine-generators that power Hoover Dam's own operations is a maximum capacity of 2080 megawatts. The annual generation of Hoover Dam varies. The maximum net generation was 10.348 TWh in 1984, and the minimum since 1940 was 2.648 TWh in 1956. The average power generated was 4.2 TWh/year for 1947–2008. In 2015, the dam generated 3.6 TWh.
The amount of electricity generated by Hoover Dam has been decreasing along with the falling water level in Lake Mead due to the prolonged drought since year 2000 and high demand for the Colorado River's water. By 2014 its generating capacity was downrated by 23% to 1592 MW and was providing power only during periods of peak demand. Lake Mead fell to a new record low elevation of on July 1, 2016, before beginning to rebound slowly. Under its original design, the dam would no longer be able to generate power once the water level fell below , which might have occurred in 2017 had water restrictions not been enforced. To lower the minimum power pool elevation from , five wide-head turbines, designed to work efficiently with less flow, were installed. Water levels were maintained at over in 2018 and 2019, but fell to a new record low of on June 10, 2021 and were projected to fall below by the end of 2021.
Control of water was the primary concern in the building of the dam. Power generation has allowed the dam project to be self-sustaining: proceeds from the sale of power repaid the 50-year construction loan, and those revenues also finance the multimillion-dollar yearly maintenance budget. Power is generated in step with and only with the release of water in response to downstream water demands.
Lake Mead and downstream releases from the dam also provide water for both municipal and irrigation uses. Water released from the Hoover Dam eventually reaches several canals. The Colorado River Aqueduct and Central Arizona Project branch off Lake Havasu while the All-American Canal is supplied by the Imperial Dam. In total, water from Lake Mead serves 18 million people in Arizona, Nevada, and California and supplies the irrigation of over of land.
In 2018, the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP) proposed a $3 billion pumped hydro storage project—a "battery" of sorts—that would use wind and solar power to recirculate water back up to Lake Mead from a pumping station downriver.
Power distribution
Electricity from the dam's powerhouse was originally sold pursuant to a fifty-year contract, authorized by Congress in 1934, which ran from 1937 to 1987. In 1984, Congress passed a new statute which set power allocations to southern California, Arizona, and Nevada from the dam from 1987 to 2017. The powerhouse was run under the original authorization by the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power and Southern California Edison; in 1987, the Bureau of Reclamation assumed control. In 2011, Congress enacted legislation extending the current contracts until 2067, after setting aside 5% of Hoover Dam's power for sale to Native American tribes, electric cooperatives, and other entities. The new arrangement began on October 1, 2017.
The Bureau of Reclamation reports that the energy generated under the contracts ending in 2017 was allocated as follows:
Spillways
The dam is protected against over-topping by two spillways. The spillway entrances are located behind each dam abutment, running roughly parallel to the canyon walls. The spillway entrance arrangement forms a classic side-flow weir with each spillway containing four and steel-drum gates. Each gate weighs and can be operated manually or automatically. Gates are raised and lowered depending on water levels in the reservoir and flood conditions. The gates cannot entirely prevent water from entering the spillways but can maintain an extra of lake level.
Water flowing over the spillways falls dramatically into , spillway tunnels before connecting to the outer diversion tunnels, and reentering the main river channel below the dam. This complex spillway entrance arrangement combined with the approximate elevation drop from the top of the reservoir to the river below was a difficult engineering problem and posed numerous design challenges. Each spillway's capacity of was empirically verified in post-construction tests in 1941.
The large spillway tunnels have only been used twice, for testing in 1941 and because of flooding in 1983. Both times, when inspecting the tunnels after the spillways were used, engineers found major damage to the concrete linings and underlying rock. The 1941 damage was attributed to a slight misalignment of the tunnel invert (or base), which caused cavitation, a phenomenon in fast-flowing liquids in which vapor bubbles collapse with explosive force. In response to this finding, the tunnels were patched with special heavy-duty concrete and the surface of the concrete was polished mirror-smooth. The spillways were modified in 1947 by adding flip buckets, which both slow the water and decrease the spillway's effective capacity, in an attempt to eliminate conditions thought to have contributed to the 1941 damage. The 1983 damage, also due to cavitation, led to the installation of aerators in the spillways. Tests at Grand Coulee Dam showed that the technique worked, in principle.
Roadway and tourism
There are two lanes for automobile traffic across the top of the dam, which formerly served as the Colorado River crossing for U.S. Route 93. In the wake of the September 11 terrorist attacks, authorities expressed security concerns and the Hoover Dam Bypass project was expedited. Pending the completion of the bypass, restricted traffic was permitted over Hoover Dam. Some types of vehicles were inspected prior to crossing the dam while semi-trailer trucks, buses carrying luggage, and enclosed-box trucks over long were not allowed on the dam at all, and were diverted to U.S. Route 95 or Nevada State Routes 163/68. The four-lane Hoover Dam Bypass opened on October 19, 2010. It includes a composite steel and concrete arch bridge, the Mike O'Callaghan–Pat Tillman Memorial Bridge, downstream from the dam.
With the opening of the bypass, through traffic is no longer allowed across Hoover Dam; dam visitors are allowed to use the existing roadway to approach from the Nevada side and cross to parking lots and other facilities on the Arizona side.
Hoover Dam opened for tours in 1937 after its completion, but following Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, it was closed to the public when the United States entered World War II, during which only authorized traffic, in convoys, was permitted. After the war, it reopened September 2, 1945, and by 1953, annual attendance had risen to 448,081. The dam closed on November 25, 1963, and March 31, 1969, days of mourning in remembrance of Presidents Kennedy and Eisenhower. In 1995, a new visitors' center was built, and the following year, visits exceeded one million for the first time. The dam closed again to the public on September 11, 2001; modified tours were resumed in December and a new "Discovery Tour" was added the following year. Today, nearly a million people per year take the tours of the dam offered by the Bureau of Reclamation. Increased security concerns by the government have led to most of the interior structure's being inaccessible to tourists. As a result, few of True's decorations can now be seen by visitors. Visitors can only purchase tickets on-site and have the options of a guided tour of the whole facility or only the power plant area. The only self-guided tour option is for the visitor center itself, where visitors can view various exhibits and enjoy a 360-degree view of the dam.
Environmental impact
The changes in water flow and use caused by Hoover Dam's construction and operation have had a large impact on the Colorado River Delta. The construction of the dam has been implicated in causing the decline of this estuarine ecosystem. For six years after the construction of the dam, while Lake Mead filled, virtually no water reached the mouth of the river. The delta's estuary, which once had a freshwater-saltwater mixing zone stretching south of the river's mouth, was turned into an inverse estuary where the level of salinity was higher close to the river's mouth.
The Colorado River had experienced natural flooding before the construction of the Hoover Dam. The dam eliminated the natural flooding, threatening many species adapted to the flooding, including both plants and animals. The construction of the dam devastated the populations of native fish in the river downstream from the dam. Four species of fish native to the Colorado River, the Bonytail chub, Colorado pikeminnow, Humpback chub, and Razorback sucker, are listed as endangered.
Naming controversy
During the years of lobbying leading up to the passage of legislation authorizing the dam in 1928, the press generally referred to the dam as "Boulder Dam" or as "Boulder Canyon Dam", even though the proposed site had shifted to Black Canyon. The Boulder Canyon Project Act of 1928 (BCPA) never mentioned a proposed name or title for the dam. The BCPA merely allows the government to "construct, operate, and maintain a dam and incidental works in the main stream of the Colorado River at Black Canyon or Boulder Canyon".
When Secretary of the Interior Ray Wilbur spoke at the ceremony starting the building of the railway between Las Vegas and the dam site on September 17, 1930, he named the dam "Hoover Dam", citing a tradition of naming dams after Presidents, though none had been so honored during their terms of office. Wilbur justified his choice on the ground that Hoover was "the great engineer whose vision and persistence ... has done so much to make [the dam] possible". One writer complained in response that "the Great Engineer had quickly drained, ditched, and dammed the country."
After Hoover's election defeat in 1932 and the accession of the Roosevelt administration, Secretary Ickes ordered on May 13, 1933, that the dam be referred to as Boulder Dam. Ickes stated that Wilbur had been imprudent in naming the dam after a sitting president, that Congress had never ratified his choice, and that it had long been referred to as Boulder Dam. Unknown to the general public, Attorney General Homer Cummings informed Ickes that Congress had indeed used the name "Hoover Dam" in five different bills appropriating money for construction of the dam. The official status this conferred to the name "Hoover Dam" had been noted on the floor of the House of Representatives by Congressman Edward T. Taylor of Colorado on December 12, 1930, but was likewise ignored by Ickes.
When Ickes spoke at the dedication ceremony on September 30, 1935, he was determined, as he recorded in his diary, "to try to nail down for good and all the name Boulder Dam." At one point in the speech, he spoke the words "Boulder Dam" five times within thirty seconds. Further, he suggested that if the dam were to be named after any one person, it should be for California Senator Hiram Johnson, a lead sponsor of the authorizing legislation. Roosevelt also referred to the dam as Boulder Dam, and the Republican-leaning Los Angeles Times, which at the time of Ickes' name change had run an editorial cartoon showing Ickes ineffectively chipping away at an enormous sign "HOOVER DAM," reran it showing Roosevelt reinforcing Ickes, but having no greater success.
In the following years, the name "Boulder Dam" failed to fully take hold, with many Americans using both names interchangeably and mapmakers divided as to which name should be printed. Memories of the Great Depression faded, and Hoover to some extent rehabilitated himself through good works during and after World War II. In 1947, a bill passed both Houses of Congress unanimously restoring the name "Hoover Dam." Ickes, who was by then a private citizen, opposed the change, stating, "I didn't know Hoover was that small a man to take credit for something he had nothing to do with."
Recognition
Hoover Dam was recognized as a National Civil Engineering Landmark in 1984. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1981, and was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1985, cited for its engineering innovations.
See also
Ralph Luther Criswell, lobbyist on behalf of the dam
Glen Canyon Dam
Hoover Dam Police
List of dams in the Colorado River system
List of largest hydroelectric power stations
List of largest hydroelectric power stations in the United States
List of National Historic Landmarks in Arizona
List of National Historic Landmarks in Nevada
St. Thomas, Nevada, ghost town with site now under Lake Mead.
Water in California
Citations
Bibliography
Cited works
Other sources
Arrigo, Anthony F. (2014). Imaging Hoover Dam: The Making of a Cultural Icon. Reno, NV: University of Nevada Press.
External links
Hoover Dam – Visitors Site
Historic Construction Company Project – Hoover Dam
Hoover Dam – An American Experience Documentary
Boulder City/Hoover Dam Museum official site
1936 establishments in Arizona
1936 establishments in Nevada
Arch-gravity dams
Art Deco architecture in Arizona
Buildings and monuments honoring American presidents in the United States
Buildings and structures in Clark County, Nevada
Buildings and structures in Mohave County, Arizona
Dams completed in 1936
Dams in Arizona
Dams in Nevada
Dams on the Colorado River
Dams on the National Register of Historic Places in Nevada
Energy infrastructure completed in 1939
Energy infrastructure on the National Register of Historic Places
Engineering projects
Historic American Engineering Record in Arizona
Historic American Engineering Record in Nevada
Historic Civil Engineering Landmarks
Hydroelectric power plants in Arizona
Hydroelectric power plants in Nevada
Industrial buildings and structures on the National Register of Historic Places in Arizona
Lake Mead National Recreation Area
Lake Mead
Naming controversies
National Historic Landmarks in Arizona
National Historic Landmarks in Nevada
National Register of Historic Places in Mohave County, Arizona
PWA Moderne architecture
Tourist attractions in Clark County, Nevada
Tourist attractions in Mohave County, Arizona
U.S. Route 93
United States Bureau of Reclamation dams | [
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14309 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holger%20Pedersen | Holger Pedersen | Holger Pedersen may refer to:
Holger Pedersen (linguist) (1867–1953), Danish linguist
Holger Pedersen (astronomer) (born 1946), Danish astronomer, at the European Southern Observatory
Holger Petersen (born 1949), Canadian radio personality | [
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14311 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adventures%20of%20Huckleberry%20Finn | Adventures of Huckleberry Finn | Adventures of Huckleberry Finn or as it is known in more recent editions, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, is a novel by American author Mark Twain, which was first published in the United Kingdom in December 1884 and in the United States in February 1885.
Commonly named among the Great American Novels, the work is among the first in major American literature to be written throughout in vernacular English, characterized by local color regionalism. It is told in the first person by Huckleberry "Huck" Finn, the narrator of two other Twain novels (Tom Sawyer Abroad and Tom Sawyer, Detective) and a friend of Tom Sawyer. It is a direct sequel to The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.
The book is noted for "changing the course of children's literature" in the United States for the "deeply felt portrayal of boyhood". It is also known for its colorful description of people and places along the Mississippi River. Set in a Southern antebellum society that had ceased to exist over 20 years before the work was published, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is an often scathing satire on entrenched attitudes, particularly racism.
Perennially popular with readers, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn has also been the continued object of study by literary critics since its publication. The book was widely criticized upon release because of its extensive use of coarse language. Throughout the 20th century, and despite arguments that the protagonist and the tenor of the book are anti-racist, criticism of the book continued due to both its perceived use of racial stereotypes and its frequent use of the racial slur "nigger".
Characters
In order of appearance:
Tom Sawyer is Huck's best friend and peer, the main character of other Twain novels and the leader of the town boys in adventures. He is mischievous, good hearted, and "the best fighter and the smartest kid in town".
Huckleberry Finn, "Huck" to his friends, is a boy about "thirteen or fourteen or along there" years old. (Chapter 17) He has been brought up by his father, the town drunk, and has a difficult time fitting into society. In the novel, Huck's good nature offers a contrast to the inadequacies and inequalities in society.
Widow Douglas is the kind woman who takes Huck in after he helped save her from a violent home invasion. She tries her best to civilize Huck, believing it is her Christian duty.
Miss Watson is the widow's sister, a tough old spinster who also lives with them. She is fairly hard on Huck, causing him to resent her a good deal. Mark Twain may have drawn inspiration for this character from several people he knew in his life.
Jim is Miss Watson's physically large but mild-mannered slave. Huck becomes very close to Jim when they reunite after Jim flees Miss Watson's household to seek refuge from slavery, and Huck and Jim become fellow travelers on the Mississippi River.
"Pap" Finn, Huck's father, a brutal alcoholic drifter. He resents Huck getting any kind of education. His only genuine interest in his son involves begging or extorting money to feed his alcohol addiction.
Judith Loftus plays a small part in the novel — being the kind and perceptive woman whom Huck talks to in order to find out about the search for Jim — but many critics believe her to be the best drawn female character in the novel.
The Grangerfords, an aristocratic Kentuckian family headed by the sexagenarian Colonel Saul Grangerford, take Huck in after he is separated from Jim on the Mississippi. Huck becomes close friends with the youngest male of the family, Buck Grangerford, who is Huck's age. By the time Huck meets them, the Grangerfords have been engaged in an age-old blood feud with another local family, the Shepherdsons.
The Duke and the King are two otherwise unnamed con artists whom Huck and Jim take aboard their raft just before the start of their Arkansas adventures. They pose as the long-lost Duke of Bridgewater and the long-dead Louis XVII of France in an attempt to over-awe Huck and Jim, who quickly come to recognize them for what they are, but cynically pretend to accept their claims to avoid conflict.
Doctor Robinson is the only man who recognizes that the King and Duke are phonies when they pretend to be British. He warns the townspeople, but they ignore him.
Mary Jane, Joanna, and Susan Wilks are the three young nieces of their wealthy guardian, Peter Wilks, who has recently died. The Duke and the King try to steal their inheritance by posing as Peter's estranged brothers from England.
Aunt Sally and Uncle Silas Phelps buy Jim from the Duke and the King. She is a loving, high-strung "farmer's wife", and he a plodding old man, both a farmer and a preacher. Huck poses as their nephew Tom Sawyer after he parts from the conmen.
Plot summary
In Missouri
The story begins in fictional St. Petersburg, Missouri (based on the actual town of Hannibal, Missouri), on the shore of the Mississippi River "forty to fifty years ago" (the novel having been published in 1884). Huckleberry "Huck" Finn (the protagonist and first-person narrator) and his friend, Thomas "Tom" Sawyer, have each come into a considerable sum of money as a result of their earlier adventures (detailed in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer). Huck explains how he is placed under the guardianship of the Widow Douglas, who, together with her stringent sister, Miss Watson, are attempting to "sivilize" him and teach him religion. Huck finds civilized life confining. His spirits are raised when Tom Sawyer helps him to slip past Miss Watson's slave, Jim, so he can meet up with Tom's gang of self-proclaimed "robbers". Just as the gang's activities begin to bore Huck, his shiftless father, "Pap", an abusive alcoholic, suddenly reappears. Huck, who knows his father will spend the money on alcohol, is successful at keeping his fortune out of his father's hands. Pap, however, kidnaps Huck and takes him out of town.
In Illinois, Jackson's Island and while going Downriver
Pap forcibly moves Huck to an abandoned cabin in the woods along the Illinois shoreline. To evade further violence and escape imprisonment, Huck elaborately fakes his own murder, steals his father's provisions, and sets off downriver in a 13/14-foot long canoe he finds drifting downstream. Soon, he settles comfortably on Jackson's Island, where he reunites with Jim, Miss Watson's slave. Jim has also run away after he overheard Miss Watson planning to sell him "down the river" to presumably more brutal owners. Jim plans to make his way to the town of Cairo in Illinois, a free state, so that he can later buy the rest of his enslaved family's freedom. At first, Huck is conflicted about the sin and crime of supporting a runaway slave, but as the two talk in-depth and bond over their mutually held superstitions, Huck emotionally connects with Jim, who increasingly becomes Huck's close friend and guardian. After heavy flooding on the river, the two find a raft (which they keep) as well as an entire house floating on the river (Chapter 9: "The House of Death Floats By"). Entering the house to seek loot, Jim finds the naked body of a dead man lying on the floor, shot in the back. He prevents Huck from viewing the corpse.
To find out the latest news in town, Huck dresses as a girl and enters the house of Judith Loftus, a woman new to the area. Huck learns from her about the news of his own supposed murder; Pap was initially blamed, but since Jim ran away he is also a suspect and a reward of 300 dollars for Jim's capture has initiated a manhunt. Mrs. Loftus becomes increasingly suspicious that Huck is a boy, finally proving it by a series of tests. Huck develops another story on the fly and explains his disguise as the only way to escape from an abusive foster family. Once he is exposed, she nevertheless allows him to leave her home without commotion, not realizing that he is the allegedly murdered boy they have just been discussing. Huck returns to Jim to tell him the news and that a search party is coming to Jackson's Island that very night. The two hastily load up the raft and depart.
After a while, Huck and Jim come across a grounded steamer. Searching it, they stumble upon two thieves named Bill and Jake Packard discussing murdering a third named Jim Turner, but they flee before being noticed in the thieves' boat as their raft has drifted away. They find their own raft again and keep the thieves' loot and sink the thieves' boat. Huck tricks a watchman on a steamer into going to rescue the thieves stranded on the wreck to assuage his conscience. They are later separated in a fog, making Jim (on the raft) intensely anxious, and when they reunite, Huck tricks Jim into thinking he dreamed the entire incident. Jim is not deceived for long and is deeply hurt that his friend should have teased him so mercilessly. Huck becomes remorseful and apologizes to Jim, though his conscience troubles him about humbling himself to a Black man.
In Kentucky: the Grangerfords and Shepherdsons
Traveling onward, Huck and Jim's raft is struck by a passing steamship, again separating the two. Huck is given shelter on the Kentucky side of the river by the Grangerfords, an "aristocratic" family. He befriends Buck Grangerford, a boy about his age, and learns that the Grangerfords are engaged in a 30-year blood feud against another family, the Shepherdsons. Although Huck asks Buck why the feud started in the first place, he is told no one knows anymore. The Grangerfords and Shepherdsons go to the same church, which ironically preaches brotherly love. The vendetta finally comes to a head when Buck's older sister elopes with a member of the Shepherdson clan. In the resulting conflict, all the Grangerford males from this branch of the family are shot and killed by the remaining Shepherdsons — including Buck, whose horrific murder Huck witnesses. He is immensely relieved to be reunited with Jim, who has since recovered and repaired the raft.
In Arkansas: the Duke and the King
Near the Arkansas-Missouri-Tennessee border, Jim and Huck take two on-the-run grifters aboard the raft. The younger man, who is about thirty, introduces himself as the long-lost son of an English duke (the Duke of Bridgewater). The older one, about seventy, then trumps this outrageous claim by alleging that he himself is the Lost Dauphin, the son of Louis XVI and rightful King of France. The "duke" and "king" soon become permanent passengers on Jim and Huck's raft, committing a series of confidence schemes upon unsuspecting locals all along their journey. To divert public suspicion from Jim, they pretend he is a runaway slave who has been recaptured, but later paint him blue and call him the "Sick Arab" so that he can move about the raft without bindings.
On one occasion, the swindlers advertise a three-night engagement of a play called "The Royal Nonesuch". The play turns out to be only a couple of minutes' worth of an absurd, bawdy sham. On the afternoon of the first performance, a drunk called Boggs is shot dead by a gentleman named Colonel Sherburn; a lynch mob forms to retaliate against Sherburn; and Sherburn, surrounded at his home, disperses the mob by making a defiant speech describing how true lynching should be done. By the third night of "The Royal Nonesuch", the townspeople prepare for their revenge on the duke and king for their money-making scam, but the two cleverly skip town together with Huck and Jim just before the performance begins.
In the next town, the two swindlers then impersonate brothers of Peter Wilks, a recently deceased man of property. To match accounts of Wilks's brothers, the king attempts an English accent and the duke pretends to be a deaf-mute while starting to collect Wilks's inheritance. Huck decides that Wilks's three orphaned nieces, who treat Huck with kindness, do not deserve to be cheated thus and so he tries to retrieve for them the stolen inheritance. In a desperate moment, Huck is forced to hide the money in Wilks's coffin, which is abruptly buried the next morning. The arrival of two new men who seem to be the real brothers throws everything into confusion, so that the townspeople decide to dig up the coffin in order to determine which are the true brothers, but, with everyone else distracted, Huck leaves for the raft, hoping to never see the duke and king again. Suddenly, though, the two villains return, much to Huck's despair. When Huck is finally able to get away a second time, he finds to his horror that the swindlers have sold Jim away to a family that intends to return him to his proper owner for the reward. Defying his conscience and accepting the negative religious consequences he expects for his actions—"All right, then, I'll go to hell!"—Huck resolves to free Jim once and for all.
On the Phelpses' farm
Huck learns that Jim is being held at the plantation of Silas and Sally Phelps. The family's nephew, Tom, is expected for a visit at the same time as Huck's arrival, so Huck is mistaken for Tom and welcomed into their home. He plays along, hoping to find Jim's location and free him; in a surprising plot twist, it is revealed that the expected nephew is, in fact, Tom Sawyer. When Huck intercepts the real Tom Sawyer on the road and tells him everything, Tom decides to join Huck's scheme, pretending to be his own younger half-brother, Sid, while Huck continues pretending to be Tom. In the meantime, Jim has told the family about the two grifters and the new plan for "The Royal Nonesuch", and so the townspeople capture the duke and king, who are then tarred and feathered and ridden out of town on a rail.
Rather than simply sneaking Jim out of the shed where he is being held, Tom develops an elaborate plan to free him, involving secret messages, a hidden tunnel, snakes in a shed, a rope ladder sent in Jim's food, and other elements from adventure books he has read, including an anonymous note to the Phelps warning them of the whole scheme. During the actual escape and resulting pursuit, Tom is shot in the leg, while Jim remains by his side, risking recapture rather than completing his escape alone. Although a local doctor admires Jim's decency, he has Jim arrested in his sleep and returned to the Phelpses. After this, events quickly resolve themselves. Tom's Aunt Polly arrives and reveals Huck and Tom's true identities to the Phelps family. Jim is revealed to be a free man: Miss Watson died two months earlier and freed Jim in her will, but Tom (who already knew this) chose not to reveal this information to Huck so that he could come up with an artful rescue plan for Jim. Jim tells Huck that Huck's father (Pap Finn) has been dead for some time (he was the dead man they found earlier in the floating house), and so Huck may now return safely to St. Petersburg. Huck declares that he is quite glad to be done writing his story, and despite Sally's plans to adopt and civilize him, he intends to flee west to Indian Territory.
Theme
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn explores themes of race and identity. A complexity exists concerning Jim's character. While some scholars point out that Jim is good-hearted and moral, and he is not unintelligent (in contrast to several of the more negatively depicted white characters), others have criticized the novel as racist, citing the use of the word "nigger" and emphasizing the stereotypically "comic" treatment of Jim's lack of education, superstition and ignorance.
Throughout the story, Huck is in moral conflict with the received values of the society in which he lives. Huck is unable consciously to rebut those values even in his thoughts but he makes a moral choice based on his own valuation of Jim's friendship and human worth, a decision in direct opposition to the things he has been taught. Twain, in his lecture notes, proposes that "a sound heart is a surer guide than an ill-trained conscience" and goes on to describe the novel as "...a book of mine where a sound heart and a deformed conscience come into collision and conscience suffers defeat".
To highlight the hypocrisy required to condone slavery within an ostensibly moral system, Twain has Huck's father enslave his son, isolate him and beat him. When Huck escapes, he immediately encounters Jim "illegally" doing the same thing. The treatments both of them receive are radically different, especially in an encounter with Mrs. Judith Loftus who takes pity on who she presumes to be a runaway apprentice, Huck, yet boasts about her husband sending the hounds after a runaway slave, Jim.
Some scholars discuss Huck's own character, and the novel itself, in the context of its relation to African-American culture as a whole. John Alberti quotes Shelley Fisher Fishkin, who writes in her 1990s book Was Huck Black?: Mark Twain and African-American Voices, "by limiting their field of inquiry to the periphery," white scholars "have missed the ways in which African-American voices shaped Twain's creative imagination at its core." It is suggested that the character of Huckleberry Finn illustrates the correlation, and even interrelatedness, between white and Black culture in the United States.
Illustrations
The original illustrations were done by E.W. Kemble, at the time a young artist working for Life magazine. Kemble was hand-picked by Twain, who admired his work. Hearn suggests that Twain and Kemble had a similar skill, writing that:
Whatever he may have lacked in technical grace ... Kemble shared with the greatest illustrators the ability to give even the minor individual in a text his own distinct visual personality; just as Twain so deftly defined a full-rounded character in a few phrases, so too did Kemble depict with a few strokes of his pen that same entire personage.
As Kemble could afford only one model, most of his illustrations produced for the book were done by guesswork. When the novel was published, the illustrations were praised even as the novel was harshly criticized. E.W. Kemble produced another set of illustrations for Harper's and the American Publishing Company in 1898 and 1899 after Twain lost the copyright.
Publication's effect on literary climate
Twain initially conceived of the work as a sequel to The Adventures of Tom Sawyer that would follow Huckleberry Finn through adulthood. Beginning with a few pages he had removed from the earlier novel, Twain began work on a manuscript he originally titled Huckleberry Finn's Autobiography. Twain worked on the manuscript off and on for the next several years, ultimately abandoning his original plan of following Huck's development into adulthood. He appeared to have lost interest in the manuscript while it was in progress, and set it aside for several years. After making a trip down the Hudson River, Twain returned to his work on the novel. Upon completion, the novel's title closely paralleled its predecessor's: Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Tom Sawyer's Comrade).
Mark Twain composed the story in pen on notepaper between 1876 and 1883. Paul Needham, who supervised the authentication of the manuscript for Sotheby's books and manuscripts department in New York in 1991, stated, "What you see is [Clemens'] attempt to move away from pure literary writing to dialect writing". For example, Twain revised the opening line of Huck Finn three times. He initially wrote, "You will not know about me", which he changed to, "You do not know about me", before settling on the final version, "You don't know about me, without you have read a book by the name of 'The Adventures of Tom Sawyer'; but that ain't no matter." The revisions also show how Twain reworked his material to strengthen the characters of Huck and Jim, as well as his sensitivity to the then-current debate over literacy and voting.
A later version was the first typewritten manuscript delivered to a printer.
Demand for the book spread outside of the United States. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn was eventually published on December 10, 1884, in Canada and the United Kingdom, and on February 18, 1885, in the United States. The illustration on page 283 became a point of issue after an engraver, whose identity was never discovered, made a last-minute addition to the printing plate of Kemble's picture of old Silas Phelps, which drew attention to Phelps' groin. Thirty thousand copies of the book had been printed before the obscenity was discovered. A new plate was made to correct the illustration and repair the existing copies.
In 1885, the Buffalo Public Library's curator, James Fraser Gluck, approached Twain to donate the manuscript to the library. Twain did so. Later it was believed that half of the pages had been misplaced by the printer. In 1991, the missing first half turned up in a steamer trunk owned by descendants of Gluck's. The library successfully claimed possession and, in 1994, opened the Mark Twain Room to showcase the treasure.
In relation to the literary climate at the time of the book's publication in 1885, Henry Nash Smith describes the importance of Mark Twain's already established reputation as a "professional humorist", having already published over a dozen other works. Smith suggests that while the "dismantling of the decadent Romanticism of the later nineteenth century was a necessary operation," Adventures of Huckleberry Finn illustrated "previously inaccessible resources of imaginative power, but also made vernacular language, with its new sources of pleasure and new energy, available for American prose and poetry in the twentieth century."
Critical reception and banning
While it is clear that Adventures of Huckleberry Finn was controversial from the outset, Norman Mailer, writing in The New York Times in 1984, concluded that Twain's novel was not initially "too unpleasantly regarded." In fact, Mailer writes: "the critical climate could hardly anticipate T. S. Eliot and Ernest Hemingway's encomiums 50 years later," reviews that would remain longstanding in the American consciousness.
Alberti suggests that the academic establishment responded to the book's challenges both dismissively and with confusion. During Twain's time and today, defenders of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn "lump all nonacademic critics of the book together as extremists and 'censors', thus equating the complaints about the book's 'coarseness' from the genteel bourgeois trustees of the Concord Public Library in the 1880s with more recent objections based on race and civil rights."
Upon issue of the American edition in 1885, several libraries banned it from their shelves. The early criticism focused on what was perceived as the book's crudeness. One incident was recounted in the newspaper the Boston Transcript:
The Concord (Mass.) Public Library committee has decided to exclude Mark Twain's latest book from the library. One member of the committee says that, while he does not wish to call it immoral, he thinks it contains but little humor, and that of a very coarse type. He regards it as the veriest trash. The library and the other members of the committee entertain similar views, characterizing it as rough, coarse, and inelegant, dealing with a series of experiences not elevating, the whole book being more suited to the slums than to intelligent, respectable people.
Writer Louisa May Alcott criticized the book's publication as well, saying that if Twain "[could not] think of something better to tell our pure-minded lads and lasses he had best stop writing for them".
Twain later remarked to his editor, "Apparently, the Concord library has condemned Huck as 'trash and only suitable for the slums.' This will sell us another twenty-five thousand copies for sure!"
In 1905, New York's Brooklyn Public Library also banned the book due to "bad word choice" and Huck's having "not only itched but scratched" within the novel, which was considered obscene. When asked by a Brooklyn librarian about the situation, Twain sardonically replied: I am greatly troubled by what you say. I wrote 'Tom Sawyer' & 'Huck Finn' for adults exclusively, & it always distressed me when I find that boys and girls have been allowed access to them. The mind that becomes soiled in youth can never again be washed clean. I know this by my own experience, & to this day I cherish an unappeased bitterness against the unfaithful guardians of my young life, who not only permitted but compelled me to read an unexpurgated Bible through before I was 15 years old. None can do that and ever draw a clean sweet breath again on this side of the grave.
Many subsequent critics, Ernest Hemingway among them, have deprecated the final chapters, claiming the book "devolves into little more than minstrel-show satire and broad comedy" after Jim is detained. Although Hemingway declared, "All modern American literature comes from" Huck Finn, and hailed it as "the best book we've had", he cautioned, "If you must read it you must stop where the Nigger Jim is stolen from the boys . That is the real end. The rest is just cheating." The African-American writer Ralph Ellison argued that "Hemingway missed completely the structural, symbolic and moral necessity for that part of the plot in which the boys rescue Jim. Yet it is precisely this part which gives the novel its significance." Pulitzer Prize winner Ron Powers states in his Twain biography (Mark Twain: A Life) that "Huckleberry Finn endures as a consensus masterpiece despite these final chapters", in which Tom Sawyer leads Huck through elaborate machinations to rescue Jim.
Controversy
In his introduction to The Annotated Huckleberry Finn, Michael Patrick Hearn writes that Twain "could be uninhibitedly vulgar", and quotes critic William Dean Howells, a Twain contemporary, who wrote that the author's "humor was not for most women". However, Hearn continues by explaining that "the reticent Howells found nothing in the proofs of Huckleberry Finn so offensive that it needed to be struck out".
Much of modern scholarship of Huckleberry Finn has focused on its treatment of race. Many Twain scholars have argued that the book, by humanizing Jim and exposing the fallacies of the racist assumptions of slavery, is an attack on racism. Others have argued that the book falls short on this score, especially in its depiction of Jim. According to Professor Stephen Railton of the University of Virginia, Twain was unable to fully rise above the stereotypes of Black people that white readers of his era expected and enjoyed, and, therefore, resorted to minstrel show-style comedy to provide humor at Jim's expense, and ended up confirming rather than challenging late-19th century racist stereotypes.
In one instance, the controversy caused a drastically altered interpretation of the text: in 1955, CBS tried to avoid controversial material in a televised version of the book, by deleting all mention of slavery and omitting the character of Jim entirely.
Because of this controversy over whether Huckleberry Finn is racist or anti-racist, and because the word "nigger" is frequently used in the novel (a commonly used word in Twain's time that has since become vulgar and taboo), many have questioned the appropriateness of teaching the book in the U.S. public school system—this questioning of the word "nigger" is illustrated by a school administrator of Virginia in 1982 calling the novel the "most grotesque example of racism I've ever seen in my life". According to the American Library Association, Huckleberry Finn was the fifth most frequently challenged book in the United States during the 1990s.
There have been several more recent cases involving protests for the banning of the novel. In 2003, high school student Calista Phair and her grandmother, Beatrice Clark, in Renton, Washington, proposed banning the book from classroom learning in the Renton School District, though not from any public libraries, because of the word "nigger". The two curriculum committees that considered her request eventually decided to keep the novel on the 11th grade curriculum, though they suspended it until a panel had time to review the novel and set a specific teaching procedure for the novel's controversial topics.
In 2009, a Washington state high school teacher, John Foley, called for replacing Adventures of Huckleberry Finn with a more modern novel. In an opinion column that Foley wrote in the Seattle Post Intelligencer, he states that all "novels that use the ‘N-word' repeatedly need to go." He states that teaching the novel is not only unnecessary, but difficult due to the offensive language within the novel with many students becoming uncomfortable at "just hear[ing] the N-word."
In 2016, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn was removed from a public school district in Virginia, along with the novel To Kill a Mockingbird, due to their use of racial slurs.
Expurgated editions
Publishers have made their own attempts at easing the controversy by way of releasing editions of the book with the word "nigger" replaced by less controversial words. A 2011 edition of the book, published by NewSouth Books, employed the word "slave" (although the word is not properly applied to a freed man). Their argument for making the change was to offer the reader a choice of reading a "sanitized" version if they were not comfortable with the original. Mark Twain scholar Alan Gribben said he hoped the edition would be more friendly for use in classrooms, rather than have the work banned outright from classroom reading lists due to its language.
According to publisher Suzanne La Rosa, "At NewSouth, we saw the value in an edition that would help the works find new readers. If the publication sparks good debate about how language impacts learning or about the nature of censorship or the way in which racial slurs exercise their baneful influence, then our mission in publishing this new edition of Twain's works will be more emphatically fulfilled." Another scholar, Thomas Wortham, criticized the changes, saying the new edition "doesn't challenge children to ask, 'Why would a child like Huck use such reprehensible language?'"
Adaptations
Film
Huck and Tom (1918 silent) by Famous Players-Lasky; directed by William Desmond Taylor; starring Jack Pickford as Tom, Robert Gordon as Huck and Clara Horton as Becky
Huckleberry Finn (1920 silent) by Famous Players-Lasky; directed by William Desmond Taylor; starring Lewis Sargent as Huck, Gordon Griffith as Tom and Thelma Salter as Becky
Huckleberry Finn (1931) by Paramount Pictures; directed by Norman Taurog; starring Jackie Coogan as Tom, Junior Durkin as Huck, and Mitzi Green as Becky
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1939) by MGM; directed by Richard Thorpe; starring Mickey Rooney as Huck
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1955), starring Thomas Mitchell and John Carradine
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1960), directed by Michael Curtiz, starring Eddie Hodges and Archie Moore
Hopelessly Lost (1973), a Soviet film
Huckleberry Finn (1974), a musical film
Huckleberry Finn (1975), an ABC movie of the week with Ron Howard as Huck Finn
The Adventures of Con Sawyer and Hucklemary Finn (1985), an ABC movie of the week with Drew Barrymore as Con Sawyer
The Adventures of Huck Finn (1993), starring Elijah Wood and Courtney B. Vance
Tom and Huck (1995), starring Jonathan Taylor Thomas as Tom and Brad Renfro as Huck
Tomato Sawyer and Huckleberry Larry's Big River Rescue (2008), a VeggieTales parody
(2012), a German film starring Leon Seidel and directed by Hermine Huntgeburth
Tom Sawyer & Huckleberry Finn (2014), starring Joel Courtney as Tom Sawyer, Jake T. Austin as Huckleberry Finn, Katherine McNamara as Becky Thatcher
Television
Huckleberry no Bōken, a 1976 Japanese anime with 26 episodes
Huckleberry Finn and His Friends, a 1979 series starring Ian Tracey
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, a 1985 PBS TV adaptation directed by Peter H. Hunt, starring Patrick Day and Samm-Art Williams.
Huckleberry Finn Monogatari (ハックルベリー・フィン物語), a 1994 Japanese anime with 26 episodes, produced by NHK
Other
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1973), by Robert James Dixson – a simplified version
Big River: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, a 1985 Broadway musical with lyrics and music by Roger Miller
Manga Classics: Adventures of Huckleberry Finn published by UDON Entertainment's Manga Classics imprint was released in November 2017.
Related works
Literature
Finn: A Novel (2007), by Jon Clinch – a novel about Huck's father, Pap Finn ()
Huck Out West (2017), by Robert Coover – continues Huck's and Tom's adventures during the 1860s and 1870s ()
The Further Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1983) by Greg Matthews – continues Huck's and Jim's adventures as they "light out for the territory" and wind up in the throes of the California Gold Rush of 1849
My Jim (2005), by Nancy Rawles – a novel narrated largely by Sadie, Jim's enslaved wife ()
Music
Mississippi Suite (1926), by Ferde Grofe: the second movement is a lighthearted whimsical piece entitled "Huckleberry Finn"
Huckleberry Finn EP (2009), comprising five songs from Kurt Weill's unfinished musical, by Duke Special
Television
The New Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, a 1968 children's series produced by Hanna-Barbera combining live-action and animation
See also
Mark Twain bibliography
List of films featuring slavery
The Story of a Bad Boy
Footnotes
Further reading
Beaver, Harold, et al., eds. "The Role of Structure in Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn." Huckleberry Finn. Vol. 1. No. 8. (New York: Johns Hopkins Textual Studies, 1987) pp. 1–57.
Brown, Clarence A. "Huckleberry Finn: A Study in Structure and Point of View." Mark Twain Journal 12.2 (1964): 10-15. Online
Buchen, Callista. "Writing the Imperial Question at Home: Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer Among the Indians Revisited." Mark Twain Annual 9 (2011): 111-129. online
Gribben, Alan. "Tom Sawyer, Tom Canty, and Huckleberry Finn: The Boy Book and Mark Twain." Mark Twain Journal 55.1/2 (2017): 127-144 online
Levy, Andrew, Huck Finn's America: Mark Twain and the Era that Shaped His Masterpiece. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2015.
Quirk, Tom. "The Flawed Greatness of Huckleberry Finn." American Literary Realism 45.1 (2012): 38-48.
Saunders, George. "The United States of Huck: Introduction to Adventures of Huckleberry Finn." In Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Modern Library Classics, 2001) , reprinted in Saunders, George, The Braindead Megaphone: Essays (New York: Riverhead Books, 2007)
Tibbetts, John C., And James M, Welsh, eds. The Encyclopedia of Novels Into Film (2005) pp 1–3.
Study and teaching tools
External links
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, with all the original illustrations – Free Online – Mark Twain Project (printed 2003 University of California Press, online 2009 MTPO) Rich editorial material accompanies text, including detailed historical notes, glossaries, maps, and documentary appendixes, which record the author's revisions as well as unauthorized textual variations.
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Digitized copy of the first American edition from Internet Archive (1885).
1884 American novels
1880s children's books
American adventure novels
American bildungsromans
American children's novels
American novels adapted into films
American novels adapted into plays
American novels adapted into television shows
American picaresque novels
Fiction with unreliable narrators
Novels about American slavery
Novels about racism
Novels set in the 19th century
Novels set in Arkansas
Novels set in Missouri
Race-related controversies in literature
Censored books
Novels by Mark Twain
Chatto & Windus books
Sequel novels
Cultural depictions of Louis XVII
First-person narrative novels | [
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14312 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harpsichord | Harpsichord | A harpsichord (, , , , , ) is a musical instrument played by means of a keyboard. This activates a row of levers that turn a trigger mechanism that plucks one or more strings with a small plectrum made from quill or plastic. The strings are under tension on a soundboard, which is mounted in a wooden case; the soundboard amplifies the vibrations from the strings so that the listeners can hear it. Like a pipe organ, a harpsichord may have more than one keyboard manual, and even a pedal board. Harpsichords may also have stop buttons which add or remove additional octaves. Some harpsichords may have a buff stop, which brings a strip of buff leather or other material in contact with the strings, muting their sound to simulate the sound of a plucked lute.
The term denotes the whole family of similar plucked-keyboard instruments, including the smaller virginals, muselar, and spinet. The harpsichord was widely used in Renaissance and Baroque music, both as an accompaniment instrument and as a soloing instrument. During the Baroque era, the harpsichord was a standard part of the continuo group. The basso continuo part acted as the foundation for many musical pieces in this era. During the late 18th century, with the development of the fortepiano (and then the increasing use of the piano in the 19th century) the harpsichord gradually disappeared from the musical scene (except in opera, where it continued to be used to accompany recitative). In the 20th century, it made a resurgence, being used in historically informed performances of older music, in new compositions, and, in rare cases, in certain styles of popular music (e.g., Baroque pop).
History
The harpsichord was most likely invented in the late Middle Ages. By the 16th century, harpsichord makers in Italy were making lightweight instruments with low string tension. A different approach was taken in the Southern Netherlands starting in the late 16th century, notably by the Ruckers family. Their harpsichords used a heavier construction and produced a more powerful and distinctive tone. They included the first harpsichords with two keyboards, used for transposition.
The Flemish instruments served as the model for 18th-century harpsichord construction in other nations. In France, the double keyboards were adapted to control different choirs of strings, making a more musically flexible instrument. Instruments from the peak of the French tradition, by makers such as the Blanchet family and Pascal Taskin, are among the most widely admired of all harpsichords, and are frequently used as models for the construction of modern instruments. In England, the Kirkman and Shudi firms produced sophisticated harpsichords of great power and sonority. German builders extended the sound repertoire of the instrument by adding sixteen-foot and two-foot choirs; these instruments have recently served as models for modern builders.
Around the year 1700 the first piano was built. The piano uses percussion, the strings being struck with muffled wooden hammers instead of being plucked. The piano is capable of a quieter sound, which is why it has the name it has. The piano also allows variation in volume, which the harpsichord did not. By the late 18th century the harpsichord was supplanted by the piano and almost disappeared from view for most of the 19th century: an exception was its continued use in opera for accompanying recitative, but the piano sometimes displaced it even there.
Twentieth-century efforts to revive the harpsichord began with instruments that used piano technology, with heavy strings and metal frames. Starting in the middle of the 20th century, ideas about harpsichord making underwent a major change, when builders such as Frank Hubbard, William Dowd, and Martin Skowroneck sought to re-establish the building traditions of the Baroque period. Harpsichords of this type of historically informed building practice dominate the current scene.
Mechanism
Harpsichords vary in size and shape, but all have the same basic mechanism. The player depresses a key that rocks over a pivot in the middle of its length. The other end of the key lifts a jack (a long strip of wood) that holds a small plectrum (a wedge-shaped piece of quill, often made of plastic in the 21st century), which plucks the string. When the player releases the key, the far end returns to its rest position, and the jack falls back; the plectrum, mounted on a tongue mechanism that can swivel backwards away from the string, passes the string without plucking it again. As the key reaches its rest position, a felt damper atop the jack stops the string's vibrations. These basic principles are explained in detail below.
The keylever is a simple pivot, which rocks on a balance pin that passes through a hole drilled through the keylever.
The jack is a thin, rectangular piece of wood that sits upright on the end of the keylever. The jacks are held in place by the registers. These are two long strips of wood (the upper movable, the lower fixed), which run in the gap between pinblock and bellyrail. The registers have rectangular mortises (holes) through which the jacks pass as they can move up and down. The registers hold the jacks in the precise location needed to pluck the string.
In the jack, a plectrum juts out almost horizontally (normally the plectrum is angled upwards a tiny amount) and passes just under the string. Historically, plectra were made of bird quill or leather; many modern harpsichords have plastic (delrin or celcon) plectra.
When the front of the key is pressed, the back of the key rises, the jack is lifted, and the plectrum plucks the string.
The vertical motion of the jack is then stopped by the jackrail (also called the upper rail), which is covered with soft felt to muffle the impact.
When the key is released, the jack falls back down under its own weight, and the plectrum passes back under the string. This is made possible by having the plectrum held in a tongue attached with a pivot and a spring to the body of the jack. The bottom surface of the plectrum is cut at a slant; thus when the descending plectrum touches the string from above, the angled lower surface provides enough force to push the tongue backward.
When the jack arrives in fully lowered position, the felt damper touches the string, causing the note to cease.
Strings, tuning, and soundboard
Each string is wound around a tuning pin (also known as a wrest pin) at the end nearest the player. When rotated with a wrench or tuning hammer, the tuning pin adjusts the tension so that the string sounds the correct pitch. Tuning pins are held tightly in holes drilled in the pinblock or wrestplank, an oblong hardwood plank. Proceeding from the tuning pin, a string next passes over the nut, a sharp edge that is made of hardwood and is normally attached to the wrestplank. The section of the string beyond the nut forms its vibrating length, which is plucked and creates sound.
At the other end of its vibrating length, the string passes over the bridge, another sharp edge made of hardwood. As with the nut, the horizontal position of the string along the bridge is determined by a vertical metal pin inserted into the bridge, against which the string rests. The bridge itself rests on a soundboard, a thin panel of wood usually made of spruce, fir or—in some Italian harpsichords—cypress. The soundboard efficiently transmits the vibrations of the strings into vibrations in the air; without a soundboard, the strings would produce only a very feeble sound. A string is attached at its far end by a loop to a hitchpin that secures it to the case.
Multiple manuals and choirs of strings
While many harpsichords have one string per note, more elaborate harpsichords can have two or more strings for each note. When there are multiple strings for each note, these additional strings are called "choirs" of strings. This provides two advantages: the ability to vary volume and ability to vary tonal quality. Volume is increased when the mechanism of the instrument is set up by the player (see below) so that the press of a single key plucks more than one string. Tonal quality can be varied in two ways. First, different choirs of strings can be designed to have distinct tonal qualities, usually by having one set of strings plucked closer to the nut, which emphasizes the higher harmonics, and produces a "nasal" sound quality. The mechanism of the instrument, called "stops" (following the use of the term in pipe organs) permits the player to select one choir or the other. Second, having one key pluck two strings at once changes not just volume but also tonal quality; for instance, when two strings tuned to the same pitch are plucked simultaneously, the note is not just louder but also richer and more complex.
A particularly vivid effect is obtained when the strings plucked simultaneously are an octave apart. This is normally heard by the ear not as two pitches but as one: the sound of the higher string is blended with that of the lower one, and the ear hears the lower pitch, enriched in tonal quality by the additional strength in the upper harmonics of the note sounded by the higher string.
When describing a harpsichord it is customary to specify its choirs of strings, often called its disposition. To describe the pitch of the choirs of strings, pipe organ terminology is used. Strings at eight-foot pitch (8') sound at the normal expected pitch, strings at four-foot pitch (4') sound an octave higher. Harpsichords occasionally include a sixteen-foot (16') choir (one octave lower than eight-foot) or a two-foot (2') choir (two octaves higher; quite rare). When there are multiple choirs of strings, the player is often able to control which choirs sound. This is usually done by having a set of jacks for each choir, and a mechanism for "turning off" each set, often by moving the upper register (through which the jacks slide) sideways a short distance, so that their plectra miss the strings. In simpler instruments this is done by manually moving the registers, but as the harpsichord evolved, builders invented levers, knee levers and pedal mechanisms to make it easier to change registration.
Harpsichords with more than one keyboard (this usually means two keyboards, stacked one on top of the other in a step-wise fashion, as with pipe organs) provide flexibility in selecting which strings play, since each manual can be set to control the plucking of a different set of strings. This means that a player can have, for instance, an 8' manual and a 4' manual ready for use, enabling him to switch between them to obtain higher (or lower) pitches or different tone. In addition, such harpsichords often have a mechanism (the "coupler") that couples manuals together, so that a single manual plays both sets of strings.
The most flexible system is the French "shove coupler", in which the lower manual slides forward and backward. In the backward position, "dogs" attached to the upper surface of the lower manual engage the lower surface of the upper manual's keys. Depending on choice of keyboard and coupler position, the player can select any of the sets of jacks labeled in "figure 4" as A, or B and C, or all three.
The English "dogleg" jack system (also used in Baroque Flanders) does not require a coupler. The jacks labeled A in Figure 5 have a "dogleg" shape that permits either keyboard to play A. If the player wishes to play the upper 8' from the upper manual only and not from the lower manual, a stop handle disengages the jacks labeled A and engages instead an alternative row of jacks called "lute stop" (not shown in the Figure). A lute stop is used to imitate the gentle sound of a plucked lute.
The use of multiple manuals in a harpsichord was not originally provided for the flexibility in choosing which strings would sound, but rather for transposition of the instrument to play in different keys (see History of the harpsichord).
Some early harpsichords used a short octave for the lowest register. The rationale behind this system was that the low notes F and G are seldom needed in early music. Deep bass notes typically form the root of the chord, and F and G chords were seldom used at this time. In contrast, low C and D, both roots of very common chords, are sorely missed if a harpsichord with lowest key E is tuned to match the keyboard layout. When scholars specify the pitch range of instruments with this kind of short octave, they write "C/E", meaning that the lowest note is a C, played on a key that normally would sound E. In another arrangement, known as "G/B', the apparent lowest key B is tuned to G, and apparent C-sharp and D-sharp are tuned to A and B respectively.
Case
The wooden case holds in position all of the important structural members: pinblock, soundboard, hitchpins, keyboard, and the jack action. It usually includes a solid bottom, and also internal bracing to maintain its form without warping under the tension of the strings. Cases vary greatly in weight and sturdiness: Italian harpsichords are often of light construction; heavier construction is found in the later Flemish instruments and those derived from them.
The case also gives the harpsichord its external appearance and protects the instrument. A large harpsichord is, in a sense, a piece of furniture, as it stands alone on legs and may be styled in the manner of other furniture of its place and period. Early Italian instruments, on the other hand, were so light in construction that they were treated rather like a violin: kept for storage in a protective outer case, and played after taking it out of its case and placing it on a table. Such tables were often quite high – until the late 18th century people usually played standing up. Eventually, harpsichords came to be built with just a single case, though an intermediate stage also existed: the false inner–outer, which for purely aesthetic reasons was built to look as if the outer case contained an inner one, in the old style. Even after harpsichords became self-encased objects, they often were supported by separate stands, and some modern harpsichords have separate legs for improved portability.
Many harpsichords have a lid that can be raised, a cover for the keyboard, and a music stand for holding sheet music and scores.
Harpsichords have been decorated in a great many different ways: with plain buff paint (e.g. some Flemish instruments), with paper printed with patterns, with leather or velvet coverings, with chinoiserie, or occasionally with highly elaborate painted artwork.
Variants
Virginals
The virginal is a smaller and simpler rectangular form of the harpsichord having only one string per note; the strings run parallel to the keyboard, which is on the long side of the case.
Spinet
A spinet is a harpsichord with the strings set at an angle (usually about 30 degrees) to the keyboard. The strings are too close together for the jacks to fit between them. Instead, the strings are arranged in pairs, and the jacks are in the larger gaps between the pairs. The two jacks in each gap face in opposite directions, and each plucks a string adjacent to the gap.
The English diarist Samuel Pepys mentions his "tryangle" several times. This was not the percussion instrument that we call triangle today; rather, it was a name for octave-pitched spinets, which were triangular in shape.
Clavicytherium
A clavicytherium is a harpsichord with the soundboard and strings mounted vertically facing the player, the same space-saving principle as an upright piano. In a clavicytherium, the jacks move horizontally without the assistance of gravity, so that clavicytherium actions are more complex than those of other harpsichords.
Ottavino
Ottavini are small spinets or virginals at four-foot pitch. Harpsichords at octave pitch were more common in the early Renaissance, but lessened in popularity later on. However, the ottavino remained very popular as a domestic instrument in Italy until the 19th century. In the Low Countries, an ottavino was commonly paired with an 8' virginals, encased in a small cubby under the soundboard of the larger instrument. The ottavino could be removed and placed on top of the virginal, making, in effect, a double manual instrument. These are sometimes called 'mother-and-child' or 'double' virginals.
Pedal harpsichord
Occasionally, harpsichords were built which included another set or sets of strings underneath and played by foot-operated pedal keyboard which trigger the plucking of the lowest-pitched keys of the harpsichord. Although there are no known extant pedal harpsichords from the 18th century or before, from Adlung (1758): the lower set of usually 8' strings "...is built like an ordinary harpsichord, but with an extent of two octaves only. The jacks are similar, but they will benefit from being arranged back to back, since the two [bass] octaves take as much space as four in an ordinary harpsichord Prior to 1980 when Keith Hill introduced his design for a pedal harpsichord, most pedal harpsichords were built based on the designs of extant pedal pianos from the 19th century, in which the instrument is as wide as the pedalboard. While these were mostly intended as practice instruments for organists, a few pieces are believed to have been written specifically for the pedal harpsichord. However, the set of pedals can augment the sound from any piece performed on the instrument, as demonstrated on several albums by E. Power Biggs.
Other variants
The archicembalo, built in the 16th century, had an unusual keyboard layout, designed to accommodate variant tuning systems demanded by compositional practice and theoretical experimentation. More common were instruments with split sharps, also designed to accommodate the tuning systems of the time.
The folding harpsichord was an instrument that could be folded up to make it more compact, thus facilitating travelling with it.
Compass and pitch range
On the whole, earlier harpsichords have smaller ranges than later ones, although there are many exceptions. The largest harpsichords have a range of just over five octaves, and the smallest have under four. Usually, the shortest keyboards were given extended range in the bass with a "short octave". The traditional pitch range for a 5-octave instrument is F1–F6 (FF–f‴).
Tuning pitch is often taken to be A4 = 415 Hz, roughly a semitone lower than the modern standard concert pitch of A4 = 440 Hz. An accepted exception is for French baroque repertoire, which is often performed with a = 392 Hz, approximately a semitone lower again. See Jean-Philippe Rameau's Treatise on Harmony (1722) [Dover Publications], Book One, chapter five, for insight into French baroque tuning; "Since most of these semitones are absolutely necessary in the tuning of organs and other similar instruments, the following chromatic system has been drawn up." Tuning an instrument nowadays usually starts with setting an A; historically it would commence from a C or an F.
Some modern instruments are built with keyboards that can shift sideways, allowing the player to align the mechanism with strings at either A = 415 Hz or A = 440 Hz. If a tuning other than equal temperament is used, the instrument requires retuning once the keyboard is shifted.
Music
Classical period
The great bulk of the standard repertoire for the harpsichord was written during its first historical flowering, the Renaissance and Baroque eras.
The first music written specifically for solo harpsichord was published around the early 16th century. Composers who wrote solo harpsichord music were numerous during the whole Baroque era in European countries including Italy, Germany, England and France. Solo harpsichord compositions included dance suites, fantasias, and fugues. Among the most famous composers who wrote for the harpsichord were the members of English virginal school of the late Renaissance, notably William Byrd (ca. 1540–1623). In France, a great number of highly characteristic solo works were created and compiled into four books of ordres by François Couperin (1668–1733). Domenico Scarlatti (1685–1757) began his career in Italy but wrote most of his solo harpsichord works in Spain; his most famous work is his series of 555 harpsichord sonatas. Perhaps the most celebrated composers who wrote for the harpsichord were Georg Friedrich Händel (1685–1759), who composed numerous suites for harpsichord, and especially J. S. Bach (1685–1750), whose solo works (for instance, the Well-Tempered Clavier and the Goldberg Variations), continue to be performed very widely, often on the piano. Bach was also a pioneer of the harpsichord concerto, both in works designated as such, and in the harpsichord part of his Fifth Brandenburg Concerto.
Two of the most prominent composers of the Classical era, Joseph Haydn (1732–1809) and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756–1791), wrote harpsichord music. For both, the instrument featured in the earlier period of their careers,
Revival
Through the 19th century, the harpsichord was almost completely supplanted by the piano. In the 20th century, composers returned to the instrument, as they sought out variation in the sounds available to them. Under the influence of Arnold Dolmetsch, the harpsichordists Violet Gordon-Woodhouse (1872–1951) and in France, Wanda Landowska (1879–1959), were at the forefront of the instrument's renaissance. Concertos for the instrument were written by Francis Poulenc (the Concert champêtre, 1927–28), and Manuel de Falla. Elliott Carter's Double Concerto is scored for harpsichord, piano and two chamber orchestras. For a detailed account of music composed for the revived harpsichord, see Contemporary harpsichord.
See also
List of historical harpsichord makers
Clavichord
Notes
References
An authoritative survey by a leading builder of how early harpsichords were built and how the harpsichord evolved over time in different national traditions.
An extensive survey by a leading contemporary scholar.
Further reading
Boalch, Donald H. (1995) Makers of the Harpsichord and Clavichord, 1440–1840, 3rd ed., with updates by Andreas H. Roth and Charles Mould, Oxford University Press, . A catalogue, originating with work by Boalch in the 1950s, of all extant historical instruments.
O'Brien, Grant (1990) Ruckers, a harpsichord and virginal building tradition, Cambridge University Press, . Covers the innovations of the Ruckers family, the founders of the Flemish tradition.
Skowroneck, Martin (2003) Cembalobau: Erfahrungen und Erkenntnisse aus der Werkstattpraxis [Harpsichord construction: a craftsman's workshop experience and insight], Fachbuchreihe Das Musikinstrument 83, Bergkirchen : Bochinsky, . A study (written in English and German) of harpsichord building by a leading figure in the modern revival of historically authentic methods of building.
Zuckermann, Wolfgang (1969) The Modern Harpsichord: twentieth century instruments and their makers, New York : October House,
The New Grove: Early Keyboard Instruments. Macmillan, 1989 . (material from here is also available online in Grove Music Online)
External links
Instruments
A few historic harpsichords from the collection at The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Double virginal by Hans Ruckers, Antwerp, 1581
Harpsichord by Jan Couchet, Antwerp, 1650
Octave virginal, Augsburg, ca. 1600
Spinetta or Virginal, Venice, ca. 1540
Golden Harpsichord by Michele Todini, Rome, ca. 1675
Harpsichord, Italy, late 17th century
Harpsichord by Pleyel et Cie, Paris, 1928
Three historic harpsichords from the Hans Adler Memorial collection at Witwatersrand University
The Wanda Landowska 16th Century sculptured harpsichord
Ferdinand Weber Harpsichord, 1752
Italian two manual harpsichord, 1750
Harpsichord attributed to Girolama Zenti, Viterbo, 1622 (Cobb Collection)
More than 450 Harpsichords at the MIMO (Musical Instruments Museums Online) portal
History
Italian Harpsichord-Building in the 16th and 17th Centuries by Shortridge
Listen
Hear the sound of various harpsichords
Sala del Cembalo, free harpsichord sound files
Les Cyclopes, 3:57 min. Composed by Jean-Phillipe Rameau and performed by Elaine Comparone
Images
HarpsichordPhoto, photographs of early stringed keyboard instruments
Organisations
British Harpsichord Society
Craftsman insights
Interview with harpsichord builder Jack Peters
Interview with harpsichord builder Craig Tomlinson
Music
Procembalo free catalog of contemporary harpsichord music
Video – Marin Marais – La Sonnerie/cembalo – Complete (09:58).
Technical
About Harpsichords. Harpsichord builder Paul Y. Irvin treats the question of necessary and sufficient compass, and other instrument technicalities, in this section of his informative site.
Keyboard instruments
Early musical instruments
Classical music instruments
Baroque instruments
Articles containing video clips
C instruments
Renaissance instruments
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14313 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hair | Hair | Hair is a protein filament that grows from follicles found in the dermis. Hair is one of the defining characteristics of mammals.
The human body, apart from areas of glabrous skin, is covered in follicles which produce thick terminal and fine vellus hair. Most common interest in hair is focused on hair growth, hair types, and hair care, but hair is also an important biomaterial primarily composed of protein, notably alpha-keratin.
Attitudes towards different forms of hair, such as hairstyles and hair removal, vary widely across different cultures and historical periods, but it is often used to indicate a person's personal beliefs or social position, such as their age, sex, or religion.
Overview
The word "hair" usually refers to two distinct structures:
the part beneath the skin, called the hair follicle, or, when pulled from the skin, the bulb or root. This organ is located in the dermis and maintains stem cells, which not only re-grow the hair after it falls out, but also are recruited to regrow skin after a wound.
the hair shaft, which is the hard filamentous part that extends above the skin surface. A cross section of the hair shaft may be divided roughly into three zones.
Hair fibers have a structure consisting of several layers, starting from the outside:
the cuticle, which consists of several layers of flat, thin cells laid out overlapping one another as roof shingles
the cortex, which contains the keratin bundles in cell structures that remain roughly rod-like
the medulla, a disorganized and open area at the fiber's center
Description
Each strand of hair is made up of the medulla, cortex, and cuticle. The innermost region, the medulla, is not always present which is an open, unstructured region. The highly structural and organized cortex, or second of three layers of the hair, is the primary source of mechanical strength and water uptake. The cortex contains melanin, which colors the fiber based on the number, distribution and types of melanin granules. The shape of the follicle determines the shape of the cortex, and the shape of the fiber is related to how straight or curly the hair is. People with straight hair have round hair fibers. Oval and other shaped fibers are generally more wavy or curly. The cuticle is the outer covering. Its complex structure slides as the hair swells and is covered with a single molecular layer of lipid that makes the hair repel water. The diameter of human hair varies from . There are two million small, tubular glands and sweat glands that produce watery fluids that cool the body by evaporation. The glands at the opening of the hair produce a fatty secretion that lubricates the hair.
Hair growth begins inside the hair follicle. The only "living" portion of the hair is found in the follicle. The hair that is visible is the hair shaft, which exhibits no biochemical activity and is considered "dead". The base of a hair's root (the "bulb") contains the cells that produce the hair shaft. Other structures of the hair follicle include the oil producing sebaceous gland which lubricates the hair and the arrector pili muscles, which are responsible for causing hairs to stand up. In humans with little body hair, the effect results in goose bumps.
Root of the hair
The root of the hair ends in an enlargement, the hair bulb, which is whiter in color and softer in texture than the shaft and is lodged in a follicular involution of the epidermis called the hair follicle. The bulb of hair consists of fibrous connective tissue, glassy membrane, external root sheath, internal root sheath composed of epithelium stratum (Henle's layer) and granular stratum (Huxley's layer), cuticle, cortex and medulla.
Natural color
All natural hair colors are the result of two types of hair pigments. Both of these pigments are melanin types, produced inside the hair follicle and packed into granules found in the fibers. Eumelanin is the dominant pigment in brown hair and black hair, while pheomelanin is dominant in red hair. Blond hair is the result of having little pigmentation in the hair strand. Gray hair occurs when melanin production decreases or stops, while poliosis is white hair (and often the skin to which the hair is attached), typically in spots that never possessed melanin at all, or ceased for natural reasons, generally genetic, in the first years of life.
Human hair growth
Hair grows everywhere on the external body except for mucus membranes and glabrous skin, such as that found on the palms of the hands, soles of the feet, and lips.
Hair follows a specific growth cycle with three distinct and concurrent phases: anagen, catagen, and telogen phases; all three occur simultaneously throughout the body. Each has specific characteristics that determine the length of the hair.
The body has different types of hair, including vellus hair and androgenic hair, each with its own type of cellular construction. The different construction gives the hair unique characteristics, serving specific purposes, mainly, warmth and protection.
Texture
Hair exists in a variety of textures. Three main aspects of hair texture are the curl pattern, volume, and consistency. The derivations of hair texture are not fully understood. All mammalian hair is composed of keratin, so the make-up of hair follicles is not the source of varying hair patterns. There are a range of theories pertaining to the curl patterns of hair. Scientists have come to believe that the shape of the hair shaft has an effect on the curliness of the individual's hair. A very round shaft allows for fewer disulfide bonds to be present in the hair strand. This means the bonds present are directly in line with one another, resulting in straight hair.
The flatter the hair shaft becomes, the curlier hair gets, because the shape allows more cysteines to become compacted together resulting in a bent shape that, with every additional disulfide bond, becomes curlier in form. As the hair follicle shape determines curl pattern, the hair follicle size determines thickness. While the circumference of the hair follicle expands, so does the thickness of the hair follicle. An individual's hair volume, as a result, can be thin, normal, or thick. The consistency of hair can almost always be grouped into three categories: fine, medium, and coarse. This trait is determined by the hair follicle volume and the condition of the strand. Fine hair has the smallest circumference, coarse hair has the largest circumference, and medium hair is anywhere between the other two. Coarse hair has a more open cuticle than thin or medium hair causing it to be the most porous.
Classification systems
There are various systems that people use to classify their curl patterns. Being knowledgeable of an individual's hair type is a good start to knowing how to take care of one's hair. There is not just one method to discovering one's hair type. Additionally it is possible, and quite normal to have more than one kind of hair type, for instance having a mixture of both type 3a & 3b curls.
The Andre Walker Hair Typing System is the most widely used system to classify hair. The system was created by the hairstylist of Oprah Winfrey, Andre Walker. According to this system there are four types of hair: straight, wavy, curly, kinky.
Type 1 is straight hair, which reflects the most sheen and also the most resilient hair of all of the hair types. It is hard to damage and immensely difficult to curl this hair texture. Because the sebum easily spreads from the scalp to the ends without curls or kinks to interrupt its path, it is the most oily hair texture of all.
Type 2 is wavy hair, whose texture and sheen ranges somewhere between straight and curly hair. Wavy hair is also more likely to become frizzy than straight hair. While type A waves can easily alternate between straight and curly styles, type B and C Wavy hair is resistant to styling.
Type 3 is curly hair known to have an S-shape. The curl pattern may resemble a lowercase "s", uppercase "S", or sometimes an uppercase "Z" or lowercase "z". This hair type is usually voluminous, "climate dependent (humidity = frizz), and damage-prone." Lack of proper care causes less defined curls.
Type 4 is kinky hair, which features a tightly coiled curl pattern (or no discernible curl pattern at all) that is often fragile with a very high density. This type of hair shrinks when wet and because it has fewer cuticle layers than other hair types it is more susceptible to damage.
This is a method which classifies the hair by curl pattern, hair-strand thickness and overall hair volume.
Functions
Many mammals have fur and other hairs that serve different functions. Hair provides thermal regulation and camouflage for many animals; for others it provides signals to other animals such as warnings, mating, or other communicative displays; and for some animals hair provides defensive functions and, rarely, even offensive protection. Hair also has a sensory function, extending the sense of touch beyond the surface of the skin. Guard hairs give warnings that may trigger a recoiling reaction.
Warmth
While humans have developed clothing and other means of keeping warm, the hair found on the head serves primarily as a source of heat insulation and cooling (when sweat evaporates from soaked hair) as well as protection from ultra-violet radiation exposure. The function of hair in other locations is debated. Hats and coats are still required while doing outdoor activities in cold weather to prevent frostbite and hypothermia, but the hair on the human body does help to keep the internal temperature regulated. When the body is too cold, the arrector pili muscles found attached to hair follicles stand up, causing the hair in these follicles to do the same. These hairs then form a heat-trapping layer above the epidermis. This process is formally called piloerection, derived from the Latin words 'pilus' ('hair') and 'erectio' ('rising up'), but is more commonly known as 'having goose bumps' in English. This is more effective in other mammals whose fur fluffs up to create air pockets between hairs that insulate the body from the cold. The opposite actions occur when the body is too warm; the arrector muscles make the hair lie flat on the skin which allows heat to leave.
Protection
In some mammals, such as hedgehogs and porcupines, the hairs have been modified into hard spines or quills. These are covered with thick plates of keratin and serve as protection against predators. Thick hair such as that of the lion's mane and grizzly bear's fur do offer some protection from physical damages such as bites and scratches.
Touch sense
Displacement and vibration of hair shafts are detected by hair follicle nerve receptors and nerve receptors within the skin. Hairs can sense movements of air as well as touch by physical objects and they provide sensory awareness of the presence of ectoparasites. Some hairs, such as eyelashes, are especially sensitive to the presence of potentially harmful matter.
Eyebrows and eyelashes
The eyebrows provide moderate protection to the eyes from dirt, sweat and rain. They also play a key role in non-verbal communication by displaying emotions such as sadness, anger, surprise and excitement. In many other mammals, they contain much longer, whisker-like hairs that act as tactile sensors.
The eyelash grows at the edges of the eyelid and protects the eye from dirt. The eyelash is to humans, camels, horses, ostriches etc., what whiskers are to cats; they are used to sense when dirt, dust, or any other potentially harmful object is too close to the eye. The eye reflexively closes as a result of this sensation.
Evolution
Hair has its origins in the common ancestor of mammals, the synapsids, about 300 million years ago. It is currently unknown at what stage the synapsids acquired mammalian characteristics such as body hair and mammary glands, as the fossils only rarely provide direct evidence for soft tissues. Skin impression of the belly and lower tail of a pelycosaur, possibly Haptodus shows the basal synapsid stock bore transverse rows of rectangular scutes, similar to those of a modern crocodile, so the age of acquirement of hair logically couldn't have been earlier than ~299 ma, based on the current understanding of the animal's phylogeny. An exceptionally well-preserved skull of Estemmenosuchus, a therapsid from the Upper Permian, shows smooth, hairless skin with what appears to be glandular depressions, though as a semi-aquatic species it might not have been particularly useful to determine the integument of terrestrial species. The oldest undisputed known fossils showing unambiguous imprints of hair are the Callovian (late middle Jurassic) Castorocauda and several contemporary haramiyidans, both near-mammal cynodonts, giving the age as no later than ~220 ma based on the modern phylogenetic understanding of these clades. More recently, studies on terminal Permian Russian coprolites may suggest that non-mammalian synapsids from that era had fur. If this is the case, these are the oldest hair remnants known, showcasing that fur occurred as far back as the latest Paleozoic.
Some modern mammals have a special gland in front of each orbit used to preen the fur, called the harderian gland. Imprints of this structure are found in the skull of the small early mammals like Morganucodon, but not in their cynodont ancestors like Thrinaxodon.
The hairs of the fur in modern animals are all connected to nerves, and so the fur also serves as a transmitter for sensory input. Fur could have evolved from sensory hair (whiskers). The signals from this sensory apparatus is interpreted in the neocortex, a section of the brain that expanded markedly in animals like Morganucodon and Hadrocodium. The more advanced therapsids could have had a combination of naked skin, whiskers, and scutes. A full pelage likely did not evolve until the therapsid-mammal transition. The more advanced, smaller therapsids could have had a combination of hair and scutes, a combination still found in some modern mammals, such as rodents and the opossum.
The high interspecific variability of the size, color, and microstructure of hair often enables the identification of species based on single hair filaments.
In varying degrees most mammals have some skin areas without natural hair. On the human body, glabrous skin is found on the ventral portion of the fingers, palms, soles of feet and lips, which are all parts of the body most closely associated with interacting with the world around us, as are the labia minora and glans penis. There are four main types of mechanoreceptors in the glabrous skin of humans: Pacinian corpuscles, Meissner's corpuscles, Merkel's discs, and Ruffini corpuscles.
The naked mole-rat (Heterocephalus glaber) has evolved skin lacking in general, pelagic hair covering, yet has retained long, very sparsely scattered tactile hairs over its body. Glabrousness is a trait that may be associated with neoteny.
Human hairlessness
The general hairlessness of humans in comparison to related species may be due to loss of functionality in the pseudogene KRTHAP1 (which helps produce keratin) in the human lineage about 240,000 years ago. On an individual basis, mutations in the gene HR can lead to complete hair loss, though this is not typical in humans. Humans may also lose their hair as a result of hormonal imbalance due to drugs or pregnancy.
In order to comprehend why humans have significantly less body hair than other primates, one must understand that mammalian body hair is not merely an aesthetic characteristic; it protects the skin from wounds, bites, heat, cold, and UV radiation. Additionally, it can be used as a communication tool and as a camouflage.
Humans are the only primate species that have undergone significant hair loss and of the approximately 5000 extant species of mammal, only a handful are effectively hairless. This list includes elephants, rhinoceroses, hippopotamuses, walruses, some species of pigs, whales and other cetaceans, and naked mole rats. Most mammals have light skin that is covered by fur, and biologists believe that early human ancestors started out this way also. Dark skin probably evolved after humans lost their body fur, because the naked skin was vulnerable to the strong UV radiation as explained in the Out of Africa hypothesis. Therefore, evidence of the time when human skin darkened has been used to date the loss of human body hair, assuming that the dark skin was needed after the fur was gone.
It was expected that dating the split of the ancestral human louse into two species, the head louse and the pubic louse, would date the loss of body hair in human ancestors. However, it turned out that the human pubic louse does not descend from the ancestral human louse, but from the gorilla louse, diverging 3.3 million years ago. This suggests that humans had lost body hair (but retained head hair) and developed thick pubic hair prior to this date, were living in or close to the forest where gorillas lived, and acquired pubic lice from butchering gorillas or sleeping in their nests. The evolution of the body louse from the head louse, on the other hand, places the date of clothing much later, some 100,000 years ago.
The sweat glands in humans could have evolved to spread from the hands and feet as the body hair changed, or the hair change could have occurred to facilitate sweating. Horses and humans are two of the few animals capable of sweating on most of their body, yet horses are larger and still have fully developed fur. In humans, the skin hairs lie flat in hot conditions, as the arrector pili muscles relax, preventing heat from being trapped by a layer of still air between the hairs, and increasing heat loss by convection.
Another hypothesis for the thick body hair on humans proposes that Fisherian runaway sexual selection played a role (as well as in the selection of long head hair), (see terminal and vellus hair), as well as a much larger role of testosterone in men. Sexual selection is the only theory thus far that explains the sexual dimorphism seen in the hair patterns of men and women. On average, men have more body hair than women. Males have more terminal hair, especially on the face, chest, abdomen, and back, and females have more vellus hair, which is less visible. The halting of hair development at a juvenile stage, vellus hair, would also be consistent with the neoteny evident in humans, especially in females, and thus they could have occurred at the same time. This theory, however, has significant holdings in today's cultural norms. There is no evidence that sexual selection would proceed to such a drastic extent over a million years ago when a full, lush coat of hair would most likely indicate health and would therefore be more likely to be selected for, not against.
A further hypothesis is that human hair was reduced in response to ectoparasites. The "ectoparasite" explanation of modern human nakedness is based on the principle that a hairless primate would harbor fewer parasites. When our ancestors adopted group-dwelling social arrangements roughly 1.8 mya, ectoparasite loads increased dramatically. Early humans became the only one of the 193 primate species to have fleas, which can be attributed to the close living arrangements of large groups of individuals. While primate species have communal sleeping arrangements, these groups are always on the move and thus are less likely to harbor ectoparasites.
Another view is proposed by James Giles, who attempts to explain hairlessness as evolved from the relationship between mother and child, and as a consequence of bipedalism. Giles also connects romantic love to hairlessness.
Another hypothesis is that humans' use of fire caused or initiated the reduction in human hair.
Evolutionary variation
Evolutionary biologists suggest that the genus Homo arose in East Africa approximately 2.5 million years ago. They devised new hunting techniques. The higher protein diet led to the evolution of larger body and brain sizes. Jablonski postulates that increasing body size, in conjunction with intensified hunting during the day at the equator, gave rise to a greater need to rapidly expel heat. As a result, humans evolved the ability to sweat: a process which was facilitated by the loss of body hair.
Another factor in human evolution that also occurred in the prehistoric past was a preferential selection for neoteny, particularly in females. The idea that adult humans exhibit certain neotenous (juvenile) features, not evinced in the other great apes, is about a century old. Louis Bolk made a long list of such traits, and Stephen Jay Gould published a short list in Ontogeny and Phylogeny. In addition, paedomorphic characteristics in women are often acknowledged as desirable by men in developed countries. For instance, vellus hair is a juvenile characteristic. However, while men develop longer, coarser, thicker, and darker terminal hair through sexual differentiation, women do not, leaving their vellus hair visible.
Texture
Curly hair
Jablonski asserts head hair was evolutionarily advantageous for pre-humans to retain because it protected the scalp as they walked upright in the intense African (equatorial) UV light. While some might argue that, by this logic, humans should also express hairy shoulders because these body parts would putatively be exposed to similar conditions, the protection of the head, the seat of the brain that enabled humanity to become one of the most successful species on the planet (and which also is very vulnerable at birth) was arguably a more urgent issue (axillary hair in the underarms and groin were also retained as signs of sexual maturity). Sometime during the gradual process by which Homo erectus began a transition from furry skin to the naked skin expressed by Homo sapiens, hair texture putatively gradually changed from straight hair (the condition of most mammals, including humanity's closest cousins—chimpanzees) to Afro-textured hair or 'kinky' (i.e. tightly coiled). This argument assumes that curly hair better impedes the passage of UV light into the body relative to straight hair (thus curly or coiled hair would be particularly advantageous for light-skinned hominids living at the equator).
It is substantiated by Iyengar's findings (1998) that UV light can enter into straight human hair roots (and thus into the body through the skin) via the hair shaft. Specifically, the results of that study suggest that this phenomenon resembles the passage of light through fiber optic tubes (which do not function as effectively when kinked or sharply curved or coiled). In this sense, when hominids (i.e. Homo Erectus) were gradually losing their straight body hair and thereby exposing the initially pale skin underneath their fur to the sun, straight hair would have been an adaptive liability. By inverse logic, later, as humans traveled farther from Africa and/or the equator, straight hair may have (initially) evolved to aid the entry of UV light into the body during the transition from dark, UV-protected skin to paler skin.
Jablonski's assertions suggest that the adjective "woolly" in reference to Afro-hair is a misnomer in connoting the high heat insulation derivable from the true wool of sheep. Instead, the relatively sparse density of Afro-hair, combined with its springy coils actually results in an airy, almost sponge-like structure that in turn, Jablonski argues, more likely facilitates an increase in the circulation of cool air onto the scalp. Further, wet Afro-hair does not stick to the neck and scalp unless totally drenched and instead tends to retain its basic springy puffiness because it less easily responds to moisture and sweat than straight hair does. In this sense, the trait may enhance comfort levels in intense equatorial climates more than straight hair (which, on the other hand, tends to naturally fall over the ears and neck to a degree that provides slightly enhanced comfort levels in cold climates relative to tightly coiled hair).
Further, it is notable that the most pervasive expression of this hair texture can be found in sub-Saharan Africa; a region of the world that abundant genetic and paleo-anthropological evidence suggests, was the relatively recent (≈200,000-year-old) point of origin for modern humanity. In fact, although genetic findings (Tishkoff, 2009) suggest that sub-Saharan Africans are the most genetically diverse continental group on Earth, Afro-textured hair approaches ubiquity in this region. This points to a strong, long-term selective pressure that, in stark contrast to most other regions of the genomes of sub-Saharan groups, left little room for genetic variation at the determining loci. Such a pattern, again, does not seem to support human sexual aesthetics as being the sole or primary cause of this distribution.
The EDAR locus
A group of studies have recently shown that genetic patterns at the EDAR locus, a region of the modern human genome that contributes to hair texture variation among most individuals of East Asian descent, support the hypothesis that (East Asian) straight hair likely developed in this branch of the modern human lineage subsequent to the original expression of tightly coiled natural afro-hair. Specifically, the relevant findings indicate that the EDAR mutation coding for the predominant East Asian 'coarse' or thick, straight hair texture arose within the past ≈65,000 years, which is a time frame that covers from the earliest of the 'Out of Africa' migrations up to now.
Disease
Ringworm is a fungal disease that targets hairy skin.
Premature greying of hair is another condition that results in greying before the age of 20 years in Whites, before 25 years in Asians, and before 30 years in Africans.
Hair care
Hair care involves the hygiene and cosmetology of hair including hair on the scalp, facial hair (beard and moustache), pubic hair and other body hair. Hair care routines differ according to an individual's culture and the physical characteristics of one's hair. Hair may be colored, trimmed, shaved, plucked, or otherwise removed with treatments such as waxing, sugaring, and threading.
Removal practices
Depilation is the removal of hair from the surface of the skin. This can be achieved through methods such as shaving. Epilation is the removal of the entire hair strand, including the part of the hair that has not yet left the follicle. A popular way to epilate hair is through waxing.
Shaving
Shaving is accomplished with bladed instruments, such as razors. The blade is brought close to the skin and stroked over the hair in the desired area to cut the terminal hairs and leave the skin feeling smooth. Depending upon the rate of growth, one can begin to feel the hair growing back within hours of shaving. This is especially evident in men who develop a five o'clock shadow after having shaved their faces. This new growth is called stubble. Stubble typically appears to grow back thicker because the shaved hairs are blunted instead of tapered off at the end, although the hair never actually grows back thicker.
Waxing
Waxing involves using a sticky wax and strip of paper or cloth to pull hair from the root. Waxing is the ideal hair removal technique to keep an area hair-free for long periods of time. It can take three to five weeks for waxed hair to begin to resurface again. Hair in areas that have been waxed consistently is known to grow back finer and thinner, especially compared to hair that has been shaved with a razor.
Laser removal
Laser hair removal is a cosmetic method where a small laser beam pulses selective heat on dark target matter in the area that causes hair growth without harming the skin tissue. This process is repeated several times over the course of many months to a couple of years with hair regrowing less frequently until it finally stops; this is used as a more permanent solution to waxing or shaving. Laser removal is practiced in many clinics along with many at-home products.
Cutting and trimming
Because the hair on one's head is normally longer than other types of body hair, it is cut with scissors or clippers. People with longer hair will most often use scissors to cut their hair, whereas shorter hair is maintained using a trimmer. Depending on the desired length and overall health of the hair, periods without cutting or trimming the hair can vary.
Cut hair may be used in wigs. Global imports of hair in 2010 was worth $US 1.24 billion.
Social role
Hair has great social significance for human beings. It can grow on most external areas of the human body, except on the palms of the hands and the soles of the feet (among other areas). Hair is most noticeable on most people in a small number of areas, which are also the ones that are most commonly trimmed, plucked, or shaved. These include the face, ears, head, eyebrows, legs, and armpits, as well as the pubic region. The highly visible differences between male and female body and facial hair are a notable secondary sex characteristic.
The world's longest documented hair belongs to Xie Qiuping (in China), at 5.627 m (18 ft 5.54 in) when measured on 8 May 2004. She has been growing her hair since 1973, from the age of 13.
Indication of status
Healthy hair indicates health and youth (important in evolutionary biology). Hair color and texture can be a sign of ethnic ancestry. Facial hair is a sign of puberty in men. White or gray hair is a sign of age or genetics, which may be concealed with hair dye (not easily for some), although many prefer to assume it (especially if it is a poliosis characteristic of the person since childhood). Male pattern baldness is a sign of age, which may be concealed with a toupee, hats, or religious and cultural adornments. Although drugs and medical procedures exist for the treatment of baldness, many balding men simply shave their heads. In early modern China, the queue was a male hairstyle worn by the Manchus from central Manchuria and the Han Chinese during the Qing dynasty; hair on the front of the head was shaved off above the temples every ten days, mimicking male-pattern baldness, and the rest of the hair braided into a long pigtail.
Hairstyle may be an indicator of group membership. During the English Civil War, the followers of Oliver Cromwell decided to crop their hair close to their head, as an act of defiance to the curls and ringlets of the king's men. This led to the Parliamentary faction being nicknamed Roundheads. Recent isotopic analysis of hair is helping to shed further light on sociocultural interaction, giving information on food procurement and consumption in the 19th century. Having bobbed hair was popular among the flappers in the 1920s as a sign of rebellion against traditional roles for women. Female art students known as the "cropheads" also adopted the style, notably at the Slade School in London, England. Regional variations in hirsutism cause practices regarding hair on the arms and legs to differ. Some religious groups may follow certain rules regarding hair as part of religious observance. The rules often differ for men and women.
Many subcultures have hairstyles which may indicate an unofficial membership. Many hippies, metalheads, and Indian sadhus have long hair, as well many older indie kids. Many punks wear a hairstyle known as a mohawk or other spiked and dyed hairstyles; skinheads have short-cropped or completely shaved heads. Long stylized bangs were very common for emos, scene kids and younger indie kids in the 2000s and early 2010s, among people of both genders.
Heads were shaved in concentration camps, and head-shaving has been used as punishment, especially for women with long hair. The shaven head is common in military haircuts, while Western monks are known for the tonsure. By contrast, among some Indian holy men, the hair is worn extremely long.
In the time of Confucius (5th century BCE), the Chinese grew out their hair and often tied it, as a symbol of filial piety.
Regular hairdressing in some cultures is considered a sign of wealth or status. The dreadlocks of the Rastafari movement were despised early in the movement's history. In some cultures, having one's hair cut can symbolize a liberation from one's past, usually after a trying time in one's life. Cutting the hair also may be a sign of mourning.
Tightly coiled hair in its natural state may be worn in an Afro. This hairstyle was once worn among African Americans as a symbol of racial pride. Given that the coiled texture is the natural state of some African Americans' hair, or perceived as being more "African", this simple style is now often seen as a sign of self-acceptance and an affirmation that the beauty norms of the (eurocentric) dominant culture are not absolute. It is important to note that African Americans as a whole have a variety of hair textures, as they are not an ethnically homogeneous group, but an ad-hoc of different racial admixtures.
The film Easy Rider (1969) includes the assumption that the two main characters could have their long hairs forcibly shaved with a rusty razor when jailed, symbolizing the intolerance of some conservative groups toward members of the counterculture. At the conclusion of the Oz obscenity trials in the UK in 1971, the defendants had their heads shaved by the police, causing public outcry. During the appeal trial, they appeared in the dock wearing wigs. A case where a 14-year-old student was expelled from school in Brazil in the mid-2000s, allegedly because of his fauxhawk haircut, sparked national debate and legal action resulting in compensation.
Religious practices
Women's hair may be hidden using headscarves, a common part of the hijab in Islam and a symbol of modesty required for certain religious rituals in Eastern Orthodoxy. Russian Orthodox Church requires all married women to wear headscarves inside the church; this tradition is often extended to all women, regardless of marital status. Orthodox Judaism also commands the use of scarves and other head coverings for married women for modesty reasons. Certain Hindu sects also wear head scarves for religious reasons. Sikhs have an obligation not to cut hair (a Sikh cutting hair becomes 'apostate' which means fallen from religion) and men keep it tied in a bun on the head, which is then covered appropriately using a turban. Multiple religions, both ancient and contemporary, require or advise one to allow their hair to become dreadlocks, though people also wear them for fashion. For men, Islam, Orthodox Judaism, Orthodox Christianity, Roman Catholicism, and other religious groups have at various times recommended or required the covering of the head and sections of the hair of men, and some have dictates relating to the cutting of men's facial and head hair. Some Christian sects throughout history and up to modern times have also religiously proscribed the cutting of women's hair. For some Sunni madhabs, the donning of a kufi or topi is a form of sunnah.
See also
Chaetophobia – the fear of hair
Hair analysis (alternative medicine)
Hypertrichosis – the state of having an excess of hair on the head or body
Hypotrichosis – the state of having a less than normal amount of hair on the head or body
Lanugo
Seta – hair-like structures in insects
Trichotillomania – hair pulling
References
Citations
Sources
External links
How to measure the diameter of your own hair using a laser pointer
Instant insight outlining the chemistry of hair from the Royal Society of Chemistry | [
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14314 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawker%20Siddeley%20Harrier | Hawker Siddeley Harrier | The Hawker Siddeley Harrier is a British military aircraft. It was the first of the Harrier Jump Jet series of aircraft and was developed in the 1960s as the first operational ground attack and reconnaissance aircraft with vertical/short takeoff and landing (V/STOL) capabilities and the only truly successful V/STOL design of that era. The Harrier was developed directly from the Hawker Siddeley Kestrel prototype aircraft, following the cancellation of a more advanced supersonic aircraft, the Hawker Siddeley P.1154. The British Royal Air Force (RAF) ordered the Harrier GR.1 and GR.3 variants in the late 1960s. It was exported to the United States as the AV-8A, for use by the US Marine Corps (USMC), in the 1970s.
During the Harrier's service the RAF positioned the bulk of the aircraft in West Germany to defend against a potential invasion of Western Europe by the Warsaw Pact forces; the unique abilities of the Harrier allowed the RAF to disperse their forces away from vulnerable airbases. The USMC used their Harriers primarily for close air support, operating from amphibious assault ships, and, if needed, forward operating bases. Harrier squadrons saw several deployments overseas. The Harrier's ability to operate with minimal ground facilities and very short runways allowed it to be used at locations unavailable to other fixed-wing aircraft. The Harrier received criticism for having a high accident rate and for a time-consuming maintenance process.
In the 1970s the British Aerospace Sea Harrier was developed from the Harrier for use by the Royal Navy (RN) on s. The Sea Harrier and the Harrier fought in the 1982 Falklands War, in which the aircraft proved to be crucial and versatile. The RN Sea Harriers provided fixed-wing air defence while the RAF Harriers focused on ground-attack missions in support of the advancing British land force. The Harrier was also extensively redesigned as the AV-8B Harrier II and British Aerospace Harrier II by the team of McDonnell Douglas and British Aerospace.
Development
Origins
The Harrier's design was derived from the Hawker P.1127. Prior to developing the P.1127 Hawker Aircraft had been working on a replacement for the Hawker Hunter, the Hawker P.1121. The P.1121 was cancelled after the release of the British Government's 1957 Defence White Paper, which advocated a policy shift away from manned aircraft and towards missiles. This policy resulted in the termination of the majority of aircraft development projects then underway for the British military. Hawker sought to quickly move on to a new project and became interested in Vertical Take Off/Landing (VTOL) aircraft, which did not need runways. According to Air Chief Marshal Sir Patrick Hine this interest may have been stimulated by the presence of Air Staff Requirement 345, which sought a V/STOL ground attack fighter for the Royal Air Force.
Design work on the P.1127 was formally started in 1957 by Sir Sydney Camm, Ralph Hooper of Hawker Aircraft, and Stanley Hooker (later Sir Stanley Hooker) of the Bristol Engine Company. The close cooperation between Hawker, the airframe company, and Bristol, the engine company, was viewed by project engineer Gordon Lewis as one of the key factors that allowed the development of the Harrier to continue in spite of technical obstacles and political setbacks. Rather than using rotors or a direct jet thrust, the P.1127 had an innovative vectored thrust turbofan engine, the Pegasus. The Pegasus I was rated at of thrust and first ran in September 1959. A contract for two development prototypes was signed in June 1960 and the first flight followed in October 1960. Of the six prototypes built, three crashed, including one during an air display at the 1963 Paris Air Show.
Tripartite evaluation
In 1961 the United Kingdom, the United States and West Germany jointly agreed to purchase nine aircraft developed from the P.1127, for the evaluation of the performance and potential of V/STOL aircraft. These aircraft were built by Hawker Siddeley and were designated Kestrel FGA.1 by the UK. The Kestrel was strictly an evaluation aircraft and to save money the Pegasus 5 engine was not fully developed as intended, only having of thrust instead of the projected . The Tripartite Evaluation Squadron numbered ten pilots; four each from the UK and US and two from West Germany. The Kestrel's first flight took place on 7 March 1964.
A total of 960 sorties had been made during the trials, including 1,366 takeoffs and landings, by the end of evaluations in November 1965. One aircraft was destroyed in an accident and six others were transferred to the United States, assigned the US designation XV-6A Kestrel, and underwent further testing. The two remaining British-based Kestrels were assigned to further trials and experimentation at RAE Bedford with one being modified to use the uprated Pegasus 6 engine.
P.1154
At the time of the development of the P.1127 Hawker and Bristol had also undertaken considerable development work on a supersonic version, the Hawker Siddeley P.1154, to meet a North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) requirement issued for such an aircraft. The design used a single Bristol Siddeley BS100 engine with four swivelling nozzles, in a fashion similar to the P.1127, and required the use of plenum chamber burning (PCB) to achieve supersonic speeds. The P.1154 won the competition to meet the requirement against strong competition from other aircraft manufacturers such as Dassault Aviation's Mirage IIIV. The French government did not accept the decision and withdrew; the NATO requirement was cancelled shortly after in 1965.
The Royal Air Force and the Royal Navy planned to develop and introduce the supersonic P.1154 independently of the cancelled NATO requirement. This ambition was complicated by the conflicting requirements between the two services—while the RAF wanted a low-level supersonic strike aircraft, the Navy sought a twin-engine air defence fighter. Following the election of the Labour Government of 1964 the P.1154 was cancelled, as the Royal Navy had already begun procurement of the McDonnell Douglas Phantom II and the RAF placed a greater importance on the BAC TSR-2's ongoing development. Work continued on elements of the project, such as a supersonic PCB-equipped Pegasus engine, with the intention of developing a future Harrier variant for the decades following cancellation.
Production
Following the collapse of the P.1154's development the RAF began considering a simple upgrade of the existing subsonic Kestrel and issued Requirement ASR 384 for a V/STOL ground attack jet. Hawker Siddeley received an order for six pre-production aircraft in 1965, designated P.1127 (RAF), of which the first made its maiden flight on 31 August 1966. An order for 60 production aircraft, designated as Harrier GR.1, was received in early 1967. The aircraft was named after the Harrier, a small bird of prey.
The Harrier GR.1 made its first flight on 28 December 1967. It officially entered service with the RAF on 1 April 1969 and the Harrier Conversion Unit at RAF Wittering received its first aircraft on 18 April. The aircraft were built in two factories—one in Kingston upon Thames, southwest London, and the other at Dunsfold Aerodrome, Surrey—and underwent initial testing at Dunsfold. The ski-jump technique for launching Harriers from Royal Navy aircraft carriers was extensively trialled at RNAS Yeovilton from 1977. Following these tests ski-jumps were added to the flight decks of all RN carriers from 1979 onwards, in preparation for the new variant for the navy, the Sea Harrier.
In the late 1960s the British and American governments held talks on producing Harriers in the United States. Hawker Siddeley and McDonnell Douglas formed a partnership in 1969 in preparation for American production, but Congressman Mendel Rivers and the House Appropriations Committee held that it would be cheaper to produce the AV-8A on the pre-existing production lines in the United Kingdom—hence all AV-8A Harriers were purchased from Hawker Siddeley. Improved Harrier versions with better sensors and more powerful engines were developed in later years. The USMC received 102 AV-8A and 8 TAV-8A Harriers between 1971 and 1976.
Design
Overview
The Harrier was typically used as a ground attack aircraft, though its manoeuvrability also allows it to effectively engage other aircraft at short ranges. The Harrier is powered by a single Pegasus turbofan engine mounted in the fuselage. The engine is fitted with two air intakes and four vectoring nozzles for directing the thrust generated: two for the bypass flow and two for the jet exhaust. Several small reaction nozzles are also fitted, in the nose, tail and wingtips, for the purpose of balancing during vertical flight. It has two landing gear units on the fuselage and two outrigger landing gear units, one near each wing tip. The Harrier is equipped with four wing and three fuselage pylons for carrying a variety of weapons and external fuel tanks.
The Kestrel and the Harrier were similar in appearance, though approximately 90 per cent of the Kestrel's airframe was redesigned for the Harrier. The Harrier was powered by the more powerful Pegasus 6 engine; new air intakes with auxiliary blow-in doors were added to produce the required airflow at low speed. Its wing was modified to increase area and the landing gear was strengthened. Several hardpoints were installed, two under each wing and one underneath the fuselage; two ADEN cannon gun pods could also be fitted to the underside of the fuselage. The Harrier was outfitted with updated avionics to replace the basic systems used in the Kestrel; a navigational-attack system incorporating an inertial navigation system, originally for the P.1154, was installed and information was presented to the pilot by a head-up display and a moving map display.
The Harrier's VTOL abilities allowed it to be deployed from very small prepared clearings or helipads as well as normal airfields. It was believed that, in a high-intensity conflict, air bases would be vulnerable and likely to be quickly knocked out. The capability to scatter Harrier squadrons to dozens of small "alert pads" on the front lines was highly prized by military strategists and the USMC procured the aircraft because of this ability. Hawker Siddeley noted that STOL operation provided additional benefits over VTOL operation, saving fuel and allowing the aircraft to carry more ordnance.
The Harrier, while serving for many decades in various forms, has been criticised on multiple issues; in particular a high accident rate, though Nordeen notes that several conventional single-engine strike aircraft like the Douglas A-4 Skyhawk and LTV A-7 Corsair II had worse accident rates. The Los Angeles Times reported in 2003 that the Harrier "...has amassed the highest major accident rate of any military plane now in service. Forty-five Marines have died in 148 noncombat accidents". Colonel Lee Buland of the USMC declared the maintenance of a Harrier to be a "challenge"; the need to remove the wings before performing most work upon the engine, including engine replacements, meant the Harrier required considerable man-hours in maintenance, more than most aircraft. Buland noted however that the maintenance difficulties were unavoidable in order to create a V/STOL aircraft.
Engine
The Pegasus turbofan jet engine, developed in tandem with the P.1127 then the Harrier, was designed specifically for V/STOL manoeuvring. Bristol Siddeley developed it from their earlier conventional Orpheus turbofan engine as the core with Olympus compressor blades for the fan. The engine's thrust is directed through the four rotatable nozzles. The engine is equipped for water injection to increase thrust and takeoff performance in hot and high altitude conditions; in normal V/STOL operations the system would be used in landing vertically with a heavy weapons load. The water injection function had originally been added following the input of US Air Force Colonel Bill Chapman, who worked for the Mutual Weapons Development Team. Water injection was necessary in order to generate maximum thrust, if only for a limited time, and was typically used during landing, especially in high ambient temperatures.
The aircraft was initially powered by the Pegasus 6 engine which was replaced by the more powerful Pegasus 11 during the Harrier GR.1 to GR.3 upgrade process. The primary focus throughout the engine's development was on achieving high performance with as little weight as possible, tempered by the amount of funding that was available. Following the Harrier's entry to service the focus switched to improving reliability and extending engine life; a formal joint US–UK Pegasus Support Program operated for many years and spent a £3-million annual budget to develop engine improvements. Several variants have been released; the latest is the Pegasus 11–61 (Mk 107), which provides 23,800 lbf (106 kN) thrust, more than any previous engine.
Controls and handling
The Harrier has been described by pilots as "unforgiving". The aircraft is capable of both forward flight (where it behaves in the manner of a typical fixed-wing aircraft above its stall speed), as well as VTOL and STOL manoeuvres (where the traditional lift and control surfaces are useless) requiring skills and technical knowledge usually associated with helicopters. Most services demand great aptitude and extensive training for Harrier pilots, as well as experience in piloting both types of aircraft. Trainee pilots are often drawn from highly experienced and skilled helicopter pilots.
In addition to normal flight controls, the Harrier has a lever for controlling the direction of the four vectoring nozzles. It is viewed by senior RAF officers as a significant design success, that to enable and control the aircraft's vertical flight required only a single lever added in the cockpit. For horizontal flight, the nozzles are directed rearwards by shifting the lever to the forward position; for short or vertical takeoffs and landings, the lever is pulled back to point the nozzles downwards.
The Harrier has two control elements not found in conventional fixed-wing aircraft: the thrust vector and the reaction control system. The thrust vector refers to the slant of the four engine nozzles and can be set between 0° (horizontal, pointing directly backwards) and 98° (pointing down and slightly forwards). The 90° vector is normally deployed for VTOL manoeuvring. The reaction control is achieved by manipulating the control stick and is similar in action to the cyclic control of a helicopter. While irrelevant during forward flight mode, these controls are essential during VTOL and STOL manoeuvres.
The wind direction is a critical factor in VTOL manoeuvres. The procedure for vertical takeoff involves facing the aircraft into the wind. The thrust vector is set to 90° and the throttle is brought up to maximum, at which point the aircraft leaves the ground. The throttle is trimmed until a hover state is achieved at the desired altitude. The short-takeoff procedure involves proceeding with normal takeoff and then applying a thrust vector (less than 90°) at a runway speed below normal takeoff speed; usually the point of application is around . For lower takeoff speeds the thrust vector is greater. The reaction control system involves a thrusters at key points in the aircraft's fuselage and nose, also the wingtips. Thrust from the engine can be temporarily syphoned to control and correct the aircraft's pitch and roll during vertical flight.
Rotating the vectored thrust nozzles into a forward-facing position during normal flight is called vectoring in forward flight, or "VIFFing". This is a dog-fighting tactic, allowing for more sudden braking and higher turn rates. Braking could cause a chasing aircraft to overshoot and present itself as a target for the Harrier it was chasing, a combat technique formally developed by the USMC for the Harrier in the early 1970s.
Differences between versions
The two largest users of the Harrier were the Royal Air Force and the United States Marine Corps (USMC). The exported model of the aircraft operated by the USMC was designated the AV-8A Harrier, which was broadly similar to the RAF's Harrier GR.1. Changes included the removal of all magnesium components, which corroded quickly at sea, and the integration of American radios and Identification Friend or Foe (IFF) systems; furthermore the outer pylons, unlike the RAF aircraft, were designed from delivery to be equipped with self-defence AIM-9 Sidewinder heat-seeking air-to-air missiles. Most of the AV-8As had been delivered with the more powerful Pegasus engine used in the GR.3 instead of the one used in the earlier GR.1. Two-seat Harriers were operated for training purposes; the body was stretched and a taller tail fin added. The RAF trained in the T.2 and T.4 versions, while T.4N and T.8 were training versions the Navy's Sea Harrier, with appropriate fittings. The US and Spain flew the TAV-8A and TAV-8S, respectively.
All RAF GR.1s and the initial AV-8As were fitted with the Ferranti FE541 inertial navigation/attack suite, but these were replaced in the USMC Harriers by a simpler Interface/Weapon Aiming Computer to aid quick turnaround between missions. The Martin-Baker ejection seats were also replaced by the Stencel SEU-3A in the American aircraft. The RAF had their GR.1 aircraft upgraded to the GR.3 standard, which featured improved sensors, a nose-mounted laser tracker, the integration of electronic countermeasure (ECM) systems and a further upgraded Pegasus Mk 103. The USMC upgraded their AV-8As to the AV-8C configuration; this programme involved the installation of ECM equipment and adding a new inertial navigation system to the aircraft's avionics. Substantial changes were the Lift Improvement Devices, to increase VTOL performance; at the same time several airframe components were restored or replaced to extend the life of the aircraft. Spain's Harriers, designated AV-8S or VA.1 Matador for the single-seater and TAV-8S or VAE.1 for the two-seater, were almost identical to USMC Harriers differing only in the radios fitted.
The Royal Navy's Fleet Air Arm (FAA) operated a substantially modified variant of the Harrier, the British Aerospace Sea Harrier. The Sea Harrier was intended for multiple naval roles and was equipped with radar and Sidewinder missiles for air combat duties as part of fleet air defence. The Sea Harrier was also fitted with navigational aids for carrier landings, modifications to reduce corrosion by seawater and a raised bubble-canopy covered cockpit for better visibility. The aircraft were later equipped to use AIM-120 AMRAAM beyond-visual-range anti-aircraft missiles and the more advanced Blue Vixen radar for longer range air-to-air combat, as well as Sea Eagle missiles for conducting anti-ship missions.
The McDonnell Douglas AV-8B Harrier II is the latest Harrier variant, a second-generation series to replace the first generation of Harrier jets already in service; all the above variants of the Harrier have mainly been retired with the Harrier II taking their place in the RAF, USMC and FAA. In the 1970s the United Kingdom considered two options for replacing their existing Harriers: joining McDonnell Douglas (MDD) in developing the BAE Harrier II, or the independent development of a "Big Wing" Harrier. This proposal would have increased the wing area from , allowing for significant increases in weapons load and internal fuel reserves. The option of cooperation with MDD was chosen in 1982 over the more risky isolated approach.
Operational history
Royal Air Force
The first RAF squadron to be equipped with the Harrier GR.1, No. 1 Squadron, started to convert to the aircraft at RAF Wittering in April 1969. An early demonstration of the Harrier's capabilities was the participation of two aircraft in the Daily Mail Transatlantic Air Race in May 1969, flying between St Pancras railway station, London and downtown Manhattan with the use of aerial refuelling. The Harrier completed the journey in 6 hours 11 minutes. Two Harrier squadrons were established in 1970 at the RAF's air base in Wildenrath to be part of its air force in Germany; another squadron was formed there two years later. In 1977, these three squadrons were moved forward to the air base at Gütersloh, closer to the prospective front line in the event of an outbreak of a European war. One of the squadrons was disbanded and its aircraft distributed between the other two.
In RAF service, the Harrier was used in close air support (CAS), reconnaissance, and other ground-attack roles. The flexibility of the Harrier led to a long-term heavy deployment in West Germany as a conventional deterrent and potential strike weapon against Soviet aggression; from camouflaged rough bases the Harrier was expected to launch attacks on advancing armour columns from East Germany. Harriers were also deployed to bases in Norway and Belize, a former British colony. No. 1 Squadron was specifically earmarked for Norwegian operations in the event of war, operating as part of Allied Forces Northern Europe. The Harrier's capabilities were necessary in the Belize deployment, as it was the only RAF combat aircraft capable of safely operating from the airport's short runway; British forces had been stationed in Belize for several years due to tensions over a Guatemalan claim to Belizean territory; the forces were withdrawn in 1993, two years after Guatemala recognized the independence of Belize.
In the Falklands War in 1982, 10 Harrier GR.3s of No. 1 Squadron operated from the aircraft carrier . As the RAF Harrier GR.3 had not been designed for naval service, the 10 aircraft had to be rapidly modified prior to the departure of the task force. Special sealants against corrosion were applied and a new deck-based inertial guidance aid was devised to allow the RAF Harrier to land on a carrier as easily as the Sea Harrier. Transponders to guide aircraft back to the carriers during night-time operations were also installed, along with flares and chaff dispensers.
As there was little space on the carriers, two requisitioned merchant container ships, and , were modified with temporary flight decks and used to carry Harriers and helicopters to the South Atlantic. The Harrier GR.3s focused on providing close air support to the ground forces on the Falklands and attacking Argentine positions; suppressing enemy artillery was often a high priority. Sea Harriers were also used in the war, primarily conducting fleet air defence and combat air patrols against the threat of attacking Argentine fighters. However, both Sea Harriers and Harrier GR.3s were used in ground-attack missions against the main airfield and runway at Stanley.
If most of the Sea Harriers had been lost, the GR.3s would have replaced them in air patrol duties, even though the Harrier GR.3 was not designed for air defence operations; as such the GR.3s quickly had their outboard weapons pylons modified to take air-to-air Sidewinder missiles. From 10 to 24 May 1982, prior to British forces landing in the Falklands, a detachment of three GR.3s provided air defence for Ascension Island until three F-4 Phantom IIs arrived to take on this responsibility. During the Falklands War, the greatest threats to the Harriers were deemed to be surface-to-air missiles (SAMs) and small arms fire from the ground. In total, four Harrier GR.3s and six Sea Harriers were lost to ground fire, accidents, or mechanical failure. More than 2,000 Harrier sorties were conducted during the conflict—equivalent to six sorties per day per aircraft.
Following the Falklands war, British Aerospace explored the Skyhook, a new technique to operate Harriers from smaller ships. Skyhook would have allowed the launching and landing of Harriers from smaller ships by holding the aircraft in midair by a crane; secondary cranes were to hold weapons for rapid re-arming. This would potentially have saved fuel and allowed for operations in rougher seas. The system was marketed to foreign customers, and it was speculated that Skyhook could be applied to large submarines such as the Russian , but the system attracted no interest.
The first generation of Harriers did not see further combat with the RAF after the Falklands War, although they continued to serve for years afterwards. As a deterrent against further Argentine invasion attempts, No. 1453 Flight RAF was deployed to the Falkland Islands from August 1983 to June 1985. However the second generation Harrier IIs saw action in Bosnia, Iraq, and Afghanistan. The first generation Hawker Siddeley airframes were replaced by the improved Harrier II, which had been developed jointly between McDonnell Douglas and British Aerospace.
United States Marine Corps
The United States Marine Corps began showing a significant interest in the aircraft around the time the first RAF Harrier squadron was established in 1969, and this motivated Hawker Siddeley to further develop the aircraft to encourage a purchase. Although there were concerns in Congress about multiple coinciding projects in the close air support role, the Marine Corps were enthusiastic about the Harrier and managed to overcome efforts to obstruct its procurement.
The Marine Corps accepted its first AV-8A on January 6, 1971 at the Dunsfold Aerodrome, England and began testing it as NAS Pax River on January 26. The AV-8A entered service with the Marine Corps in 1971, replacing other aircraft in the Marines' attack squadrons. The service became interested in performing ship-borne operations with the Harrier. Admiral Elmo Zumwalt promoted the concept of a Sea Control Ship, a 15,000-ton light carrier equipped with Harriers and helicopters, to supplement the larger aircraft carriers of the US Navy. An amphibious assault ship, , was converted into the Interim Sea Control Ship and operated as such between 1971 and 1973 with the purpose of studying the limits and possible obstacles for operating such a vessel. Since then the Sea Control Ship concept has been subject to periodic re-examinations and studies, often in the light of budget cuts and questions over the use of supercarriers.
Other exercises were performed to demonstrate the AV-8A's suitability for operating from various amphibious assault ships and aircraft carriers, including a deployment of 14 Harriers aboard for six months in 1976. The tests showed, amongst other things, that the Harrier was capable of performing in weather where conventional carrier aircraft could not. In support of naval operations, the USMC devised and studied several methods to further integrate the Harrier. One result was Arapaho, a stand-by system to rapidly convert civilian cargo ships into seagoing platforms for operating and maintaining a handful of Harriers, to be used to augment the number of available ships to deploy upon.
When the reactivation of the s was under consideration, a radical design for a battleship-carrier hybrid emerged that would have replaced the ship's rear turret with a flight deck, complete with a hangar and two ski jumps, for operating several Harriers. However, the USMC considered the need for naval gunfire support to be a greater priority than additional platforms for carrier operations, while the cost and delay associated with such elaborate conversions was significant, and the concept was dropped.
The Marines Corps' concept for deploying the Harriers in a land-based expeditionary role focused on aggressive speed. Harrier forward bases and light maintenance facilities were to be set up in under 24 hours on any prospective battle area. The forward bases, containing one to four aircraft, were to be located from the forward edge of battle (FEBA), while a more established permanent airbase would be located around from the FEBA. The close proximity of forward bases allowed for a far greater sortie rate and reduced fuel consumption.
The AV-8A's abilities in air-to-air combat were tested by the Marine Corps by conducting mock dogfights with McDonnell Douglas F-4 Phantom IIs; these exercises trained pilots to use the vectoring-in-forward-flight (VIFF) capability to outmanoeuvre their opponents and showed that the Harriers could act as effective air-to-air fighters at close range. The success of Harrier operations countered scepticism of V/STOL aircraft, which had been judged to be expensive failures in the past. Marine Corps officers became convinced of the military advantages of the Harrier and pursued extensive development of the aircraft.
Starting in 1979, the USMC began upgrading their AV-8As to the AV-8C configuration—the work focused mainly on extending useful service lives and improving VTOL performance. The AV-8C and the remaining AV-8A Harriers were retired by 1987. These were replaced by the Harrier II, designated as the AV-8B, which was introduced into service in 1985. The performance of the Harrier in USMC service led to calls for the United States Air Force to procure Harrier IIs in addition to the USMC's own plans, but these never resulted in Air Force orders. Since the late 1990s, the AV-8B has been slated to be replaced by the F-35B variant of the Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II, a more modern V/STOL jet aircraft.
Like the next generation AV-8Bs, nevertheless, the AV-8A/C Harriers suffered many accidents, with around 40 aircraft lost and some 30 pilots killed during the 1970s and 1980s.
Other operators
Due to the Harrier's unique characteristics it attracted a large amount of interest from other nations, often as attempts to make their own V/STOL jets were unsuccessful, such as in the cases of the American XV-4 Hummingbird and the German VFW VAK 191B. Operations by the USMC aboard in 1981 and by British Harriers and Sea Harriers in the Falklands War proved that the aircraft was highly effective in combat. These operations also demonstrated that "Harrier Carriers" provided a powerful presence at sea without the expense of big deck carriers.
Following the display of Harrier operations from small carriers, the navies of Spain and later Thailand bought the Harrier for use as their main carrier-based fixed-wing aircraft. Spain's purchase of Harriers was complicated by long-standing political friction between the British and Spanish governments of the era; even though the Harriers were manufactured in the UK they were sold to Spain with the US acting as an intermediary. During tests in November 1972, the British pilot John Farley showed that the wooden deck of Dédalo was able to withstand the temperature of the gases generated by the Harrier. Since 1976, the Spanish Navy operated the AV-8S Matador from their aircraft carrier (formerly the ); the aircraft provided both air defence and strike capabilities for the Spanish fleet. Spain later purchased five Harriers directly from the British government mainly to replace losses.
Hawker Siddeley aggressively marketed the Harrier for export. At one point the company was holding talks with Australia, Brazil, Switzerland, India and Japan. Of these only India became a customer, purchasing the Sea Harrier. At one point China came very close to becoming an operator of the first generation Harrier. Following an overture by the UK in the early 1970s, when relations with the West were warming, China became interested in the aircraft as it sought to modernise its armed forces; British Prime Minister James Callaghan noted significant hostility from the USSR over the sales bid. The deal was later cancelled by the UK as part of a diplomatic backlash after China invaded Vietnam in 1979.
The Spanish Navy, Thai Navy, Royal Air Force, and U.S. Marine Corps have all retired their first-generation Harriers. Spain sold seven single-seat and two twin-seat Harriers to Thailand in 1998. The Royal Thai Navy's AV-8S Matadors were delivered as part of the air wing deployed on the new light aircraft carrier . The Thai Navy had from the start significant logistical problems keeping the Harriers operational due to a shortage of funds for spare parts and equipment, leaving only a few Harriers serviceable at a time. In 1999, two years after being delivered, only one airframe was in airworthy condition. Around 2003, Thailand considered acquiring former Royal Navy Sea Harriers, which were more suitable for maritime operations and better equipped for air defence, to replace their AV-8S Harriers; this investigation did not progress to a purchase. The last first-generation Harriers were retired by Thailand in 2006.
Potential operators
Some countries almost purchased Harriers. British Aerospace held talks with Argentina, Australia, Brazil, China, Switzerland, India, and Japan.
Argentina
When the Argentinian Navy looked for newer fighters in 1968 the US government only offered old A-4A planes instead of the A-4Fs Argentina wanted. Argentina contacted the British government in 1969 and expressed interest in buying from six to twelve Harrier GR.1s. In 1969 the Argentinian Navy received its second carrier, ARA 25 de Mayo, from the Netherlands. On her voyage home, the British company Hawker Siddeley demonstrated a RAF Harrier GR.Mk.1 (XV757) but Argentina opted for the A-4Q Skyhawk instead. There were several problems to supply Argentina with Harrier jets and engines that prevented the deal from being closed, and when the US knew about the Harrier negotiations they quickly offered a better deal to Argentina. Some years later, before the 1982 war, British officials offered Argentina an aircraft carrier and Sea Harrier aircraft.
Australia
Planning for a HMAS Melbourne aircraft carrier replacement began in 1981. After considering American, Italian, and Spanish designs, the Australian government accepted a British offer to sell , which would be operated with Harriers and helicopters. However, the Royal Navy withdrew the offer after the Falklands War, and the 1983 election of the Australian Labor Party led to the cancellation of plans to replace Melbourne.
China
As early as 1972 the Chinese government started negotiating a purchase of up to 200 Harrier aircraft. Due to internal political issues, China put the negotiations on hold. In 1977 Li Chiang, the Chinese Minister of Foreign Trade, visited the UK and British Aerospace organised a Harrier flying demonstration. In November 1978, the Harrier-demonstration was repeated for the Chinese Vice-Premier Wang Chen during his UK visit. The Harrier deal would have meant British Government ignored United States laws that prohibited such sales to communist countries. The Soviet Union was also actively opposed to the UK selling weapons to the Chinese. In spite of that, British Aerospace convinced China that the Harrier was an effective close-support fighter and was good enough to act in a defensive role. In 1979, the Anglo-Sino deal was almost done before being cancelled by the Sino-Vietnamese War.
Switzerland
The Swiss Air Force was interested in purchasing some Harriers as its doctrine was to operate in hidden and disperse locations during the Cold War. British Aerospace held talks with Switzerland offering AV-8s to replace De Havilland Venoms. A demonstration was made by test pilot John Farley and XV742/G-VSTO in 1971.
Variants
Harrier GR.1, GR.1A, GR.3 Single-seat versions for the RAF. The RAF ordered 118 of the GR.1/GR.3 series, with the last production aircraft delivery in December 1986. 122 built.
AV-8A, AV-8C Harrier Single-seat versions for the US Marine Corps. The USMC ordered 102 AV-8As (company designation: Harrier Mk. 50). The AV-8C was an upgrade to the AV-8A. 110 built.
AV-8S Matador Export version of the AV-8A Harrier for the Spanish Navy, who designated them as VA-1 Matador; later sold to the Royal Thai Navy. 10 built.
Harrier T.2, T.2A, T.4, T.4A Two-seat training versions for the RAF, with a stretched body and taller tail fin. 25 built.
Harrier T.4N, T.8, T.60 Two-seat training versions for the Royal Navy and Indian Navy with avionics based on the Sea Harrier.
TAV-8A Harrier Two-seat training version for the USMC, powered by a Pegasus Mk 103.
TAV-8S Matador Two-seat training version for the Spanish Navy and later sold to the Royal Thai Navy.
Operators
Indian Navy (see Sea Harrier)
Spanish Navy
Royal Thai Navy
Royal Air Force
Royal Navy
United States Marine Corps
Aircraft on display
Belize
GR.3
ZD669 – Philip S. W. Goldson International Airport, Ladyville, Belize
No. 1417 Flight RAF
Canada
AV-8A
158966 – Canada Aviation and Space Museum, Ottawa, Ontario
China
GR.3
XZ965 – Beijing Air and Space Museum
Germany
GR.1
XV278 – Luftwaffenmuseum der Bundeswehr, Gatow
GR.3
XZ998 – Flugausstellung Hermeskeil at Hermeskeil
Poland
GR.3
XW919 – Polish Aviation Museum, Kraków, Poland
New Zealand
GR.3
XZ129 – Ashburton Aviation Museum, Ashburton, New Zealand
Thailand
AV-8S
3109 – Royal Thai Air Force Museum
United Kingdom
GR.1
XV277 – National Museum of Flight, East Fortune
XV281 (Under Restoration) – South Yorkshire Aircraft Museum, Doncaster, South Yorkshire
XV741 – Brooklands Museum, Surrey
GR.3
XV744 – Tangmere Military Aviation Museum, Chichester, West Sussex
XV748 – Yorkshire Air Museum, Elvington
XV751 – Gatwick Aviation Museum, Surrey
XV752 – South Yorkshire Aircraft Museum, Doncaster, South Yorkshire
XV753 – Classic Air Force, St Mawgan, Newquay, Cornwall
XV779 – RAF Wittering (Gate Guardian)
XZ133 – Imperial War Museum, Duxford
XZ968 – Muckleburgh Collection, Norfolk
XZ997 – RAF Museum, Hendon
XZ971 – MoD Donnington, Telford
ZD667 – Bentwaters Cold War Museum, Suffolk
Mk.52 G-VTOL
ZA250 – Brooklands Museum, Surrey
T.2
XW269 – Airworld Aviation Museum Caernarfon Wales
T.4
XW934 – Farnborough Air Sciences Trust, Farnborough, Hampshire
XW268 – City of Norwich Aviation Museum, Norfolk
AV-8A
159233 – Imperial War Museum North
United States
AV-8A
158695 – Air Park, MCAS Yuma, Yuma, Arizona
159239 – San Diego Air and Space Museum, San Diego, California
158963 – Craven County Regional Airport, Grantham, North Carolina
158976 – City of Havelock, Havelock, North Carolina
Cockpit on display at Moffett Historical Museum, Moffett Federal Airfield, California
TAV-8A
159381 – Oakland Aviation Museum, Oakland, California
159382 – Pima Air & Space Museum, Tucson, Arizona
AV-8C
158387 – Fort Worth Aviation Museum, Fort Worth, Texas
158710 – Quonset Air Museum, North Kingstown, Rhode Island
158959 – Pacific Coast Air Museum, Santa Rosa, California
158975 – National Naval Aviation Museum, NAS Pensacola, Pensacola, Florida
158977 – Museum of Flight, Seattle, Washington
159232 – Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum, New York City, New York<ref>"AV-8C Harrier/159232." Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum. Retrieved: 10 December 2015.</ref>
159238 – Hangar 25 Museum, Webb AFB (formerly), Big Spring, Texas
159241 – Pima Air & Space Museum, Tucson, Arizona
159247 – Naval Inventory Control Point (NAVICP) Philadelphia, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
159249 – United States Naval Museum of Armament and Technology, NCC China Lake (North), Ridgecrest, California
Specifications (Harrier GR.3)
Popular culture
See also
References
Notes
Citations
Bibliography
Bishop, Chris and Chris Chant. Aircraft Carriers. Grand Rapids, Michigan, USA: Zenith Imprint, 2004. .
Braybrook, Roy. Battle for the Falklands: Air Forces. Oxford, UK: Osprey Publishing, 1982. .
Brown, Kevin. "The Plane That Makes Airfields Obsolete." Popular Mechanics, 133(6), June 1970, pp. 80–83.
Bull, Stephen. Encyclopedia of Military Rechnology and Innovation. Westport, Connecticut, USA: Greenwood Publishing, 2004. .
Burke, David J. Harriers and Close Air Support. Air Enthusiast 115, January–February 2005, p. 75
Burr, Lawrence and Peter Bull. US Fast Battleships 1938–91: The Iowa Class. New York, USA: Osprey Publishing, 2010. .
Buttler, Tony. British Secret Projects: Jet Fighters Since 1950. Hinckley, UK: Midland Publishing, 2000. .
Chant, Chris. Air War in the Falklands 1982 (Osprey Combat Aircraft #28). Oxford, UK: Osprey Publishing, 2001. .
Congress Committee on Appropriations. "Department of Defense Appropriations for 1979: Part 5". Washington D.C., USA: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1979.
Davies, Peter and Anthony M. Thornborough. The Harrier Story. Annapolis, Maryland, USA: Naval Institute Press, 1997. .
Ellis, Ken. Wrecks & Relics, 21st edition. Manchester, UK: Crécy Publishing, 2008. .
Evans, Andy. BAe/McDonald Douglas Harrier. Ramsbury, UK: The Crowood Press, 1998. .
Freedman, Lawrence. The Official History of the Falklands Campaign. Volume II: War and Diplomacy. London, UK: Routledge, 2007. .
Friedman, Norman. U.S. Aircraft Carriers: an Illustrated Design History. Annapolis, Maryland, USA: Naval Institute Press, 1983. .
Gunston, W. T. "Pegasus updating prospects". Flight International, 22 January 1977, pp. 189–191.
Jackson, Paul. "British Aerospace/McDonnell Douglas Harrier". World Air Power Journal, Volume 6, Summer 1991. pp. 46–105.
Jefford, C.G., ed. The RAF Harrier Story. London, UK: Royal Air Force Historical Society, 2006. .
Jenkins, Dennis R. Boeing / BAe Harrier. North Branch, Minnesota, USA: Specialty Press, 1998. .
Layman, R D and Stephen McLaughlin. The Hybrid Warship. London: Conway, 1991. .
Markman, Steve and Bill Holder. Straight Up: A History of Vertical Flight. Atglen, PA: Schiffer Publishing, 2000. .
Mason, Francis K. Harrier. Wellingborough, UK: Patrick Stephens Limited, Third edition, 1986. .
Mason, Francis K. Hawker Aircraft since 1920. London, UK: Putnam, 1991. .
Miller, David M. O. and Chris Miller. "Modern Naval Combat". Crescent Books, 1986. .
Moxton, Julian. "Supersonic Harrier: One Step Closer". Flight International, 4 December 1982, pp. 1633–1635.
Nordeen, Lon O. Harrier II, Validating V/STOL. Annapolis, Maryland, USA: Naval Institute Press, 2006. .
Spick, Mike, ed. The Great Book of Modern Warplanes. St. Paul, Minnesota, USA: MBI Publishing, 2000. .
Sturtivant, Ray. Fleet Air Arm Fixed-Wing Aircraft since 1946. Tonbridge, Kent, UK: Air-Britain (Historians), 2004. .
Sturtivant, Ray. RAF Flying Training and Support Units since 1912. Tonbridge, Kent, UK: Air-Britain (Historians), 2007. .
Taylor, John W. R. Jane's All The World's Aircraft 1988–89. Coulsdon, UK: Jane's Defence Data, 1988. .
Vann, Frank. Harrier Jump Jet. New York, USA: Bdd Promotional Book Co, 1990. .
Further reading
Farley, John OBE. A View From The Hover: My Life in Aviation. Bath, UK: Seager Publishing/Flyer Books, 2010, first edition 2008. .
Gunston, Bill and Mike Spick. Modern Air Combat: The Aircraft, Tactics and Weapons Employed in Aerial Warfare Today. New York: Crescent Books, 1983. .
Mason, Francis. Hawker Aircraft since 1920. London: Putnam Publishing, 1971. .
Polmar, Norman and Dana Bell. One Hundred Years of World Military Aircraft. Annapolis, Maryland, USA: Naval Institute Press, 2003. .
External links
Harrier history website (see archive)
Harrier page on globalsecurity.org
Harriers lost in the Falklands
Harrier GR.3 in Beijing Aviation Museum, China
"Harrier – World's First Fixed-wing V/STOL Weapons System" a 1967 article in Flight "Harriers for the United States?" 1969 Flight article on the USMC case for the Harrier
"Woodland Warfare" a 1972 Flight article on Harrier dispersed operations
"V for Two" a 1972 Flight article on the two-seat Harrier T.2
"In the Air – Harrier" a 1973 Flight'' article on flying the Harrier
1960s British fighter aircraft
Harrier
V/STOL aircraft by thrust vectoring
Single-engined jet aircraft
High-wing aircraft
Harrier Jump Jet
Aircraft first flown in 1967 | [
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14315 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawker%20Harrier | Hawker Harrier | The Hawker Harrier was an experimental biplane torpedo bomber aircraft built by Hawker Aircraft to a specification issued in the 1920s for the RAF.
Development
In 1925, the British Air Ministry laid down specifications for a high altitude bomber to replace the Hawker Horsley and for a coastal torpedo bomber (Specifications 23/25 and 24/25). As these specifications were similar, the Air Ministry announced that a single competition would be held to study aircraft submitted for both specifications.
Sydney Camm of Hawker Aircraft designed the Harrier to meet the requirements of Specification 23/25, with the prototype (J8325) first flying in February 1927, the first of the competitors for the two specifications to fly. The Harrier was a two-seat biplane with single-bay wings powered by a geared Bristol Jupiter VIII radial engine. It was armed with one .303 in (7.7 mm) Vickers machine gun and one .303 in (7.7 mm) Lewis gun carrying a maximum of of bombs.
The prototype Harrier was tested at the Aeroplane and Armament Experimental Establishment (A & AEE) at Martlesham Heath in November 1927, where, while it met the requirements of Specification 23/25 and had satisfactory handling, the geared engine meant that it was underpowered, and it had an inferior bombload to the Hawker Horsley, the aircraft it was meant to replace. It was therefore modified to carry a torpedo. On testing the modified aircraft, however, it was found to still be underpowered, being incapable of taking off with a torpedo, gunner and full fuel load. It was therefore not considered further, the competition ultimately being won by the Vickers Vildebeest.
The prototype was used by Bristol as an engine testbed, flying with the Bristol Hydra and the Bristol Orion engines.
Specifications (Harrier, as bomber)
See also
References
Notes
Bibliography
External links
Hawker Harrier – British Aircraft Directory
1920s British bomber aircraft
Harrier
Single-engined tractor aircraft
Biplanes
Aircraft first flown in 1927 | [
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14317 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herg%C3%A9 | Hergé | Georges Prosper Remi (; 22 May 1907 – 3 March 1983), known by the pen name Hergé (; ), from the French pronunciation of his reversed initials RG, was a Belgian cartoonist. He is best known for creating The Adventures of Tintin, the series of comic albums which are considered one of the most popular European comics of the 20th century. He was also responsible for two other well-known series, Quick & Flupke (1930–1940) and The Adventures of Jo, Zette and Jocko (1936–1957). His works were executed in his distinct ligne claire drawing style.
Born to a lower-middle-class family in Etterbeek, Brussels, Hergé began his career by contributing illustrations to Scouting magazines, developing his first comic series, The Adventures of Totor, for Le Boy-Scout Belge in 1926. Working for the conservative Catholic newspaper Le Vingtième Siècle, he created The Adventures of Tintin in 1929 on the advice of its editor Norbert Wallez. Revolving around the actions of boy reporter Tintin and his dog Snowy, the series' early installments — Tintin in the Land of the Soviets, Tintin in the Congo, and Tintin in America — were designed as conservative propaganda for children. Domestically successful, after serialisation the stories were published in book form, with Hergé continuing the series and also developing both the Quick & Flupke and Jo, Zette and Jocko series for Le Vingtième Siècle. Influenced by his friend Zhang Chongren, from 1934 Hergé placed far greater emphasis on conducting background research for his stories, resulting in increased realism from The Blue Lotus onward. Following the German occupation of Belgium in 1940, Le Vingtième Siècle was closed, but Hergé continued his series in Le Soir, a popular newspaper controlled by the Nazi administration.
After the Allied liberation of Belgium in 1944, Le Soir was shut down and its staff — including Hergé — accused of having been collaborators. An official investigation was launched, and although no charges were brought against Hergé, in subsequent years he repeatedly faced accusations of having been a traitor and collaborator. With Raymond Leblanc he established Tintin magazine in 1946, through which he serialised new Adventures of Tintin stories. As the magazine's artistic director, he also oversaw the publication of other successful comics series, such as Edgar P. Jacobs' Blake and Mortimer. In 1950 he established Studios Hergé as a team to aid him in his ongoing projects; prominent staff members Jacques Martin and Bob de Moor greatly contributed to subsequent volumes of The Adventures of Tintin. Amid personal turmoil following the collapse of his first marriage, he produced Tintin in Tibet, his personal favourite of his works. In later years he became less prolific, and unsuccessfully attempted to establish himself as an abstract artist.
Hergé's works have been widely acclaimed for their clarity of draughtsmanship and meticulous, well-researched plots. They have been the source of a wide range of adaptations, in theatre, radio, television, cinema, and computer gaming. He remains a strong influence on the comic book medium, particularly in Europe. He is widely celebrated in Belgium: a Hergé Museum was established in Louvain-la-Neuve in 2009.
Early life
Childhood and youth: 1907–1925
Georges Prosper Remi was born on 22 May 1907 in his parental home in Etterbeek, Brussels, a central suburb in the capital city of Belgium. His was a lower-middle-class family. His Walloon father, Alexis Remi, worked in a confectionery factory, whilst his Flemish mother, Elisabeth Dufour, was a housewife. Married on 18 January 1905, they moved into a house at 25 rue Cranz (now 33 rue Philippe Baucq), where Georges was born, although a year later they moved to a house at 34 rue deTheux. His primary language was his father's French, but growing up in the bilingual Brussels, he also learned Dutch, developing a Marollien accent from his maternal grandmother. A younger brother, Paul, was born five years after Georges. Like most Belgians, his family belonged to the Roman Catholic Church, though they were not particularly devout. He later characterised his life in Etterbeek as dominated by a monochrome grey, considering it extremely boring. Biographer Benoît Peeters suggested that this childhood melancholy might have been exacerbated through being sexually abused by a maternal uncle.
Remi developed a love of cinema, favouring Winsor McCay's Gertie the Dinosaur and the films of Charlie Chaplin, Harry Langdon and Buster Keaton; his later work in the comic strip medium displayed an obvious influence from them in style and content. Although not a keen reader, he enjoyed the novels of British and US authors, such as Huckleberry Finn, Treasure Island, Robinson Crusoe and The Pickwick Papers, as well as the novels of Frenchman Alexandre Dumas. Drawing as a hobby, he sketched out scenes from daily life along the edges of his school books. Some of these illustrations were of German soldiers, because his four years of primary schooling at the Ixelles Municipal School No. 3 coincided with World War I, during which Brussels was occupied by the German army. In 1919, his secondary education began at the secular Place de Londres in Ixelles, but in 1920 he was moved to Saint-Boniface School, an institution controlled by the archbishop where the teachers were Roman Catholic priests. Remi proved a successful student, being awarded prizes for excellence. He completed his secondary education in July 1925 at the top of his class.
Aged 12, Remi joined the Boy Scout brigade attached to Saint-Boniface School, becoming troop leader of the Squirrel Patrol and earning the name "Curious Fox" (Renard curieux). With the Scouts, he travelled to summer camps in Italy, Switzerland, Austria and Spain, and in the summer of 1923 his troop hiked 200 miles across the Pyrenees. His experiences with Scouting would have a significant influence on the rest of his life, sparking his love of camping and the natural world, and providing him with a moral compass that stressed personal loyalty and keeping one's promises.
His Scoutmaster, Rene Weverbergh, encouraged his artistic ability, and published one of Remi's drawings in the newsletter of the Saint-Boniface Scouts, Jamais Assez (Never Enough): his first published work. When Weverbergh became involved in the publication of Boy-Scout, the newsletter of the Federation of Scouts, he published more of Remi's illustrations, the first of which appeared in the fifth issue, from 1922. Remi continued publishing cartoons, drawings and woodcuts in subsequent issues of the newsletter, which was soon renamed Le Boy-Scout Belge (The Belgian Boy Scout). During this time, he experimented with different pseudonyms, using "Jérémie" and "Jérémiades" before settling on "Hergé", the French pronunciation of his reversed initials (R.G.) His work was first published under this name in December 1924.
Totor and early career: 1925–1928
Alongside his stand-alone illustrations, in July 1926 Hergé began production of a comic strip for Le Boy-Scout Belge, Les Aventures de Totor (The Adventures of Totor), which continued intermittent publication until 1929. Revolving around the adventures of a Boy Scout patrol leader, the comic initially featured written captions underneath the scenes, but Hergé began to experiment with other forms of conveying information, including speech balloons. Illustrations were also published in Le Blé qui lève (The Wheat That Grows) and other publications of the (Action catholique de la jeunesse belge), and Hergé produced a book jacket for Weverbergh's novel, The Soul of the Sea. Being young and inexperienced, still learning his craft, Hergé sought guidance from an older cartoonist, Pierre Ickx, and together they founded the short-lived Atelier de la Fleur de Lys (AFL), an organisation for Christian cartoonists.
After graduating from secondary school in 1925, Hergé enrolled in the École Saint-Luc art school, but finding the teaching boring, he left after one lesson. He hoped for a job as an illustrator alongside Ickx at Le Vingtième Siècle (The Twentieth Century) — a conservative "Catholic Newspaper of Doctrine and Information" — but no positions were available. Instead he got a job in the paper's subscriptions department, starting in September 1925. Despising the boredom of this position, he enlisted for military service before he was called up, and in August 1926 was assigned to the Dailly barracks at Schaerbeek. Joining the first infantry regiment, he was also bored by his military training, but continued sketching and producing episodes of Totor.
Toward the end of his military service, in August 1927, Hergé met the editor of Le Vingtième Siècle, the Abbé Norbert Wallez, a vocal fascist who kept a signed photograph of the Italian Fascist leader Benito Mussolini on his desk. Impressed by Hergé's repertoire, Wallez agreed to give him a job as a photographic reporter and cartoonist for the paper, something for which Hergé always remained grateful, coming to view the Abbé as a father figure. Supplemented by commissions for other publications, Hergé illustrated a number of texts for "The Children's Corner" and the literary pages; the illustrations of this period show his interest in woodcuts and the early prototype of his ligne claire style.
Founding Tintin and Quick & Flupke: 1929–1932
Beginning a series of newspaper supplements in late 1928, Wallez founded a supplement for children, Le Petit Vingtième (The Little Twentieth), which subsequently appeared in Le Vingtième Siècle every Thursday. Carrying strong Catholic and fascist messages, many of its passages were explicitly anti-semitic. For this new venture, Hergé illustrated L'Extraordinaire Aventure de Flup, Nénesse, Poussette et Cochonnet (The Extraordinary Adventure of Flup, Nénesse, Poussette and Cochonnet), a comic strip authored by one of the paper's sport columnists, which told the story of two boys, one of their little sisters, and her inflatable rubber pig. Hergé was unsatisfied, and eager to write and draw a comic strip of his own. He was fascinated by new techniques in the medium — such as the systematic use of speech bubbles — found in such US comics as George McManus' Bringing Up Father, George Herriman's Krazy Kat and Rudolph Dirks's The Katzenjammer Kids, copies of which had been sent to him from Mexico by the paper's reporter Léon Degrelle, stationed there to report on the Cristero War.
Hergé developed a character named Tintin as a Belgian boy reporter who could travel the world with his fox terrier, Snowy — "Milou" in the original French — basing him in large part on his earlier character of Totor and also on his own brother, Paul. Degrelle later falsely claimed that Tintin had been based on him, while he and Hergé fell out when Degrelle used one of his designs without permission; they settled out-of-court. Although Hergé wanted to send his character to the United States, Wallez instead ordered him to set his adventure in the Soviet Union, acting as a work of anti-socialist propaganda for children. The result, Tintin in the Land of the Soviets, began serialisation in Le Petit Vingtième on 10 January 1929, and ran until 8 May 1930. Popular in Francophone Belgium, Wallez organized a publicity stunt at the Gare de Nord station, following which he organized the publication of the story in book form. The popularity of the story led to an increase in sales, and so Wallez granted Hergé two assistants, Eugène Van Nyverseel and Paul "Jam" Jamin.
In January 1930, Hergé introduced Quick & Flupke (Quick et Flupke), a new comic strip about two street kids from Brussels, in the pages of Le Petit Vingtième. At Wallez's direction, in June he began serialisation of the second Tintin adventure, Tintin in the Congo, designed to encourage colonial sentiment towards the Belgian Congo. Authored in a paternalistic style that depicted the Congolese as childlike idiots, in later decades it would be accused of racism; however, at the time it was un-controversial and popular, with further publicity stunts held to increase sales. For the third adventure, Tintin in America, serialised from September 1931 to October 1932, Hergé finally got to deal with a scenario of his own choice, although he used the work to push an anti-capitalist, anti-consumerist agenda in keeping with the paper's ultra-conservative ideology. Although the Adventures of Tintin had been serialised in the French Catholic Cœurs Vaillants ("Brave Hearts") since 1930, he was soon receiving syndication requests from Swiss and Portuguese newspapers too. Though wealthier than most Belgians at his age, and despite increasing success, he remained an unfazed "conservative young man" dedicated to his work.
Hergé sought work elsewhere too, creating The Lovable Mr. Mops cartoon for the Bon Marché department store, and The Adventures of Tim the Squirrel Out West for the rival L'Innovation department store.
First marriage
At the offices of in 1928, Hergé met the woman who would become his first wife, Germaine Kieckens (1906 – 26 October 1995). A redhead described by Pierre Assouline as "elegant and popular", she had obtained work as the secretary for Norbert Wallez. At the time of her birth, her parents were relatively elderly, and having lost an earlier child they were particularly overprotective of her. Greatly admiring Wallez, whom she looked up to as a father figure, she adopted his fascist political beliefs. She was appointed editor of , a supplement for women for which Hergé sometimes drew the cover. She also began writing articles for using the pseudonym Tantine. The first 500 copies of Tintin in the Land of the Soviets were numbered and signed by Hergé using Tintin's signature, with Snowy's paw print being drawn next to it by Kieckens.
In 1930, Hergé escorted her home from work almost every night, though she expressed little romantic interest in him at the time. Instead she desired an older, or more mature man, such as the Abbé himself. Wallez however encouraged the two to enter into a relationship, and one evening at the Taverne du Palace she indicated to Hergé that she would be interested in a relationship.
On 20 July 1932 Hergé and Kieckens were married; although neither of them was entirely happy with the union, they had been encouraged to do so by Wallez, who insisted that all his single staff married and who personally carried out the wedding ceremony at the Saint-Roch Church in Laeken. Spending their honeymoon in Vianden, Luxembourg, the couple moved into an apartment in the rue Knapen, Schaerbeek.
Rising fame
Tintin in the Orient and Jo, Zette & Jocko: 1932–1939
In November 1932 Hergé announced that the following month he would send Tintin on an adventure to Asia. Although initially titled The Adventures of Tintin, Reporter, in the Orient, it would later be renamed Cigars of the Pharaoh. A mystery story, the plot began in Egypt before proceeding to Arabia and India, during which the recurring characters of Thomson and Thompson and Rastapopoulos were introduced. Through his friend Charles Lesne, Hergé was hired to produce illustrations for the company Casterman, and in late 1933 they proposed taking over the publication of both The Adventures of Tintin and Quick and Flupke in book form, to which Hergé agreed; the first Casterman book was the collected volume of Cigars. Continuing to subsidise his comic work with commercial advertising, in January 1934 he also founded the "Atelier Hergé" advertising company with two partners, but it was liquidated after six months.
After Wallez was removed from the paper's editorship in August 1933 following a scandal, Hergé became despondent; in March 1934 he tried to resign, but was encouraged to stay after his monthly salary was increased from 2000 to 3000 francs and his workload was reduced, with Jamin taking responsibility for the day-to-day running of Le Petit Vingtième.
From February to August 1934 Hergé serialised Popol Out West in Le Petit Vingtième, a story using animal characters that was a development of the earlier Tim the Squirrel comic.
From August 1934 to October 1935, Le Petit Vingtième serialised Tintin's next adventure, The Blue Lotus, which was set in China and dealt with the recent Japanese invasion of Manchuria. Hergé had been greatly influenced in the production of the work by his friend Zhang Chongren, a Catholic Chinese student studying at Brussels' Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts, to whom he had been introduced in May 1934. Zhang gave him lessons in Taoist philosophy, Chinese art and Chinese calligraphy, influencing not only his artistic style, but also his general outlook on life. As a token of appreciation Hergé added a fictional "Chang Chong-Chen" to The Blue Lotus, a young Chinese boy who meets and befriends Tintin. For The Blue Lotus, Hergé devoted far more attention to accuracy, resulting in a largely realistic portrayal of China. As a result, The Blue Lotus has been widely hailed as "Hergé's first masterpiece" and a benchmark in the series' development. Casterman published it in book form, also insisting that Hergé include colour plates in both the volume and in reprints of America and Cigars. In 1936, they also began production of Tintin merchandise, something Hergé supported, having ideas of an entire shop devoted to The Adventures of Tintin, something that would come to fruition 50 years later. Nevertheless, while his serialised comics proved lucrative, the collected volumes sold less well, something Hergé blamed on Casterman, urging them to do more to market his books.
Hergé's next Tintin story, The Broken Ear (1935–1937), was the first for which the plot synopsis had been outlined from the start, being a detective story that took Tintin to South America. It introduced the character of General Alcazar, and also saw Hergé introduce the first fictional countries into the series, San Theodoros and Nuevo Rico, two republics based largely on Bolivia and Paraguay. The violent elements within The Broken Ear upset the publishers of Cœurs Vaillants, who asked Hergé to create a more child-appropriate story for them. The result was The Adventures of Jo, Zette, and Jocko, a series about a young brother and sister and their pet monkey. The series began with The Secret Ray, which was serialised in Cœurs Vaillants and then Le Petit Vingtième, and continued with The Stratoship H-22. Hergé nevertheless disliked the series, commenting that the characters "bored me terribly." Now writing three series simultaneously, Hergé was working every day of the year, and felt stressed.
The next Tintin adventure was The Black Island (1937–1938), which saw the character travel to Britain to battle counterfeiters and introduced a new antagonist, the German Dr. Müller. Hergé followed this with King Ottokar's Sceptre (1938–1939), in which Tintin saves the fictional Eastern European country of Syldavia from being invaded by its expansionist neighbour, Borduria; the event was an anti-fascist satire of Nazi Germany's expansion into Austria and Czechoslovakia. In May 1939, Hergé moved to a new house in Watermael-Boitsfort, although following the German invasion of Poland, he was conscripted into the Belgian army and temporarily stationed in Herenthout. Demobbed within the month, he returned to Brussels and adopted a more explicit anti-German stance when beginning his next Tintin adventure, Land of Black Gold, which was set in the Middle East and featured Dr. Müller sabotaging oil lines.
During this period, Hergé also contributed to L'Ouest (The West), a newspaper run by his friend Raymond De Becker. L'Ouest urged Belgium to remain neutral in World War II, a stance Hergé supported, creating the Mr Bellum strip to argue this position. Hergé was invited to visit China by Chinese Nationalist leader Chiang Kai-shek, who had enjoyed The Blue Lotus, although due to the political situation in Europe, this was not possible. He was re-mobilized in December, and stationed in Antwerp, from where he continued to send the Tintin strip to Le Petit Vingtième. However, he fell ill with sinusitis and boils and was declared unfit for military service in May 1940. That same day, Germany invaded Belgium. Le Vingtième Siècle was shut down, part way through the serialisation of Land of Black Gold.
German occupation and Le Soir: 1939–1945
As the Belgian Army clashed with the invading Germans, Hergé and his wife fled by car to France along with tens of thousands of other Belgians, first staying in Paris and then heading south to Puy-de-Dôme, where they remained for six weeks. On 28 May, King Leopold III of the Belgians surrendered the country to the German army to prevent further killing; a move that Hergé supported. He followed the king's request that all of those Belgians who had fled the country return, arriving back in Brussels on 30 June. There, he found that his house had been occupied as an office for the German army's Propagandastaffel, and also faced financial trouble, as he owed back taxes yet was unable to access his financial reserves. All Belgian publications were now under the control of the German occupying force, who refused permission to continue publication. Instead, Hergé was offered employment as a cartoonist for by its editor, the Rexist Victor Matthys, but Hergé perceived as an explicitly political publication, and thus declined the position.
Instead, he took up a position with , Belgium's largest Francophone daily newspaper. Confiscated from its original owners, the German authorities had permitted Le Soir to be re-opened under the directorship of De Doncker, although it remained firmly under Nazi control, supporting the German war effort and espousing anti-Semitism. After joining the Le Soir team on 15 October, Hergé was involved in the creation of a children's supplement, Soir-Jeunesse, aided by Jamin and Jacques Van Melkebeke. He relaunched The Adventures of Tintin with a new story, The Crab with the Golden Claws, in which Tintin pursued drug smugglers in North Africa; the story was a turning point in the series for its introduction of Captain Haddock, who would become a major character in the rest of the Adventures. This story, like the subsequent Adventures of Tintin published in Le Soir, would reject the political themes present in earlier stories, instead remaining firmly neutral. Hergé also included new Quick & Flupke gags in the supplement, as well as illustrations for serialised stories by Edgar Allan Poe and the Brothers Grimm.
In May 1941, a paper shortage led to the Soir-Jeunesse being reduced to four pages, with the length of the Tintin strip being cut by two thirds. Several weeks later the supplement disappeared altogether, with The Crab with the Golden Claws being moved into Le Soir itself, where it became a daily strip. While some Belgians were upset that Hergé was willing to work for a newspaper controlled by the occupying Nazi administration, he was heavily enticed by the size of 's readership, which reached 600,000. With Van Melkebeke, Hergé put together two Tintin plays. The first, Tintin in the Indies, appeared at Brussels' Theatre des Galeries in April 1941, while the second, Mr Boullock's Disappearance, was performed there in December. From October 1941 to May 1942, Le Soir serialised Hergé's next Tintin adventure, The Shooting Star, followed by publication as a single volume by Casterman. In keeping with Le Soirs editorial standpoint, The Shooting Star espoused an anti-Semitic and anti-American attitude, with the antagonist being a wealthy Jewish American businessman; it would thus prove particularly controversial in the post-war period, although Hergé denied any malicious anti-Semitic intention.
Casterman felt that the black-and-white volumes of The Adventures of Tintin were not selling as well as colour comic books, and thus that the series should be produced in colour. At the same time, Belgium was facing a paper-shortage, with Casterman wishing to cut down the volumes from 120-pages in length to 62. Hergé was initially sceptical, but ultimately agreed to their demands in February 1942. For these new editions, Casterman introduced a four-colour system, although Hergé insisted that colour should remain secondary to line, and that it would not be used for shading. To cope with this additional workload, Hergé approached a friend whom he had met through Van Melkebeke, Edgar P. Jacobs, to aid him as a cartoonist and colourist. Jacobs could only work on the project part-time, and so in March 1942, Hergé also employed a woman named Alice Devos to aid him. In July 1942, Hergé then procured an agent, Bernard Thièry, who took 40% of his commissions; their working relationship would be strained. With their assistance, from 1942 to 1947, Hergé adapted most of his previous Adventures of Tintin into 62-page colour versions.
Hergé's next Adventure of Tintin would be The Secret of the Unicorn, serialised in Le Soir from June 1942. He had collaborated closely with Van Melkebeke on this project, who had introduced many elements from the work of Jules Verne into the detective story, in which Tintin and Haddock searched for parchments revealing the location of hidden pirate treasure. The Secret of the Unicorn marked the first half of a story arc that was completed in Red Rackham's Treasure, serialised in Le Soir from February 1943; in this story, Tintin and Haddock search for the pirate's treasure in the Caribbean, with the character of Professor Calculus being introduced to the series. Following Red Rackham's Treasure, Hergé drew illustrations for a serialised story titled Dupont et Dupond, détectives ("Thomson and Thompson, Detectives"), authored by the newspaper's crime editor, Paul Kinnet.
In September 1943, De Becker was removed as editor of Le Soir for stating that although the Nazis were motivated "by undoubted good will, [they were also] extremely out of touch with reality". Although Hergé was close to De Becker, he decided to remain at the newspaper, which came under the editorship of Max Hodeige. In autumn 1943, Hergé had decided that he wanted Jacobs to collaborate with him on The Adventures of Tintin. Although initially hesitant, Jacobs eventually agreed, adopting the paid position in January 1944. Jacobs and Hergé became close collaborators and greatly influenced each other, while together they developed the plot for the next Adventure of Tintin, The Seven Crystal Balls, which began serialisation in Le Soir in December 1943.
Post-war controversy: 1944–1946
As the Allied troops liberated Brussels from German occupation, Le Soir ceased publication on 2 September 1944, partway through its serialisation of The Seven Crystal Balls. Hergé was arrested on 3 September, having been named as a collaborator in a Resistance document known as the "Gallery of Traitors". This would be the first of four incidents in which Hergé was arrested — by the State Security, the Judiciary Police, the Belgian National Movement, and the Front for Independence respectively — during the course of which he spent one night in jail. On 5 September the entire staff of Le Soir were fired and a new editorial team introduced, while on 8 September the Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force (SHAEF) issued a proclamation announcing that "any journalist who had helped produce a newspaper during the occupation was for the time being barred from practising his profession." Blacklisted, Hergé was now unemployed. Further, he was publicly lampooned as a collaborator by a newspaper closely associated with the Belgian Resistance, La Patrie, which issued a satirical strip titled The Adventures of Tintin in the Land of the Nazis.
The period witnessed widespread recriminations against accused collaborators, with military courts condemning 30,000 on minor charges and 25,000 on more serious charges; of those, 5,500 were sentenced to life imprisonment or capital punishment. A judiciary inquiry into Hergé's case was launched by the deputy public prosecutor, Mr Vinçotte, although in his report he urged lenience, stating that "I am inclined to close the case. I believe it would bring ridicule on the judicial system to go after an inoffensive children's book author and illustrator. On the other hand, Hergé worked for Le Soir during the war, and his illustrations are what made people buy the newspaper." Although unable to work for the press, Hergé continued to re-draw and colour the older Adventures of Tintin for publication in book form by Casterman, completing the second version of Tintin in the Congo and starting on King Ottokar's Sceptre. Casterman supported Hergé throughout his ordeal, for which he always remained grateful. Attempting to circumvent his blacklisting, with Jacobs he began producing comics under the anonymous pseudonym of "Olav", but upon sending them to publishers found none who would accept them. Although this period allowed him an escape from the pressure of daily production which had affected most of his working life, he also had to deal with family problems: His brother Paul returned to Brussels from a German prisoner-of-war camp, although their mother had become highly delusional and was moved to a psychiatric hospital.
In October 1945, Hergé was approached by Raymond Leblanc, a former member of a conservative Resistance group, the National Royalist Movement, and his associates André Sinave and Albert Debaty. The trio were planning on launching a weekly magazine for children, and Leblanc — who had fond childhood memories of Tintin in the Land of the Soviets — thought Hergé would be ideal for it. Hergé agreed, and Leblanc obtained clearance papers for him, allowing him to work. Concerned about the judicial investigation into Hergé's wartime affiliations, Leblanc convinced William Ugeux, a leader of the Belgian Resistance who was now in charge of censorship and certificates of good citizenship, to look into the comic creator's file. Ugeux concluded that Hergé had been "a blunderer rather than a traitor" for his work at Le Soir. The decision as to whether Hergé would stand trial belonged to the general auditor of the Military Tribunal, Walter Jean Ganshof van der Meersch. He closed the case on 22 December 1945, declaring that "in regard to the particularly inoffensive character of the drawings published by Remi, bringing him before a war tribunal would be inappropriate and risky".
Now free from threat of prosecution, Hergé continued to support his colleagues at Le Soir who were being charged as collaborators; six of them were sentenced to death, and others to lengthy prison sentences. Among those sentenced to death was Hergé's friend, Jamin, although his sentence was commuted to life imprisonment. In May 1946, Hergé was issued a certificate of good citizenship, which became largely necessary to obtain employment in post-war Belgium. Celebrations were marred by his mother's death in April 1946; she was aged 60. Harry Thompson has described this post-war period as the "greatest upheaval" of Hergé's life. Hergé later described it as "an experience of absolute intolerance. It was horrible, horrible!" He considered the post-war trials of alleged collaborators a great injustice inflicted upon many innocent people, and never forgave Belgian society for the way that he had been treated, although he hid this from his public persona.
Later life
Establishing Tintin magazine: 1946–1949
Sinave devised the idea of naming their new magazine Tintin, believing that this would attract a wide audience. The Dutch-language edition produced for release in Belgium's Flemish north was titled Kuifje after the character's Dutch-language name. Adopting the slogan of "The Newspaper for the Young Aged 7 to 77", the magazine also used a logo featuring the Tintin character himself. The capital for the project had been put up by those involved: as executive director, Leblanc provided 50%, while its managing director Georges Lallemand provided 40% and Hergé, its artistic director, provided 10%. Hergé assembled a group of associates to aid him, including Van Melkebeke, Jacobs, Paul Cuvelier, and Jacques Laudy. Van Melkebeke was initially appointed editor-in-chief, although he was arrested for having worked for the collaborationist Le Nouveau journal shortly after, with his involvement in the project thus being kept secret so as to avoid further controversy. Van Melkebeke continued to provide work for the magazine under pseudonyms, although this ceased during his imprisonment from December 1947 to October 1949.
The first issue of Tintin magazine was published on 26 September 1946. Hergé was assigned to produce a two-page spread each week, and began by concluding The Seven Crystal Balls before embarking on its successor story, Prisoners of the Sun. Alongside Hergé's Adventures of Tintin, the magazine also included Laudy's The Legend of the Four Aymon Brothers and Jacobs' The Secret of the Swordfish, the first in his new Blake and Mortimer series. While the magazine was in competition with a number of rivals, most notably Spirou, famous for serialising the Lucky Luke and Buck Danny comics, it proved an immediate success, with 60,000 copies being sold in three days of its release. Its publication resulted in a massive boost to Hergé's book sales too.
In 1947 a Belgian film adaptation of The Crab with the Golden Claws was produced, and believing that cinematic adaptations were a good way to proceed, Hergé contacted Disney Studios in the United States; they declined his offer to adapt The Adventures of Tintin for the silver screen. In May 1947 the artistic collaboration between Hergé and Jacobs ended after an argument. Hergé had been jealous of the immediate success of Jacobs' Blake and Mortimer series, and had turned down Jacobs' request that he be credited as co-creator of the new Adventures of Tintin. That same month, Hergé broke from his manager, Thiery, after discovering that the latter had been siphoning off money for himself.
Many Belgians were highly critical of the magazine due to its connections with Hergé, who was still deemed a collaborator and traitor by many; La Soir and La Cité publicly criticised the decision without referring to him by name while Le Quotidien and Le Drapeau Rouge specifically singled him out for denunciation. Hergé believed that the children's author Jeanne Cappe was behind many of these accusations, and threatened her with a lawsuit. Unhappy with life in Belgium, Hergé made plans to emigrate to Argentina, a nation that was welcoming many Europeans who had supported the defeated Axis powers and which had a thriving comic book scene. Ultimately, he changed his mind, for reasons that have remained unknown; it is possible that he was unable to secure any promise of work in the South American country.
In May, Hergé and Germaine holidayed near to Gland on Lake Geneva, Switzerland, where they were accompanied by a friend of theirs, a young woman named Rosane. During the holiday, Hergé and Rosane embarked on an extra-marital affair. He felt guilty, and returned to Brussels in June. Privately, he expressed the view that he had been led to commit such an act, which he viewed as immoral, through the influence of "amoral friends" with whom he was associating. Hoping to reignite the passion and stability of his marriage, he arranged for him and Germaine to return to Switzerland soon after; here they argued, and embarked on a temporary separation. Remaining in Switzerland, he visited King Leopold III, who was then holidaying in Prégny, before briefly returning to Brussels in July. Back in Switzerland, he embarked on an affair with a married woman, although again informed Germaine before setting off to spend time in the Ardennes. In August, the couple sought to reunite by holidaying together in Brittany, but there they broke up again and Hergé returned to his lover in Switzerland. In September he finally returned to Brussels, but with his close friend Marcel Dehaye then spent time in a retreat at the Abbey of Notre-Dame-de-Scourmont. That month, he revived Land of Black Gold — the Adventure of Tintin that had been interrupted by the German invasion of 1940 — and began serialising it in Tintin magazine. However, the story was again interrupted, this time for twelve weeks as Hergé took a further unannounced holiday to Gland, greatly annoying many of his colleagues.
Although they retained respect for each other, Hergé's repeated absences had created a tense situation between himself and Leblanc. After a lengthy search, Leblanc had found a publisher willing to produce an edition of Tintin magazine in France: Georges Dargaud's Le Lombard, which began production of a French edition in October 1948. However, Hergé was unhappy that Leblanc had appointed André Frenez as Van Melkebeke's replacement as editor-in-chief, describing Frenez as "a cold functionary". Hergé was stubborn and uncompromising as the magazine's artistic director, known for strongly criticising the work of old friends like Pierre Ickx if he felt that they did not meet his exacting standards. He was particularly critical of the work of two of the newly hired staff at Tintin and Kuifje, Jacques Martin and Willy Vandersteen, encouraging them to change their artistic style to better reflect his own preferences. To Leblanc, he expressed the concern that most of those working at Tintin were better illustrators than storytellers. He also opined that Tintin was not keeping up with the times and what he perceived as the increased maturity of children, encouraging the magazine to better reflect current events and scientific developments.
Studios Hergé and Fanny Vlamynck: 1950–1965
On 6 April 1950 Hergé established Studios Hergé as a public company. The Studios were based in his Avenue Delleur house in Brussels, with Hergé making a newly purchased country house in Céroux-Mousty his and Germaine's main residence. The Studios would provide both personal support to Hergé and technical support for his ongoing work. Initially with only three employees, this would rise to fifteen, with all working on Hergé's projects. He hired Bob de Moor as his primary apprentice at the Studios in March 1951. Impressed by Jacques Martin's work on The Golden Sphinx, Hergé persuaded Martin to join the Studios in January 1954; Martin insisted on bringing with him his own two assistants, Roger Leloup and Michel Demarets. During the early 1950s, a number of those convicted for collaborating with the Nazi occupiers were freed from prison. Sympathetic to their plight, Hergé lent money to some and aided others in getting jobs at Tintin magazine, much to Leblanc's annoyance. For instance, as well as lending him money, Hergé used his connections to secure Raymond de Becker a job in Switzerland as a book shop sales inspector. He also hired those associated with collaboration for his Studios; his new colourist, Josette Baujot, was the wife of a recently assassinated member of the Walloon Legion, and his new secretary, Baudouin van der Branden de Reeth, had served a prison sentence for working at Le Nouveau Journal during the occupation.
Hergé had developed the idea of setting an Adventure of Tintin on the moon while producing Prisoners of the Sun. He began serialisation of Destination Moon, the first of a two part arc followed by Explorers on the Moon, in Tintin magazine in March 1950. In September 1950, Hergé broke off the story, feeling the need for a break from work, having fallen back into clinical depression. He and Germaine went on holiday to Gland before returning to Brussels in late September. Many readers sent letters to Tintin asking why Explorers on the Moon was no longer being serialised, with a rumour emerging that Hergé had died. Explorers of the Moon would resume after an eighteen-month hiatus, returning in April 1952. Alongside his work on the new stories, Hergé also made use of the Studios in revising more of his early works.
In February 1952, Hergé was involved in a car crash in which Germaine's leg was shattered; she had to have a steel rod implanted in it, and was confined to a wheelchair for several months. Their relationship was further strained when they received news of Wallez' death in September 1952. His friendship with Van Melkebeke also broke apart in this period, in part due to advice gained from an alleged clairvoyant, Bertje Janueneau, upon whom both Hergé and Germaine were increasingly relying for guidance. In January 1955 a young woman named Fanny Vlamynck (fr) was hired as a colourist at the Studios. Hergé embarked on an extramarital affair with her in November 1956, with the rest of the studio staff soon finding out. Germaine grew suspicious of her husband's affections for Fanny, but was also experiencing a strong romantic attraction to her ballroom dance partner. Hergé and Germaine went on a cruise for the former's fiftieth birthday in May 1957, in which they visited Casablanca, Rabat, Palermo, and Rome, and in October went on a second holiday, this time to Ostend. Following this, he revealed his affair with Fanny to Germaine. He began experiencing traumatic dreams dominated by the colour white, and seeking to explain them he visited Franz Ricklin, a psychoanalyst who was a student of Carl Jung in Zürich in May 1959. In February 1960 he returned to Switzerland, and upon his arrival back in Brussels he began renting an apartment in Uccle, away from Germaine. His relationship with Germaine had ended, although due to restrictions under Belgian law he was unable to obtain a divorce until seventeen years later.
In September 1958, Tintin magazine moved its headquarters to a newly constructed building near the Gare du Midi. Hergé continued to feud with Leblanc over the direction of the magazine; his constant absences had led to him being replaced as artistic director, and he demanded that he be reinstated. Leblanc relented in early 1965, although Hergé soon departed to Sardinia for six weeks. In October 1965 Leblanc appointed the cartoonist Greg to be editor-in-chief of the magazine, believing him capable of reforming the paper to remain relevant to the youth of the day. By this point, Tintin magazine was at its commercial peak, with sales of 600,000 a week, although Hergé had lost much of his interest in it.
Hergé's book sales were higher than ever, and translations were being produced for the British, Spanish, and Scandinavian markets. He was receiving international press attention, with articles on his work appearing in France-Observateur, The Listener, and The Times Literary Supplement. Paul Vandromme authored an uncritical book on Hergé, Le Monde de Tintin ("The World of Tintin"), published by Éditions Gallimard; Hergé vetoed the inclusion of a proposed preface by Roger Nimier after finding its praise for his own work too embarrassing. Radio adaptations of The Adventures of Tintin were produced, as was an animated cartoon series produced by Belvision Studios, Hergé's Adventures of Tintin. Two live-action films were also produced, Tintin and the Golden Fleece (1961) and Tintin and the Blue Oranges (1964), the former of which Hergé had been closely involved with.
Developing an interest in modern art, in the early 1960s Hergé befriended the art dealer Marcel Stal, owner of the Carrefour gallery in Brussels. He was a particular fan of the work of Constant Permeke, Jakob Smits, Lucio Fontana, and Jean-Pierre Raynaurd, as well as the pop art movement, in particular the work of Roy Lichtenstein. He built up his own personal collection, which consisted of both modern paintings as well as African art and Chinese ceramics. In 1962, Hergé decided he wanted to paint. He chose Louis Van Lint, one of the most respected Belgian abstract painters at the time, whose work he liked a lot, to be his private teacher. Hergé took up painting as a hobby, producing abstract art works which were influenced by the styles of Joan Miró and Serge Poliakoff. He showed his work to the art historian Léo Van Puyvelde, who was the chief conservator of the Musées des Beaux-Arts, who believed that they showed promise, but that Hergé's real talent lay with cartooning. Hergé abandoned painting shortly after, having produced 37 paintings in all. Spending less time on new Adventures of Tintin, from June to December 1965 Tintin magazine serialised a redrawn and newly coloured version of The Black Island prepared by staff at Studios Hergé. Supported by his studio, Hergé produced The Calculus Affair between 1954 until 1956 which was followed by The Red Sea Sharks in 1956 to 1957.
Final years: 1966–1983
In the 1960s, Hergé became increasingly annoyed at the success of René Goscinny and Albert Uderzo's Asterix comic book series, which various commentators had described as eclipsing The Adventures of Tintin as the foremost comic in the Franco-Belgian tradition. Hoping to imitate the success of the recent animated films Asterix the Gaul (1967) and Asterix and Cleopatra (1968), Hergé agreed to the production of two animated Belvision films based on the Adventures of Tintin. The first, Tintin and the Temple of the Sun (1969), was based on pre-existing comics, whereas the second, Tintin and the Lake of Sharks (1972) was an original story written by Greg. In 1982, the US filmmaker Steven Spielberg requested the film rights for a live-action adaptation of one of The Adventures of Tintin, a prospect that excited Hergé, but the project never came to fruition at the time.
In October 1971, the journalist Numa Sadoul conducted a wide-ranging interview with Hergé, in which the latter opened up about many of the problems he had experienced in his personal life. Sadoul planned to publish the interview as a book, but Hergé made many alterations to the transcript, both to improve its prose and to remove sections which cast him in a negative light. Editors at Casterman then removed even further sections, particularly those in which Hergé expressed a negative view of Catholicism. The interview was published as Tintin et moi ("Tintin and Me") in 1975. Hergé followed this by agreeing to be the subject of a documentary film produced by Henri Roane, Moi, Tintin ("I, Tintin"), which premiered in 1975. In January 1977 he attended an early comic book convention at Angoulême, where he was widely heralded as one of the masters of the discipline. To mark the fiftieth anniversary of The Adventures of Tintin in 1979, a celebratory event was held at Brussels' Hilton hotel, while an exhibit on "Le Musée imaginaire de Tintin" ("The Imaginary Museum of Tintin") was held at the Palais de Beaux-Arts.
In April 1971 Hergé visited the U.S. for the first time, primarily to visit a liver specialist in Rochester, Minnesota; however, on the trip he also visited a Sioux reservation in South Dakota, but was shocked at the conditions in which their inhabitants lived. On this visit he also spent time in Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, and Kansas City. In April 1972 he travelled to New York City for an international conference on the strip cartoon, and there presented Mayor John Lindsay with a cartoon of Tintin visiting the city and also met with the pop artist Andy Warhol. Several years later, in 1977, Warhol visited Europe, where he produced a pop art portrait of Hergé. In April 1973, Hergé took up an invite to visit Taiwan by the nation's government, in recognition of his promotion of Chinese culture in The Blue Lotus. During the visit he also spent time in Thailand and Bali.
Hergé had long sought to regain contact with his old friend Zhang Chongren, with whom he had lost contact. He regularly asked any Chinese people that he met if they knew of Zhang, and in 1979 had some success when a staff member in a Brussels Chinese restaurant revealed that he was Zhang's godson. Hergé was thus able to re-establish contact with his old friend. The journalist Gérard Valet organised for Zhang to visit Brussels so that he and Hergé could be re-united. The event took place in March 1981, and was heavily publicised; Hergé however found the situation difficult, disliking the press attention and finding that he and Zhang had grown distant during the intervening years.
In June 1970, Hergé's father died, and after the funeral he holidayed near Lake Geneva. In 1974, his assistant Branden suffered a stroke and was left unable to write, with Hergé replacing him with a young man, Alain Baran, who Hergé biographer Pierre Assouline later termed Hergé's "surrogate son". In March 1977, Hergé's divorce with Germaine was finalised; although Hergé continued to visit her and financially support her, Germaine took the divorce badly, viewing it as a further betrayal. Hergé was then able to marry Fanny several weeks later, in a low-key ceremony on 20 May; he was 70 years old and she was 42.
Death
In 1979, Hergé was diagnosed with osteomyelofibrosis, necessitating a complete blood transfusion. His need for blood transfusions had increased, as he came to require them every two weeks, and then every week.
On 25 February 1983, Hergé suffered cardiac arrest and was hospitalised in intensive care at Brussels' Cliniques universitaires Saint-Luc. He had been scheduled to meet with U.S. director Steven Spielberg, who later made The Adventures of Tintin (2011). He died at Saint-Luc on 3 March. His death received front page coverage in numerous francophone newspapers, including Libération and Le Monde. In his will, he had left Fanny as his sole heir.
In November 1986, Fanny closed Studios Hergé, replacing it with the Hergé Foundation.
In 1988, Tintin magazine itself was discontinued.
Bibliography
Only the works marked * have been translated into English
Personal life
Hergé was a highly private person, being described by biographer Harry Thompson as "reserved [and] unostentatious". According to his biographer Pierre Sterckx, Hergé appeared "very conventional" in public, but in reality was "extremely erudite, with an insatiable curiosity, constantly on the watch". He greatly enjoyed walking in the countryside, gardening, and art collecting, and he was a fan of jazz music. Although he disliked making public or press appearances, Hergé insisted on personally responding to all fan mail received, which took up a considerable part of his time. He stated that "not replying to children's letters would be to betray their dreams." Friends described him as a humorous man, known particularly for his self-deprecating jokes. Colleagues described Hergé as egocentric, an assessment he agreed with. He was known to be authoritarian in dealing with his assistants and refused to share credit with them for their part in his work. Sterckx noted that "on the one hand he could be distant, even frosty, but on the other he was affectionate".
Throughout his first marriage he had a number of affairs with other women. He had no children, having been rendered sterile by radiation treatment, but in the 1950s offered to adopt his brother Paul's two children, Denise and George, when their parents were experiencing trouble in their relationship. Paul declined the offer, with Denise and George later noting that they had no great affection for Hergé, deeming him awkward around children. Hergé was raised as a Catholic, although was never a devout practitioner of the religion. His adherence to Catholicism declined in later life as he developed a keen interest in Taoism, and became an agnostic. He was a fan of the Tao Te Ching and Arnaud Desjardins' The Path to Wisdom, as well as Fritjof Capra's The Tao of Physics and the work of Jean-Émile Charon.
Political views
Politically, Hergé was a fervent royalist, and remained so throughout his life, also believing in the unity of Belgium. In his early life, Hergé was "close to the traditional right-wing" of Belgian society, with Sterckx noting that through his work he was "plunged into rightist, even extreme right-wing circles". According to Harry Thompson, such political ideas were not unusual in middle-class circles in Belgium of the 1920s and early 1930s, where "patriotism, Catholicism, strict morality, discipline and naivety were so inextricably bound together in everyone's lives that right-wing politics were an almost inevitable by-product. It was a world view shared by everyone, distinguished principally by its complete ignorance of the world." When Hergé took responsibility for , he followed Wallez's instruction and allowed the newspaper to contain explicitly pro-fascist and anti-semitic sentiment. Literary critic Jean-Marie Apostolidès noted that the character of Tintin was a personification of the "New Youth" concept which was promoted by the European far right. Under Wallez's guidance, the early Adventures of Tintin contained explicit political messages for its young readership. Tintin in the Land of the Soviets was a work of anti-socialist propaganda, while Tintin in the Congo was designed to encourage colonialist sentiment toward the Belgian Congo, and Tintin in America was designed as a work of anti-Americanism heavily critical of capitalism, commercialism, and industrialisation.
In contrast to Hergé's involvement in Belgium's right-wing, Sterckx thought the cartoonist to have been "a liberal and independent spirit", someone who was "the very opposite of a conservative [or] a reactionary of the right". Michael Farr asserted that Hergé had "an acute political conscience" during his earlier days, as exemplified by his condemnation of racism in the United States evident in Tintin in America. Literary critic Tom McCarthy went further, remarking that Tintin in America represented the emergence of a "left-wing counter tendency" in Hergé's work that rebelled against his right-wing milieu and which was particularly critical of wealthy capitalists and industrialists. This was furthered in The Blue Lotus, in which Hergé rejected his "classically right-wing" ideas to embrace an anti-imperialist stance, and in a contemporary Quick & Flupke strip in which he lampooned the far right leaders of Germany and Italy, Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini. Although many of his friends and colleagues did so in the mid-1930s, Hergé did not join the far-right Rexist Party, later asserting that he "had always had an aversion to it" and commenting that "to throw my heart and soul into an ideology is the opposite of who I am."
Accusations of racism
Hergé faced repeated accusations of racism due to his portrayal of diverse ethnic groups throughout The Adventures of Tintin. According to McCarthy, in Tintin in the Congo Hergé represented the Congolese as "good at heart, but backwards and lazy, in need of European mastery". Thompson argued that Hergé had not written the book to be "deliberately racist" and that it reflected the average early 20th-century Belgian view of the Congolese, which was more patronising than malevolent. The book provoked no controversy at the time, coming to be perceived as racist only in the latter half of the 20th century.
In the following adventure, Tintin in America, Hergé depicted members of the Blackfoot tribe of Native Americans as "gullible, even naive", though it was nevertheless "broadly sympathetic" to their culture and plight, depicting their oppression at the hands of the United States Army. The Blue Lotus received both criticism for depicting the Japanese as militaristic and buck-toothed and praise for representing a less stereotypical vision of China than was the norm in Europe at the time.
Hergé has also been accused of utilising anti-semitic stereotypes, despite Hergé's protestations that the character of Rastapopoulos was Greek, and not Jewish.
From his early years, Hergé was openly critical of racism. He lambasted the pervasive racism of U.S. society in a prelude comment to Tintin in America published in Le Petit Vingtième on 20 August 1931, and ridiculed racist attitudes toward the Chinese in The Blue Lotus. Peeters asserted that "Hergé was no more racist than the next man", an assessment shared by Farr, who after meeting Hergé in the 1980s commented that "you couldn't have met someone who was more open and less racist". In contrast, President of the International Bande Dessinée Society Laurence Grove opined that Hergé adhered to prevailing societal trends in his work, and that "When it was fashionable to be a Nazi, he was a Nazi. When it was fashionable to be a colonial racist, that's what he was." Vietnamese-American novelist Viet Thanh Nguyen wrote in 2022, after discussing Tintin's racist elements, that "Hergé’s work is deeply flawed, and yet riveting narratively and aesthetically. I have forgotten all the well-intentioned, moralistic children’s literature that I have read, but I haven’t forgotten Hergé."
Legacy
Assouline described Hergé as "the personification of Belgium".
Awards and recognition
1971: Adamson Awards, Sweden
1972: Yellow Kid lifetime award ("una vita per il cartooning") at the Festival of Lucca
1973: Grand Prix Saint Michel of the city of Brussels
1999: Included in the Harvey Award Jack Kirby Hall of Fame
2003: Included in the Eisner Award Hall of Fame as the Judge's choice
2006: The Dalai Lama bestowed the International Campaign for Tibet's Light of Truth Award upon the character of Tintin.
2007: Selected as the main motif for a Belgian commemorative coin with a face value of €20 in honour of his 100th birthday.
According to the UNESCO's Index Translationum, Hergé is the ninth-most-often-translated French-language author, the second-most-often-translated Belgian author after Georges Simenon, and the second-most-often-translated French-language comics author behind René Goscinny. He also had an asteroid, 1652 Hergé, within the main belt, named after him in 1953.
In popular culture
A cartoon version of Hergé makes a number of cameo appearances in the 1990s animated television series The Adventures of Tintin. An animated version of Hergé also makes a cameo appearance at the start of the 2011 motion capture film, The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn, directed by Steven Spielberg and produced by Peter Jackson, where he is depicted as a street cartoonist drawing a portrait of Tintin at the start of the film.
Hergé Museum
The Musée Hergé is located in the centre of Louvain-la-Neuve, a city to the south of Brussels. This location was originally chosen for the Museum in 2001. The futuristic building was designed by Pritzker Prize-winning French architect Christian de Portzamparc and cost €15 million to build. On the centenary of the birth of Hergé, 22 May 2007, the museum's first stone was laid. The museum opened its doors in June 2009.
The idea of a museum dedicated to the work of Hergé can be traced back to the end of the 1970s, when Hergé was still alive. After his death in 1983, Hergé's widow, Fanny, led the efforts, undertaken at first by the Hergé Foundation and then by the new Studios Hergé, to catalogue and choose the artwork and elements that would become part of the Museum's exhibitions.
The Hergé Museum contains eight permanent galleries displaying original artwork by Hergé, and telling the story of his life and career which had not previously been visible to the public. The Museum also houses a temporary exhibition gallery. Although Tintin features prominently in the museum, Hergé's other comic strip characters, such as Jo, Zette and Jocko, and Quick and Flupke, as well as his work as a graphic designer, are also present.
References
Books cited
Articles cited
Further reading
Pierre Sterckx (Textes) / André Soupart (Photos), Hergé. Collectionneur d'Art, Brussels/Belgium (Tournesol Conseils SA-Renaissance du Livre) 2006, 84 p.
External links
Hergé on Tintin.com official site
Hergé biography on À la découverte de Tintin
Hergé on Lambiek Comiclopedia
Hergé — mini profile and time line on Tintinologist.org
Hergé publications in Belgian Tintin and French Tintin BDoubliées
Tintin
1907 births
1983 deaths
20th-century Belgian artists
20th-century Belgian writers
Belgian agnostics
Belgian cartoonists
Belgian comics artists
Belgian comics writers
Belgian humorists
Belgian illustrators
Belgian military personnel of World War II
Belgian satirists
Belgian Taoists
Constructed language creators
Former Roman Catholics
People associated with Scouting
People from Etterbeek
People from Uccle
Pseudonymous artists
Scouting and Guiding in Belgium
Will Eisner Award Hall of Fame inductees
Belgian Army personnel
Belgian collaborators with Nazi Germany
20th-century pseudonymous writers
World War II refugees | [
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14318 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horned%20God | Horned God | The Horned God is one of the two primary deities found in Wicca and some related forms of Neopaganism.
The term Horned God itself predates Wicca, and is an early 20th-century syncretic term for a horned or antlered anthropomorphic god partly based on historical horned deities.
The Horned God represents the male part of the religion's duotheistic theological system, the consort of the female Triple goddess of the Moon or other Mother goddess.
In common Wiccan belief, he is associated with nature, wilderness, sexuality, hunting, and the life cycle. Whilst depictions of the deity vary, he is always shown with either horns or antlers upon his head, often depicted as being theriocephalic (having a beast's head), in this way emphasizing "the union of the divine and the animal", the latter of which includes humanity.
In traditional Wicca (British Traditional Wicca), he is generally regarded as a dualistic god of twofold aspects: bright and dark, night and day, summer and winter, the Oak King and the Holly King. In this dualistic view, his two horns symbolize, in part, his dual nature. (The use of horns to symbolize duality is also reflected in the phrase "on the horns of a dilemma.") The three aspects of the Goddess and the two aspects of the Horned god are sometimes mapped on to the five points of the Pentagram, (spiritual/pagan/satanism), or Pentacle, (Wicca), although which points correspond to which deity aspects varies. In some other systems, he is represented as a triune god, split into three aspects that reflect those of the Triple goddess: the Youth (Warrior), the Father, and the Sage.
The Horned God has been explored within several psychological theories and has become a recurrent theme in fantasy literature.
In Wicca
In traditional and mainstream Wicca, the Horned God is viewed as the divine male principality, being both equal and opposite to the Goddess. The Wiccan god himself can be represented in many forms, including as the Sun God, the Sacrificed God and the Vegetation God, although the Horned God is the most popular representation. The pioneers of the various Wiccan or Witchcraft traditions, such as Gerald Gardner, Doreen Valiente and Robert Cochrane, all claimed that their religion was a continuation of the pagan religion of the Witch-Cult following historians who had purported the Witch-Cult's existence, such as Jules Michelet and Margaret Murray.
For Wiccans, the Horned God is "the personification of the life force energy in animals and the wild" and is associated with the wilderness, virility and the hunt. Doreen Valiente writes that the Horned God also carries the souls of the dead to the underworld.
Wiccans generally, as well as some other neopagans, tend to conceive of the universe as polarized into gender opposites of male and female energies. In traditional Wicca, the Horned God and the Goddess are seen as equal and opposite in gender polarity. However, in some of the newer traditions of Wicca, and especially those influenced by feminist ideology, there is more emphasis on the Goddess, and consequently the symbolism of the Horned God is less developed than that of the Goddess.
In Wicca the cycle of the seasons is celebrated during eight sabbats called The Wheel of the Year. The seasonal cycle is imagined to follow the relationship between the Horned God and the Goddess. The Horned God is born in winter, impregnates the Goddess and then dies during the autumn and winter months and is then reborn by the Goddess at Yule. The different relationships throughout the year are sometimes distinguished by splitting the god into aspects, the Oak King and the Holly King. The relationships between the Goddess and the Horned God are mirrored by Wiccans in seasonal rituals. There is some variation between Wiccan groups as to which sabbat corresponds to which part of the cycle. Some Wiccans regard the Horned God as dying at Lammas, August 1; also known as Lughnasadh, which is the first harvest sabbat. Others may see him dying at Mabon, the autumn equinox, or the second harvest festival. Still other Wiccans conceive of the Horned God dying on October 31, which Wiccans call Samhain, the ritual of which is focused on death. He is then reborn on Winter Solstice, December 21.
Other important dates for the Horned God include Imbolc when, according to Valiente, he leads a wild hunt. In Gardnerian Wicca, the Dryghten prayer recited at the end of every ritual meeting contains the lines referring to the Horned God:
According to Sabina Magliocco, Gerald Gardner says (in 1959's The Meaning of Witchcraft) that The Horned God is an Under-god, a mediator between an unknowable supreme deity and the people. (In Wiccan liturgy in the Book of Shadows, this conception of an unknowable supreme deity is referred to as "Dryghtyn." It is not a personal god, but rather an impersonal divinity similar to the Tao of Taoism.)
Whilst the Horned God is the most common depiction of masculine divinity in Wicca, he is not the only representation. Other examples include the Green Man and the Sun God. In traditional Wicca, however, these other representations of the Wiccan god are subsumed or amalgamated into the Horned God, as aspects or expressions of him. Sometimes this is shown by adding horns or antlers to the iconography. The Green Man, for example, may be shown with branches resembling antlers; and the Sun God may be depicted with a crown or halo of solar rays, that may resemble horns. These other conceptions of the Wiccan god should not be regarded as displacing the Horned God, but rather as elaborating on various facets of his nature. Doreen Valiente has called the Horned God "the eldest of gods" in both The Witches Creed and also in her Invocation To The Horned God.
Wiccans believe that The Horned God, as Lord of Death, is their "comforter and consoler" after death and before reincarnation; and that he rules the Underworld or Summerland where the souls of the dead reside as they await rebirth. Some, such as Joanne Pearson, believe that this is based on the Mesopotamian myth of Inanna's descent into the underworld, though this has not been confirmed.
Names
Doreen Valiente, a former High Priestess of the Gardnerian tradition, claimed that Gerald Gardner's Bricket Wood coven referred to the god as Cernunnos, or Kernunno, which is a Latin word, discovered on a stone carving found in France, meaning "the Horned One". Valiente claimed that the coven also referred to the god as Janicot, which she theorised was of Basque origin, and Gardner also used this name in his novel High Magic's Aid.
Stewart Farrar, a High Priest of the Alexandrian tradition referred to the Horned God as Karnayna, which he believed was a corruption of the word Cernunnos. The historian Ronald Hutton has suggested that it instead came from the Arabic term Dhul-Qarnayn which meant "Horned One". Margaret Murray had mentioned this information in her 1933 book The God of the Witches, and Hutton theorised that Alex Sanders had taken it from there, enjoying the fact that he shared his name with the ancient Macedonian emperor. Prudence Jones has suggested that the name may instead derive from Karneios, a Spartan deity conflated with Apollo as a subordinate consort to Diana.
In the writings of Charles Cardell and Raymond Howard, the god was referred to as Atho. Howard had a wooden statue of Atho's head which he claimed was 2200 years old, but the statue was stolen in April 1967. Howard's son later admitted that his father had carved the statue himself.
In Cochrane's Craft, which was founded by Robert Cochrane, the Horned God was often referred to by a Biblical name; Tubal-cain, who, according to the Bible was the first blacksmith. In this neopagan concept, the god is also referred to as Brân, a Welsh mythological figure, Wayland, the smith in Germanic mythology, and Herne, a horned figure from English folklore.
In the neopagan tradition of Stregheria, founded by Raven Grimassi and loosely inspired by the works of Charles Godfrey Leland, the Horned God goes by several names, including Dianus, Faunus, Cern, and Actaeon.
In the Hinduism, the Horned God is referred to Pashupati, See Pashupati seal.
In psychology
Jungian analysis
Sherry Salman considers the image of the Horned God in Jungian terms, as an archetypal protector and mediator of the outside world to the objective psyche. In her theory the male psyche's 'Horned God' frequently compensates for inadequate fathering.
When first encountered, the figure is a dangerous, 'hairy chthonic wildman' possessed of kindness and intelligence. If repressed, later in life The Horned God appears as the lord of the Otherworld, or Hades. If split off entirely, he leads to violence, substance abuse and sexual perversion. When integrated he gives the male an ego 'in possession of its own destructiveness' and for the female psyche gives an effective animus relating to both the physical body and the psyche.
In considering the Horned God as a symbol recurring in women's literature, Richard Sugg suggests the Horned God represents the 'natural Eros', a masculine lover subjugating the social-conformist nature of the female shadow, thus encompassing a combination of the shadow and animus. One such example is Heathcliff from Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights. Sugg goes on to note that female characters who are paired with this character usually end up socially ostracised, or worse – in an inverted ending to the male hero-story.
Humanistic psychology
Following the work of Robert Bly in the Mythopoetic men's movement, John Rowan proposes the Horned God as a "Wild Man" be used as a fantasy image or "sub-personality" helpful to men in humanistic psychology, and escaping from "narrow societal images of masculinity" encompassing excessive deference to women and paraphillia.
Theories of historical origins
Many horned deities are known to have been worshipped in various cultures throughout history. Evidence for horned gods appear very early in the human record. The so-called Sorcerer dates from perhaps 13,000 BCE. Twenty-one red deer headdresses, made from the skulls of the red deer and likely fitted with leather laces, have been uncovered at the Mesolithic site of Star Carr. They are thought to date from roughly 9,000 BCE. Several theories have been created to establish historical roots for modern Neopagan worship of a Horned God.
Margaret Murray
Following the writings of suffragist Matilda Joslyn Gage and others, Margaret Murray, in her 1921 book The Witch-Cult in Western Europe, proposed the theory that the witches of the early-modern period were remnants of a pagan cult and that the Christian Church had declared the god of the witches was in fact the Devil. Without recourse to any specific representation of this deity, Murray speculates that the head coverings common in inquisition-derived descriptions of the devil "may throw light on one of the possible origins of the cult."
In 1931 Murray published a sequel, The God of the Witches, which tries to gather evidence in support of her witch-cult theory. In Chapter 1 "The Horned God". Murray claims that various depictions of humans with horns from European and Indian sources, ranging from the paleolithic French cave painting of "The Sorcerer" to the Indic Pashupati to the modern English Dorset Ooser, are evidence for an unbroken, Europe-wide tradition of worship of a singular Horned God. Murray derived this model of a horned god cult from James Frazer and Jules Michelet.
In dealing with "The Sorcerer", the earliest evidence claimed, Murray based her observations on a drawing by Henri Breuil, which some modern scholars such as Ronald Hutton claim is inaccurate. Hutton states that modern photographs show the original cave art lacks horns, a human torso or any other significant detail on its upper half. However, others, such as celebrated prehistorian Jean Clottes, assert that Breuil's sketch is indeed accurate. Clottes stated that "I have seen it myself perhaps 20 times over the years".
Breuil considered his drawing to represent a shaman or magician - an interpretation which gives the image its name. Murray having seen the drawing called Breuil's image "the first depiction of a deity", an idea which Breuil and others later adopted.
Murray also used an inaccurate drawing of a mesolithic rock-painting at Cogul in northeast Spain as evidence of group religious ceremony of the cult, although the central male figure is not horned. The illustration she used of the Cogul painting leaves out a number of figures, human and animal, and the original is more likely a sequence of superimposed but unrelated illustrations, rather than a depiction of a single scene.
Despite widespread criticism of Murray's scholarship some minor aspects of her work continued to have supporters.
Influences from literature
The popular image of the Greek god Pan was removed from its classical context in the writings of the Romantics of the 18th century and connected with their ideals of a pastoral England. This, along with the general public's increasing lack of familiarity of Greek mythology at the time led to the figure of Pan becoming generalised as a 'horned god', and applying connotations to the character, such as benevolence that were not evident in the original Greek myths which in turn gave rise to the popular acceptance of Murray's hypothetical horned god of the witches.
The reception of Aradia amongst Neopagans has not been entirely positive. Clifton suggests that modern claims of revealing an Italian pagan witchcraft tradition, for example those of Leo Martello and Raven Grimassi, must be "match[ed] against", and compared with the claims in Aradia. He further suggests that a lack of comfort with Aradia may be due to an "insecurity" within Neopaganism about the movement's claim to authenticity as a religious revival.
Valiente offers another explanation for the negative reaction of some neopagans; that the identification of Lucifer as the god of the witches in Aradia was "too strong meat" for Wiccans who were used to the gentler, romantic paganism of Gerald Gardner and were especially quick to reject any relationship between witchcraft and Satanism.
In 1985 Classical historian Georg Luck, in his Arcana Mundi: Magic and the Occult in the Greek and Roman Worlds, theorised that the origins of the Witch-cult may have appeared in late antiquity as a faith primarily designed to worship the Horned God, stemming from the merging of Cernunnos, a horned god of the Celts, with the Greco-Roman Pan/Faunus, a combination of gods which he posits created a new deity, around which the remaining pagans, those refusing to convert to Christianity, rallied and that this deity provided the prototype for later Christian conceptions of the Devil, and his worshippers were cast by the Church as witches.
Influences from occultism
Eliphas Levi's image of "Baphomet" serves as an example of the transformation of the Devil into a benevolent fertility deity and provided the prototype for Murray's horned god. Murray's central thesis that images of the Devil were actually of deities and that Christianity had demonised these worshippers as following Satan, is first recorded in the work of Levi in the fashionable 19th-century Occultist circles of England and France. Levi created his image of Baphomet, published in his Dogme et Rituel de la Haute Magie (1855), by combining symbolism from diverse traditions, including the Diable card of the 16th and 17th century Tarot of Marseille. Lévi called his image "The Goat of Mendes", possibly following Herodotus' account that the god of Mendes—the Greek name for Djedet, Egypt—was depicted with a goat's face and legs. Herodotus relates how all male goats were held in great reverence by the Mendesians, and how in his time a woman publicly copulated with a goat. E. A. Wallis Budge writes,
Historically, the deity that was venerated at Egyptian Mendes was a ram deity Banebdjedet (literally Ba of the lord of djed, and titled "the Lord of Mendes"), who was the soul of Osiris. Lévi combined the images of the Tarot of Marseilles Devil card and refigured the ram Banebdjed as a he-goat, further imagined by him as "copulator in Anep and inseminator in the district of Mendes".
Gerald Gardner and Wicca
Margaret Murray's theory of the historical origins of the Horned God has been used by Wiccans to create a myth of historical origins for their religion. There is no verifiable evidence to support claims that the religion originates earlier than the mid-20th century.
Modern scholarship has disproved Margaret Murray's theory, however various horned gods and mother goddesses were indeed worshipped in the British Isles during the ancient and early Medieval periods.
The "father of Wicca", Gerald Gardner, who adopted Margaret Murray's thesis, claimed Wicca was a modern survival of an ancient pan-European pagan religion. Gardner states that he had reconstructed elements of the religion from fragments, incorporating elements from Freemasonry, the Occult, and Theosophy, which came together in the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, where Gardner met Aleister Crowley, whose influence became the basis for Wiccan magical practices.
Gerald Gardner was initiated into the O.T.O. by Aleister Crowley and subsequently went on to found the Neopagan religion of Wicca. Various scholars on early Wiccan history, such as Ronald Hutton, Philip Heselton, and Leo Ruickbie concur that witchcraft's early rituals, as devised by Gardner, contained much from Crowley's writings such as the Gnostic Mass. The third degree initiation ceremony in Gardnerian Wicca (including the Great Rite) is derived almost completely from the Gnostic Mass.
Romano-Celtic fusion
Georg Luck, repeats part of Murray's theory, stating that the Horned God may have appeared in late antiquity, stemming from the merging of Cernunnos, an antlered god of the Continental Celts, with the Greco-Roman Pan/Faunus, a combination of gods which he posits created a new deity, around which the remaining pagans, those refusing to convert to Christianity, rallied and that this deity provided the prototype for later Christian conceptions of the devil, and his worshippers were cast by the Church as witches.
Art, fantasy and science fiction
In 1908's The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame, in Chapter 7, "The Piper at the Gates of Dawn", Ratty and Mole meet a mystical horned being, powerful, fearsome and kind. Grahame's work was a significant part of the cultural milieu which stripped the Greek god Pan of his cultural identity in favor of an unnamed, generic horned deity which led to Murray's thesis of historical origins.
Outside of works that predate the publication of Murray's thesis, horned god motifs and characters appear in fantasy literature that draws upon her work and that of her followers.
In the novel Childhood's End (1953) by Arthur C. Clarke, all humans have a collective premonition, also described as a memory of the future, of horned aliens which arrive to usher in a new phase of human evolution. The collective subconscious image of the horned aliens is what accounts for mankind's image of the devil or Satan. This theme is also explored in the Doctor Who story The Dæmons in 1971, where the local superstitions around a landmark known as The Devil's Hump prove to be based on reality, as aliens from the planet Dæmos have been affecting man's progress over the millennia and the Hump actually contains a spacecraft. The only Dæmon to appear is a classic interpretation of a horned satyr-like being with hooves.
In the critically acclaimed and influential 1950s TV series created by Nigel Kneale, Quatermass and the Pit, depictions of supernatural horned entities, with specific reference to prehistoric cave-art and shamanistic horned head-dress are revealed to be a "race-memory" of psychic Martian grasshoppers, manifested at the climax of the film by a fiery horned god.
Murray's theories have been seen to have had influence on the horror film The Blood on Satan's Claw (1971), where a murderous female-led cult worships a horned deity named Behemoth.
Marion Zimmer Bradley, who acknowledges the influence of Murray, uses the figure of the "horned god" in her feminist fantasy transformation of Arthurian myth, Mists of Avalon (1984), and portrays ritualistic incest between King Arthur as the representative of the horned god and his sister Morgaine as the "spring maiden".
In the popular video game Morrowind, its expansion Bloodmoon has a plot enemy known as Hircine, the Daedric god of the Hunt, who appears as a horned man with the face of a deer skull. He condemned his "hounds" (werewolves) to walk the mortal ground during the Bloodmoon until a champion defeats him or Bloodmoon falls. When in combat, Hircine appears as a horned wolf or bear.
The 1992 Discworld novel Lords and Ladies, by Terry Pratchett, features a King of the Elves who is strongly reminiscent of the Horned God. Although not worshipped by the witches who are the heroines of the book (indeed, quite the reverse), they temporarily ally themselves with him out of necessity.
See also
Dionysus
Cernunnos
Green Man
Herne the Hunter
Horned deity (mythology)
Horned helmet
Krampus
Pan
Satyr
Triple Goddess (Neopaganism)
Enki
References
External links
Death gods
Fantasy tropes
Horned deities
Hunting gods
Mythological hybrids
Nature gods
Pseudohistory
Solar gods
Wicca
Modern Pagan theology
New religious movement deities | [
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14320 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haggis | Haggis | Haggis () is a savoury pudding containing sheep's pluck (heart, liver, and lungs), minced with onion, oatmeal, suet, spices, and salt, mixed with stock, and cooked while traditionally encased in the animal's stomach though now an artificial casing is often used instead. According to the 2001 English edition of the Larousse Gastronomique: "Although its description is not immediately appealing, haggis has an excellent nutty texture and delicious savoury flavour".
It is believed that food similar to haggis—perishable offal quickly cooked inside an animal's stomach, all conveniently available after a hunt—was eaten from ancient times.
Although the name "hagws" or "hagese" was first recorded in England c. 1430, the dish is considered traditionally of Scottish origin. It is even the national dish, as a result of Scots poet Robert Burns' poem "Address to a Haggis" of 1786. Haggis is traditionally served with "neeps and tatties", boiled and mashed separately, and a dram (a glass of Scotch whisky), especially as the main course of a Burns Supper.
History and etymology
Haggis is popularly assumed to be of Scottish origin, but many countries have produced similar dishes, albeit with different names. However, the recipes as known and standardised now are distinctly Scottish. The first known written recipes for a dish of the name, made with offal and herbs, are as "hagese", in the verse cookbook Liber Cure Cocorum dating from around 1430 in Lancashire, north west England, and, as "hagws of a schepe" from an English cookbook also of c. 1430.
{{poemquote|
For hagese'''.
Þe hert of schepe, þe nere þou take,
Þo bowel noght þou shalle forsake,
On þe turbilen made, and boyled wele,
Hacke alle togeder with gode persole,
}}
The Scottish poem "Flyting of Dunbar and Kennedy", which is dated before 1520 (the generally accepted date prior to the death of William Dunbar, one of the composers), refers to "haggeis".
An early printed recipe for haggis appears in 1615 in The English Huswife by Gervase Markham. It contains a section entitled "Skill in Oate meale": "The use and vertues of these two severall kinds of Oate-meales in maintaining the Family, they are so many (according to the many customes of many Nations) that it is almost impossible to recken all"; and then proceeds to give a description of "oat-meale mixed with blood, and the Liver of either Sheepe, Calfe or Swine, maketh that pudding which is called the Haggas or Haggus, of whose goodnesse it is in vaine to boast, because there is hardly to be found a man that doth not affect them." (Gervase Markham, The English Huswife)
Food writer Alan Davidson suggests that the ancient Romans were the first known to have made products of the haggis type. Haggis was "born of necessity, as a way to utilize the least expensive cuts of meat and the innards as well".
Clarissa Dickson Wright says that it "came to Scotland in a longship [i.e., from Scandinavia] even before Scotland was a single nation". She cites etymologist Walter William Skeat as further suggestion of possible Scandinavian origins: Skeat claimed that the hag– element of the word is derived from the Old Norse haggw or the Old Icelandic hoggva (höggva meaning 'to chop' in modern Icelandic), Modern Scots hag, meaning 'to hew' or strike with a sharp weapon, relating to the chopped-up contents of the dish.
In her book, The Haggis: A Little History, Dickson Wright suggests that haggis was invented as a way of cooking quick-spoiling offal near the site of a hunt, without the need to carry along an additional cooking vessel. The liver and kidneys could be grilled directly over a fire, but this treatment was unsuitable for the stomach, intestines, or lungs. Chopping up the lungs and stuffing the stomach with them and whatever fillers might have been on hand, then boiling the assembly – probably in a vessel made from the animal's hide – was one way to make sure these parts were not wasted.
Folklore
In the absence of hard facts as to haggis' origins, popular folklore has provided some notions. One is that the dish originates from the days of the old Scottish cattle drovers. When the men left the Highlands to drive their cattle to market in Edinburgh, the women would prepare rations for them to eat during the long journey down through the glens. They used the ingredients that were most readily available in their homes and conveniently packaged them in a sheep's stomach allowing for easy transportation during the journey. Other speculations have been based on Scottish slaughtering practices. When a chieftain or laird required an animal to be slaughtered for meat (whether sheep or cattle) the workmen were allowed to keep the offal as their share.
A joke sometimes maintained is that a haggis is a small Scottish animal with longer legs on one side, so that it can run around the steep hills of the Scottish highlands without falling over. According to one poll, 33 percent of American visitors to Scotland believed haggis to be an animal.
Modern use
Haggis is traditionally served as part of the Burns supper on or near January 25, the birthday of Scotland's national poet Robert Burns. Burns wrote the poem Address to a Haggis, which starts "Fair fa' your honest, sonsie face, Great chieftain o' the puddin-race!" In Burns's lifetime haggis was a common dish of the poor as it was nourishing yet very cheap, being made from leftover parts of sheep otherwise discarded.
Haggis is widely available in supermarkets in Scotland all year, with cheaper brands normally packed in artificial casings, rather than stomachs. Sometimes haggis is sold in tins or a container which can be cooked in a microwave or conventional oven. Some commercial haggis is largely made from pig, rather than sheep, offal. Kosher haggis, not only pork-free but fully conformant to Jewish dietary laws, is produced.
Haggis is often served in Scottish fast-food establishments, in the shape of a large sausage and deep fried in batter. Together with chips, this comprises a "haggis supper". A "haggis burger" is a patty of fried haggis served on a bun. A "haggis pakora" is another deep fried variant, available in some Indian restaurants in Scotland. Haggis can be used as an ingredient in other dishes, even pizza, rather than the main part of a dish.
A traditional haggis recipe describes haggis as "sheep's 'pluck' (heart, liver, and lungs), minced with onion, oatmeal, suet, spices, and salt, mixed with stock, and traditionally encased in the animal's stomach and boiled". Ingredients are sheep stomach, heart and lungs of one lamb, onions, oatmeal, salt, pepper, stock, and water, with optional ingredients dried coriander, cinnamon, and nutmeg. It can be boiled, baked, or deep fried.
In the north-east of Scotland, from Aberdeen northwards, in addition to the customary neeps and tatties, haggis is commonly served with mince.
Vegetarian haggis
Vegetarian haggis was first available commercially in 1984, and now can account for between 25% and 40% of haggis sales. It substitutes various pulses, nuts and vegetables for the meat. Oats and barley may be included as may different types of lentils, split peas, adzuki beans, kidney beans, borlotti beans, peanuts, other nuts and mushrooms, onions, and carrots.
Outside Scotland
Haggis remains popular with Scottish immigrants in the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, owing to the strong influence of Scottish culture, especially for Burns Suppers. It can easily be made in any country but is sometimes imported from Scotland. A recipe from the Canadian province of New Brunswick uses pork and bakes it in a loaf pan.
Legality
In 1971 it became illegal to import haggis into the US from the UK due to a ban on food containing sheep lung, which constitutes 10–15% of the traditional recipe. The ban encompasses all lungs, as fluids such as stomach acid and phlegm may enter the lung during slaughter. The situation was further complicated in 1989 when all UK beef and lamb was banned from importation to the US due to a BSE crisis. In 2010 a spokeswoman for the US Department of Agriculture stated that they were reviewing the ban on beef and lamb products, but that the ban on food containing sheep lung would remain in force.
As haggis cannot be exported to the United States, it is instead made there, sometimes by Scottish companies. In one such use, which is stated to be the same 150-year-old recipe having the same ingredients as in Scotland, sheep lung is not used and the casing is artificial rather than stomach.
See also
Skirlie
Black pudding
White pudding
Haggis hurling
List of sausages
References
Notes
External links
Alton Brown's Haggis Recipe
Belief in the Wild Haggis
How to cook the perfect Burns supper at scotland.org
Haggis, Hail to Thee!- slideshow by Life magazine''
HAGGIS at The Foods Of England
British puddings
Meat dishes
Scottish cuisine
Scottish sausages
Savory puddings
National dishes
Meat and grain sausages
Precooked sausages | [
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14321 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hank%20Aaron | Hank Aaron | Henry Louis Aaron (February 5, 1934 – January 22, 2021), nicknamed "Hammer" or "Hammerin' Hank", was an American professional baseball right fielder who played 23 seasons in Major League Baseball (MLB), from 1954 through 1976. Widely regarded as one of the greatest baseball players in history, he spent 21 seasons with the Milwaukee/Atlanta Braves in the National League (NL) and two seasons with the Milwaukee Brewers in the American League (AL).
His 755 career home runs broke the long-standing MLB record set by Babe Ruth and stood as the most for 33 years; Aaron still holds many other MLB batting records. He hit 24 or more home runs every year from 1955 through 1973 and is one of only two players to hit 30 or more home runs in a season at least fifteen times. In 1999, The Sporting News ranked Aaron fifth on its list of the "100 Greatest Baseball Players". In 1982, he was inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame in his first year of eligibility.
Aaron was born and raised in and around Mobile, Alabama. Aaron had seven siblings, including Tommie Aaron, who played major-league baseball with him. He appeared briefly in the Negro American League and in minor league baseball before starting his major league career. By his final MLB season, Aaron was the last former Negro league baseball player on a major league roster. During his time in Major League Baseball, and especially during his run for the home run record, Aaron and his family endured extensive racist threats. His experiences fueled his activism during the civil rights movement.
Aaron played the vast majority of his MLB games in right field, though he appeared at several other infield and outfield positions. In his last two seasons, he was primarily a designated hitter. Aaron was an NL All-Star for 20 seasons and an AL All-Star for one season, and he holds the record for the most All-Star selections (25), while sharing the record for most All-Star Games played (24) with Willie Mays and Stan Musial. He was a three-time Gold Glove winner, and in 1957, he won the NL Most Valuable Player (MVP) Award when the Milwaukee Braves won the World Series. Aaron holds the MLB records for the most career runs batted in (RBIs) (2,297), extra base hits (1,477), and total bases (6,856). Aaron is also in the top five for career hits (3,771) and runs (2,174). He is one of only four players to have at least 17 seasons with 150 or more hits. Aaron is in second place in home runs (755) and at-bats (12,364), and in third place in games played (3,298). At the time of his retirement, Aaron held most of the game's key career power-hitting records.
After his retirement, Aaron held front office roles with the Atlanta Braves, including the senior vice president. In 1988, Aaron was inducted into the Wisconsin Athletic Hall of Fame. In 1999, MLB introduced the Hank Aaron Award to recognize the top offensive players in each league. He was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2002. He was named a 2010 Georgia Trustee by the Georgia Historical Society in recognition of accomplishments that reflect the ideals of Georgia's founders. Aaron resided near Atlanta until his death.
Early life
Aaron was born in Mobile, Alabama, to Herbert Aaron Sr. and Estella (Pritchett) Aaron. He had seven siblings. Tommie Aaron, one of his brothers, also went on to play Major League Baseball. By the time Aaron retired, he and his brother held the record for most career home runs by a pair of siblings (768). They were also the first siblings to appear in a League Championship Series as teammates.
While he was born in a section of Mobile referred to as "Down the Bay", he spent most of his youth in Toulminville. Aaron grew up in a poor family. His family could not afford baseball equipment, so he practiced by hitting bottle caps with sticks. He would create his own bats and balls out of materials he found on the streets. His boyhood idol was baseball star Jackie Robinson. Aaron attended Central High School as a freshman and a sophomore. Like most high schools, they did not have organized baseball, so he played outfield and third base for the Mobile Black Bears, a semipro team. Aaron was a member of the Boy Scouts of America.
Although he batted cross-handed (as a right-handed hitter, with his left hand above his right), Aaron established himself as a power hitter. As a result, in 1949, at the age of 15, Aaron had his first tryout with an MLB franchise, the Brooklyn Dodgers; however, he did not make the team. After this, Aaron returned to school to finish his secondary education, attending the Josephine Allen Institute, a private high school in Alabama. During his junior year, Aaron joined the Prichard Athletics, an independent Negro league team, followed by the Mobile Black Bears, another independent Negro league team. While on the Bears, Aaron earned $3 per game ($ today), which was a dollar more than he got while on the Athletics.
Negro league and minor league career
On November 20, 1951, baseball scout Ed Scott signed Aaron to a contract on behalf of the Indianapolis Clowns of the Negro American League, where he played for three months.
He started play as a , shortstop, and earned $200 per month. As a result of his standout play with the Indianapolis Clowns, Aaron received two offers from MLB teams via telegram, one from the New York Giants and the other from the Boston Braves. Years later, Aaron remembered:
I had the Giants' contract in my hand. But the Braves offered fifty dollars a month more. That's the only thing that kept Willie Mays and me from being teammates – fifty dollars.
While with the Clowns he experienced racism. Of a time his team was in Washington, D.C. Aaron recalled
We had breakfast while we were waiting for the rain to stop, and I can still envision sitting with the Clowns in a restaurant behind Griffith Stadium and hearing them break all the plates in the kitchen after we finished eating. What a horrible sound. Even as a kid, the irony of it hit me: here we were in the capital in the land of freedom and equality, and they had to destroy the plates that had touched the forks that had been in the mouths of black men. If dogs had eaten off those plates, they'd have washed them.
The Howe Sports Bureau credits Aaron with a .366 batting average in 26 official Negro league games, with five home runs, 33 runs batted in (RBIs), 41 hits, and nine stolen bases.
The Braves purchased Aaron's contract from the Clowns for $10,000, which GM John Quinn thought was a steal, as he stated that he felt that Aaron was a $100,000 property. On June 12, 1952, Aaron signed with Braves' scout Dewey Griggs. During this time, he picked up the nickname "pork chops" because it "was the only thing I knew to order off the menu". A teammate later said, "the man ate pork chops three meals a day, two for breakfast".
The Braves assigned Aaron to the Eau Claire Bears, the Braves' Northern League Class-C farm team. The 1952 season proved to be very beneficial for Aaron. Playing in the infield, Aaron continued to develop as a ballplayer and made the Northern League's All-Star team. He broke his habit of hitting cross-handed and adopted the standard hitting technique. By the end of the season, he had performed so well that the league made him the unanimous choice for Rookie of the Year. Although he appeared in just 87 games, he scored 89 runs, had 116 hits, nine home runs, and 61 RBIs. In addition, Aaron hit for a .336 batting average. During his minor league experience, he was very homesick and faced constant racism, but his brother, Herbert Jr., told him not to give up the opportunity.
In 1953, the Braves promoted him to the Jacksonville Braves, their Class-A affiliate in the South Atlantic League. Helped by Aaron's performance, the Braves won the league championship that year. Aaron led the league in runs (115), hits (208), doubles (36), RBIs (125), total bases (338), and batting average (.362). He won the league's Most Valuable Player Award, and had such a dominant year that one sportswriter was prompted to say, "Henry Aaron led the league in everything except hotel accommodations." Aaron's time with the Braves did not come without problems. He was one of the first African Americans to play in the league. The 1950s were a period of racial segregation in parts of the United States, especially the southeastern portion of the country. When Aaron traveled around Jacksonville, Florida, and the surrounding areas, he was often separated from his team because of Jim Crow laws. In most circumstances, the team was responsible for arranging housing and meals for its players, but Aaron often had to make his own arrangements. The Braves' manager, Ben Geraghty, tried his best to help Aaron on and off the field. Former Braves minor league player and sportswriter Pat Jordan said, "Aaron gave [Geraghty] much of the credit for his own swift rise to stardom."
That same year, Aaron met his future wife, Barbara Lucas. The night they met, Lucas decided to attend the Braves' game. Aaron singled, doubled, and hit a home run in the game. On October 6, Aaron and Lucas married. In 1958, Aaron's wife noted that during the offseason he liked "to sit and watch those shooting westerns". He also enjoyed cooking and fishing.
Aaron spent the winter of 1953 playing in Puerto Rico. Mickey Owen, the team's manager, helped Aaron with his batting stance. Until then, Aaron had hit most pitches to left field or center field, but after working with Owen, Aaron was able to hit the ball more effectively all over the field. During his stay in Puerto Rico, Owen also helped Aaron transition from second base to the outfield. Aaron had not played well at second base, but Owen noted that Aaron could catch fly balls and throw them well from the outfield to the infield.
The stint in Puerto Rico also allowed Aaron to avoid being drafted into military service. Though the Korean War was over, people were still being drafted. The Braves were able to speak to the draft board, making the case that Aaron could be the player to integrate the Southern Association the following season with the Atlanta Crackers. The board appears to have been convinced, as Aaron was not drafted.
MLB career
In 1954, Aaron attended spring training with the major league club. Although he was on the roster of its farm club, Milwaukee manager Charley Grimm later stated, "From the start, he did so well I knew we were going to have to carry him." On March 13, 1954, Milwaukee Braves left fielder Bobby Thomson fractured his ankle while sliding into second base during a spring training game. The next day, Aaron made his first spring training start for the Braves major league team, playing in left field and hitting a home run. This led Hank Aaron to a major league contract, signed on the final day of spring training, and a Braves uniform with the number five. On April 13, Aaron made his major league debut and was hitless in five at-bats against the Cincinnati Reds' left-hander Joe Nuxhall. In the same game, Eddie Mathews hit two home runs, the first of a record 863 home runs the pair would hit as teammates. On April 15, Aaron collected his first major league hit, a double off Cardinals' pitcher Vic Raschi. Aaron hit his first major league home run on April 23, also off Raschi. Over the next 122 games, Aaron batted .280 with 13 homers before he suffered a fractured ankle on September 5. He then changed his number to 44, which would turn out to look like a "lucky number" for the slugger. Aaron would hit 44 home runs in four different seasons, and he hit his record-breaking 715th career home run off Dodgers pitcher Al Downing, who coincidentally also wore number 44.
At this point, Aaron was known to family and friends primarily as "Henry". Braves' public relations director Don Davidson, observing Aaron's quiet, reserved nature, began referring to him publicly as "Hank" in order to suggest more accessibility. The nickname quickly gained currency, but "Henry" continued to be cited frequently in the media, both sometimes appearing in the same article, and Aaron would answer to either one. During his rookie year, his other well-known nicknames, "Hammerin' Hank" (by teammates) and "Bad Henry" (by opposing pitchers) are reported to have arisen.
Considerably later in his career, Aaron coined "Stone-fingers", which would prove a popular handle for one of baseball's more colorful characters, the famously distance-hitting but defensively challenged first baseman Dick Stuart, reportedly "delight[ing]" even its recipient.
Sal Maglie recommended throwing low curveballs to Aaron. "He's going to swing and he'll go after almost anything," Maglie said of the Braves' slugger. "And he'll hit almost anything, so you have to be careful."
Prime of his career
Aaron hit .314 with 27 home runs and 106 RBIs, in 1955. He was named to the NL All-Star roster for the first time; it was the first of a record 21 All-Star selections and first of a record 25 All-Star Game appearances. In 1956, Aaron hit .328 and captured the first of two NL batting titles. He was also named The Sporting News NL Player of the Year. In 1957, Aaron won his only NL MVP Award, as he had his first brush with the triple crown. He batted .322, placing third, and led the league in home runs and runs batted in. On September 23, 1957, in Milwaukee, Aaron hit a two-run walk-off home run against the St. Louis Cardinals, clinching the pennant for the Braves. After touching home plate he was carried off the field by his teammates. It is as of yet the only pennant-clinching walk-off home run in major league history in a non-playoff regular-season game. Milwaukee went on to win the World Series against the New York Yankees, the defending champions, 4 games to 3. Aaron did his part by hitting .393 with three homers and seven RBIs. On December 15, 1957, his wife Barbara gave birth to twins. Two days later, one of the children died. In 1958, Aaron hit .326, with 30 home runs and 95 RBIs. He led the Braves to another pennant, but this time they lost a seven-game World Series to the Yankees. Aaron finished third in the MVP race and he received his first of three Gold Glove Awards. During the next several years, Aaron had some of his best games and best seasons as a major league player. On June 21, 1959, against the San Francisco Giants, he hit three two-run home runs. It was the only time in his career that he hit three home runs in a game.
In 1963, Aaron nearly won the triple crown. He led the league with 44 home runs and 130 RBIs and finished third in batting average. In that season, Aaron became the third player to hit 30 home runs and steal 30 bases in a single season, and the first player to record 40 home runs and 30 steals in a season. He again finished third in National League MVP voting. The Braves moved from Milwaukee to Atlanta after the 1965 season. On May 10, 1967, he hit an inside-the-park home run against Jim Bunning in Philadelphia. It was the only inside-the-park home run of his career. In 1968, Aaron was the first Atlanta Braves player to hit his 500th career home run, and in 1970, he was the first Atlanta Brave to reach 3,000 career hits.
Home run milestones and 3,000th hit
During his days in Atlanta, Aaron reached several milestones; he was only the eighth player ever to hit 500 career home runs, with his 500th coming against Mike McCormick of the San Francisco Giants on July 14, 1968 — exactly one year after former Milwaukee Braves teammate Eddie Mathews had hit his 500th. Aaron was, at the time, the second-youngest player to reach the milestone. On July 31, 1969, Aaron hit his 537th home run, passing Mickey Mantle's total; this moved Aaron into third place on the career home run list, after Willie Mays and Babe Ruth. At the end of the 1969 season, Aaron again finished third in the MVP voting.
In 1970, Aaron reached two more career milestones. On May 17, Aaron collected his 3,000th hit, in a game against the Cincinnati Reds, the team against which he played in his first major-league game. Aaron established the record for most seasons with thirty or more home runs in the National League. On April 27, 1971, Aaron hit his 600th career home run, the third major league player ever to do so. On July 13, Aaron hit a home run in the All-Star Game (played at Detroit's Tiger Stadium) for the first time. He hit his 40th home run of the season against the Giants' Jerry Johnson on August 10, which established a National League record for most seasons with 40 or more home runs (seven). At age 37, he hit a career-high 47 home runs during the season (along with a career-high .669 slugging percentage) and finished third in MVP voting for the sixth time. During the strike-shortened season of 1972, Aaron tied and then surpassed Willie Mays for second place on the career home run list. Aaron also drove in the 2,000th run of his career and hit a home run in the first All-Star game played in Atlanta. As the year came to a close, Aaron broke Stan Musial's major-league record for total bases (6,134), a record he was the most proud of, more than his home run record since it reflected his overall performance as a team player. Aaron finished the season with 673 career home runs.
Breaking Ruth's record
Aaron himself downplayed the "chase" to surpass Babe Ruth, while baseball enthusiasts and the national media grew increasingly excited as he closed in on the 714 career home runs record. Aaron received thousands of letters every week during the summer of 1973, including hate mail; the Braves ended up hiring a secretary to help him sort through it.
Aaron (then age 39) hit 40 home runs in 392 at-bats, ending the 1973 season one home run short of the record. He hit home run number 713 on September 29, 1973, and with one day remaining in the season, many expected him to tie the record. But in his final game that year, playing against the Houston Astros (managed by Leo Durocher, who had once roomed with Babe Ruth), he was unable to achieve this. After the game, Aaron said his only fear was that he might not live to see the 1974 season.
He was the recipient of death threats and a large assortment of hate mail during the 1973–1974 offseason from people who did not want to see Aaron break Ruth's nearly sacrosanct home run record. The threats extended to those providing positive press coverage of Aaron. Lewis Grizzard, then-executive sports editor of the Atlanta Journal, reported receiving numerous phone calls calling journalists "nigger lovers" for covering Aaron's chase. While preparing the massive coverage of the home run record, he quietly had an obituary written, afraid that Aaron might be murdered.
Sports Illustrated pointedly summarized the racist vitriol that Aaron was forced to endure:
Is this to be the year in which Aaron, at the age of thirty-nine, takes a moon walk above one of the most hallowed individual records in American sport...? Or will it be remembered as the season in which Aaron, the most dignified of athletes, was besieged with hate mail and trapped by the cobwebs and goblins that lurk in baseball's attic?
At the end of the 1973 season, Aaron received a plaque from the U.S. Postal Service for receiving more mail (930,000 pieces) than any person excluding politicians. Aaron received an outpouring of public support in response to the bigotry. Newspaper cartoonist Charles Schulz created a series of Peanuts strips printed in August 1973 in which Snoopy attempts to break the Ruth record, only to be besieged with hate mail. Lucy says in the August 11 strip, "Hank Aaron is a great player... but you! If you break Babe Ruth's record, it'll be a disgrace!" Coincidentally, Snoopy was only one home run short of tying the record (and finished the season as such when Charlie Brown got picked off during Snoopy's last at-bat), and as it turned out, Aaron finished the 1973 season one home run short of Ruth. Babe Ruth's widow, Claire Hodgson, denounced the racism and declared that her husband would have enthusiastically cheered Aaron's attempt at the record. As the 1974 season began, Aaron's pursuit of the record caused a small controversy. The Braves opened the season on the road in Cincinnati with a three-game series against the Cincinnati Reds. Braves management wanted him to break the record in Atlanta and was therefore going to have Aaron sit out the first three games of the season. But Baseball Commissioner Bowie Kuhn ruled that he had to play two games in the first series. He played two out of three and tied Babe Ruth's record on April 4, 1974, in his very first at-bat on his first swing of the season—off Reds pitcher Jack Billingham, but did not hit another home run in the series.
The Braves returned to Atlanta, and on April 8, 1974, a crowd of 53,775 people showed up for the game — a Braves attendance record. The game was also broadcast nationally on NBC. In the fourth inning, Aaron hit home run number 715 off Los Angeles Dodgers pitcher Al Downing. Although Dodgers outfielder Bill Buckner nearly went over the outfield fence trying to catch it, the ball flew into the Braves' bullpen, where relief pitcher Tom House caught it. While cannons were fired in celebration, two college students sprinted onto the field and jogged alongside Aaron for part of his circuit around the bases, temporarily startling him. A young Craig Sager actually interviewed Aaron between third and home for a television station, WXLT (now WWSB-Channel 40) in Sarasota. As the fans cheered wildly, Aaron's parents ran onto the field as well. Braves announcer Milo Hamilton, calling the game on WSB radio, described the scene as Aaron broke the record:
"Henry Aaron, in the second inning walked and scored. He's sittin' on 714. Here's the pitch by Downing. Swinging. There's a drive into left-center field. That ball is gonna be-eee... Outta here! It's gone! It's 715! There's a new home run champion of all time, and it's Henry Aaron! The fireworks are going. Henry Aaron is coming around third. His teammates are at home plate. And listen to this crowd!"
Meanwhile, Dodgers broadcaster Vin Scully addressed the racial tension—or apparent lack thereof—in his call of the home run:
"What a marvelous moment for baseball; what a marvelous moment for Atlanta and the state of Georgia; what a marvelous moment for the country and the world. A black man is getting a standing ovation in the Deep South for breaking a record of an all-time baseball idol. And it is a great moment for all of us, and particularly for Henry Aaron... And for the first time in a long time, that poker face in Aaron shows the tremendous strain and relief of what it must have been like to live with for the past several months."
Return to Milwaukee
On October 2, 1974, Aaron hit his 733rd home run in his last at-bat as a Braves player. Aaron commented after the game that it was his last time as a player in Atlanta as his contract had expired. While he considered retirement, he said that he was willing to return to baseball for another year. He had also said that he would be interested in serving as a team's general manager, someone who would make decisions and not a “house boy”. The Braves offered Aaron a position with the team when he retired, but the role would be more in public relations, rather than one where he could evaluate talent.
At the end of the season, Aaron, who had a prior relationship with Brewers owner Bud Selig, requested a trade to Milwaukee. He was acquired by the Milwaukee Brewers for Dave May thirty-one days later on November 2. Minor league right-handed pitcher Roger Alexander was sent to the Braves to complete the transaction at the Winter Meetings one month later on December 2. The trade re-united Aaron with former teammate Del Crandall, who was now managing the Brewers. He signed a two-year contract with the Brewers for $240,000 per year. Playing in the American League would allow Aaron to serve as a designated hitter rather than play in the field.
On May 1, 1975, Aaron broke baseball's all-time RBI record, previously held by Ruth with 2,213. That year, he also played in his last and 24th All-Star Game (25th All-Star Game selection); he lined out to Dave Concepción as a pinch-hitter in the second inning. This All-Star Game, like the first one he played in 1955, was before a home crowd at Milwaukee County Stadium.
Aaron hit his 755th and final home run on July 20, 1976, at Milwaukee County Stadium off Dick Drago of the California Angels, which stood as the MLB career home run record until it was broken in 2007 by Barry Bonds. Over the course of his record-breaking 23-year career, Aaron had a batting average of .305 and 163 hits a season, while averaging just over 32 home runs and 99 RBIs a year. He had 100+ RBIs in a season 15 times, including a record of 13 in a row.
Post-playing career
After the 1976 season, Aaron rejoined the Braves as an executive. On August 1, 1982, he was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame, having received votes on 97.8 percent of the ballots, second only to Ty Cobb, who had received votes on 98.2% of the ballot in the inaugural 1936 Hall of Fame election. Aaron was then named the Braves' vice president and director of player development. This made him one of the first minorities in Major League Baseball upper-level management.
In December 1980, Aaron became senior vice president and assistant to the Braves' president. He was the corporate vice president of community relations for Turner Broadcasting System, a member of the company's board of directors, and the vice president of business development for The Airport Network. On January 21, 2007, Major League Baseball announced the sale of the Atlanta Braves. In that announcement, Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig also announced that Aaron would be playing a major role in the management of the Braves, forming programs through major league baseball that will encourage the influx of minorities into baseball. Aaron founded the Hank Aaron Rookie League program.
Aaron's autobiography, I Had a Hammer was published in 1990. The book's title is a play on his nickname, "The Hammer" or "Hammerin' Hank", and the title of the folk song "If I Had a Hammer". Aaron owned Hank Aaron BMW of south Atlanta in Union City, Georgia, where he included an autographed baseball with every car sold. Aaron also owned Mini, Land Rover, Toyota, Hyundai, and Honda dealerships throughout Georgia, as part of the Hank Aaron Automotive Group. Aaron sold all but the Toyota dealership in McDonough in 2007. Additionally, Aaron owned a chain of 30 restaurants around the country.
Later life and death
During the 2006 season, San Francisco Giants slugger Barry Bonds passed Babe Ruth and moved into second place on the all-time home run list, attracting growing media coverage as he drew closer to Aaron's record. Playing off the intense interest in their perceived rivalry, Aaron and Bonds made a television commercial that aired during Super Bowl XLI, shortly before the start of the 2007 baseball season, in which Aaron jokingly tried to persuade Bonds to retire before breaking the record. As Bonds began to close in on the record during the 2007 season, Aaron let it be known that, although he recognized Bonds' achievements, he would not be present when Bonds broke the record. There was considerable speculation that this was a snubbing of Bonds based on the widespread belief that Bonds had used performance-enhancing drugs and steroids to aid his achievement. However, some observers looked back on Aaron's personal history, pointing out that he had downplayed his own breaking of Babe Ruth's all-time record and suggesting Aaron was simply treating Bonds in a similar fashion. In a later interview with Atlanta sportscasting personality Chris Dimino, Aaron made it clear his reluctance to attend any celebration of a new home run record was based upon his personal conviction that baseball is not about breaking records, but simply playing to the best of one's potential. After Bonds hit his record-breaking 756th home run on August 7, 2007, Aaron made a surprise appearance on the JumboTron video screen at AT&T Park in San Francisco to congratulate Bonds on his accomplishment:
On January 5, 2021, Aaron publicly received a COVID-19 vaccination with the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine at the Morehouse School of Medicine at Atlanta, Georgia. He and several other African American public figures, including activist Joe Beasley, Andrew Young, and Louis Sullivan did so to demonstrate the safety of the vaccine and encourage other black Americans to do the same.
Aaron died in his sleep in his Atlanta residence on January 22 at the age of 86. The manner of death was listed as natural causes. Anti-vaccine activists Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Del Bigtree have suggested that Aaron's death was caused by receiving the COVID-19 vaccine. However, medical officials did not believe the COVID-19 vaccine had any adverse effect on his health. An emailed statement to AFP Fact Check from Fulton County medical examiner Karen Sullivan said that "There was no information suggestive of an allergic or anaphylactic reaction to any substance which might be attributable to recent vaccine distribution."
His funeral was held on January 27, followed by his burial at South-View Cemetery.
Tributes
Upon Aaron's death, the sports world expressed their condolences to him. Many current or former athletes and team owners such as MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred, Magic Johnson, David Ortiz, Dusty Baker, Eduardo Pérez, Mike Trout, and Baseball Hall of Fame chairman Jane Forbes Clark paid tribute to him. Fans paid tribute to Aaron by placing flowers in front of the home run wall where he hit his 715th home run at the former site of Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium. Politicians also paid tribute to him. Atlanta mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms released the following statement on his death:
“Derek, our family and I join the nation in sending heartfelt condolences to Mrs. Billye Aaron, the beautiful wife of Henry “Hank” Aaron for nearly 50 years, and the entire family. This is a considerable loss for the entire city of Atlanta. While the world knew him as ‘Hammering Hank Aaron’ because of his incredible, record-setting baseball career, he was a cornerstone of our village, graciously and freely joining Mrs. Aaron in giving their presence and resources toward making our city a better place. As an adopted son of Atlanta, Mr. Aaron was part of the fabric that helped place Atlanta on the world stage. Our gratitude, thoughts and prayers are with the Aaron family.”
Georgia governor Brian Kemp ordered flags in the state to be lowered half-staff in honor of him.
US President Joe Biden paid tribute to Aaron by releasing a statement calling him "an American hero". He also received tributes from former presidents Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama.
The Atlanta Braves honored Hank Aaron during the 2021 season by including his jersey number 44 on the back of the team caps along with Phil Niekro's jersey number, 35 (who died one month earlier in December 2020). They also painted his jersey number 44 in the midfield at Truist Park.
At game 3 of the 2021 World Series in Truist Park, a pregame ceremony was held honoring Hank Aaron where his son Hank Aaron Jr. threw out a ceremonial first pitch.
Personal life
Aaron's first marriage was to Barbara Lucas in 1953. They had five children: Gary, Lary, Dorinda, Gaile, and Hank Jr. He divorced Barbara in 1971 and married Billye Suber Williams on November 13, 1973. With his second wife, he had one child, Ceci.
Despite being publicly and professionally known as "Hank," Aaron preferred to go by his given name, "Henry."
Religion
Aaron was Catholic, having converted in 1959 with his family. He and his wife first became interested in the faith after the birth of their first child, whom they baptized immediately. A friendship with a Roman Catholic priest later helped lead to Hank and his wife's conversion. Aaron was known to frequently read Thomas à Kempis' 15th-century book The Imitation of Christ, which he kept in his locker.
In an interview in 1991, Aaron credited the priest, Fr. Michael Sablica, with helping him grow as a person in the 1950s. "He taught me what life was all about. But he was more than just a religious friend of mine, he was a friend because he talked as if he was not a priest sometimes." Active in the civil rights movement, the priest encouraged Aaron to be more publicly vocal about causes he believed in.
Sablica also encouraged him to "attend Mass every Sunday" during Spring Training, to which he responded with the racist realities of the day: "[In Bradenton], they won't let me go to Mass." Sablica said in an interview that he wouldn't have blamed Aaron if he stopped practicing, and Aaron indeed attended Friendship Baptist Church toward the end of his life—noting in his autobiography that he didn't remain Catholic for very long after converting.
Hobbies and health
Aaron was a long-time fan of the Cleveland Browns, having attended many games in disguise in their "Dawg Pound" seating section.
in 1986 Hank Aaron made a guest appearance in ‘Just Another Fox in the Crowd’, episode 30 of Crazy Like a Fox.
Aaron lived in the Atlanta area. In July 2013, media reported that his home was burglarized with jewelry and two BMW vehicles having been stolen. The cars were later recovered.
Aaron suffered from arthritis and had a partial hip replacement after a fall in 2014.
Awards and honors
In 1982, Aaron was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame during his first year of eligibility.
Aaron was awarded the Spingarn Medal in 1976, from the NAACP. In 1977, Aaron received the American Academy of Achievement's Golden Plate Award. In 1988, Aaron was inducted into the Wisconsin Athletic Hall of Fame for his time spent on the Eau Claire Bears, Milwaukee Braves, and Milwaukee Brewers.
In 1999, major league baseball created the Hank Aaron Award, to commemorate the 25th anniversary of Aaron's surpassing of Babe Ruth's career home run mark of 714 home runs and to honor Aaron's contributions to baseball. The award is given annually to the baseball hitters voted the most effective in each respective league. That same year, baseball fans named Aaron to the Major League Baseball All-Century Team. In 2002, scholar Molefi Kete Asante listed Aaron on his list of 100 Greatest African Americans.
When the city of Atlanta was converting Centennial Olympic Stadium into a new baseball stadium, many local residents hoped the stadium would be named for Aaron. When the stadium was instead named Turner Field (after Atlanta Braves owner Ted Turner), a section of Capitol Avenue running past the stadium was renamed Hank Aaron Drive. The stadium's street number is 755, after Aaron's total number of home runs; the 755 street number was retained for Turner Field's replacement, Truist Park. In April 1997, a new baseball facility for the AA Mobile Bay Bears constructed in Aaron's hometown of Mobile, Alabama was named Hank Aaron Stadium. Georgia State University acquired Turner Field and has since rebuilt it as Center Parc Stadium, in 2017, and university officials plan to build a new baseball park on the former Atlanta–Fulton County Stadium site, incorporating the left field wall where Aaron hit his record-breaking home run.
He was honored before the third game of 2021 World Series.
On February 5, 1999, at his 65th birthday celebration, Major League Baseball announced the introduction of the Hank Aaron Award. The award honors the best overall offensive performer in the American and National League. It was the first major award to be introduced in more than thirty years and had the distinction of being the first award named after a player who was still alive. Later that year, he ranked fifth on The Sporting News list of the 100 Greatest Baseball Players, and was elected to the Major League Baseball All-Century Team.
In June 2000 Tufts University awarded Aaron an honorary Doctor of Public Service. In July 2000 and again in July 2002, Aaron threw out the ceremonial first pitch at the Major League Baseball All-Star Game, played at Turner Field and Miller Park now named American Family Field, respectively.
On January 8, 2001, Aaron was presented with the Presidential Citizens Medal by President Bill Clinton. He received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian honor, from President George W. Bush in June 2002. In 2001, a recreational trail in Milwaukee connecting American Family Field with Lake Michigan along the Menomonee River was dedicated as the "Hank Aaron State Trail". Aaron attended the dedication. Aaron was on the Board of Selectors of Jefferson Awards for Public Service.
In 2002, Aaron was honored with the "Lombardi Award of Excellence" from the Vince Lombardi Cancer Foundation. The award was created to honor Vince Lombardi's legacy and is awarded annually to an individual who exemplifies the spirit of the coach.
Aaron dedicated the new exhibit "Hank Aaron-Chasing the Dream" at the Baseball Hall of Fame on April 25, 2009. Statues of Aaron stand outside the front entrance of both Turner Field and American Family Field. There is also a statue of him as an 18-year-old shortstop outside Carson Park in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, where he played his first season in the Braves' minor league system.
He was named a 2010 Georgia Trustee by the Georgia Historical Society, in conjunction with the Governor of Georgia, to recognize accomplishments and community service that reflect the ideals of the founding body of Trustees, which governed the Georgia colony from 1732 to 1752.
In 2011, the President of Princeton University Shirley M. Tilghman awarded an honorary Doctor of Humanities degree to Aaron.
In November 2015, Aaron was one of the five inaugural recipients of the Portrait of a Nation Prize, an award granted by the National Portrait Gallery in recognition of "exemplary achievements in the fields of civil rights, business, entertainment, science, and sports."
In January 2016, Aaron received the Order of the Rising Sun, Gold Rays with Rosette from Akihito, the Emperor of Japan.
On April 14, 2017, Aaron threw out the first pitch at SunTrust Park now called Truist Park at 83 years old.
The Elite Development Invitational, a youth baseball tournament organized by the Major League Baseball and the MLB Players Association to increase diversity in the sport, was renamed the Hank Aaron Invitational for the 2019 season.
Atlanta-area sports teams plan to honor Aaron during the 2021 seasons. The Arthur Blank-owned Atlanta Falcons and Atlanta United FC, along with Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets have plans during their 2021 seasons to reserve 44 for Aaron. It is expected the Gwinnett County professional teams, the AAA Gwinnett Stripers (2021 season) and AA Atlanta Gladiators (2021-22 season), will also be involved in temporarily retiring Aaron's 44. (The NBA's Atlanta Hawks had previously retired No. 44 for Pete Maravich.) Also in Atlanta, the Forrest Hill Academy was renamed the Hank Aaron New Beginnings Academy in April 2021. The alternative high school had been named after Nathan Bedford Forrest, a general in the Confederate Army and the Ku Klux Klan's first Grand Wizard.
See also
3,000 hit club
500 home run club
Aaron Monument
Hank Aaron Stadium
"A Leela of Her Own"
List of Major League Baseball annual doubles leaders
List of Major League Baseball annual home run leaders
List of Major League Baseball annual runs batted in leaders
List of Major League Baseball annual runs scored leaders
List of Major League Baseball batting champions
List of Major League Baseball career doubles leaders
List of Major League Baseball career hits leaders
List of Major League Baseball career home run leaders
List of Major League Baseball career runs batted in leaders
List of Major League Baseball career runs scored leaders
List of Major League Baseball career stolen bases leaders
List of Major League Baseball career triples leaders
List of Major League Baseball doubles records
List of Major League Baseball home run records
List of Major League Baseball individual streaks
List of Major League Baseball runs batted in records
Major League Baseball titles leaders
Ruth-Aaron pairs
References
Informational notes
Citations
Bibliography
External links
Play-by-Play Audio of Aaron's 715th Home Run from Archive.org
1934 births
2021 deaths
African-American baseball players
African-American Catholics
Atlanta Braves executives
Atlanta Braves players
Baseball players from Alabama
Baseball players from Atlanta
Burials at South-View Cemetery
Eau Claire Bears players
Gold Glove Award winners
Indianapolis Clowns players
Jacksonville Braves players
Major League Baseball players with retired numbers
Major League Baseball right fielders
Milwaukee Braves players
Milwaukee Brewers players
National Baseball Hall of Fame inductees
National League All-Stars
National League batting champions
National League home run champions
National League Most Valuable Player Award winners
National League RBI champions
Presidential Citizens Medal recipients
Presidential Medal of Freedom recipients
Recipients of the Order of the Rising Sun, 4th class
Spingarn Medal winners
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14322 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holy%20Grail | Holy Grail | The Holy Grail (, , , ) is a treasure that serves as an important motif in Arthurian literature. Different traditions describe it as a cup, dish or stone with miraculous powers that provides eternal youth or sustenance in infinite abundance, often in the custody of the Fisher King. The term "holy grail" is often used to denote an elusive object or goal that is sought after for its great significance.
A "grail", wondrous but not explicitly holy, first appears in Perceval, le Conte du Graal, an unfinished romance written by Chrétien de Troyes around 1190. Chrétien's story attracted many continuators, translators and interpreters in the later 12th and early 13th centuries, including Wolfram von Eschenbach, who perceived the Grail as a stone. In the late 12th century, Robert de Boron wrote in Joseph d'Arimathie that the Grail was Jesus's vessel from the Last Supper, which Joseph of Arimathea used to catch Christ's blood at the crucifixion. Thereafter, the Holy Grail became interwoven with the legend of the Holy Chalice, the Last Supper cup, a theme continued in works such as the Lancelot-Grail cycle and consequently Le Morte d'Arthur.
Etymology
The word , as it is earliest spelled, comes from Old French or , cognate with Old Occitan and Old Catalan , meaning "a cup or bowl of earth, wood, or metal" (or other various types of vessels in different Occitan dialects). The most commonly accepted etymology derives it from Latin or via an earlier form, , a derivative of or , which was, in turn, borrowed from Greek (, a large wine-mixing vessel). Alternative suggestions include a derivative of , a name for a type of woven basket that came to refer to a dish, or a derivative of Latin meaning "'by degree', 'by stages', applied to a dish brought to the table in different stages or services during a meal".
In the 15th century, English writer John Hardyng invented a fanciful new etymology for Old French (or ), meaning "Holy Grail", by parsing it as , meaning "royal blood". This etymology was used by some later medieval British writers such as Thomas Malory, and became prominent in the conspiracy theory developed in the book The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail, in which refers to the Jesus bloodline.
Medieval literature
The literature surrounding the Grail can be divided into two groups. The first concerns King Arthur's knights visiting the Grail castle or questing after the object. The second concerns the Grail's history in the time of Joseph of Arimathea.
The nine works from the first group are:
Perceval, the Story of the Grail by Chrétien de Troyes.
Four Continuations of Chrétien's unfinished poem, by authors of differing vision and talent, designed to bring the story to a close.
Parzival by Wolfram von Eschenbach, which adapted at least the holiness of Robert's Grail into the framework of Chrétien's story. In Wolfram's telling, the Grail was kept safe at the castle of Munsalvaesche (mons salvationis), entrusted to Titurel, the first Grail King. Some, not least the Benedictine monks, have identified the castle with their real sanctuary of Montserrat in Catalonia.
The Didot Perceval, named after the manuscript's former owner, and purportedly a prosification of Robert de Boron's sequel to Joseph d'Arimathie.
Welsh romance Peredur son of Efrawg, a loose translation of Chrétien's poem and the Continuations, with some influence from native Welsh literature.
Perlesvaus, called the "least canonical" Grail romance because of its very different character.
German poem Diu Crône (The Crown), in which Gawain, rather than Percival, achieves the Grail.
The Lancelot section of the vast Vulgate Cycle introduced the new Grail hero, Galahad. The Queste del Saint Graal, a follow-up part of the cycle, concerns Galahad's eventual achievement of the Grail.
Of the second group there are:
Robert de Boron's Joseph d'Arimathie.
The Estoire del Saint Graal, the first part of the Vulgate Cycle (but written after Lancelot and the Queste), based on Robert's tale but expanding it greatly with many new details.
Verses by Rigaut de Barbezieux, a late 12th or early 13th-century Provençal troubador, where mention is made of Perceval, the lance, and the Grail ("Like Perceval when he lived, who stood amazed in contemplation, so that he was quite unable to ask what purpose the lance and grail served" - "Attressi con Persavaus el temps que vivia, que s'esbait d'esgarder tant qu'anc non saup demandar de que servia la lansa ni-l grazaus").
The Grail was considered a bowl or dish when first described by Chrétien de Troyes. There, it is a processional salver, a tray, used to serve at a feast. Hélinand of Froidmont described a grail as a "wide and deep saucer" (scutella lata et aliquantulum profunda); other authors had their own ideas. Robert de Boron portrayed it as the vessel of the Last Supper. Peredur son of Efrawg had no Grail as such, presenting the hero instead with a platter containing his kinsman's bloody, severed head.
Chrétien de Troyes
The Grail is first featured in Perceval, le Conte du Graal (The Story of the Grail) by Chrétien de Troyes, who claims he was working from a source book given to him by his patron, Count Philip of Flanders. In this incomplete poem, dated sometime between 1180 and 1191, the object has not yet acquired the implications of holiness it would have in later works. While dining in the magical abode of the Fisher King, Perceval witnesses a wondrous procession in which youths carry magnificent objects from one chamber to another, passing before him at each course of the meal. First comes a young man carrying a bleeding lance, then two boys carrying candelabras. Finally, a beautiful young girl emerges bearing an elaborately decorated graal, or "grail".
Chrétien refers to this object not as "The Grail" but as "a grail" (un graal), showing the word was used, in its earliest literary context, as a common noun. For Chrétien, a grail was a wide, somewhat deep, dish or bowl, interesting because it contained not a pike, salmon, or lamprey, as the audience may have expected for such a container, but a single Communion wafer which provided sustenance for the Fisher King's crippled father. Perceval, who had been warned against talking too much, remains silent through all of this and wakes up the next morning alone. He later learns that if he had asked the appropriate questions about what he saw, he would have healed his maimed host, much to his honour. The story of the Wounded King's mystical fasting is not unique; several saints were said to have lived without food besides communion, for instance Saint Catherine of Genoa. This may imply that Chrétien intended the Communion wafer to be the significant part of the ritual, and the Grail to be a mere prop.
Robert de Boron
Though Chrétien's account is the earliest and most influential of all Grail texts, it was in the work of Robert de Boron that the Grail truly became the "Holy Grail" and assumed the form most familiar to modern readers in its Christian context. In his verse romance Joseph d'Arimathie, composed between 1191 and 1202, Robert tells the story of Joseph of Arimathea acquiring the chalice of the Last Supper to collect Christ's blood upon his removal from the cross. Joseph is thrown in prison, where Christ visits him and explains the mysteries of the blessed cup. Upon his release, Joseph gathers his in-laws and other followers and travels to the west. He founds a dynasty of Grail keepers that eventually includes Perceval.
Wolfram von Eschenbach
In Parzival, Wolfram von Eschenbach, citing the authority of a certain (probably fictional) Kyot the Provençal, claimed the Grail was a Stone, the sanctuary of the neutral angels who took neither side during Lucifer's rebellion. It is called Lapis exillis, which in alchemy is the name of the Philosopher's stone.
Lancelot-Grail
The authors of the Vulgate Cycle used the Grail as a symbol of divine grace; the virgin Galahad, illegitimate son of Lancelot and Elaine, the world's greatest knight and the Grail Bearer at the castle of Corbenic, is destined to achieve the Grail, his spiritual purity making him a greater warrior than even his illustrious father. The Queste del Saint Graal (The Quest of The Holy Grail) tells also of the adventures of various Knights of the Round Table in their eponymous quest. Some of them, including Percival and Bors the Younger, eventually join Galahad as his companions near the successful end of the Grail Quest and are witnesses of his ascension to Heaven.
Galahad and the interpretation of the Grail involving him were picked up in the 15th century by Thomas Malory in Le Morte d'Arthur and remain popular today. While it is not explicit that the Holy Grail is never to be seen again on Earth, it is stated by Malory that there has since then been no knight capable of obtaining it.
Scholarly hypotheses
Scholars have long speculated on the origins of the Holy Grail before Chrétien, suggesting that it may contain elements of the trope of magical cauldrons from Celtic mythology and later Welsh mythology combined with Christian legend surrounding the Eucharist, the latter found in Eastern Christian sources, conceivably in that of the Byzantine Mass, or even Persian sources. The view that the "origin" of the Grail legend should be seen as deriving from Celtic mythology was championed by Roger Sherman Loomis, Alfred Nutt and Jessie Weston. Loomis traced a number of parallels between Medieval Welsh literature and Irish material and the Grail romances, including similarities between the Mabinogions Bran the Blessed and the Arthurian Fisher King, and between Bran's life-restoring cauldron and the Grail.
The opposing view dismissed the "Celtic" connections as spurious and interpreted the legend as essentially Christian in origin. Joseph Goering has identified sources for Grail imagery in 12th-century wall paintings from churches in the Catalan Pyrenees (now mostly removed to the Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya), which present unique iconic images of the Virgin Mary holding a bowl that radiates tongues of fire, images that predate the first literary account by Chrétien de Troyes. Goering argues that they were the original inspiration for the Grail legend.
Psychologists Emma Jung and Marie-Louise von Franz used analytical psychology to interpret the Grail as a series of symbols in their book The Grail Legend. This expanded on interpretations by Carl Jung, which were later invoked by Joseph Campbell.
Richard Barber (2004) argued that the Grail legend is connected to the introduction of "more ceremony and mysticism" surrounding the sacrament of the Eucharist in the high medieval period, proposing that the first Grail stories may have been connected to the "renewal in this traditional sacrament". Daniel Scavone (1999, 2003) has argued that the "Grail" in origin referred to the Image of Edessa. Goulven Peron (2016) suggested that the Holy Grail may reflect the horn of the river-god Achelous as described by Ovid in the Metamorphoses.
Later traditions
Relics
In the wake of the Arthurian romances, several artifacts came to be identified as the Holy Grail in medieval relic veneration. These artifacts are said to have been the vessel used at the Last Supper, but other details vary. Despite the prominence of the Grail literature, traditions about a Last Supper relic remained rare in contrast to other items associated with Jesus' last days, such as the True Cross and Holy Lance.
One tradition predates the Grail romances: in the 7th century, the pilgrim Arculf reported that the Last Supper chalice was displayed near Jerusalem. In the wake of Robert de Boron's Grail works, several other items came to be claimed as the true Last Supper vessel. In the late 12th century, one was said to be in Byzantium; Albrecht von Scharfenberg's Grail romance Der Jüngere Titurel associated it explicitly with the Arthurian Grail, but claimed it was only a copy. This item was said to have been looted in the Fourth Crusade and brought to Troyes in France, but it was lost during the French Revolution.
Two relics associated with the Grail survive today. The Sacro Catino (Sacred Basin, also known as the Genoa Chalice) is a green glass dish held at the Genoa Cathedral said to have been used at the Last Supper. Its provenance is unknown, and there are two divergent accounts of how it was brought to Genoa by Crusaders in the 12th century. It was not associated with the Last Supper until later, in the wake of the Grail romances; the first known association is in Jacobus da Varagine's chronicle of Genoa in the late 13th century, which draws on the Grail literary tradition. The Catino was moved and broken during Napoleon's conquest in the early 19th century, revealing that it is glass rather than emerald.
The Holy Chalice of Valencia is an agate dish with a mounting for use as a chalice. The bowl may date to Greco-Roman times, but its dating is unclear, and its provenance is unknown before 1399, when it was gifted to Martin I of Aragon. By the 14th century an elaborate tradition had developed that this object was the Last Supper chalice. This tradition mirrors aspects of the Grail material, with several major differences, suggesting a separate tradition entirely. It is not associated with Joseph of Arimathea or Jesus' blood; it is said to have been taken to Rome by Saint Peter and later entrusted to Saint Lawrence. Early references do not call the object the "Grail"; the first evidence connecting it to the Grail tradition is from the 15th century. The monarchy sold the cup in the 15th century to Valencia Cathedral, where it remains a significant local icon.
Several objects were identified with the Holy Grail in the 17th century. In the 20th century, a series of new items became associated with it. These include the Nanteos Cup, a medieval wooden bowl found near Rhydyfelin, Wales; a glass dish found near Glastonbury, England; and the Antioch chalice, a 6th-century silver-gilt object that became attached to the Grail legend in the 1930s.
Locations associated with the Holy Grail
In the modern era, a number of places have become associated with the Holy Grail. One of the most prominent is Glastonbury in Somerset, England. Glastonbury was associated with King Arthur and his resting place of Avalon by the 12th century. In the 13th century, a legend arose that Joseph of Arimathea was the founder of Glastonbury Abbey. Early accounts of Joseph at Glastonbury focus on his role as the evangelist of Britain rather than as the custodian of the Holy Grail, but from the 15th century, the Grail became a more prominent part of the legends surrounding Glastonbury. Interest in Glastonbury resurged in the late 19th century, inspired by renewed interest in the Arthurian legend and contemporary spiritual movements centered on ancient sacred sites. In the late 19th century, John Goodchild hid a glass bowl near Glastonbury; a group of his friends, including Wellesley Tudor Pole, retrieved the cup in 1906 and promoted it as the original Holy Grail. Glastonbury and its Holy Grail legend have since become a point of focus for various New Age and Neopagan groups.
In the early 20th century, esoteric writers identified Montségur, a stronghold of the heretical Cathar sect in the 13th century, as the Grail castle. Similarly, the 14th-century Rosslyn Chapel in Midlothian, Scotland, became attached to the Grail legend in the mid-20th century when a succession of conspiracy books identified it as a secret hiding place of the Grail.
Modern interpretations
Pseudohistory and conspiracy theories
Since the 19th century, the Holy Grail has been linked to various conspiracy theories. In 1818, Austrian pseudohistorical writer Joseph von Hammer-Purgstall connected the Grail to contemporary myths surrounding the Knights Templar that cast the order as a secret society dedicated to mystical knowledge and relics. In Hammer-Purgstall's work, the Grail is not a physical relic but a symbol of the secret knowledge that the Templars sought. There is no historical evidence linking the Templars to a search for the Grail, but subsequent writers have elaborated on the Templar theories.
Starting in the early 20th century, writers, particularly in France, further connected the Templars and Grail to the Cathars. In 1906, French esoteric writer Joséphin Péladan identified the Cathar castle of Montségur with Munsalväsche or Montsalvat, the Grail castle in Wolfram's Parzival. This identification has inspired a wider legend asserting that the Cathars possessed the Holy Grail. According to these stories, the Cathars guarded the Grail at Montségur, and smuggled it out when the castle fell in 1244.
Beginning in 1933, German writer Otto Rahn published a series of books tying the Grail, Templars, and Cathars to modern German nationalist mythology. According to Rahn, the Grail was a symbol of a pure Germanic religion repressed by Christianity. Rahn's books inspired interest in the Grail in Nazi occultism and led to Heinrich Himmler's abortive sponsorship of Rahn's search for the Grail, as well as many subsequent conspiracy theories and fictional works about the Nazis searching for the Grail.
In the late 20th century, writers Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh and Henry Lincoln created one of the most widely known conspiracy theories about the Holy Grail. The theory first appeared in the BBC documentary series Chronicle in the 1970s, and was elaborated upon in the bestselling 1982 book Holy Blood, Holy Grail. The theory combines myths about the Templars and Cathars with various other legends and a prominent hoax about a secret order called the Priory of Sion. According to this theory, the Holy Grail is not a physical object, but a symbol of the bloodline of Jesus. The blood connection is based on the etymological reading of san greal (holy grail) as sang real (royal blood), which dates to the 15th century. The narrative developed here is that Jesus was not divine, and had children with Mary Magdalene, who took the family to France where their descendants became the Merovingians dynasty. While the Catholic Church worked to destroy the dynasty, they were protected by the Priory of Sion and their associates, including the Templars, Cathars, and other secret societies. The book, its arguments, and its evidence have been widely dismissed by scholars as pseudohistorical, but it has had a vast influence on conspiracy and alternate history books. It has also inspired fiction, most notably Dan Brown's 2003 novel The Da Vinci Code and its 2006 film adaptation.
Music and painting
The combination of hushed reverence, chromatic harmonies and sexualized imagery in Richard Wagner's final music drama Parsifal, premiered in 1882, developed this theme, associating the grail – now periodically producing blood – directly with female fertility. The high seriousness of the subject was also epitomized in Dante Gabriel Rossetti's painting in which a woman modeled by Alexa Wilding holds the Grail with one hand, while adopting a gesture of blessing with the other.
A major mural series depicting the Quest for the Holy Grail was done by the artist Edwin Austin Abbey during the first decade of the 20th century for the Boston Public Library. Other artists, including George Frederic Watts and William Dyce, also portrayed grail subjects.
Literature
The story of the Grail and of the quest to find it became increasingly popular in the 19th century, referred to in literature such as Alfred, Lord Tennyson's Arthurian cycle Idylls of the King. A sexualised interpretation of the grail, now identified with female genitalia, appeared in 1870 in Hargrave Jennings' book The Rosicrucians, Their Rites and Mysteries.
T. S. Eliot's poem The Waste Land (1922) loosely follows the legend of the Holy Grail and the Fisher King combined with vignettes of contemporary British society. In his first note to the poem Eliot attributes the title to Jessie Weston's book on the Grail legend, From Ritual to Romance. The allusion is to the wounding of the Fisher King and the subsequent sterility of his lands. A poem of the same title, though otherwise dissimilar, written by Madison Cawein, was published in 1913 in Poetry.
In John Cowper Powys's A Glastonbury Romance (1932) the "heroine is the Grail," and its central concern is with the various myths and legends along with history associated with Glastonbury. It is also possible to see most of the main characters as undertaking a Grail quest.
The Grail is central in Charles Williams' novel War in Heaven (1930) and his two collections of poems about Taliessin, Taliessin Through Logres and Region of the Summer Stars (1938).
The Silver Chalice (1952) is a non-Arthurian historical Grail novel by Thomas B. Costain.
A quest for the Grail appears in Nelson DeMille's adventure novel The Quest (1975), set during the 1970s.
Marion Zimmer Bradley's Arthurian revisionist fantasy novel The Mists of Avalon (1983) presented the Grail as a symbol of water, part of a set of objects representing the four classical elements.
The main theme of Rosalind Miles' Child of the Holy Grail (2000) in her Guenevere series is the story of the Grail quest by the 14-year-old Galahad.
The Grail motif features heavily in Umberto Eco's 2000 novel Baudolino, set in the 12th century.
It is the subject of Bernard Cornwell's historical fiction series of books The Grail Quest (2000–2012), set during the Hundred Years War. In his series the Warlord Chronicles, an adaptation of the Arthurian legend, Cornwell also reimagines the Grail quest as a quest for a cauldron which is one of the Thirteen Treasures of Britain from Celtic mythology.
Influenced by the 1982 publication of the ostensibly non-fiction The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail, Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code (2003) has the "grail" taken to refer to Mary Magdalene as the "receptacle" of Jesus' bloodline (playing on the sang real etymology). In Brown's novel, it is hinted that this Grail was long buried beneath Rosslyn Chapel in Scotland, but that in recent decades its guardians had it moved to a secret chamber embedded in the floor beneath the Inverted Pyramid in the entrance of the Louvre museum.
Michael Moorcock's fantasy novel The War Hound and the World's Pain (1981) depicts a supernatural Grail quest set in the era of the Thirty Years' War.
German history and fantasy novel author Rainer M. Schröder wrote the trilogy Die Bruderschaft vom Heiligen Gral (The Brotherhood of the Holy Grail) about a group of four Knights Templar who save the Grail from the Fall of Acco 1291 and go through an Odyssey to bring it to the Temple in Paris in the first two books, Der Fall von Akkon (2006) and Das Amulett der Wüstenkrieger (2006), while defending the holy relic from the attempts of a satanic sect called Iscarians to steal it. In the third book, Das Labyrinth der schwarzen Abtei (2007), the four heroes must reunite to smuggle the Holy Grail out of the Temple in Paris after the fall of the Knights Templar 1307, again pursued by the Iscarians (who in the novel used the King's animosity against the Templars to their advantage). Interestingly, Schröder also indirectly addresses the Cathar Theory by letting the four heroes encounter Cathars - among them old friends from their flight from Acco - on their way to Portugal to seek refuge with the King of Portugal and travel further west.
The 15th novel in The Dresden Files series by Jim Butcher, Skin Game (2014), features Harry Dresden being recruited by Denarian and longtime enemy Nicodemus into a heist team seeking to retrieve the Holy Grail from the vault of Hades, the lord of the Underworld. The properties of the item are not explicit, but the relic itself makes an appearance and is in the hands of Nicodemus by the end of the novel's events.
The Holy Grail features prominently in Jack Vance's Lyonesse Trilogy, where it is the subject of an earlier quest, several generations before the birth of King Arthur. However, in contrast to the Arthurian canon. Vance's Grail is a common object lacking any magical or spiritual qualities, and the characters finding it derive little benefit.
Grails: Quests of the Dawn (1994), edited by Richard Gilliam, Martin H. Greenberg, and Edward E. Kramer is a collection of 25 short stories about the grail by various science fiction and fantasy writers.
Film and other media
In the cinema, the Holy Grail debuted in the 1904 silent film Parsifal, an adaptation of Wagner's opera by Edwin S. Porter. More recent cinematic adaptations include Costain's The Silver Chalice made into a 1954 film by Victor Saville and Brown's The Da Vinci Code turned into a 2006 film by Ron Howard.
The silent drama film The Light in the Dark (1922) involves discovery of the Grail in modern times.
Robert Bresson's fantasy film Lancelot du Lac (1974) includes a more realistic version of the Grail quest from Arthurian romances.
Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975) is a comedic take on the Arthurian Grail quest, adapted in 2004 as the stage production Spamalot.
John Boorman, in his fantasy film Excalibur (1981), attempted to restore a more traditional heroic representation of an Arthurian tale, in which the Grail is revealed as a mystical means to revitalise Arthur and the barren land to which his depressive sickness is connected.
Steven Spielberg's adventure film Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989) features Indiana Jones and his father in a race for the Grail against the Nazis.
In a pair of fifth-season episodes (September 1989), entitled "Legend of the Holy Rose," MacGyver undertakes a quest for the Grail.
Terry Gilliam's comedy-drama film The Fisher King (1991) features the Grail quest in the modern New York City.
In the season one episode "Grail" (1994) of the television series Babylon 5, a man named Aldous Gajic visits Babylon 5 in his continuing quest to find the Holy Grail. His quest is primarily a plot device, as the episode's action revolves not around the quest but rather around his presence and impact on the life of a station resident.
In Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon, the Holy Grail (Sehai in the anime, or Rainbow Moon Chalice) is the magical object with which Sailor Moon transforms in her Super form.
A science fiction version of the Grail Quest is central theme in the Stargate SG-1 season 10 episode "The Quest" (2006).
The song "Holy Grail" by Jay-Z featuring Justin Timberlake was released in 2013.
In the video game Persona 5 (2016), the Holy Grail is the Treasure of the game's final Palace, representing the combined desires of all of humanity for a higher power to take control their lives and make a world that has no sense of individuality.
In the television series Knightfall (2017), the search for the Holy Grail by the Knights Templar is a major theme of the series' first season. The Grail, which appears as a simple earthenware cup, is coveted by various factions including the Pope, who thinks that possession of it will enable him to ignite another Crusade.
In the Fate franchise, the Holy Grail serves as the prize of the Holy Grail War, granting a single wish to the victor of the battle royale. However, it is hinted at throughout the series that this Grail is not the real chalice of Christ, but is actually an item of uncertain nature created by mages some generations ago.
In the Assassin's Creed video game franchise the Holy Grail is mentioned. In the original game, one Templar refers to the main relic of the game as the Holy Grail, although it was later discovered to be one of many Apples of Eden. The Holy Grail was mentioned again in Templar Legends, either ending up in Scotland or Spain by different accounts. The Holy Grail appears again in Assassin's Creed: Altaïr's Chronicles, by the name of the Chalice, however this time not as an object but as a woman named Adha, similar to the sang rael, or royal blood, interpretation.
In the fourth series of The Grand Tour, the trio goes to Nosy Boraha where they accidentally find the Holy Grail while searching for La Buse's buried treasure.
In the 17th episode of Little Witch Academia, "Amanda O'Neill and the Holy Grail", the Holy Grail is used as a plot device in which witches Amanda O'Neill and Akko Kagari set out to find the item itself at Appleton School.
In the 12th episode of season 9 of the American show The Office, Jim Halpert sends Dwight Schrute on a wild goose chase to find the Holy Grail. After Dwight completing all the clues to find it, but coming up empty handed, the camera cuts to Glenn drinking out of it in his office.
See also
Akshaya Patra (Hindu mythology)
Arma Christi
Cornucopia (Greek mythology)
Cup of Jamshid (Persian mythology)
Fairy cup legend
Holy Chalice (Christian mythology)
List of mythological objects
Relics associated with Jesus
Sampo (Finnish mythology)
Salsabil (Quran)
References
Further reading
Barber, Richard (2004). The Holy Grail: Imagination and Belief. Harvard University Press.
Campbell, Joseph (1990). Transformations of Myth Through Time. Harper & Row Publishers, New York.
Loomis, Roger Sherman (1991). The Grail: From Celtic Myth to Christian Symbol. Princeton.
Weston, Jessie L. (1993; originally published 1920). From Ritual To Romance. Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey.
Wood, Juliette (2012). The Holy Grail: History and Legend. University of Wales Press. .
External links
The Holy Grail at the Camelot Project
The Holy Grail at the Catholic Encyclopedia
The Holy Grail today in Valencia Cathedral
XVth century Old French Estoire del saint Graal manuscript BNF fr. 113 Bibliothèque Nationale de France, selection of illuminated folios, Modern French Translation, Commentaries.
Christian terminology
Literary motifs | [
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14323 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunt%20the%20Wumpus | Hunt the Wumpus | Hunt the Wumpus is a text-based adventure game developed by Gregory Yob in 1973. In the game, the player moves through a series of connected caves, arranged as the vertices of a dodecahedron, as they hunt a monster named the Wumpus. The turn-based game has the player trying to avoid fatal bottomless pits and "super bats" that will move them around the cave system; the goal is to fire one of their "crooked arrows" through the caves to kill the Wumpus. Yob created the game in early 1973 due to his annoyance at the multiple hide-and-seek games set in caves in a grid pattern, and multiple variations of the game were sold via mail order by Yob and the People's Computer Company. The source code to the game was published in Creative Computing in 1975 and republished in The Best of Creative Computing the following year.
The game sparked multiple variations and expanded versions and was ported to several systems, including the TI-99/4A home computer. It has been cited as an early example of the survival horror genre, and was listed in 2012 on Times All-Time 100 greatest video games list. The Wumpus monster has appeared in several forms in media since 1973, including other video games, a novella, and Magic: The Gathering cards.
Gameplay
Hunt the Wumpus is a text-based adventure game set in a series of caves connected by tunnels. In one of the twenty caves is a "Wumpus", which the player is attempting to kill. Additionally, two of the caves contain bottomless pits, while two others contain "super bats" which will pick up the player and move them to a random cave. The game is turn-based; each cave is given a number by the game, and each turn begins with the player being told which cave they are in and which caves are connected to it by tunnels. The player then elects to either move to one of those connected caves or shoot one of their five "crooked arrows", named for their ability to change direction while in flight. Each cave is connected to three others, and the system as a whole is equivalent to a dodecahedron.
The caves are in complete darkness, so the player cannot see into adjacent caves; instead, upon moving to a new empty cave, the game describes if they can smell a Wumpus, hear a bat, or feel a draft from a pit in one of the connected caves. Entering a cave with a pit ends the game due to the player falling in, while entering the cave with the Wumpus startles it; the Wumpus will either move to another cave or remain and kill the player. If the player chooses to fire an arrow, they first select how many caves, up to five, that the arrow will travel through, and then enters each cave that the arrow moves through. If the player enters a cave number that is not connected to where the arrow is, the game picks a valid option at random. If the arrow hits the player while it is travelling, the player loses; if it hits the Wumpus, they win. If the arrow does not hit anything, then the Wumpus is startled and may move to a new cave; unlike the player, the Wumpus is not affected by super bats or pits. If the Wumpus moves to the player's location, they lose.
Development
In early 1973, Gregory Yob was looking through some of the games published by the People's Computer Company (PCC), and grew annoyed that there were multiple games, including Hurkle and Mugwump, that had the player "hide and seek" in a 10 by 10 grid. Yob was inspired to make a game that used a non-grid pattern, where the player would move through points connected through some other type of topology. Yob came up with the name "Hunt the Wumpus" that afternoon, and decided from there that the player would traverse through rooms arranged in a non-grid pattern, with a monster called a Wumpus somewhere in them. Yob chose a dodecahedron because it was his favorite platonic solid, and because he had once made a kite shaped like one. From there, Yob added the arrows to shoot between rooms, terming it the "crooked arrow" as it would need to change directions to go through multiple caves, and decided that the player could only sense nearby caves by smell, as a light would wake the Wumpus up. He then added the bottomless pits, and a couple days later the super bats. Finally, feeling that players would want to create a map, he made the cave map fixed and gave each cave a number. Yob later claimed that, to his knowledge, most players did not create maps of the cave system, nor follow his expected strategy of carefully moving around the system to determine exactly where the Wumpus was before firing an arrow. While playtesting the game, Yob found it unexciting that the Wumpus always stayed in one place, and so changed it to be able to move. He then delivered a copy of the game, written in BASIC, to the PCC.
In May 1973, one month after he had finished coding the game, Yob went to a conference at Stanford University and discovered that in the section of the conference where the PCC had set up computer terminals, multiple players were engrossed in playing Wumpus, making it, in his opinion, a hit game. The PCC first mentioned the game in its newsletter in September 1973 as a "cave game" that would be available to order through them soon, and gave it a full two-page description in its next issue in November 1973. Tapes containing Wumpus were sold via mail order by both the PCC and Yob himself. The PCC description was republished along with source code in its book What to Do After You Hit Return in 1977, while a description of the game and its source code was published in Creative Computing in its October 1975 issue, and republished in The Best of Creative Computing the following year. It also appeared in other books of BASIC games, such as Computer Programs in BASIC in 1981.
Legacy
Multiple versions of Hunt the Wumpus were created and distributed after the game's release. Yob made Wumpus 2 and Wumpus 3, beginning immediately after finishing the original game, with Wumpus 2 adding different cave arrangements and Wumpus 3 adding more hazards. The source code for Wumpus 2 was published in Creative Computing and republished in The Best of Creative Computing 2 (1977), along with a description of Wumpus 3. The PCC announced in the same November 1973 newsletter issue as it discussed the original game that a version from them titled Super Wumpus would be available soon, and listed it in its order catalog in its January 1974 issue. In 1978, a book titled Superwumpus, by Jack Emmerichs, was published containing source code for both BASIC and assembly language versions of his unrelated version of Hunt the Wumpus.
In addition to the original BASIC games, versions of Hunt the Wumpus have been created for numerous other systems. Yob had seen or heard of versions in several languages, such as IBM RPG and Fortran, by 1975. A version in C, written in November 1973 by Ken Thompson, creator of the Unix operating system, was released in 1974; a later C version can still be found in the bsdgames package on modern BSD and Linux operating systems. In 1978 Danny Hillis, working as a summer intern on the TMS9918 graphics chip, wrote a graphical version of the game as a demonstration with the pattern of caves displayed as a torus instead of a dodecahedron, which was later published as a commercial game for the TI-99/4A. In 1981, a version was released for the HP-41C calculator.
Hunt the Wumpus has been cited as an early example of a survival horror game; the book Vampires and Zombies claims that it was an early example of the genre, while the paper "Restless dreams in Silent Hill" states that "from a historical perspective the genre's roots lie in Hunt the Wumpus". Other sources, however, such as the book The World of Scary Video Games, claim that the game lacks elements needed for a "horror" game, as the player hunts rather than is hunted by the Wumpus, and nothing in the game is explicitly intended to frighten the player, making it more of an early adventure or puzzle game. Kevin Cogger of 1Up.com claimed that Wumpus, whether or not it is an adventure game, "introduced a number of concepts that would come to define the adventure genre", such as presenting the game from the perspective of the player-character, and non-grid-based map design. In 2012, Hunt the Wumpus was listed on Times All-Time 100 greatest video games list. The Wumpus monster has appeared in several different forms of media, including a "Hunted Wumpus" Magic: The Gathering card, the 1983 video game M.U.L.E., and Cory Doctorow's 2011 novella The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow. The textbook Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach, with editions published since 1995, uses a version of this game as one of the examples.
References
External links
Playable versions of Hunt the Wumpus and Hunt the Wumpus 2 as published by Creative Computing (1977) can be found at the Internet Archive
Game manual for the TI-99/4A version of Hunt the Wumpus
1973 video games
Adventure games
Horror video games
Mainframe games
Public-domain software with source code
Texas Instruments TI-99/4A games
Video games developed in the United States
Video games with textual graphics | [
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14324 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hash | Hash | Hash, hashes, hash mark, or hashing may refer to:
Substances
Hash (food), a coarse mixture of ingredients
Hash, a nickname for hashish, a cannabis product
Hash mark
Hash mark (sports), a marking on hockey rinks and gridiron football fields
Hatch mark, a form of mathematical notation
Number sign (#), also known as the hash, hash mark, or (in American English) pound sign
Service stripe, a military and paramilitary decoration
Tally mark, a counting notation
Computing
Hash function, an encoding of data into a small, fixed size; used in hash tables and cryptography
Hash table, a data structure using hash functions
Cryptographic hash function, a hash function used to authenticate message integrity
URI fragment, in computer hypertext, a string of characters that refers to a subordinate resource
Geohash, a spatial data structure which subdivides space into buckets of grid shape
Hashtag, a form of metadata often used on social networking websites
hash (Unix), an operating system command
Hash chain, a method of producing many one-time keys from a single key or password
Password hash
Zobrist hashing, a method of hashing chess positions into a key
Hashgraph, a Distributed ledger technology.
Other uses
Hash House Harriers, a running club
Hash (EP) ([#]), a 2020 EP by Loona
See also
Hash browns
Hash House (disambiguation) | [
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14325 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hearst%20Communications | Hearst Communications | Hearst Communications, Inc., often referred to simply as Hearst, is an American multinational mass media and business information conglomerate based in the Hearst Tower in Midtown Manhattan, New York City.
Hearst owns newspapers, magazines, television channels, and television stations, including the San Francisco Chronicle, the Houston Chronicle, Cosmopolitan and Esquire. It owns 50% of the A&E Networks cable network group and 20% of the sports cable network group ESPN, both in partnership with The Walt Disney Company.
The conglomerate also owns several business-information companies, including Fitch Ratings and First Databank.
The company was founded by William Randolph Hearst as an owner of newspapers, and the Hearst family remains involved in its ownership and management.
History
The formative years
In 1880, George Hearst, mining entrepreneur and U.S. senator, bought the San Francisco Daily Examiner. In 1887, he turned the Examiner over to his son, William Randolph Hearst, who that year founded the Hearst Corporation. The younger Hearst eventually built readership for Hearst-owned newspapers and magazines from 15,000 to over 20 million. Hearst began to purchase and launched other newspapers, including the New York Journal in 1895 and the Los Angeles Examiner in 1903.
In 1903, Hearst created Motor magazine, the first title in his company's magazine division. He acquired Cosmopolitan in 1905, and Good Housekeeping in 1911. The company entered the book publishing business in 1913 with the formation of Hearst's International Library. Hearst began producing film features in the mid-1910s, creating one of the earliest animation studios: the International Film Service, turning characters from Hearst newspaper strips into film characters.
Hearst bought the Atlanta Georgian in 1912, the San Francisco Call and the San Francisco Post in 1913, the Boston Advertiser and the Washington Times (unrelated to the present-day paper) in 1917, and the Chicago Herald in 1918 (resulting in the Herald-Examiner).
In 1919, Hearst's book publishing division was renamed Cosmopolitan Book.
The peak era
In the 1920s and 1930s, Hearst owned the biggest media conglomerate in the world, which included a number of magazines and newspapers in major cities. Hearst also began acquiring radio stations to complement his papers. Hearst saw financial challenges in the early 1920s, when he was using company funds to build Hearst Castle in San Simeon and support movie production at Cosmopolitan Productions. This eventually led to the merger of the magazine Hearst International with Cosmopolitan in 1925.
Despite some financial troubles, Hearst began extending its reach in 1921, purchasing the Detroit Times, The Boston Record, and the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. Hearst then added the Los Angeles Herald and Washington Herald, as well as the Oakland Post-Enquirer, the Syracuse Telegram and the Rochester Journal-American in 1922. He continued his buying spree into the mid-1920s, purchasing the Baltimore News (1923), the San Antonio Light (1924), the Albany Times Union (1924), and The Milwaukee Sentinel (1924). In 1924, Hearst entered the tabloid market in New York City with New York Daily Mirror, meant to compete with the New York Daily News.
In addition to print and radio, Hearst established Cosmopolitan Pictures in the early 1920s, distributing his films under the newly created Metro Goldwyn Mayer. In 1929, Hearst and MGM created the Hearst Metrotone newsreels.
Retrenching after the Great Depression
The Great Depression hurt Hearst and his publications. Cosmopolitan Book was sold to Farrar & Rinehart in 1931. After two years of leasing them to Eleanor "Cissy" Patterson (of the McCormick-Patterson family that owned the Chicago Tribune), Hearst sold her the Washington Times and Herald in 1939; she merged them to form the Washington Times-Herald. That year he also bought the Milwaukee Sentinel from Paul Block (who bought it from the Pfisters in 1929), absorbing his afternoon Wisconsin News into the morning publication. Also in 1939, he sold the Atlanta Georgian to Cox Newspapers, which merged it with the Atlanta Journal.
Hearst, with his chain now owned by his creditors after a 1937 liquidation, also had to merge some of his morning papers into his afternoon papers. In Chicago, he combined the morning Herald-Examiner and the afternoon American into the Herald-American in 1939. This followed the 1937 combination of the New York Evening Journal and the morning American into the New York Journal-American, the sale of the Omaha Daily Bee to the World-Herald.
Afternoon papers were a profitable business in pre-television days, often outselling their morning counterparts featuring stock market information in early editions, while later editions were heavy on sporting news with results of baseball games and horse races. Afternoon papers also benefited from continuous reports from the battlefront during World War II. After the war, however, both television news and suburbs experienced explosive growth; thus, evening papers were more affected than those published in the morning, whose circulation remained stable while their afternoon counterparts' sales plummeted.
In 1947, Hearst produced an early television newscast for the DuMont Television Network: I.N.S. Telenews, and in 1948 he became the owner of one of the first television stations in the country, WBAL-TV in Baltimore.
The earnings of Hearst's three morning papers, the San Francisco Examiner, the Los Angeles Examiner, and The Milwaukee Sentinel, supported the company's money-losing afternoon publications such as the Los Angeles Herald-Express, the New York Journal-American, and the Chicago American. The company sold the latter paper in 1956 to the Chicago Tribunes owners, who changed it to the tabloid-size Chicago Today in 1969 and ceased publication in 1974). In 1960, Hearst also sold the Pittsburgh Sun-Telegraph to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and the Detroit Times to The Detroit News. After a lengthy strike it sold the Milwaukee Sentinel to the afternoon Milwaukee Journal in 1962. The same year Hearst's Los Angeles papers – the morning Examiner and the afternoon Herald-Express – merged to become the evening Los Angeles Herald-Examiner. The 1962-63 New York City newspaper strike left the city with no papers for over three months, with the Journal-American one of the earliest strike targets of the Typographical Union. The Boston Record and the Evening American merged in 1961 as the Record-American and in 1964, the Baltimore News-Post became the Baltimore News-American.
In 1953 Hearst Magazines bought Sports Afield magazine, which it published until 1999 when it sold the journal to Robert E. Petersen. In 1958, Hearst's International News Service merged with E.W. Scripps' United Press, forming United Press International as a response to the growth of the Associated Press and Reuters. The following year Scripps-Howard's San Francisco News merged with Hearst's afternoon San Francisco Call-Bulletin. Also in 1959, Hearst acquired the paperback book publisher Avon Books.
In 1965, the Hearst Corporation began pursuing Joint Operating Agreements (JOA's). It reached the first agreement with the DeYoung family, proprietors of the afternoon San Francisco Chronicle, which began to produce a joint Sunday edition with the Examiner. In turn, the Examiner became an evening publication, absorbing the News-Call-Bulletin. The following year, the Journal-American reached another JOA with another two landmark New York City papers: the New York Herald Tribune and Scripps-Howard's World-Telegram and Sun to form the New York World Journal Tribune (recalling the names of the city's mid-market dailies), which collapsed after only a few months.
The 1962 merger of the Herald-Express and Examiner in Los Angeles led to the termination of many journalists who began to stage a 10-year strike in 1967. The effects of the strike accelerated the pace of the company's demise, with the Herald Examiner ceasing publication November 2, 1989.
Newspaper shifts
Hearst moved into hardcover publishing by acquiring Arbor House in 1978 and William Morrow and Company in 1981.
In 1982, the company sold the Boston Herald American — the result of the 1972 merger of Hearst's Record-American & Advertiser with the Herald-Traveler — to Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation, which renamed the paper as The Boston Herald, competing to this day with the Boston Globe.
In 1986, Hearst bought the Houston Chronicle and that same year closed the 213-year-old Baltimore News-American after a failed attempt to reach a JOA with A.S. Abell Company, the family who published The Baltimore Sun since its founding in 1837. Abell sold the paper several days later to the Times-Mirror syndicate of the Chandlers' Los Angeles Times, also competitor to the evening Los Angeles Herald-Examiner, which folded in 1989. In 1990, both King Features Entertainment and King Phoenix Entertainment were rebranded under the collective Hearst Entertainment umbrella. King Features Entertainment was renamed to Hearst Entertainment Distribution, while King Phoenix Entertainment was renamed to Hearst Entertainment Productions.
In 1993, Hearst closed the San Antonio Light after it purchased the rival San Antonio Express-News from Murdoch.
On November 8, 1990, Hearst Corporation acquired the remaining 20% stake of ESPN, Inc. from RJR Nabisco for a price estimated between $165 million and $175 million. The other 80% has been owned by The Walt Disney Company since 1996. Over the last 25 years, the ESPN investment is said to have accounted for at least 50% of total Hearst Corp profits and is worth at least $13 billion.
On July 31, 1996, Hearst and the Cisneros Group of Companies of Venezuela announced its plans to launch Locomotion, a Latin American animation cable television channel.
On March 27, 1997, Hearst Broadcasting announced that it would merge with Argyle Television Holdings II for $525 million, the merger was completed in August to form Hearst-Argyle Television (later renamed as Hearst Television in 2009).
In 1999, Hearst sold its Avon and Morrow book publishing activities to HarperCollins.
In 2000, the Hearst Corp. pulled another "switcheroo" by selling its flagship and "Monarch of the Dailies", the afternoon San Francisco Examiner, and acquiring the long-time competing, but now larger morning paper, San Francisco Chronicle from the Charles de Young family. The San Francisco Examiner is now published as a daily freesheet.
In December 2003, Marvel Entertainment acquired Cover Concepts from Hearst, to extend Marvel's demographic reach among public school children.
In 2009, A&E Networks acquired Lifetime Entertainment Services, with Hearst ownership increasing to 42%.
In 2010, Hearst acquired digital marketing agency iCrossing.
In 2011, Hearst absorbed more than 100 magazine titles from the Lagardere group for more than $700 million and became a challenger of Time Inc ahead of Condé Nast. In December 2012, Hearst Corporation partnered again with NBCUniversal to launch Esquire Network.
On February 20, 2014, Hearst Magazines International appointed Gary Ellis to the new position, Chief Digital Officer. That December, DreamWorks Animation sold a 25% stake in AwesomenessTV for $81.25 million to Hearst.
In January 2017, Hearst announced that it had acquired a majority stake in Litton Entertainment. Its CEO, Dave Morgan, was a former employee of Hearst.
On January 23, 2017, Hearst announced that it had acquired the business operations of The Pioneer Group from fourth-generation family owners Jack and John Batdorff. The Pioneer Group was a Michigan-based communications network that circulates print and digital news to local communities across the state. In addition to daily newspapers, The Pioneer and Manistee News Advocate, Pioneer published three weekly papers and four local shopper publications, and operated a digital marketing services business. The acquisition brought Hearst Newspapers to publishing 19 daily and 61 weekly papers.
Other 2017 acquisitions include the New Haven Register and associated papers from Digital First Media, and the Alton, Illinois, Telegraph and Jacksonville, Illinois, Journal-Courier from Civitas Media.
In October 2017, Hearst announced it would acquire the magazine and book businesses of Rodale, with some sources reporting the purchase price as about $225 million. The transaction was expected to close in January following government approvals.
Chief executive officers
In 1880, George Hearst entered the newspaper business, acquiring the San Francisco Daily Examiner.
On March 4, 1887, he turned the Examiner over to his son, 23-year-old William Randolph Hearst, who was named editor and publisher. William Hearst died in 1951, at age 88.
In 1951, Richard E. Berlin, who had served as president of the company since 1943, succeeded William Hearst as chief executive officer. Berlin retired in 1973. William Randolph Hearst Jr. claimed in 1991 that Berlin had suffered from Alzheimer's disease starting in the mid-1960s and that caused him to shut down several Hearst newspapers without just cause.
From 1973 to 1975, Frank Massi, a longtime Hearst financial officer, served as president, during which time he carried out a financial reorganization followed by an expansion program in the late 1970s.
From 1975 to 1979, John R. Miller was Hearst president and chief executive officer.
Frank Bennack served as CEO and president from 1979 to 2002, when he became vice chairman, returning as CEO from 2008 to 2013, and remains executive vice chairman.
Victor F. Ganzi served as president and CEO from 2002 to 2008.
Steven Swartz has been president since 2012 and CEO since 2013.
Operating group heads
David Carey previously served as chairman and group head of the magazines. Debi Chirichella is that unit's president.
Jeffrey M. Johnson became president of Hearst Newspapers in 2018 upon the promotion of Mark Aldam to executive vice president and chief operating officer of the parent company.
Assets
A non-exhaustive list of its current properties and investments includes:
Magazines
Autoweek
Bicycling
Billboard (magazine)
Car and Driver
Cosmopolitan
Country Living
Dr. Oz THE GOOD LIFE
ELLE (US and UK)
Elle Decor
Esquire
Food Network Magazine
Good Housekeeping
Harper's Bazaar
HGTV Magazine
The Hollywood Reporter
House Beautiful
Men's Health
Nat Mags
O, The Oprah Magazine
Popular Mechanics
Prevention
Red
Redbook
Road & Track
Rodale's Organic Life
Runner's World
Seventeen (digital)
Town & Country
Veranda
Woman's Day
Women's Health
Hearst Books (in partnership with Sterling Publishing)
Newspapers
(alphabetical by state, then title)
San Francisco Chronicle (San Francisco, California)
The News-Times (Danbury, Connecticut)
Greenwich Time (Greenwich, Connecticut)
The Advocate (Stamford, Connecticut)
Connecticut Post (Bridgeport, Connecticut)
The Middletown Press (Middletown, Connecticut)
New Haven Register (New Haven, Connecticut)
The Hour (Norwalk, Connecticut)
The Register Citizen (Torrington, Connecticut)
The Telegraph (Alton, Illinois)
Edwardsville Intelligencer (Edwardsville, Illinois)
Jacksonville Journal-Courier (Jacksonville, Illinois)
Huron Daily Tribune (Bad Axe, Michigan)
Pioneer (Big Rapids, Michigan)
Manistee News Advocate (Manistee, Michigan)
Midland Daily News (Midland, Michigan)
Times Union (Albany, New York)
Beaumont Enterprise (Beaumont, Texas)
Houston Chronicle (Houston, Texas)
Laredo Morning Times (Laredo, Texas)
Midland Reporter-Telegram (Midland, Texas)
Plainview Daily Herald (Plainview, Texas)
San Antonio Express-News (San Antonio, Texas)
Seattle Post-Intelligencer (Seattle, Washington)
Broadcasting
A+E Networks (owns 50%; shared joint venture with The Walt Disney Company)
ESPN, Inc. (owns 20%; also shared with Disney, which owns the other 80%)
CTV Specialty Television (owns 4% through its co-ownership of ESPN; shared joint venture with Bell Media, which owns 80%)
Hearst Television (owns 100%; owner of 29 local television stations and two local radio stations/one translator)
Hearst Media Production Group (owns 100%; provider of syndicated programming, mainly educational and informational programming, and contracted with four of the five major broadcast networks to provide their weekly educational output)
Internet
BestProducts.com
Clevver
Delish.com
Digital Spy
NetDoctor
Hearst Interactive Media
Other
Black Book (National Auto Research)
CDS Global
First Databank
Fitch Ratings
Homecare Homebase
iCrossing
Jumpstart Automotive Group
King Features Syndicate
KUBRA
LocalEdge (Buffalo, New York)
Map of Medicine
MCG Health
ODG by Workloss Data Institute
Zynx Health
Trustees of William Randolph Hearst's will
Under William Randolph Hearst's will, a common board of thirteen trustees (its composition fixed at five family members and eight outsiders) administers the Hearst Foundation, the William Randolph Hearst Foundation, and the trust that owns (and selects the 26-member board of) the Hearst Corporation (immediate parent of Hearst Communications which shares the same officers). The foundations shared ownership until tax law changed to prevent this.
In 2009, it was estimated to be the largest private company managed by trustees in this way. As of 2017, the trustees are:
Family members
Anissa Bouadjakdji Balson, granddaughter of fifth son, David Whitmire Hearst Sr.
Lisa Hearst Hagerman, granddaughter of third son, John Randolph Hearst Sr.
George Randolph Hearst III, grandson of Hearst's eldest son, George Randolph Hearst Sr., and publisher of the Albany Times Union
William Randolph Hearst III, son of second son, William Randolph Hearst Jr., and chairman of the board of the corporation
Virginia Hearst Randt, daughter of late former chairman and fourth son, Randolph Apperson Hearst
Non-family members
James M. Asher, chief legal and development officer of the corporation
David J. Barrett, former chief executive officer of Hearst Television, Inc.
Frank A. Bennack Jr., former chief executive officer and executive vice chairman of the corporation
John G. Conomikes, former executive of the corporation
Gilbert C. Maurer, former chief operating officer of the corporation and former president of Hearst Magazines
Mark F. Miller, former executive vice president of Hearst Magazines
Mitchell Scherzer, senior vice president and chief financial officer of the corporation
Steven R. Swartz, president and chief executive officer of the corporation
The trust dissolves when all family members alive at the time of Hearst's death in August 1951 have died.
See also
224 West 57th Street, former building occupied by Hearst
Newsboys' strike of 1899
References
Further reading
Carlisle, Rodney. "The Foreign Policy Views of an Isolationist Press Lord: WR Hearst and the International Crisis, 1936-41." Journal of Contemporary History 9.3 (1974): 217–227.
Nasaw, David. The Chief: The Life of William Randolph Hearst. (2000). Boston: Houghton Mifflin. ., a prominent scholarly biography.
Pizzitola, Louis. Hearst over Hollywood: power, passion, and propaganda in the movies (Columbia UP, 2002).
Procter, Ben H. William Randolph Hearst: Final Edition, 1911-1951. (Oxford UP 2007).
Whyte, Kenneth. The uncrowned king: The sensational rise of William Randolph Hearst (2009).
External links
The Hearst Foundation, Inc.
Hearst family
Magazine publishing companies of the United States
Newspaper companies of the United States
Publishing companies based in New York City
Companies based in Manhattan
American companies established in 1887
Publishing companies established in 1887
1887 establishments in California
Privately held companies based in New York City
William Randolph Hearst
Family-owned companies of the United States | [
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14326 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS%20Hercules | HMS Hercules | Five ships of the Royal Navy have borne the name HMS Hercules, or HMS Hercule, after the Greek and Roman hero Hercules. Another was launched, but never served in the Navy:
was a 74-gun third rate launched in 1759 and sold in 1784.
HMS Hercule was a 74-gun third rate captured by in 1798 and broken up in 1810.
was a 74-gun third rate launched in 1815. She was used for harbour service from 1853 and was sold in 1865.
was an ironclad battleship launched in 1868. She was used for harbour service from 1881, as a barracks from 1905, was renamed HMS Calcutta in 1909, HMS Fisgard II in 1915, and was sold in 1932.
was a battleship launched in 1910 and sold for breaking up in 1921.
was a light fleet aircraft carrier launched in 1945, but not completed until purchased by India in 1957. Commissioned in 1961 as , she was paid off in 1997 and was a museum ship between 2001 and 2012. She was scrapped in 2014.
Royal Navy ship names | [
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14327 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMAS%20Sydney | HMAS Sydney | Five ships of the Royal Australian Navy (RAN) have been named HMAS Sydney, after Sydney, the capital city of New South Wales.
, a Town-class light cruiser launched in 1912, decommissioned in 1928, and broken up for scrap
, a Leander-class light cruiser launched in 1934, and sunk following a battle with the German auxiliary cruiser Kormoran on 19 November 1941
, a Majestic-class light aircraft carrier launched in 1944, decommissioned in 1973, and broken up for scrap
, an Adelaide-class guided missile frigate launched in 1980, and decommissioned in 2015
, a Hobart-class air warfare destroyer in service since 2020
Battle honours
Between them, vessels named HMAS Sydney have been awarded fourteen battle honours by the Royal Australian Navy. These include two of the only three battle honours awarded in the 20th century for an action involving a single opposing ship:
Rabaul 1914
Emden 1914
North Sea 1916–18
Calabria 1940
Spada 1940
Mediterranean 1940
Kormoran 1941
Korea 1951–52
Malaysia 1964
Vietnam 1965–72
Kuwait 1991
East Timor 1999
Persian Gulf 2001–03
Iraq 2003
References
External links
[CC-By-SA]
Royal Australian Navy ship names | [
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14328 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunter%20S.%20Thompson | Hunter S. Thompson | Hunter Stockton Thompson (July 18, 1937 – February 20, 2005) was an American journalist and author who founded the gonzo journalism movement. He rose to prominence with the publication of Hell's Angels (1967), a book for which he spent a year living and riding with the Hells Angels motorcycle gang to write a first-hand account of their lives and experiences.
In 1970, he wrote an unconventional magazine feature titled "The Kentucky Derby Is Decadent and Depraved" for Scanlan's Monthly, which raised his profile and established his counterculture credibility. It also set him on the path to establishing his own subgenre of New Journalism that he called "Gonzo", which was essentially an ongoing experiment in which the writer becomes a central figure and participant in the events of the narrative.
Thompson remains best known for Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1971), a book first serialized in Rolling Stone in which he grapples with the implications of what he considered the failure of the 1960s counterculture movement. It was adapted for film twice: loosely in Where the Buffalo Roam starring Bill Murray as Thompson in 1980, and explicitly in 1998 by director Terry Gilliam in the eponymous film starring Johnny Depp and Benicio del Toro.
Thompson ran unsuccessfully for sheriff of Pitkin County, Colorado in 1970 on the Freak Power ticket. His campaign was chronicled in the documentary film Freak Power: The Ballot or the Bomb. He became known for his dislike of Richard Nixon, who he claimed represented "that dark, venal, and incurably violent side of the American character". He covered Nixon's 1972 reelection campaign for Rolling Stone and later collected the stories in book form as Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72.
Thompson's output declined from the mid-1970s, as he struggled with the consequences of fame, and complained that he could no longer merely report on events, as he was too easily recognized. After several high-profile stories were quashed by the upper management of Rolling Stone, he found it increasingly difficult to get his work into mainstream outlets. He did continue to write for alternative newspapers, and had a gig as a critic for the mainstream San Francisco Examiner for much of the late 1980s and early 1990s. Most of his work from 1979 to 1994 was collected in The Gonzo Papers. He continued to write for various journalism outlets in a variety of formats, including sporadic stories published in Rolling Stone and a weekly column that appeared on ESPN.com's Page 2 titled "Hey, Rube" that he started in 2000.
He was known for his lifelong use of alcohol and illegal narcotics, his love of firearms, and his iconoclastic contempt for authority. He often remarked: "I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence, or insanity to anyone, but they've always worked for me." Thompson died by suicide at the age of 67, following a series of health problems. In accordance with his wishes, his ashes were fired out of a cannon in a ceremony funded by his friend Johnny Depp and attended by friends including then-Senator John Kerry and Jack Nicholson. Hari Kunzru wrote, "the true voice of Thompson is revealed to be that of American moralist ... one who often makes himself ugly to expose the ugliness he sees around him."
Early life
Thompson was born into a middle-class family in Louisville, Kentucky, the first of three sons of Virginia Davison Ray (1908, Springfield, Kentucky – March 20, 1998, Louisville), who worked as head librarian at the Louisville Free Public Library and Jack Robert Thompson (September 4, 1893, Horse Cave, Kentucky – July 3, 1952, Louisville), a public insurance adjuster and World War I veteran. His parents were introduced by a friend from Jack's fraternity at the University of Kentucky in September 1934, and married on November 2, 1935. The Guardian journalist Nicholas Lezard, stated that Thompson's first name, Hunter, came from an ancestor on his mother's side, the Scottish surgeon John Hunter. A more direct attribution is that Thompson's first and middle name, Hunter Stockton, came from his maternal grandparents, Prestly Stockton Ray and Lucille Hunter.
In December 1943 when Thompson was six years old, the family settled in the affluent Cherokee Triangle neighborhood of The Highlands. On July 3, 1952, when Thompson was 14, his father died of myasthenia gravis at age 58. Hunter and his brothers were raised by their mother. Virginia worked as a librarian to support her children, and was described as a "heavy drinker" following her husband's death.
Education
Interested in sports and athletically inclined from a young age, Thompson co-founded the Hawks Athletic Club while attending I.N. Bloom Elementary School, which led to an invitation to join Louisville's Castlewood Athletic Club for adolescents that prepared them for high-school sports. Ultimately, he never joined a sports team in high school.
Thompson attended I.N. Bloom Elementary School, Highland Middle School, and Atherton High School, before transferring to Louisville Male High School in fall 1952. Also in 1952, he was accepted as a member of the Athenaeum Literary Association, a school-sponsored literary and social club that dated to 1862. Its members at the time came from Louisville's upper-class families, and included Porter Bibb, who became the first publisher of Rolling Stone at Thompson's behest. During this time, Thompson read and admired J. P. Donleavy's The Ginger Man.
As an Athenaeum member, Thompson contributed articles to and helped produce the club's yearbook The Spectator. The group ejected Thompson in 1955 for criminal activity. Charged as an accessory to robbery after being in a car with the perpetrator, Thompson was sentenced to 60 days in Kentucky's Jefferson County Jail. He served 31 days and, a week after his release, enlisted in the United States Air Force. While he was in jail, the school superintendent refused permission to take his high-school final examinations so he was unable to graduate.
Military service
Thompson completed basic training at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas, and transferred to Scott Air Force Base in Belleville, Illinois, to study electronics. He applied to become an aviator, but the Air Force's aviation-cadet program rejected his application. In 1956, he transferred to Eglin Air Force Base near Fort Walton Beach, Florida. While serving at Eglin, he took evening classes at Florida State University. At Eglin, he landed his first professional writing job as sports editor of The Command Courier by falsifying his job experience. As sports editor, Thompson traveled around the United States with the Eglin Eagles football team, covering its games. In early 1957, he wrote a sports column for The Playground News, a local newspaper in Fort Walton Beach, Florida. His name did not appear on the column because Air Force regulations forbade outside employment.
In 1958, as an airman first class, his commanding officer recommended him for an early honorable discharge. "In summary, this airman, although talented, will not be guided by policy," chief of information services Colonel William S. Evans wrote to the Eglin personnel office. "Sometimes his rebel and superior attitude seems to rub off on other airmen staff members."
Early journalism career
After leaving the Air Force, Thompson worked as sports editor for a newspaper in Jersey Shore, Pennsylvania, before relocating to New York City. There he audited several courses at the Columbia University School of General Studies. During this time he worked briefly for Time as a copy boy for $51 a week. At work, he typed out parts of F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby and Ernest Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms in order to learn the authors' rhythms and writing styles. In 1959 Time fired him for insubordination. Later that year, he worked as a reporter for The Middletown Daily Record in Middletown, New York. He was fired from this job after damaging an office candy machine and arguing with the owner of a local restaurant who happened to be an advertiser with the paper.
In 1960, Thompson moved to San Juan, Puerto Rico, to take a job with the sporting magazine El Sportivo, which ceased operations soon after his arrival. Thompson applied for a job with the Puerto Rican English-language daily The San Juan Star, but its managing editor, future novelist William J. Kennedy, turned him down. Nonetheless, the two became friends. After the demise of El Sportivo, Thompson worked as a stringer for the New York Herald Tribune and a few other stateside papers on Caribbean issues, with Kennedy working as his editor.
After returning to the United States, Thompson visited San Francisco and eventually lived in Big Sur, where he worked as a security guard and caretaker at Slates Hot Springs for an eight-month period in 1961, just before it became the Esalen Institute. At the time, Big Sur was a Beat outpost and home of Henry Miller and Dennis Murphy (screenwriter), both of whom Thompson admired. While there, he published his first magazine feature in Rogue about the artisan and bohemian culture of Big Sur. During this period, Thompson wrote two novels, Prince Jellyfish and The Rum Diary, and submitted many short stories to publishers – with little success. The Rum Diary, based on Thompson's experiences in Puerto Rico, was not published until .
In May 1962, Thompson traveled to South America for a year as a correspondent for the Dow Jones-owned weekly paper, the National Observer. In Brazil, he spent several months as a reporter for the Brazil Herald, the country's only English-language daily, published in Rio de Janeiro. His longtime girlfriend Sandra Dawn Conklin (or Sandy Conklin Thompson, subsequently Sondi Wright) later joined him in Rio. They married on May 19, 1963, shortly after returning to the United States, and lived briefly in Aspen, Colorado. Sandy was eight months pregnant when they relocated to Glen Ellen, California. Their son, Juan Fitzgerald Thompson, was born on March 23, 1964.
Thompson continued to write for the National Observer on an array of domestic subjects. One story told of his 1964 visit to Ketchum, Idaho, to investigate the reasons for Ernest Hemingway's suicide. While there, he stole a pair of elk antlers hanging above the front door of Hemingway's cabin. Later that year, Thompson moved to San Francisco, where he attended the 1964 GOP Convention at the Cow Palace. Thompson severed his ties with the Observer after his editor refused to print his review of Tom Wolfe's 1965 essay-collection The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby,. He later immersed himself in the drug and hippie culture taking root in the area, and soon began writing for the Berkeley underground paper Spider.
Hell's Angels
In 1965 Carey McWilliams, editor of The Nation, hired Thompson to write a story about the Hells Angels motorcycle club in California. At the time Thompson was living in a house near San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury neighborhood, where the Hells Angels lived across from the Grateful Dead. His article appeared on May 17, 1965, after which he received several book offers and spent the next year living and riding with the club. The relationship broke down when the bikers perceived that Thompson was exploiting them for personal gain and demanded a share of his profits. An argument at a party resulted in Thompson suffering a savage beating (or "stomping", as the Angels referred to it). Random House published the hard-cover Hell's Angels: The Strange and Terrible Saga of the Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs in 1966, and the fight between Thompson and the Angels was well-marketed. CBC Television even broadcast an encounter between Thompson and Hells Angel Skip Workman before a live studio audience.
A New York Times review praised the work as an "angry, knowledgeable, fascinating, and excitedly written book", that shows the Hells Angels "not so much as dropouts from society but as total misfits, or unfits—emotionally, intellectually and educationally unfit to achieve the rewards, such as they are, that the contemporary social order offers". The reviewer also praised Thompson as a "spirited, witty, observant, and original writer; his prose crackles like motorcycle exhaust".
Following the book's publication, Thompson appeared as himself on the February 20, 1967, episode of the game show To Tell The Truth, receiving all four votes by the panel members.
Late 1960s
Following the success of Hell's Angels, Thompson successfully sold articles to several national magazines, including The New York Times Magazine, Esquire, Pageant, and Harper's.
In 1967, shortly before the Summer of Love, Thompson wrote "The 'Hashbury' is the Capital of the Hippies" for The New York Times Magazine. He criticized San Francisco's hippies as devoid of both the political convictions of the New Left and the artistic core of the Beats, resulting in a culture overrun with young people who spent their time in the pursuit of drugs. "The thrust is no longer for 'change' or 'progress' or 'revolution', but merely to escape, to live on the far perimeter of a world that might have been – perhaps should have been – and strike a bargain for survival on purely personal terms," he wrote.
By late 1967, Thompson and his family moved back to Colorado and rented a house in Woody Creek, a small mountain hamlet outside Aspen. In early 1969, Thompson received a $15,000 royalty check for the paperback sales of Hell's Angels and used two-thirds of the money for a down payment on a modest home and property where he would live for the rest of his life. He named the house Owl Farm and often described it as his "fortified compound".
In early 1968, Thompson signed the "Writers and Editors War Tax Protest" pledge, vowing to refuse tax payments in protest against the Vietnam War. According to Thompson's letters and his later writings, at this time, he planned to write a book called The Joint Chiefs about "the death of the American Dream." He used a $6,000 advance from Random House to travel the 1968 Presidential campaign trail and attend the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago for research. From his hotel room in Chicago, Thompson watched the clashes between police and protesters, which he wrote had a great effect on his political views. The book was never finished, and the theme of the death of the American dream was carried over into his later work. The contract with Random House was eventually fulfilled with the 1972 book Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. He also signed a deal with Ballantine Books in 1968 to write a satirical book called The Johnson File about Lyndon B. Johnson. A few weeks after the contract was signed, however, Johnson announced that he would not seek re-election, and the deal was cancelled.
Middle years
Aspen sheriff campaign
In 1970, Thompson ran for sheriff of Pitkin County, Colorado, as part of a group of citizens running for local offices on the "Freak Power" ticket. The platform included promoting the decriminalization of drugs (for personal use only, not trafficking, as he disapproved of profiteering), tearing up the streets and turning them into grassy pedestrian malls, banning any building so tall as to obscure the view of the mountains, disarming all police forces, and renaming Aspen "Fat City" to deter investors. Thompson, having shaved his head, referred to the crew cut-wearing Republican candidate as "my long-haired opponent".
With polls showing him with a slight lead in a three-way race, Thompson appeared at Rolling Stone magazine headquarters in San Francisco with a six-pack of beer in hand, and declared to editor Jann Wenner that he was about to be elected sheriff of Aspen, Colorado, and wished to write about the "Freak Power" movement. Thus, Thompson's first article in Rolling Stone was published as "The Battle of Aspen" with the byline "By: Dr. Hunter S. Thompson (Candidate for Sheriff)". Despite the publicity, Thompson narrowly lost the election. While carrying the city of Aspen, he garnered only 44% of the county-wide vote in what had become a two-way race. The Republican candidate agreed to withdraw a few days before the election to consolidate the anti-Thompson votes, in return for the Democrats withdrawing their candidate for county commissioner. Thompson later remarked that the Rolling Stone article mobilized his opposition far more than his supporters.
A documentary film about Hunter S. Thompson's campaign for sheriff called Freak Power: The Ballot or the Bomb was released on October 23, 2020.
Birth of Gonzo
Also in 1970, Thompson wrote an article entitled "The Kentucky Derby Is Decadent and Depraved" for the short-lived new journalism magazine Scanlan's Monthly. For that article, editor Warren Hinckle paired Thompson with illustrator Ralph Steadman, who drew expressionist illustrations with lipstick and eyeliner. Thompson's article virtually ignored the race, focusing instead on the drunken revelry surrounding the annual event in his hometown. The first-person narrator also sets that debauchery against a political backdrop, which included the bombing of Cambodia and the deaths of four students at Kent State University, which occurred two days after the Kentucky Derby.
Thompson and Steadman collaborated regularly after that. Although it was not widely read, the article was the first to use the techniques of Gonzo journalism, a style Thompson later employed in almost every literary endeavor. The manic first-person subjectivity of the story was reportedly the result of sheer desperation; he was facing a looming deadline and started sending the magazine pages ripped out of his notebook.
The first use of the word "Gonzo" to describe Thompson's work is credited to the journalist Bill Cardoso, who first met Thompson on a bus full of journalists covering the 1968 New Hampshire primary. In 1970, Cardoso (who was then the editor of The Boston Globe Sunday Magazine) wrote to Thompson praising the "Kentucky Derby" piece as a breakthrough: "This is it, this is pure Gonzo. If this is a start, keep rolling." According to Steadman, Thompson took to the word right away and said, "Okay, that's what I do. Gonzo." Thompson's first published use of the word appears in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: "Free Enterprise. The American Dream. Horatio Alger gone mad on drugs in Las Vegas. Do it now: pure Gonzo journalism."
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
The book for which Thompson gained most of his fame had its genesis during the research for "Strange Rumblings in Aztlan", an exposé for Rolling Stone on the 1970 killing of the Mexican-American television journalist Rubén Salazar. Salazar had been shot in the head at close range with a tear-gas canister fired by officers of the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department during the National Chicano Moratorium March against the Vietnam War. One of Thompson's sources for the story was Oscar Zeta Acosta, a prominent Mexican-American activist and attorney. Finding it difficult to talk in the racially tense atmosphere of Los Angeles, Thompson and Acosta decided to travel to Las Vegas, and take advantage of an assignment by Sports Illustrated to write a 250-word photograph caption on the Mint 400 motorcycle race held there.
What was to be a short caption quickly grew into something else entirely. Thompson first submitted to Sports Illustrated a manuscript of 2,500 words, which was, as he later wrote, "aggressively rejected." Rolling Stone publisher Jann Wenner was said to have liked "the first 20 or so jangled pages enough to take it seriously on its own terms and tentatively scheduled it for publication — which gave me the push I needed to keep working on it", Thompson later wrote. To develop the story, Thompson and Acosta returned to Las Vegas to attend a drug enforcement conference.
The two trips became the basis for "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas," which appeared as a two-part Rolling Stone story in November 1971. Random House published the book version the following year. It is written as a first-person account by a journalist named Raoul Duke with Dr. Gonzo, his "300-pound Samoan attorney." During the trip, Duke and his companion (always referred to as "my attorney") become sidetracked by a search for the American Dream, with "two bags of grass, 75 pellets of mescaline, five sheets of high-powered blotter acid, a salt shaker half full of cocaine, and a whole galaxy of multicolored uppers, downers, screamers, laughers ... and also a quart of tequila, a quart of rum, a case of Budweiser, a pint of raw ether, and two dozen amyls."
Coming to terms with the failure of the 1960s countercultural movement is a major theme of the novel, and the book was greeted with considerable critical acclaim, including being heralded by The New York Times as "by far the best book yet written on the decade of dope". "The Vegas Book", as Thompson referred to it, was a mainstream success and introduced his Gonzo journalism techniques to a wide public.
Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72
Beginning in late 1971, Thompson wrote extensively for Rolling Stone on the election campaigns of President Richard Nixon and his unsuccessful opponent, Senator George McGovern. The articles were soon combined and published as Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72. As the title suggests, Thompson spent nearly all of his time traveling the "campaign trail", focusing largely on the Democratic Party's primaries. Nixon, as the Republican incumbent, performed little campaign work, while McGovern competed with rival candidates Edmund Muskie and Hubert Humphrey. Thompson was an early supporter of McGovern and wrote unflattering coverage of the rival campaigns in the increasingly widely read Rolling Stone.
Thompson went on to become a fierce critic of Nixon, both during and after his presidency. After Nixon's death in 1994, Thompson described him in Rolling Stone as a man who "could shake your hand and stab you in the back at the same time", and said "his casket [should] have been launched into one of those open-sewage canals that empty into the ocean just south of Los Angeles. He was a swine of a man and a jabbering dupe of a president. [He] was an evil man—evil in a way that only those who believe in the physical reality of the Devil can understand it." Following Nixon's pardon by Gerald Ford in 1974, Hunter ruminated on the roughly $400,000 pension Nixon maneuvered his way into, by resigning before being formally indicted. While The Washington Post was lamenting Nixon's "lonely and depressed" state after being forced from the White House, Hunter wrote that '[i]f there were any such thing as true justice in this world, his [Nixon's] rancid carcass would be somewhere down around Easter Island right now, in the belly of a hammerhead shark.' There was however one passion shared by Thompson and Nixon: a love of football, discussed in Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72.
Fame and its consequences
Thompson's journalistic work began to seriously suffer after his trip to Africa to cover the Rumble in the Jungle—the world heavyweight boxing match between George Foreman and Muhammad Ali—in 1974. He missed the match while intoxicated at his hotel, and did not submit a story to the magazine. As Wenner put it to the film critic Roger Ebert in the 2008 documentary Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson, "After Africa, he just couldn't write. He couldn't piece it together".
Plans for Thompson to cover the 1976 presidential campaign for Rolling Stone and later publish a book fell through after Wenner canceled the project without informing Thompson. Wenner then assigned Thompson to travel to Vietnam to cover what appeared to be the end of the Vietnam War. Thompson arrived in Saigon just as South Vietnam was collapsing and as other journalists were leaving the country. Wenner allegedly cancelled Thompson's life insurance, which strained Thompson's relationship with Rolling Stone. He soon fled the country and refused to file his report until the ten-year anniversary of the Fall of Saigon.
From the late 1970s on, most of Thompson's literary output appeared as a four-volume series of books entitled The Gonzo Papers. Beginning with The Great Shark Hunt in 1979 and ending with Better Than Sex in 1994, the series is largely a collection of rare newspaper and magazine pieces from the pre-gonzo period, along with almost all of his Rolling Stone pieces.
Starting around 1980, Thompson became less active by his standards. Aside from paid appearances, he largely retreated to his compound in Woody Creek, rejecting projects and assignments or failing to complete them. Despite a lack of new material, Wenner kept Thompson on the Rolling Stone masthead as chief of the "National Affairs Desk", a position he held until his death.
In 1980, Thompson divorced wife Sandra Conklin. The same year marked the release of Where the Buffalo Roam, a loose film adaptation based on Thompson's early 1970s work, starring Bill Murray as the writer. Murray eventually became one of Thompson's trusted friends. Later that year, Thompson relocated to Hawaii to research and write The Curse of Lono, a Gonzo-style account of the 1980 Honolulu Marathon. Extensively illustrated by Ralph Steadman, the piece first appeared in Running in 1981 as "The Charge of the Weird Brigade" and was later excerpted in Playboy in 1983.
In 1983, he covered the U.S. invasion of Grenada, but did not write or discuss the experiences until the publication of Kingdom of Fear in 2003. Later that year, at the behest of Terry McDonell, he wrote "A Dog Took My Place", an exposé for Rolling Stone of the scandalous Roxanne Pulitzer divorce case and what he called the "Palm Beach lifestyle". The story included dubious insinuations of bestiality, but was widely considered to be a return by Thompson to his proper form. In 1985, Thompson accepted an advance to write about "couples pornography" for Playboy. As part of his research, he spent evenings at the Mitchell Brothers O'Farrell Theatre striptease club in San Francisco. The experience evolved into an as-yet-unpublished novel tentatively entitled The Night Manager.
Thompson next accepted a role as weekly media columnist and critic for The San Francisco Examiner. The position was arranged by former editor and fellow Examiner columnist Warren Hinckle. His editor at The Examiner, David McCumber described, "One week it would be acid-soaked gibberish with a charm of its own. The next week it would be incisive political analysis of the highest order."
Many of these columns were collected in Gonzo Papers, Vol. 2: Generation of Swine: Tales of Shame and Degradation in the '80s (1988) and Gonzo Papers, Vol. 3: Songs of the Doomed: More Notes on the Death of the American Dream (1990), a collection of autobiographical reminiscences, articles, and previously unpublished material.
Later years
Throughout the early 1990s, Thompson claimed to be at work on a novel entitled Polo Is My Life. It was briefly excerpted in Rolling Stone in 1994, and Thompson himself described it in 1996 as "a sex book — you know, sex, drugs, and rock and roll. It's about the manager of a sex theater who's forced to leave and flee to the mountains. He falls in love and gets in even more trouble than he was in the sex theater in San Francisco". The novel was slated to be released by Random House in 1999, and was even assigned , but was never published.
Thompson continued to publish irregularly in Rolling Stone, ultimately contributing 17 pieces to the magazine between 1984 and 2004. "Fear and Loathing in Elko," published in 1992, was a well-received fictional rallying cry against the nomination of Clarence Thomas to a seat on the Supreme Court of the United States. "Trapped in Mr. Bill's Neighborhood" was a largely factual account of an interview with Bill Clinton at a Little Rock, Arkansas, steakhouse. Rather than traveling the campaign trail as he had done in previous presidential elections, Thompson monitored the proceedings on cable television; Better Than Sex: Confessions of a Political Junkie, his account of the 1992 presidential campaign, is composed of reactive faxes to Rolling Stone. In 1994, the magazine published "He Was a Crook", a "scathing" obituary of Richard Nixon.
In November 2004, Rolling Stone published Thompson's final magazine feature "The Fun-Hogs in the Passing Lane: Fear and Loathing, Campaign 2004", a brief account of the 2004 presidential election in which he compared the outcome of the Bush v. Gore court case to the Reichstag fire and formally endorsed Senator John Kerry, a longtime friend, for president.
Fear and Loathing redux
In 1996, Modern Library reissued Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas along with "Strange Rumblings in Aztlan," "The Kentucky Derby Is Decadent and Depraved," and "Jacket Copy for Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas." Two years later, the film Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas generated new interest in Thompson and his work, and a paperback edition was published as a tie-in. The same year, an early novel, The Rum Diary, was published. Two volumes of collected letters, edited by Douglas Brinkley, also appeared during this time. The first volume appeared in 1997 and covers the years 1955-67. The second volume appeared in 2000 and covers 1968 to 1976.
Thompson's next, and penultimate, collection, Kingdom of Fear: Loathsome Secrets of a Star-Crossed Child in the Final Days of the American Century, was widely publicized as Thompson's first memoir. Published in 2003, it combined new material (including reminiscences of the O'Farrell Theater), selected newspaper and digital clippings, and other older works.
Thompson finished his journalism career in the same way it had begun: Writing about sports. From 2000 until his death in 2005, he wrote a weekly column for ESPN.com's Page 2 entitled "Hey, Rube." In 2004, Simon & Schuster collected some of the columns from the first few years and released them in mid-2004 as Hey Rube: Blood Sport, the Bush Doctrine, and the Downward Spiral of Dumbness.
Thompson married assistant Anita Bejmuk on April 23, 2003.
Death
At 5:42 pm on February 20, 2005, Thompson died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head at Owl Farm, his "fortified compound" in Woody Creek, Colorado. His son Juan, daughter-in-law Jennifer, and grandson were visiting for the weekend. His wife Anita, who was at the Aspen Club, was on the phone with him as he cocked the gun. According to the Aspen Daily News, Thompson asked her to come home to help him write his ESPN column, then set the receiver on the counter. Anita said she mistook the cocking of the gun for the sound of his typewriter keys and hung up as he fired. Will and Jennifer were in the next room when they heard the gunshot, but mistook the sound for a book falling and did not check on Thompson immediately. Juan Thompson found his father's body. According to the police report and Anita's cell phone records, he called the sheriff's office half an hour later, then walked outside and fired three shotgun blasts into the air to "mark the passing of his father". The police report stated that in Thompson's typewriter was a piece of paper with the date "Feb. 22 '05" and a single word, "counselor".
Years of alcohol and cocaine abuse contributed to his problem with depression. Thompson's inner circle told the press that he had been depressed and always found February a "gloomy" month, with football season over and the harsh Colorado winter weather. He was also upset over his advancing age and chronic medical problems, including a hip replacement; he would frequently mutter "This kid is getting old." Rolling Stone published what Douglas Brinkley described as a suicide note written by Thompson to his wife, titled "Football Season Is Over". It read:
Thompson's collaborator and friend Ralph Steadman wrote:
Funeral
On August 20, 2005, in a private funeral, Thompson's ashes were fired from a cannon. This was accompanied by red, white, blue, and green fireworks—all to the tune of Norman Greenbaum's "Spirit in the Sky" and Bob Dylan's "Mr. Tambourine Man". The cannon was placed atop a tower which had the shape of a double-thumbed fist clutching a peyote button, a symbol originally used in his 1970 campaign for sheriff of Pitkin County, Colorado. The plans for the monument were initially drawn by Thompson and Steadman, and were shown as part of an Omnibus program on the BBC titled Fear and Loathing in Gonzovision (1978). It is included as a special feature on the second disc of the 2004 Criterion Collection DVD release of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, and labeled as Fear and Loathing on the Road to Hollywood.
According to his widow, Anita, the $3 million funeral was funded by actor Johnny Depp, who was a close friend of Thompson's. Depp told the Associated Press, "All I'm doing is trying to make sure his last wish comes true. I just want to send my pal out the way he wants to go out." An estimated 280 people attended, including U.S. Senators John Kerry and George McGovern; 60 Minutes correspondents Ed Bradley and Charlie Rose; actors Jack Nicholson, John Cusack, Bill Murray, Benicio del Toro, Sean Penn, and Josh Hartnett; musicians Lyle Lovett, John Oates and David Amram, and artist and long-time friend Ralph Steadman.
Legacy
Writing style
Thompson is often credited as the creator of Gonzo journalism, a style of writing that blurs distinctions between fiction and nonfiction. His work and style are considered to be a major part of the New Journalism literary movement of the 1960s and 1970s, which attempted to break free from the purely objective style of mainstream reportage of the time. Thompson almost always wrote in the first person, while extensively using his own experiences and emotions to color "the story" he was trying to follow.
Despite him having personally described his work as "Gonzo", it fell to later observers to articulate what the term actually meant. While Thompson's approach clearly involved injecting himself as a participant in the events of the narrative, it also involved adding invented, metaphoric elements, thus creating, for the uninitiated reader, a seemingly confusing amalgam of facts and fiction notable for the deliberately blurred lines between one and the other. Thompson, in a 1974 interview in Playboy addressed the issue himself, saying, "Unlike Tom Wolfe or Gay Talese, I almost never try to reconstruct a story. They're both much better reporters than I am, but then, I don't think of myself as a reporter." Tom Wolfe would later describe Thompson's style as "... part journalism and part personal memoir admixed with powers of wild invention and wilder rhetoric." Or as one description of the differences between Thompson and Wolfe's styles would elaborate, "While Tom Wolfe mastered the technique of being a fly on the wall, Thompson mastered the art of being a fly in the ointment."
The majority of Thompson's most popular and acclaimed work appeared within the pages of Rolling Stone magazine. Along with Joe Eszterhas and David Felton, Thompson was instrumental in expanding the focus of the magazine past music criticism; indeed, Thompson was the only staff writer of the epoch never to contribute a music feature to the magazine. Nevertheless, his articles were always peppered with a wide array of pop music references ranging from Howlin' Wolf to Lou Reed. Armed with early fax machines wherever he went, he became notorious for haphazardly sending sometimes illegible material to the magazine's San Francisco offices as an issue was about to go to press.
Robert Love, Thompson's editor of 23 years at Rolling Stone, wrote, "the dividing line between fact and fancy rarely blurred, and we didn't always use italics or some other typographical device to indicate the lurch into the fabulous. But if there were living, identifiable humans in a scene, we took certain steps ... Hunter was a close friend of many prominent Democrats, veterans of the ten or more presidential campaigns he covered, so when in doubt, we'd call the press secretary. 'People will believe almost any twisted kind of story about politicians or Washington,' he once said, and he was right."
Discerning the line between the fact and the fiction of Thompson's work presented a practical problem for editors and fact-checkers of his work. Love called fact-checking Thompson's work "one of the sketchiest occupations ever created in the publishing world", and "for the first-timer ... a trip through a journalistic fun house, where you didn't know what was real and what wasn't. You knew you had better learn enough about the subject at hand to know when the riff began and reality ended. Hunter was a stickler for numbers, for details like gross weight and model numbers, for lyrics and caliber, and there was no faking it."
Persona
Thompson often used a blend of fiction and fact when portraying himself in his writing, too, sometimes using the name Raoul Duke as an author surrogate whom he generally described as a callous, erratic, self-destructive journalist who constantly drank alcohol and took hallucinogenic drugs. Fantasizing about causing bodily harm to others was also a characteristic in his work used to comedic effect and an example of his brand of humor.
In the late 1960s, Thompson acquired the title of "Doctor" from the Universal Life Church.
A number of critics have commented that as he grew older, the line that distinguished Thompson from his literary self became increasingly blurred. Thompson admitted during a 1978 BBC interview that he sometimes felt pressured to live up to the fictional self that he had created, adding, "I'm never sure which one people expect me to be. Very often, they conflict — most often, as a matter of fact. ... I'm leading a normal life and right alongside me there is this myth, and it is growing and mushrooming and getting more and more warped. When I get invited to, say, speak at universities, I'm not sure if they are inviting Duke or Thompson. I'm not sure who to be."
Thompson's writing style and eccentric persona gave him a cult following in both literary and drug circles, and his cult status expanded into broader areas after being portrayed three times in major motion pictures. Hence, both his writing style and persona have been widely imitated, and his likeness has even become a popular costume choice for Halloween.
Political beliefs
Thompson was a firearms and explosives enthusiast (in his writing and in life) and owned a vast collection of handguns, rifles, shotguns, and various automatic and semiautomatic weapons, along with numerous forms of gaseous crowd-control and many homemade devices. He was a proponent of the right to bear arms and privacy rights. A member of the National Rifle Association, Thompson was also co-creator of the Fourth Amendment Foundation, an organization to assist victims in defending themselves against unwarranted search and seizure.
Part of his work with the Fourth Amendment Foundation centered around support of Lisl Auman, a Colorado woman who was sentenced for life in 1997 under felony murder charges for the death of police officer Bruce VanderJagt, despite contradictory statements and dubious evidence. Thompson organized rallies, provided legal support, and co-wrote an article in the June 2004 issue of Vanity Fair outlining the case. The Colorado Supreme Court eventually overturned Auman's sentence in March 2005, shortly after Thompson's death, and Auman is now free. Auman's supporters claim Thompson's support and publicity resulted in the successful appeal.
Thompson was also an ardent supporter of drug legalization and became known for his detailed accounts of his own drug use. He was an early supporter of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws and served on the group's advisory board for over 30 years, until his death. He told an interviewer in 1997 that drugs should be legalized "[a]cross the board. It might be a little rough on some people for a while, but I think it's the only way to deal with drugs. Look at Prohibition; all it did was make a lot of criminals rich."
In a 1965 letter to his friend Paul Semonin, Thompson explained an affection for the Industrial Workers of the World, "I have in recent months come to have a certain feeling for Joe Hill and the Wobbly crowd who, if nothing else, had the right idea. But not the right mechanics. I believe the IWW was probably the last human concept in American politics." In another letter to Semonin, Thompson wrote that he agreed with Karl Marx, and compared him to Thomas Jefferson. In a letter to William Kennedy, Thompson confided that he was "coming to view the free enterprise system as the single greatest evil in the history of human savagery." In the documentary Breakfast with Hunter, Hunter S. Thompson is seen in several scenes wearing different Che Guevara T-shirts. Additionally, actor and friend Benicio del Toro has stated that Thompson kept a "big" picture of Che in his kitchen. Thompson wrote on behalf of African-American rights and the civil rights movement. He strongly criticized the dominance in American society of what he called "white power structures".
After the September 11 attacks, Thompson voiced skepticism regarding the official story on who was responsible for the attacks. He speculated to several interviewers that it may have been conducted by the U.S. government or with the government's assistance, though readily admitting he had no way to prove his theory.
In 2004, Thompson wrote: "[Richard] Nixon was a professional politician, and I despised everything he stood for—but if he were running for president this year against the evil Bush–Cheney gang, I would happily vote for him."
Scholarships
Thompson's widow established two scholarship funds at Columbia University School of General Studies for U.S. military veterans and the University of Kentucky for journalism students.
Colorado NORML created the Hunter S. Thompson Scholarship to pay all expenses for a lawyer or law student to attend the NORML Legal Committee Conference in Aspen, generally the first few days of June each year. The funding from a silent auction has paid for two winners for some years. Many winners have gone on to become important cannabis lawyers on state and national levels.
Works
Books
Thompson wrote a number of books, publishing from 1966 to the end of his life. His best-known works include Hell's Angels: The Strange and Terrible Saga of the Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, The Rum Diary, The Curse of Lono, and Screwjack.
Articles
As a journalist over the course of decades, Thompson published numerous articles in various periodicals. He wrote for many publications, including Rolling Stone, Esquire, The Boston Globe, Chicago Tribune, The New York Times, The San Francisco Examiner, Time, Vanity Fair, The San Juan Star, and Playboy. He was also guest editor for a single edition of The Aspen Daily News. A collection of 100 of his columns from The San Francisco Examiner was published in 1988 as Gonzo Papers, Vol. 2: Generation of Swine: Tales of Shame and Degradation in the '80s. A collection of his articles for Rolling Stone was released in 2011 as Fear and Loathing at Rolling Stone: The Essential Writings of Hunter S. Thompson. The book was edited by the magazine's co-founder and publisher, Jann S. Wenner, who also provided an introduction to the collection.
Letters
Thompson wrote many letters, which were his primary means of personal communication. He made carbon copies of all his letters, usually typed, a habit begun in his teenaged years.
The Fear and Loathing Letters is a three-volume collection of selections from Thompson's correspondence, edited by historian Douglas Brinkley. The first volume, The Proud Highway, was published in 1997, and contains letters from 1955 to 1967. Fear and Loathing in America was published in 2000 and contains letters dating from 1968 to 1976. A third volume, titled The Mutineer: Rants, Ravings, and Missives from the Mountaintop 1977–2005, was edited by Douglas Brinkley and prepared by Simon & Schuster in 2005. As of March 2019, it has yet to be sold to the public. It contains a special introduction by Johnny Depp.
Illustrations
Accompanying the eccentric and colorful writing of Hunter Thompson, illustrations by British artist Ralph Steadman offer visual representations of the Gonzo style. Steadman and Thompson developed a professional relationship. The two collaborated many times over Thompson's career, although at times they were known to violently argue. Wayne Ewing's documentary on Hunter captured an encounter where Steadman tells Hunter that he believes his drawings contributed as much to the success of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas as Hunter's writing. Hunter was furious at the suggestion and their relationship was certainly at times, strained. Steadman in recent years has described Hunter as "rude" and "a bully." So while they are publicly known as great friends, the true nature of their relationship was considerably more nuanced.
Photography
Thompson was an avid amateur photographer throughout his life, and his photos have been exhibited since his death at art galleries in the United States and United Kingdom. In late 2006, AMMO Books published a limited-edition, 224-page collection of Thompson photos called Gonzo: Photographs by Hunter S. Thompson, with an introduction by Johnny Depp. Thompson's snapshots were a combination of the subjects he was covering, stylized self-portraits, and artistic still life photos. The London Observer called the photos "astonishingly good" and noted that "Thompson's pictures remind us, brilliantly in every sense, of very real people, real colours."
Feature films
The film Where the Buffalo Roam (1980) depicts heavily fictionalized attempts by Thompson to cover the Super Bowl and the 1972 U.S. presidential election. It stars Bill Murray as Thompson and Peter Boyle as Thompson's attorney Oscar Zeta Acosta, referred to in the movie as Carl Lazlo, Esq.
The 1998 film adaptation of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas was directed by Monty Python veteran Terry Gilliam and starred Johnny Depp (who moved into Thompson's basement to "study" Thompson's persona before assuming his role in the film) as Raoul Duke and Benicio del Toro as Oscar Zeta Acosta. The film has achieved something of a cult following.
In the 2001 film Ali, Thompson is briefly portrayed by actor Lee Cummings.
The film adaptation of Thompson's novel The Rum Diary was released in October 2011, also starring Johnny Depp as the main character, Paul Kemp. The novel's premise was inspired by Thompson's own experiences in Puerto Rico. The film was written and directed by Bruce Robinson.
At a press junket for The Rum Diary shortly before the film's release, Depp said that he would like to adapt The Curse of Lono, "The Kentucky Derby Is Decadent and Depraved", and Hell's Angels: The Strange and Terrible Saga of the Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs for the big screen: "I'd just keep playing Hunter. There's a great comfort in it for me, because I get a great visit with my old friend who I miss dearly."
Documentaries
Fear and Loathing in Gonzovision (1978) is an extended television profile by the BBC. It can be found on disc 2 of The Criterion Collection edition of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.
The Mitchell brothers, owners of the O'Farrell Theatre in San Francisco, made a documentary about Thompson in 1988 called Hunter S. Thompson: The Crazy Never Die.
Wayne Ewing created three documentaries about Thompson. The film Breakfast with Hunter (2003) was directed and edited by Ewing. It documents Thompson's work on the movie Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, his arrest for drunk driving, and his subsequent fight with the court system. When I Die (2005) is a video chronicle of making Thompson's final farewell wishes a reality, and documents the send-off itself. Free Lisl: Fear and Loathing in Denver (2006) chronicles Thompson's efforts in helping to free Lisl Auman, who was sentenced to life in prison without parole for the shooting of a police officer, a crime she did not commit. All three films are only available online.
In Come on Down: Searching for the American Dream (2004) Thompson gives director Adamm Liley insight into the nature of the American Dream over drinks at the Woody Creek Tavern.
Buy the Ticket, Take the Ride: Hunter S. Thompson on Film (2006) was directed by Tom Thurman, written by Tom Marksbury, and produced by the Starz Entertainment Group. The original documentary features interviews with Thompson's inner circle of family and friends, but the thrust of the film focuses on the manner in which his life often overlapped with numerous Hollywood celebrities who became his close friends, such as Johnny Depp, Benicio del Toro, Bill Murray, Sean Penn, John Cusack, Thompson's wife Anita, son Juan, former Senators George McGovern and Gary Hart, writers Tom Wolfe and William F. Buckley, actors Gary Busey and Harry Dean Stanton, and the illustrator Ralph Steadman among others.
Blasted!!! The Gonzo Patriots of Hunter S. Thompson (2006), produced, directed, photographed, and edited by Blue Kraning, is a documentary about the scores of fans who volunteered their privately owned artillery to fire the ashes of the late author, Hunter S. Thompson. Blasted!!! premiered at the 2006 Starz Denver International Film Festival, part of a tribute series to Hunter S. Thompson held at the Denver Press Club.
In 2008, Academy Award-winning documentarian Alex Gibney (Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room, Taxi to the Dark Side) wrote and directed a documentary on Thompson, titled Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson. The film premiered on January 20, 2008, at the Sundance Film Festival. Gibney uses intimate, never-before-seen home videos, interviews with friends, enemies, lovers, and clips from films adapted from Thompson's material to document his turbulent life.
Theater
Lou Stein's adaptation of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas was performed at the Battersea Theatre. Stein persuades London's Time Out magazine to put Thompson up for a fortnight, in exchange for him writing a cover story to publicize the play. Thompson does not write the story, but does rampage around London on Time Out 's expense account. The play was revived for the Vault Fringe Festival in 2014.
GONZO: A Brutal Chrysalis is a one-man show about Thompson written by Paul Addis, who also played the author. Set in the writing den of Thompson's Woody Creek home, the show portrays his life between 1968 and 1971. James Cartee began playing the role soon after Addis's arrest in 2009, and again after Addis's death in 2012.
Awards, accolades, and tributes
Thompson was named a Kentucky Colonel by the governor of Kentucky in a December 1996 tribute ceremony where he also received keys to the city of Louisville.
Author Tom Wolfe has called Thompson the greatest American comic writer of the 20th century.
Asked in an interview with Jody Denberg on KGSR Studio, in 2000, whether he would ever consider writing a book "like [his] buddy Hunter S. Thompson", the musician Warren Zevon responded: "Let's remember that Hunter S. Thompson is the finest writer of our generation; he didn't just toss off a book the other day..."
Thompson appeared on the cover of the 1,000th issue of Rolling Stone, May 18 – June 1, 2006, as a devil playing the guitar next to the two "L"'s in the word "Rolling". Johnny Depp also appeared on the cover.
The Thompson-inspired character Uncle Duke appears on a recurring basis in Doonesbury, the daily newspaper comic strip by Garry Trudeau. When the character was first introduced, Thompson protested, quoted in an interview as saying that he would set Trudeau on fire if the two ever met, although reportedly he liked the character in later years. Between March 7, 2005 (roughly two weeks after Thompson's suicide), and March 12, 2005, Doonesbury ran a tribute to Hunter, with Uncle Duke lamenting the death of the man he called his "inspiration". The first of these strips featured a panel with artwork similar to that of Ralph Steadman, and later strips featured various non sequiturs (with Duke variously transforming into a monster, melting, shrinking to the size of an empty drinking glass, or people around him turning into animals), which seemed to mirror some of the effects of hallucinogenic drugs described in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.
Many have suggested that General Hunter Gathers in the Adult Swim animated series The Venture Bros. is a tribute to Thompson, as they have a similar name, mannerisms, and physical appearance.
Dale Gribble in the Fox animated series King of the Hill is a tribute to Thompson and derives his physical appearance from him.
In the Cameron Crowe film Almost Famous, based on Crowe's experiences writing for Rolling Stone while on the road with the fictional band Stillwater", the writer is on the phone with an actor portraying Jann Wenner. Wenner tells the young journalist that he "is not there to join the party, we already have one Hunter Thompson" after the young writer amassed large hotel and traveling expenses and is overheard to be sharing his room with several young women.
Eric C. Shoaf donated a caché of approximately 800 items (in librarian terms, about 35-40 linear feet of material on a shelf) pertaining to the life and career of Thompson to the University of California at Santa Cruz. Shoaf also published a descriptive bibliography, Gonzology: A Hunter Thompson Bibliography, of the works of Hunter S. Thompson with over 1,000 entries, many never before documented appearances in print, hundreds of biographical entries about Thompson's life, full descriptions of all his primary works, preface by William McKeen, Phd, and photo section with rare and exclusive items depicted.
References
External links
"Hunter S. Thompson's ESPN Page 2 Archive", Totallygonzo.org
"Shotgun Golf With Bill Murray", Thompson's final column for ESPN.com's Page 2.
A collection of articles on Thompson from The Guardian
Thompson's photography
1937 births
2005 suicides
20th-century American journalists
20th-century American male writers
20th-century American novelists
20th-century essayists
21st-century American journalists
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9/11 conspiracy theorists
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14329 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historicism | Historicism | Historicism is an approach to explaining the existence of phenomena, especially social and cultural practices (including ideas and beliefs), by studying their history, that is, by studying the process by which they came about. The term is widely used in philosophy, anthropology, and sociology.
This historical approach to explanation differs from and complements the approach known as functionalism, which seeks to explain a phenomenon, such as for example a social form, by providing reasoned arguments about how that social form fulfils some function in the structure of a society. In contrast, rather than taking the phenomenon as a given and then seeking to provide a justification for it from reasoned principles, the historical approach asks "Where did this come from?" and "What factors led up to its creation?"; that is, historical explanations often place a greater emphasis on the role of process and contingency.
Historicism is often used to help contextualize theories and narratives, and is a useful tool to help understand how social and cultural phenomena came to be.
The historicist approach differs from individualist theories of knowledge such as strict empiricism and de-contextualised rationalism, which neglect the role of traditions. Historicism may be contrasted with reductionist theories—which assume that all developments can be explained by fundamental principles (such as in economic determinism)—or with theories that posit that historical changes occur entirely at random.
History of the term
The term historicism (Historismus) was coined by German philosopher Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel. Over time, what historicism is and how it is practiced have developed different and divergent meanings. Elements of historicism appear in the writings of French essayist Michel de Montaigne (1533–1592) and Italian philosopher G. B. Vico (1668–1744), and became more fully developed with the dialectic of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831), influential in 19th-century Europe. The writings of Karl Marx, influenced by Hegel, also include historicism. The term is also associated with the empirical social sciences and with the work of Franz Boas. Historicism tends to be hermeneutic because it values cautious, rigorous, and contextualized interpretation of information; or relativist, because it rejects notions of universal, fundamental and immutable interpretations.
Variants
Hegelian
Hegel viewed the realization of human freedom as the ultimate purpose of history, which could be achieved only through the creation of the perfect state. Historical progress toward this state would occur through a dialectical process: the tension between the purpose of humankind (freedom) and humankind's current condition would produce the attempt by humankind to change its condition to one more in accord with its nature. However, because humans are often not aware of the goal of humanity and history, the process of achieving freedom is necessarily one of self-discovery.
Hegel saw progress toward freedom as conducted by the "spirit" (Geist), a seemingly supernatural force that directs all human actions and interactions. Yet Hegel makes clear that the spirit is a mere abstraction and comes into existence "through the activity of finite agents." Thus, Hegel's determining forces of history may not have a metaphysical nature, though many of his opponents and interpreters have understood him as holding metaphysical and determinist views.
Hegel's historicism also suggests that any human society and all human activities such as science, art, or philosophy, are defined by their history. Consequently, their essence can be sought only by understanding said history. The history of any such human endeavor, moreover, not only continues but also reacts against what has gone before; this is the source of Hegel's famous dialectic teaching usually summarized by the slogan "thesis, antithesis, and synthesis". (Hegel did not use these terms, although Johann Fichte did.) Hegel's famous aphorism, "Philosophy is the history of philosophy," describes it bluntly.
Hegel's position is perhaps best illuminated when contrasted against the atomistic and reductionist opinion of human societies and social activities self-defining on an ad hoc basis through the sum of dozens of interactions. Yet another contrasting model is the persistent metaphor of a social contract. Hegel considers the relationship between individuals and societies as organic, not atomic: even their social discourse is mediated by language, and language is based on etymology and unique character. It thus preserves the culture of the past in thousands of half-forgotten metaphors. To understand why a person is the way he is, you must examine that person in his society: and to understand that society, you must understand its history, and the forces that influenced it. The Zeitgeist, the "Spirit of the Age," is the concrete embodiment of the most important factors that are acting in human history at any given time. This contrasts with teleological theories of activity, which suppose that the end is the determining factor of activity, as well as those who believe in a tabula rasa, or blank slate, opinion, such that individuals are defined by their interactions.
These ideas can be interpreted variously. The Right Hegelians, working from Hegel's opinions about the organicism and historically determined nature of human societies, interpreted Hegel's historicism as a justification of the unique destiny of national groups and the importance of stability and institutions. Hegel's conception of human societies as entities greater than the individuals who constitute them influenced nineteenth-century romantic nationalism and its twentieth-century excesses. The Young Hegelians, by contrast, interpreted Hegel's thoughts on societies influenced by social conflict for a doctrine of social progress, and attempted to manipulate these forces to cause various results. Karl Marx's doctrine of "historical inevitabilities" and historical materialism is one of the more influential reactions to this part of Hegel's thought. Significantly, Karl Marx's theory of alienation argues that capitalism disrupts traditional relationships between workers and their work.
Hegelian historicism is related to his ideas on the means by which human societies progress, specifically the dialectic and his conception of logic as representing the inner essential nature of reality. Hegel attributes the change to the "modern" need to interact with the world, whereas ancient philosophers were self-contained, and medieval philosophers were monks. In his History of Philosophy Hegel writes:
In modern times things are very different; now we no longer see philosophic individuals who constitute a class by themselves. With the present day all difference has disappeared; philosophers are not monks, for we find them generally in connection with the world, participating with others in some common work or calling. They live, not independently, but in the relation of citizens, or they occupy public offices and take part in the life of the state. Certainly they may be private persons, but if so, their position as such does not in any way isolate them from their other relationship. They are involved in present conditions, in the world and its work and progress. Thus their philosophy is only by the way, a sort of luxury and superfluity. This difference is really to be found in the manner in which outward conditions have taken shape after the building up of the inward world of religion. In modern times, namely, on account of the reconciliation of the worldly principle with itself, the external world is at rest, is brought into order — worldly relationships, conditions, modes of life, have become constituted and organized in a manner which is conformable to nature and rational. We see a universal, comprehensible connection, and with that individuality likewise attains another character and nature, for it is no longer the plastic individuality of the ancients. This connection is of such power that every individuality is under its dominion, and yet at the same time can construct for itself an inward world.
This opinion that entanglement in society creates an indissoluble bond with expression, would become an influential question in philosophy, namely, the requirements for individuality. It would be considered by Nietzsche, John Dewey and Michel Foucault directly, as well as in the work of numerous artists and authors. There have been various responses to Hegel's challenge. The Romantic period emphasized the ability of individual genius to transcend time and place, and use the materials from their heritage to fashion works which were beyond determination. The modern would advance versions of John Locke's infinite malleability of the human animal. Post-structuralism would argue that since history is not present, but only the image of history, that while an individual era or power structure might emphasize a particular history, that the contradictions within the story would hinder the very purposes that the history was constructed to advance.
Anthropological
In the context of anthropology and other sciences which study the past, historicism has a different meaning. Historical Particularism is associated with the work of Franz Boas. His theory used the diffusionist concept that there were a few "cradles of civilization" which grew outwards, and merged it with the idea that societies would adapt to their circumstances. The school of historicism grew in response to unilinear theories that social development represented adaptive fitness, and therefore existed on a continuum. While these theories were espoused by Charles Darwin and many of his students, their application as applied in social Darwinism and general evolution characterized in the theories of Herbert Spencer and Leslie White, historicism was neither anti-selection, nor anti-evolution, as Darwin never attempted nor offered an explanation for cultural evolution. However, it attacked the notion that there was one normative spectrum of development, instead emphasizing how local conditions would create adaptations to the local environment. Julian Steward refuted the viability of globally and universally applicable adaptive standards proposing that culture was honed adaptively in response to the idiosyncrasies of the local environment, the cultural ecology, by specific evolution. What was adaptive for one region might not be so for another. This conclusion has likewise been adopted by modern forms of biological evolutionary theory.
The primary method of historicism was empirical, namely that there were so many requisite inputs into a society or event, that only by emphasizing the data available could a theory of the source be determined. In this opinion, grand theories are unprovable, and instead intensive field work would determine the most likely explanation and history of a culture, and hence it is named "historicism."
This opinion would produce a wide range of definition of what, exactly, constituted culture and history, but in each case the only means of explaining it was in terms of the historical particulars of the culture itself.
New Historicism
Since the 1950s, when Jacques Lacan and Michel Foucault argued that each epoch has its own knowledge system, within which individuals are inexorably entangled, many post-structuralists have used historicism to describe the opinion that all questions must be settled within the cultural and social context in which they are raised. Answers cannot be found by appeal to an external truth, but only within the confines of the norms and forms that phrase the question. This version of historicism holds that there are only the raw texts, markings and artifacts that exist in the present, and the conventions used to decode them. This school of thought is sometimes given the name of New Historicism. The same term, new historicism is also used for a school of literary scholarship which interprets a poem, drama, etc. as an expression of or reaction to the power-structures of its society. Stephen Greenblatt is an example of this school.
Modern Historicism
Within the context of 20th-century philosophy, debates continue as to whether ahistorical and immanent methods were sufficient to understand the meaning (that is to say, "what you see is what you get" positivism) or whether context, background and culture are important beyond the mere need to decode words, phrases and references. While post-structural historicism is relativist in its orientation—that is, it sees each culture as its own frame of reference—a large number of thinkers have embraced the need for historical context, not because culture is self-referential, but because there is no more compressed means of conveying all of the relevant information except through history. This opinion is often seen as deriving from the work of Benedetto Croce. Recent historians using this tradition include Thomas Kuhn.
Talcott Parsons criticized historicism as a case of idealistic fallacy in The Structure of Social Action (1937). Post-structuralism uses the term new historicism, which has some associations with both anthropology and Hegelianism.
Christian Historicism
Eschatological
In Christianity, the term historicism refers to the confessional Protestant form of prophetical interpretation which holds that the fulfillment of biblical prophecy has occurred throughout history and continues to occur; as opposed to other methods which limit the time-frame of prophecy-fulfillment to the past or to the future.
Dogmatic and ecclesiastic
There is also a particular opinion in ecclesiastical history and in the history of dogmas which has been described as historicist by Pope Pius XII in the encyclical Humani generis. "They add that the history of dogmas consists in the reporting of the various forms in which revealed truth has been clothed, forms that have succeeded one another in accordance with the different teachings and opinions that have arisen over the course of the centuries."
Critics
Karl Marx
The social theory of Karl Marx, with respect to modern scholarship, has an ambiguous relation to historicism. Critics of Marx have understood his theory as historicist since its very genesis. However, the issue of historicism has been debated even among Marxists: the charge of historicism has been made against various types of Marxism, typically disparaged by Marxists as "vulgar" Marxism.
Marx himself expresses critical concerns with this historicist tendency in his Theses on Feuerbach:
Western Marxists such as Karl Korsch, Antonio Gramsci and the early Georg Lukacs emphasise the roots of Marx's thought in Hegel. They interpret Marxism as an historically relativist philosophy, which views ideas (including Marxist theory) as necessary products of the historical epochs that create them. In this view, Marxism is not an objective social science, but rather a theoretical expression of the class consciousness of the working class within an historical process. This understanding of Marxism is strongly criticised by the structural Marxist Louis Althusser, who affirms that Marxism is an objective science, autonomous from interests of society and class.
Karl Popper
Karl Popper used the term historicism in his influential books The Poverty of Historicism and The Open Society and Its Enemies, to mean: "an approach to the social sciences which assumes that historical prediction is their primary aim, and which assumes that this aim is attainable by discovering the 'rhythms' or the 'patterns', the 'laws' or the 'trends' that underlie the evolution of history". Popper condemned historicism along with the determinism and holism which he argued formed its basis. In his The Poverty of Historicism, he identified historicism with the opinion that there are "inexorable laws of historical destiny", which opinion he warned against. If this seems to contrast with what proponents of historicism argue for, in terms of contextually relative interpretation, this happens, according to Popper, only because such proponents are unaware of the type of causality they ascribe to history. Popper wrote with reference to Hegel's theory of history, which he criticized extensively. However, there is wide dispute whether Popper's description of "historicism" is an accurate description of Hegel, or more his characterisation of his own philosophical antagonists, including Marxist-Leninist thought, then widely held as posing a challenge to the philosophical basis of the West, as well as theories such as Spengler's which drew predictions about the future course of events from the past.
In The Open Society and Its Enemies, Popper attacks "historicism" and its proponents, among whom (as well as Hegel) he identifies and singles out Plato and Marx—calling them all "enemies of the open society". The objection he makes is that historicist positions, by claiming that there is an inevitable and deterministic pattern to history, abrogate the democratic responsibility of each one of us to make our own free contributions to the evolution of society, and hence lead to totalitarianism.
Another of his targets is what he terms "moral historicism", the attempt to infer moral values from the course of history; in Hegel's words, that "history is the world's court of justice". This may take the form of conservatism (former might is right), positivism (might is right) or futurism (presumed coming might is right). As against these, Popper says that he does not believe "that success proves anything or that history is our judge". Futurism must be distinguished from prophecies that the right will prevail: these attempt to infer history from ethics, rather than ethics from history, and are therefore historicism in the normal sense rather than moral historicism.
He also attacks what he calls "Historism", which he regards as distinct from historicism. By historism, he means the tendency to regard every argument or idea as completely accounted for by its historical context, as opposed to assessing it by its merits. In Popperian terms, the "New Historicism" is an example of historism rather than of historicism proper.
Leo Strauss
Leo Strauss used the term historicism and reportedly termed it the single greatest threat to intellectual freedom insofar as it denies any attempt to address injustice-pure-and-simple (such is the significance of historicism's rejection of "natural right" or "right by nature"). Strauss argued that historicism "rejects political philosophy" (insofar as this stands or falls by questions of permanent, trans-historical significance) and is based on the belief that "all human thought, including scientific thought, rests on premises which cannot be validated by human reason and which came from historical epoch to historical epoch." Strauss further identified R. G. Collingwood as the most coherent advocate of historicism in the English language. Countering Collingwood's arguments, Strauss warned against historicist social scientists' failure to address real-life problems—most notably that of tyranny—to the extent that they relativize (or "subjectivize") all ethical problems by placing their significance strictly in function of particular or ever-changing socio-material conditions devoid of inherent or "objective" "value." Similarly, Strauss criticized Eric Voegelin's abandonment of ancient political thought as guide or vehicle in interpreting modern political problems.
In his books, Natural Right and History and On Tyranny, Strauss offers a complete critique of historicism as it emerges in the works of Hegel, Marx, and Heidegger. Many believe that Strauss also found historicism in Edmund Burke, Tocqueville, Augustine, and John Stuart Mill. Although it is largely disputed whether Strauss himself was a historicist, he often indicated that historicism grew out of and against Christianity and was a threat to civic participation, belief in human agency, religious pluralism, and, most controversially, an accurate understanding of the classical philosophers and religious prophets themselves. Throughout his work, he warns that historicism, and the understanding of progress that results from it, expose us to tyranny, totalitarianism, and democratic extremism. In his exchange with Alexandre Kojève in On Tyranny, Strauss seems to blame historicism for Nazism and Communism. In a collection of his works by Kenneth Hart entitled Jewish Philosophy and the Crisis of Modernity, he argues that Islam, traditional Judaism, and ancient Greece, share a concern for sacred law that makes them especially susceptible to historicism, and therefore to tyranny. Strauss makes use of Nietzsche's own critique of progress and historicism, although Strauss refers to Nietzsche himself (no less than to Heidegger) as a "radical historicist" who articulated a philosophical (if only untenable) justification for historicism.
See also
Parametric determinism
Path dependence
Sociocultural evolution
References
Further reading
Franz Boas, The Mind of Primitive Man.
Hans-Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method.
G. W. F. Hegel, 1911. The Philosophy of History.
Ludwig von Mises, 1957. Theory and History, chapter 10: "Historicism"
Karl Popper, 1945. The Open Society and Its Enemies, in 2 volumes. Routledge. .
Karl Popper, 1993. The Poverty of Historicism. Routledge. .
External links
Historicism in Anthropology
Aesthetics
Evolution
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
Social philosophy
Theories of history | [
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14330 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunter%20College | Hunter College | Hunter College is one of the constituent colleges of the City University of New York, a public university in New York City. The college offers studies in more than one hundred undergraduate and postgraduate fields across five schools. It also administers Hunter College High School and Hunter College Elementary School.
Hunter was founded in 1870 as a women's college; it first admitted male freshmen in 1946. The main campus has been located on Park Avenue since 1873. In 1943, Eleanor Roosevelt dedicated Franklin Delano Roosevelt's and her former townhouse to the college; the building was reopened in 2010 as the Roosevelt House Public Policy Institute at Hunter College. The college has a 57% graduation rate within six years.
History
Founding
Hunter College has its origins in the 19th-century movement for normal school training which swept across the United States. Hunter descends from the Female Normal and High School (later renamed the Normal College of the City of New York), established in New York City in 1870. Founded by Irish immigrant Thomas Hunter, who was president of the school during the first 37 years, it was originally a women's college for training teachers. The school, which was housed in an armory and saddle store at Broadway and East Fourth Street in Manhattan, was open to all qualified women, irrespective of race, religion or ethnic background. At the time most women's colleges had racial or ethno-religious admissions criteria.
Created by the New York State Legislature, Hunter was deemed the only approved institution for those seeking to teach in New York City. The school incorporated an elementary and high school for gifted children, where students practiced teaching. In 1887, a kindergarten was established as well. (Today, the elementary school and the high school still exist at a different location, and are now called the Hunter College Campus Schools.)
During Thomas Hunter's tenure as president of the school, Hunter became known for its impartiality regarding race, religion, ethnicity, financial or political favoritism; its pursuit of higher education for women; its high entry requirements; and its rigorous academics. The first female professor at the school, Helen Gray Cone, was elected to the position in 1899. The college's student population quickly expanded, and the college subsequently moved uptown, in 1873, into a new red brick Gothic structure facing Park Avenue between 68th and 69th Streets. It was one of several public institutions built at the time on a Lenox Hill lot that had been set aside by the city for a park, before the creation of Central Park.
In 1888 the school was incorporated as a college under the statutes of New York State, with the power to confer the degree of A.B. This led to the separation of the school into two "camps": the "Normals", who pursued a four-year course of study to become licensed teachers, and the "Academics", who sought non-teaching professions and the Bachelor of Arts degree. After 1902 when the "Normal" course of study was abolished, the "Academic" course became standard across the student body.
Expansion
In 1913 the east end of the building, housing the elementary school, was replaced by Thomas Hunter Hall, a new limestone Tudor building facing Lexington Avenue and designed by C. B. J. Snyder. The following year the Normal College became Hunter College in honor of its first president. At the same time, the college was experiencing a period of great expansion as increasing student enrollments necessitated more space. The college reacted by establishing branches in the boroughs of Brooklyn, Queens, and Staten Island. By 1920, Hunter College had the largest enrollment of women of any municipally financed college in the United States. In 1930, Hunter's Brooklyn campus merged with City College's Brooklyn campus, and the two were spun off to form Brooklyn College.
In 1936 fire destroyed the 1873 Gothic building facing Park Avenue, and by 1940 the Public Works Administration replaced it with the Modernist north building, designed by Shreve, Lamb & Harmon along with Harrison & Fouilhoux.
The late 1930s saw the construction of Hunter College in the Bronx (later known as the Bronx Campus). During the Second World War, Hunter leased the Bronx Campus buildings to the United States Navy who used the facilities to train 95,000 women volunteers for military service as WAVES and SPARS. When the Navy vacated the campus, the site was briefly occupied by the nascent United Nations, which held its first Security Council sessions at the Bronx Campus in 1946, giving the school an international profile.
In 1943, Eleanor Roosevelt dedicated a town house at 47–49 East 65th Street in Manhattan to the college. The house had been a home for the future President and First Lady. Today it is known as The Roosevelt House of Public Policy and opened in fall 2010 as an academic center hosting prominent speakers.
CUNY era
Hunter became the women's college of the municipal system, and in the 1950s, when City College became coeducational, Hunter started admitting men to its Bronx campus. In 1964, the Manhattan campus began admitting men also. The Bronx campus subsequently became Lehman College in 1968.
In 1968–1969, Black and Puerto Rican students struggled to get a department that would teach about their history and experience. These and supportive students and faculty expressed this demand through building take-overs, rallies, etc. In Spring 1969, Hunter College established Black and Puerto Rican Studies (now called Africana/Puerto Rican and Latino Studies). An "open admissions" policy initiated in 1970 by the City University of New York opened the school's doors to historically underrepresented groups by guaranteeing a college education to any and all who graduated from NYC high schools. Many African Americans, Asian Americans, Latinos, Puerto Ricans, and students from the developing world made their presence felt at Hunter, and even after the end of "open admissions" still comprise a large part of the school's student body. As a result of this increase in enrollment, Hunter opened new buildings on Lexington Avenue during the early 1980s. In further advancing Puerto Rican studies, Hunter became home to the Centro de Estudios Puertorriqueños ("Center for Puerto Rican Studies" or simply "Centro") in 1982.
Today, Hunter College is a comprehensive teaching and research institution. Of the more than 20,000 students enrolled at Hunter, nearly 5,000 are enrolled in a graduate program, the most popular of which are education and social work. Although less than 28% of students are the first in their families to attend college, the college maintains its tradition of concern for women's education, with nearly three out of four students being female. In 2006, Hunter became home to the Bella Abzug Leadership Institute, which will run training programs for young women to build their leadership, public speaking, business and advocacy skills.
In recent years, the college has integrated its undergraduate and graduate programs to successfully make advanced programs in fields such as (Psychology and Biology) – "PhD Program", (Education) – "Master's Program", (Mathematics) – "Master's Program", -"PhD Program" (Biology & Chemistry) – "Biochemistry", (Accounting) – "Master's Program" along with the highly competitive (Economics) – "Master's Program" to which only a select few students may enter based on excellent scholarship and performance, and less than half will earn a master's degree by maintaining a nearly perfect academic record and performing thesis research.
Although far from the polar regions, Hunter is a member institution of the University of the Arctic, a network of schools providing education accessible to northern students.
Campuses
Main campus
Hunter College is anchored by its main campus at East 68th Street and Lexington Avenue, a modern complex of three towers – the East, West, and North Buildings – and Thomas Hunter Hall, all interconnected by skywalks. The college's official street address is 695 Park Avenue, New York, NY 10065. (Formerly bearing the ZIP code of 10021, the code changed on July 1, 2007, in accordance with the United States Postal Service's plan to split the 10021 ZIP code.) The address is based on the North Building, which stretches from 68th to 69th Streets along Park Avenue.
The main campus is situated two blocks east of Central Park, as well as many of New York's most prestigious cultural institutions, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Asia Society Museum, and the Frick Collection. The New York City Subway's 68th Street–Hunter College station () on the IRT Lexington Avenue Line is directly underneath, and serves the entire campus. Adjacent to the staircase to the station, in front of the West Building, sat an iconic Hunter sculpture, "Tau", created by late Hunter professor and respected artist Tony Smith. The sculpture has been removed as of October 2018 due to restoration purposes.
The main campus is home to the School of Arts and Sciences and the School of Education. It features numerous facilities that serve not only Hunter, but the surrounding community, and is y well known as a center for the arts. The Assembly Hall, which seats more than 2,000, is a major performance site; the Sylvia and Danny Kaye Playhouse, a 675-seat proscenium theatre, has over 100,000 visitors annually and hosts over 200 performances each season; the Ida K. Lang Recital Hall is a fully equipped concert space with 148 seats; the Frederick Loewe Theatre, a 50 x black box performance space is the site of most department performances; and the Bertha and Karl Leubsdorf Art Gallery hosts professionally organized art exhibits.
Students have access to specialized learning facilities at the main campus, including the Dolciani Mathematics Learning Center, the Leona and Marcy Chanin Language Center, and the Physical Sciences Learning Center. A respected research institution, Hunter has numerous research laboratories in the natural and biomedical sciences. These labs accommodate post-docs, PhD students from the CUNY Graduate School, and undergraduate researchers.
College sports and recreational programs are served by the Hunter Sportsplex, located below the West Building.
Satellite campuses
Hunter has two satellite campuses: The Silberman School of Social Work Building, located on third Avenue between East 118th and East 119th Streets, which houses the School of Social Work, the School of Urban Public Health, and the Brookdale Center on Aging; and the Brookdale Campus, located at East 25th Street and first Avenue, which houses the Hunter-Bellevue School of Nursing, the Schools of the Health Professions, the Health Professions Library and several research centers and computer labs.
The Brookdale Campus is the site of the Hunter dormitory, which is home to over 600 undergraduate and graduate students, as well as a limited number of nurses employed at Bellevue Hospital. Prior to the opening of City College's new "Towers," the Brookdale complex was the City University's only dormitory facility.
Other facilities
The college owns and operates property outside of its main campuses, including the MFA Building at 205 Hudson, Roosevelt House, Baker Theatre Building, Silberman School of Social Work, and the Hunter College Campus Schools. The MFA Studio Art program was formerly run out of a building on West 41st Street between 9th and 10th Avenues. It was a industrial space that students converted to studio space for the college's BFA and MFA program. The current building in Tribeca now houses the Studio Art and Integrated Media Arts MFA program, and Art History MA program. Roosevelt House, located on East 65th Street, is the historic family home of Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt. Hunter's Roosevelt House Public Policy Institute is now located there, honoring the public policy commitments of Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt. Baker Theatre Building located on 149 East 67th Street, New York, NY 10065 is the home of Hunter's Department of Theatre thanks to the extraordinary generosity of Hunter trustee Patty Baker ’82 and her husband, Jay. The Silberman School of Social Work is located between 118th and 119th street on 3rd Ave. The Hunter Campus Schools—Hunter College High School and Hunter College Elementary School—are publicly funded schools for the intellectually gifted. Located at East 94th Street, the Campus Schools are among the nation's oldest and largest elementary and secondary schools of their kind.
Libraries
Hunter library collections are housed in the Leon and Toby Cooperman Library (the main library), the Zabar Art Library at East 68th Street in the North Building, the Health Professions Library at the Brookdale Campus, and the Social Work Library at the Silberman School of Social Work building. There is a small library at the Roosevelt House building. Together, these libraries hold over 760,000 volumes, more than 2,100 current print periodical subscriptions and approximately 10,000 in electronic format, 1,168,000 microforms, 13,000 videos and music CDs, 250,000 art slides, and 40,000+ digital images. The CUNY+ online catalog of university-wide holdings and remote online databases are accessible at all Hunter libraries.
Under the guidance of the Presidential Task Force on the Library, created in the fall of 2006, the Leon and Toby Cooperman Library has undergone several improvements in the areas of facilities, holdings, and services. The library now features wireless capability, a redesigned student lounge and circulation desk, improved lighting, and expanded electronic resources. Additionally, the college has extended library hours, hired more library staff, and instituted a laptop loan program for students. More improvements are planned for the future, as part of an initiative to fully modernize the library.
Academics
Hunter is organized into four schools: The School of Arts and Sciences, the School of Education, the School of the Health Professions, and the School of Social Work. The college is highly selective, with an admissions acceptance rate of 36% in Fall 2018. Hunter offers 70 programs leading to a BA or BS degree; 10 BA-MA joint degree programs; and 75 graduate programs.
They may study within the fields of fine arts, the humanities, the language arts, the sciences, the social sciences, and the applied arts and sciences, as well as in professional areas in accounting, education, health sciences, and nursing. Regardless of area of concentration, all Hunter students are encouraged to have broad exposure to the liberal arts; Hunter was one of the first colleges in the nation to pass a 12-credit curriculum requirement for pluralism and diversity courses.
As of 2007, Hunter has 673 full-time and 886 part-time faculty members, and 20,844 students—15,718 undergraduates and 5,126 graduates. Over 50% of Hunter's students belong to ethnic minority groups. The class of 2011 represented 60 countries and speaks 59 different languages. Seventy-one percent of these students were born outside the United States or have at least one foreign-born parent. SAT and high school GPA scores for the entering Fall 2012 class of freshmen had an SAT score 25th–75th percentile range of 1090 to 1280 and high school GPA 25th–75th percentile range of 85% to 92%.
Rankings (Updated for 2021 - 2022 academic year)
Hunter College rankings are as follows:
National
ARWU: 187 - 200
Forbes: 129
THE/WSJ: 256
QS: 151 - 160
CWUR: 218
Regional
US News and World: 18
Washington Monthly: 37
Graduate Program in Fine Arts
In the most recent edition of U.S. News and World Report Ranking of Graduate Fine Arts Programs, Hunter has been ranked 23rd best in the United States. Hunter's MFA Programs in Studio Art (Painting and Sculpture) and Studio Art (Painting and Drawing) have both been ranked ninth best in the nation. In 2017, Artsy included Hunter's in the list of "Top 15 Art Schools in the United States." The admission to Hunter's MFA Programs in Studio Art is highly competitive, with the average acceptance rate of 8% as of 2018.
Honors programs
Hunter offers several honors programs, including the Macaulay Honors College and the Thomas Hunter Honors Program. The Macaulay Honors College, a CUNY-wide honors program, supports the undergraduate education of academically gifted students. University Scholars benefit from a full tuition scholarship (up to the value of in-state tuition only as of Fall 2013, effectively restricting it to NY state residents), personalized advising, early registration, access to internships, and study abroad opportunities. All scholars at Hunter are given the choice of either a free dormitory room at the Brookdale Campus for two years or a yearly stipend.
The Thomas Hunter Honors Program offers topical interdisciplinary seminars and academic concentrations designed to meet students’ individual interests. The program is open to outstanding students pursuing a BA and is orchestrated under the supervision of an Honors Council. It can be combined with, or replace, a formal departmental major/minor.
Hunter offers other honors programs, including Honors Research Training Programs and Departmental Honors opportunities, The Muse Scholar program, the Jenny Hunter program, the Athena program, and the Yalow program.
In addition to these honors programs, several honors societies are based at Hunter, including Phi Beta Kappa (PBK). A small percentage of Hunter students are invited to join Hunter's Nu chapter of PBK, which has existed at the college since 1920.
Student life
Student governance
The Hunter College student body is governed by the Undergraduate Student Government and the Graduate Student Association (GSA),.
Clubs
Hunter offers approximately 150 clubs.. These organizations range from the academic to the athletic, and from the religious/spiritual to the visual and performing arts. There are even clubs based on specific interests, such as "Russian Club", which offers a look at Russian life and culture and "InterVarsity Christian Fellowship" an organization whose vision is to "transform students and faculty, renew the campus, and develop world changers."
Fraternities and sororities
National – Social
Alpha Epsilon Pi (ΑΕΠ) – international social fraternity
Kappa Sigma (ΚΣ) – international social fraternity
Delta Sigma Theta (ΔΣΘ) – international social sorority
Phi Sigma Sigma (ΦΣΣ) – international social sorority
National – Service
Alpha Phi Omega (ΑΦΩ) – national co-educational service fraternity
Local – Social
Alpha Sigma (ΑΣ) – local social sorority
Nu Phi Delta (ΝΦΔ) – local multicultural social fraternity
Local – Service
Theta Phi Gamma (ΘΦΓ) – local cultural and philanthropic sorority
Epsilon Sigma Phi (ΕΣΦ) – local multicultural service sorority
Zeta Phi Alpha (ΖΦΑ) – local service sorority
Non-Greek
Gamma Ce Upsilon (ΓCΥ) – non-Greek Latina sorority
Student media
Hunter College has a campus radio station, "WHCS", which once broadcast at 590AM but is now solely online. "The Envoy" is the main campus newspaper, published bi-weekly during the academic year. Its literary and art magazine The Olivetree Review offers opportunities for publishing student prose, poetry, drama, and art. Other publications include "Culture Magazine" (fashion and lifestyle), "Hunted Hero Comics" (comics and graphic stories), "The Photographer's Collective" (photography), "Nursing Student Press" (medical news and articles), Spoon University (culinary online publication), Psych News (psychology), "The Wistarion" (yearbook), "SABOR" (Spanish language and photography/now defunct), Revista De La Academia (Spanish language/now defunct), the Islamic Times (now defunct), Political Paradigm (political science/now defunct), Hakol (Jewish interest/now defunct), and Spoof (humor/now defunct).
Past publications also include the WORD (news) and Hunter Anonymous.
Athletics
Hunter is a member of the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) and competes at the Division III level.
The mascot is the Hawks. Hunter plays in the City University of New York Athletic Conference.
The basketball, volleyball and wrestling teams play at the Hunter Sportsplex.
Manhattan/Hunter College Science High School
As a partnership with the New York City Department of Education, the Manhattan/Hunter College High School for Sciences was opened in 2003 on the campus of the former Martin Luther King, Jr. High School on the Upper West Side. Unlike Hunter's campus schools, Hunter Science does not require an entrance exam for admission.
Notable alumni
Arts
This list covers alumni in visual, musical, and performing arts.
Martina Arroyo – opera singer
Barbara Adrian – artist
Robert Altman – photographer
Firelei Báez - visual artist
Jules de Balincourt – artist (painter)
Crackhead Barney – performance artist
Robert Barry (born 1936) – conceptual artist.
Katherine Behar – artist (performance)
Aisha Tandiwe Bell – artist (mixed media)
Daniel Bozhkov – artist (painter, performance)
Vivian E. Browne – artist (painter)
Roy DeCarava – artist (photographer)
Jacqueline Donachie – contemporary artist
Cheryl Donegan – contemporary artist
Echo Eggebrecht – contemporary artist
Gabriele Evertz – contemporary artist (painter)
Omer Fast – artist (video, film)
Denise Green – artist (painter)
Wade Guyton – artist (painter)
Minna Harkavy – sculptor
Kim Hoeckele – artist
Louise E. Jefferson – artist, graphic designer
Jessica Kairé – installation artist
Mel Kendrick – artist (sculptor, printmaking)
Kathleen Kucka – artist (painter)
Katerina Lanfranco – artist (painter, sculptor)
Terrance Lindall – artist (surrealist)
Nick Mangano - stage actor and director
Monica McKelvey Johnson – artist (comics) and curator
Awoiska van der Molen – photographer
Robert Morris – artist (sculptor)
Doug Ohlson (1936–2010) – abstract artist.
Roselle Osk — artist
Paul Pfeiffer – artist (video)
William Powhida – artist (painter)
Henning Rübsam – choreographer and dancer
Abbey Ryan – artist (painter)
Lenny Schultz – comedian, gym teacher
Sally Sheinman – artist
Liz Story – artist (pianist)
Robin Tewes – artist (painter)
Cora Kelley Ward – artist (painter)
Nari Ward – artist (sculptor)
Beatrice Witkin - composer
Esther Zweig - composer
Business
Leon G. Cooperman – chairman and CEO, Omega Advisors
Lewis Frankfort – chairman and CEO, Coach, Inc.
Jeremiah J. Sheehan – chairman and CEO, Reynolds Metals, Inc.
Entertainment and sports
Ellen Barkin – actress
James Bethea – producer/television executive
Inna Brayer – ballroom dance champion
Edward Burns – actor
Harry Connick, Jr. – actor, singer
Bobby Darin – musician, singer, songwriter and actor
Ruby Dee (1945) – Emmy-nominated actress and civil rights activist
Vin Diesel – American actor
Grete Dollitz (1946) – radio presenter and guitarist
Hugh Downs – television host
Nikolai Fraiture – musician and bassist for The Strokes
Wilson Jermaine Heredia – Tony Award-winning actor
Alice Minnie Herts – founded Children's Educational Theatre in 1903
Jake Hurwitz – web comedian and actor
Richard Jeni – comedian
Natasha Leggero – actress/comedian
Leigh Lezark – member of DJ trio the Misshapes
Quinn Marston – singer-songwriter of indie folk
Janet MacLachlan (1955) – actress
Deepti Naval – actress, filmmaker, writer and photographer
Julianne Nicholson – actress on Law & Order: Criminal Intent (did not graduate)
Rhea Perlman – actress
Dascha Polanco – actress
The Kid Mero – former co-host of Viceland's Desus & Mero and current co-host of Showtime's Desus & Mero; AKA SKKRRRRT Loder, Light-An-L Dutchie, Barmelo Xanthony, and the Plantain Supernova in the Sky
Daniel Ravner – writer, speaker, cross media creator
Judy Reyes – actress
DJ Ricardo! – DJ/producer
Margherita Roberti – opera singer
Esther Rolle – actress
Ron Rothstein – basketball coach
Mirko Savone – actor and voice-over
Jun Song – blogger and Big Brother contestant
Jean Stapleton – actress
Nick Valensi – musician and guitarist for The Strokes
J. Buzz Von Ornsteiner – forensic psychologist/television personality
Government, politics, and social issues
Bella Abzug (1942) – Congresswoman (1971–1977), women's rights advocate, political activist
Charles Barron – New York City Council member
Keiko Bonk – Activist, artist, politician, and highest-ranking elected Green Party member in the United States
Carmen Beauchamp Ciparick (1963) – Judge, first Hispanic woman named to the New York State Court of Appeals
Helene S. Coleman (1925) – President, National Council of Jewish Women
Robert R. Davila (1965) – President, Gallaudet University and advocate for the rights of the hearing impaired
Martin Garbus (1955) – First Amendment attorney
Paula Harper – art historian
Florence Howe (1950) – Founder of women's studies and founder/publisher of the Feminist Press/CUNY
Teresa Patterson Hughes – California State Senator
Mary Johnson Lowe (1951) – Judge of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York
Roger Manno – Maryland politician
Soia Mentschikoff (1934) – law professor who worked on the Uniform Commercial Code; first woman partner of a major law firm; first woman elected president, Association of American Law Schools
Thomas J. Murphy, Jr. (1973) – Mayor, Pittsburgh, PA, 1994–2006
Pauli Murray (1933) – first African-American woman named an Episcopal priest; human rights activist; lawyer and co-founder of N. O. W.
Thomas P. Noonan, Jr. – Medal of Honor; United States Marine Corps, Vietnam
Antonia Pantoja – Puerto Rican community leader, founder of Boricua College
Thomas S. Popkewitz – Professor of curriculum theory, University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Education
Jeanette Reibman (1937) – Pennsylvania State Representative and State Senator
Sandra Schnur – disability rights advocate
Larry Seidlin – Broward County, Florida Judge, presided over Anna Nicole Smith's estate
Donna Shalala – United States Secretary of Health and Human Services under Bill Clinton; tenth president of Hunter College (1980–1988)
John Timoney – Chief of Police of Miami, Florida
Literature
Mohamad Bazzi – journalist
Maurice Berger – cultural critic
Peter Carey – writer
Colin Channer – writer, musician, co-founder of Calabash International Literary Festival Trust
Joy Davidman – writer, poet
Garance Franke-Ruta – journalist
Colette Inez – poet, academic, Guggenheim, Rockefeller, and two NEA Fellowships
Martin Greif – writer, publisher, former Managing Editor of Time-Life Books
Ada Louise Huxtable (1941) – writer, Pulitzer Prize-winning architectural critic
Phil Klay – writer Redeployment
Bel Kaufman – teacher and author, best known for the 1965 novel Up the Down Staircase.
Audre Lorde (1959) – African-American poet, essayist, educator and activist
Paule Marshall – author, MacArthur Fellow "genius grant," Dos Passos Prize for Literature
Lilian Moore, author of children's books, teacher and poet
Melissa Plaut – author
Sylvia Field Porter – economist/journalist, former Financial Editor of the New York Post
Helen Reilly – mystery writer
Sonia Sanchez – poet
Paula Schwartz – novelist
Augusta Huiell Seaman – writer
Julie Shigekuni – novelist, professor at University of New Mexico
Ned Vizzini – writer
Science and technology
Henriette Avram – Computer programmer and systems analyst
Patricia Bath – pioneering ophthalmologist
Patricia Charache – Microbiologist and infectious disease specialist
Mildred Cohn – biochemist, National Medal of Science
Mary P. Dolciani – mathematician; influential in developing the basic modern method used for teaching algebra in the United States
Mildred Dresselhaus – National Medal of Science; Institute Professor at MIT; Professor, physics and electrical engineering
Gertrude Elion – Nobel Laureate, medicine; biochemist; National Medal of Science (1991); Lemelson-MIT Prize (1997); first woman, National Inventors Hall of Fame
Charlotte Friend – virologist; member, National Academy of Sciences; discoverer, Friend Leukemia Virus and Friend erythroleukemia cells
Erich Jarvis – Professor of neurobiology, Duke University Medical Center
Edna Kramer - American mathematician and popularizer of mathematics
Marilyn Levy –photographic chemist at Fort Monmouth from 1953 to 1979
J. Buzz Von Ornsteiner – forensic psychologist/television personality
Arlie Petters – professor of physics, mathematics, and business administration, Duke University
Mina Rees – mathematician; first female President, American Association for the Advancement of Science (1971)
Rosalyn Yalow – Nobel Laureate, medicine; medical physicist; National Medal of Science (1988); Albert Lasker Award for Basic Medical Research (1977)
Notable faculty
Vishwa Adluri, professor of religion and philosophy
Meena Alexander, poet
Marimba Ani (Dona Richards), afrocentric anthropologist, coined the term "Maafa" for African holocaust
Dora Askowith (1884-1958), Lithuanian-born American author and historian
Harry Binswanger (born 1944), philosopher
Emily Braun, Canadian-born art historian and curator
Joyce Brothers (1927–2013), psychologist, television personality, advice columnist, and writer
Jeannette Brown (born 1934), chemist, historian, author
Peter Carey, Australian novelist
Neal L. Cohen, NYC Health Commissioner
LaWanda Cox, historian
Kelle Cruz, astrophysicist
Roy DeCarava, photographer
Mary P. Dolciani, mathematician
Emil Draitser (born 1937), author and professor of Russian
Nathan Englander, novelist
Philip Ewell, music theorist
Stuart Ewen, historian and author
Norman Finkelstein (born 1953), political scientist and author
Helen Frankenthaler, artist
Godfrey Gumbs, physicist
E. Adelaide Hahn, classicist and linguist
Winifred Hathaway, advocate for blind education
H. Wiley Hitchcock, musicologist
Alice von Hildebrand, Belgian-born American philosopher
Eva Hoffman, writer
Tina Howe, playwright
Julia Indichova, reproductive healthcare activist and author
Victoria Johnson, Associate Professor of Urban Policy
Francis Kilcoyne (died 1985), third President of Brooklyn College
John Kneller (1916–2009), English-American professor and fifth President of Brooklyn College
Julia Jones-Pugliese (1909–1993), national champion fencer and fencing coach
Bo Lawergren, physicist and musicologist
Jan Heller Levi (born 1954), poet
Lillian Rosanoff Lieber (1886-1986), Russian-American mathematician and author
Audre Lorde (1934–1992), poet
Marguerite Merington (1857–1951), author
Robert Motherwell, artist
Carrie Moyer, artist
Colum McCann, Irish novelist
Leonard Peikoff, Canadian-American, Ayn Rand's intellectual heir and founder of the Ayn Rand Institute
Jeffrey T. Parsons, psychologist
Jennifer Raab, 13th and current president of Hunter College
Mina Rees, mathematician
Paul Ramirez Jonas, artist
Blake Schwarzenbach, singer/guitarist of Jawbreaker and Jets to Brazil
Gary Shteyngart (born 1972), Soviet-born American writer
Lao Genevra Simons, mathematician and math historian
Tom Sleigh, poet
Tony Smith, sculptor
Leo Steinberg, Russian-born American art historian
John Kennedy Toole, author
Lionel Trilling (1905–1975), literary critic, short story writer, essayist, and teacher
Edward P. Tryon, physicist
Lydia Fowler Wadleigh, "lady superintendent" of the Normal School
Nari Ward, artist
Jacob Weinberg, pianist and composer
Dr. Ruth Westheimer (Dr. Ruth; born 1928), German-American sex therapist, talk show host, author, professor, Holocaust survivor, and former Haganah sniper.
Blanche Colton Williams, professor of English literature and head of the English department
References
Informational notes
Citations
External links
Official athletics website
1870 establishments in New York (state)
Educational institutions established in 1870
Former women's universities and colleges in the United States
Universities and colleges in Manhattan
Upper East Side
Schools of education in the United States
Colleges of the City University of New York | [
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14331 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry%20Shearer | Harry Shearer | Harry Julius Shearer (born December 23, 1943) is an American actor, voice actor, comedian, writer, musician, radio host, director and producer. Born in Los Angeles, California, Shearer began his career as a child actor. From 1969 to 1976, Shearer was a member of The Credibility Gap, a radio comedy group. Following the breakup of the group, Shearer co-wrote the film Real Life (1979) with Albert Brooks and worked as a writer on Martin Mull's television series Fernwood 2 Night.
Shearer was a cast member on Saturday Night Live between 1979 and 1980, and 1984 and 1985. Shearer co-created, co-wrote and co-starred in the film This Is Spinal Tap (1984), a satirical rockumentary, which became a hit. In 1989, he joined the cast of the animated sitcom The Simpsons; he provides voices for characters including Mr. Burns, Waylon Smithers, Principal Skinner, Ned Flanders, Reverend Lovejoy, Kent Brockman, formerly Dr. Hibbert, and more. Shearer has appeared in films including The Truman Show (1998) and A Mighty Wind (2003), and has directed two, Teddy Bears' Picnic (2002) and The Big Uneasy (2010). Since 1983, Shearer has been the host of the public radio comedy/music program Le Show, incorporating satire, music, and sketch comedy. He has written three books.
Shearer has won a Primetime Emmy Award and has received several other Emmy and Grammy Award nominations. He has been married to singer-songwriter Judith Owen since 1993. He became an artist in residence at Loyola University, New Orleans in 2013.
Early life
Shearer was born December 23, 1943, in Los Angeles, California the son of Dora, a bookkeeper, and Mack Shearer. His parents were Jewish immigrants from Austria and Poland. Starting when Shearer was four years old, he had a piano teacher whose daughter worked as a child actress. The piano teacher later decided to make a career change and become a children's agent, since she knew people in the business through her daughter's work. The teacher asked Shearer's parents for permission to take him to an audition. Several months later, she called Shearer's parents and told them that she had gotten Shearer an audition for the radio show The Jack Benny Program. Shearer received the role when he was seven years old. He described Jack Benny as "very warm and approachable ... He was a guy who dug the idea of other people on the show getting laughs, which sort of spoiled me for other people in comedy." Shearer said in an interview that one person who took him "under his wing" and was one of his best friends during his early days in show business was voice actor Mel Blanc, who voiced many animated characters, including Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck and Barney Rubble. Shearer made his film debut in the film Abbott and Costello Go to Mars (1953), in which he had a small part, and appeared in The Robe (also 1953). Throughout his childhood and teenage years he worked in television, film, and radio. In 1957, Shearer played the precursor to the Eddie Haskell character in the pilot episode of the television series Leave It to Beaver. After the filming, Shearer's parents said they did not want him to be a regular in a series. Instead they wanted him to just do occasional work so that he could have a normal childhood. Shearer and his parents made the decision not to accept the role in the series if it was picked up by a television network.
Shearer attended UCLA as a political science major in the early 1960s and decided to quit show business to become a "serious person". However, he says this lasted approximately a month, and he joined the staff of the Daily Bruin, UCLA's school newspaper, during his first year. He was editor of the college humor magazine (Satyr), including the June 1964 parody Preyboy. He also worked as a newscaster at KRLA, a top 40 radio station in Pasadena, during this period. According to Shearer, after graduating, he had "a very serious agenda going on, and it was 'Stay Out of the Draft'." He attended graduate school at Harvard University for one year and worked at the state legislature in Sacramento. In 1967 and 1968, he was a high school teacher, teaching English and social studies. He left teaching following "disagreements with the administration".
From 1969 to 1976, Shearer was a member of The Credibility Gap, a radio comedy group that included David Lander, Richard Beebe and Michael McKean. The group consisted of "a bunch of newsmen" at KRLA 1110, "the number two station" in Los Angeles. They wanted to do more than just straight news, so they hired comedians who were talented vocalists. Shearer heard about it from a friend so he brought over a tape to the station and nervously gave it to the receptionist. He found out he was hired that same day. The group's radio show was canceled in 1970 by KRLA and in 1971 by KPPC-FM, so they started performing in various clubs and concert venues. While at KRLA, Shearer also interviewed Creedence Clearwater Revival for the Pop Chronicles music documentary. In 1973, Shearer appeared as Jim Houseafire on How Time Flys, an album by The Firesign Theatre's David Ossman. The Credibility Gap broke up in 1976 when Lander and McKean left to perform in the sitcom Laverne & Shirley. Shearer started working with Albert Brooks, producing one of Brooks' albums and co-writing the film Real Life (1979). Shearer also started writing for Martin Mull's television series Fernwood 2 Night. In the mid-1970s, he started working with Rob Reiner on a pilot for ABC. The show, which starred Christopher Guest, Tom Leopold and McKean, was not picked up.
Career
Saturday Night Live
In August 1979, Shearer was hired as a writer and cast member on Saturday Night Live, one of the first additions to the original 1975 cast, and an unofficial replacement for John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd, who were both leaving the show. Al Franken recommended Shearer to Saturday Night Live creator Lorne Michaels. Shearer describes his experience on the show as a "living hell" and "not a real pleasant place to work." He did not get along well with the other writers and cast members and states that he was not included with the cast in the opening montage (although he was added to the montage for latter episodes of the 1979–80 season) and that Lorne Michaels had told the rest of the cast that he was just a writer. Michaels left Saturday Night Live at the end of the fifth season, taking the entire cast with him. Shearer told new executive producer Jean Doumanian that he was "not a fan of Lorne's" and offered to stay with the show if he was given the chance to overhaul the program and bring in experienced comedians, like Christopher Guest. However, Doumanian turned him down, so he decided to leave with the rest of the cast.
In 1984, while promoting the film This Is Spinal Tap, Shearer, Christopher Guest and Michael McKean performed on Saturday Night Live. All three members were offered the chance to join the show in the 1984–1985 season. Shearer accepted because he was treated well by the producers and he thought the backstage environment had improved but later stated that he "didn't realize that guests are treated better than the regulars." Guest also accepted the offer while McKean rejected it, although he would join the cast in 1994. Dick Ebersol, who replaced Lorne Michaels as the show's producer, said that Shearer was "a gifted performer but a pain in the butt. He's just so demanding on the preciseness of things and he's very, very hard on the working people. He's just a nightmare-to-deal-with person." In January 1985, Shearer left the show for good, partially because he felt he was not being used enough. Martin Short said Shearer "wanted to be creative and Dick [Ebersol] wanted something else. ... I think he felt his voice wasn't getting represented on the show. When he wouldn't get that chance, it made him very upset."
Spinal Tap
Shearer co-created, co-wrote and co-starred in Rob Reiner's film This Is Spinal Tap (1984). Shearer, Reiner, Michael McKean and Christopher Guest received a deal to write a first draft of a screenplay for a company called Marble Arch. They decided that the film could not be written and instead filmed a 20-minute demo of what they wanted to do. It was eventually greenlighted by Norman Lear and Jerry Perenchio at Embassy Pictures. The film satirizes the wild personal behavior and musical pretensions of hard rock and heavy metal bands, as well as the hagiographic tendencies of rockumentaries of the time. The three core members of the band Spinal Tap—David St. Hubbins, Derek Smalls and Nigel Tufnel—were portrayed by McKean, Shearer and Guest respectively. The three actors play their musical instruments and speak with mock English accents throughout the film. There was no script, although there was a written breakdown of most of the scenes, and many of the lines were ad-libbed. It was filmed in 25 days.
Shearer said in an interview that "The animating impulse was to do rock 'n' roll right. The four of us had been around rock 'n' roll and we were just amazed by how relentlessly the movies got it wrong. Because we were funny people it was going to be a funny film, but we wanted to get it right." When they tried to sell it to various Hollywood studios, they were told that the film would not work. The group kept saying, "No, this is a story that's pretty familiar to people. We're not introducing them to anything they don't really know," so Shearer thought it would at least have some resonance with the public. The film was only a modest success upon its initial release but found greater success, and developed a cult following, after its video release. In 2000, the film was ranked 29th on the American Film Institute's list of the top 100 comedy movies in American cinema and it was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".
Shearer, Guest and McKean have since worked on several projects as their Spinal Tap characters. They released three albums: This Is Spinal Tap (1984), Break Like the Wind (1992) and Back from the Dead (2009). In 1992, Spinal Tap appeared in an episode of The Simpsons called "The Otto Show". The band has played several concerts, including at Live Earth in London on July 7, 2007. In anticipation of the show, Rob Reiner directed a short film entitled Spinal Tap. In 2009, the band released Back from the Dead to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the release of the film. The album features re-recorded versions of songs featured in This Is Spinal Tap and its soundtrack, and five new songs. The band performed a one-date "world tour" at London's Wembley Arena on June 30, 2009. The Folksmen, a mock band featured in the film A Mighty Wind that is also made up of characters played by Shearer, McKean and Guest, was the opening act for the show.
The Simpsons
Shearer is known for his work as a voice actor on The Simpsons. Matt Groening, the creator of the show, was a fan of Shearer's work, while Shearer was a fan of a column Groening used to write. When approached by Groening to be in the series, Shearer was initially reluctant because he thought the recording sessions would be too much trouble. He felt that voice acting was "not a lot of fun" as, traditionally, voice actors record their parts separately. He was told that the actors would record their lines together, and after three phone calls for executive producer James L. Brooks, Shearer was convinced to join the cast of The Simpsons. Shearer's first impression of The Simpsons was that it was funny. He – who thought it was a "pretty cool" way to work – found it peculiar that his fellow cast members were adamant about not being known to the public as the people behind the voices.
Shearer provides voices for Principal Skinner, Kent Brockman, Mr. Burns, Waylon Smithers, Ned Flanders, Reverend Lovejoy, formerly Dr. Hibbert, Lenny Leonard, Otto Mann, Rainier Wolfcastle, Scratchy, Kang, Dr. Marvin Monroe, and Judge Snyder, among others. He has described all of his regular characters' voices as "easy to slip into. ... I wouldn't do them if they weren't easy." Shearer modeled Mr. Burns's voice on the two actors Lionel Barrymore and Ronald Reagan. Shearer says that Burns is the most difficult character for him to voice because it is rough on his vocal cords and he often needs to drink tea and honey to soothe his voice. He describes Burns as his favorite character, saying he "like[s] Mr. Burns because he is pure evil. A lot of evil people make the mistake of diluting it. Never adulterate your evil." Shearer is also the voice of Burns' assistant Smithers, and is able to perform dialogue between the two characters in one take. In the episode "Bart's Inner Child", Shearer said "wow" in the voice of Otto, which was then used when Otto was seen jumping on a trampoline. Ned Flanders had been meant to be just a neighbor that Homer Simpson was jealous of, but because Shearer used "such a sweet voice" for him, Flanders was broadened to become a Christian and a sweet guy that someone would prefer to live next to over Homer. Dr. Marvin Monroe's voice was based on psychiatrist David Viscott. Monroe has been largely retired since the seventh season barring a few cameo appearances because voicing the character strained Shearer's throat.
In 2004, Shearer criticized what he perceived as the show's declining quality: "I rate the last three seasons as among the worst, so season four looks very good to me now." Shearer has also been vocal about "The Principal and the Pauper" (season nine, 1997), one of the most controversial episodes of The Simpsons. Many fans and critics reacted negatively to the revelation that Principal Seymour Skinner, a recurring character since the first season, was an impostor. The episode has been criticized by both Shearer and Groening. In a 2001 interview, Shearer recalled that after reading the script, he told the writers, "That's so wrong. You're taking something that an audience has built eight years or nine years of investment in and just tossed it in the trash can for no good reason, for a story we've done before with other characters. It's so arbitrary and gratuitous, and it's disrespectful to the audience." In a December 2006 interview, Shearer added, "Now, [the writers] refuse to talk about it. They realize it was a horrible mistake. They never mention it. It's like they're punishing [the audience] for paying attention."
Due to scheduling and availability conflicts, Shearer decided not to participate in The Simpsons Ride, which opened in 2008, so none of his characters have vocal parts and many do not appear in the ride at all. In a 2010 interview on The Howard Stern Show, Shearer alluded that the reason he was not part of the ride was because he would not be getting paid for it. Similarly, Shearer was unable to appear in the Family Guy crossover episode "The Simpsons Guy" due to further scheduling conflicts. Therefore, his characters are again mute. When asked about how he felt about the crossover, Shearer replied, "Matter and anti-matter."
Until 1998, Shearer was paid $30,000 per episode. During a pay dispute in 1998, Fox threatened to replace the six main voice actors with new actors, going as far as preparing for casting of new voices. The dispute, however, was resolved and Shearer received $125,000 per episode until 2004, when the voice actors demanded that they be paid $360,000 an episode. The dispute was resolved a month later, and Shearer's pay rose to $250,000 per episode. After salary re-negotiations in 2008, the voice actors received $400,000 per episode. Three years later, with Fox threatening to cancel the series unless production costs were cut, Shearer and the other cast members accepted a 30% pay cut, down to just over $300,000 per episode. On May 14, 2015, Shearer announced he was leaving the show. After the other voice actors signed a contract for the same pay, Shearer refused, stating it was not enough. Al Jean made a statement from the producers saying "the show must go on," but did not elaborate on what might happen to the characters Shearer voiced. On July 7, 2015, Shearer agreed to continue with the show, on the same terms as the other voice actors.
Wild Discovery
Shearer is also known for his work as a narrator on Wild Discovery.
Le Show and radio work
Since 1983, Shearer has been the host of the public radio comedy/music program Le Show. The program is a hodgepodge of satirical news commentary, music, and sketch comedy that takes aim at the "mega morons of the mighty media". It is carried on many National Public Radio and other public radio stations throughout the United States. Since the merger of SIRIUS and XM satellite radio services the program is no longer available on either. The show has also been made available as a podcast on iTunes and by WWNO. On the weekly program Shearer alternates between DJing, reading and commenting on the news of the day after the manner of Mort Sahl, and performing original (mostly political) comedy sketches and songs. In 2008, Shearer released a music CD called Songs of the Bushmen, consisting of his satirical numbers about former President George W. Bush on Le Show. Shearer says he criticizes both Republicans and Democrats equally, and also says that "the iron law of doing comedy about politics is you make fun of whoever is running the place" and that "everyone else is just running around talking. They are the ones who are actually doing something, changing people's lives for better or for worse. Other people the media calls 'satirists' don't work that way."
Since encountering satellite news feeds when he worked on Saturday Night Live, Shearer has been fascinated with the contents of the video that does not air. Shearer refers to these clips as found objects. "I thought, wow, there is just an unending supply of this material, and it's wonderful and fascinating and funny and sometimes haunting – but it's always good," said Shearer. He collects this material and uses it on Le Show and on his website. In 2008, he assembled video clips of newsmakers from this collection into an art installation titled "The Silent Echo Chamber" which was exhibited at The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum in Ridgefield, Connecticut. The exhibit was also displayed in 2009 at Institut Valencià d'Art Modern (IVAM) in Valencia, Spain and in 2010 at the New Orleans Contemporary Arts Center.
In 2006 Shearer appeared with Brian Hayes in four episodes of the BBC Radio 4 sitcom Not Today, Thank You, playing Nostrils, a man so ugly he cannot stand to be in his own presence. He was originally scheduled to appear in all six episodes but had to withdraw from recording two due to a problem with his work permit. On June 19, 2008, it was announced that Shearer would receive a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in the radio category.
Further career
Shearer's first feature film as director, Teddy Bears' Picnic, which he also wrote, was released in 2002. The plot is based on Bohemian Grove, which hosts a three-week encampment of some of the most powerful men in the world. The film was not well received by critics. It garnered a 0% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes, with all 19 reviews being determined as negative and received a rating of 32 out of 100 (signifying "generally negative reviews") on Metacritic from 10 reviews. In 2003, he co-wrote J. Edgar! The Musical with Tom Leopold, which spoofed J. Edgar Hoover's relationship with Clyde Tolson. It premiered at the U.S. Comedy Arts Festival in Aspen, Colorado and starred Kelsey Grammer and John Goodman.
Shearer, Guest and McKean starred in the folk music mockumentary A Mighty Wind (2003), portraying a band called The Folksmen. The film was written by Guest and Eugene Levy, and directed by Guest. Shearer had a major role in the Guest-directed parody of Oscar politicking For Your Consideration released in 2006. He played Victor Allan Miller, a veteran actor who is convinced that he is going to be nominated for an Academy Award. He also appeared as a news anchor in Godzilla (1998) with fellow The Simpsons cast members Hank Azaria and Nancy Cartwright. His other film appearances include The Right Stuff (1983), The Fisher King (1991), The Truman Show (1998), Small Soldiers (also 1998), and EdTV (1999). He also directed and appeared in the television program Portrait of a White Marriage (1988), a sequel to The History of White People in America.
Shearer has also worked as a columnist for the Los Angeles Times Magazine, but decided that it "became such a waste of time to bother with it." His columns have also been published in Slate and Newsweek. Since May 2005 he has been a contributing blogger at The Huffington Post. Shearer has written three books. Man Bites Town, published in 1993, is a collection of columns that he wrote for The Los Angeles Times between 1989 and 1992. Published in 1999, It's the Stupidity, Stupid analyzed the hatred some people had for then-President Bill Clinton. Shearer believes that Clinton became disliked because he had an affair with "the least powerful, least credentialed woman cleared into his official compound." His most recent book is Not Enough Indians, his first novel. Published in 2006, it is a comic novel about Native Americans and gambling. Without the "pleasures of collaboration" and "spontaneity and improvisation which characterize his other projects", Not Enough Indians was a "struggle" for Shearer to write. He said that "the only fun thing about it was having written it. It was lonely, I had no deal for it and it took six years to do. It was a profoundly disturbing act of self-discipline."
Shearer has released five solo comedy albums: It Must Have Been Something I Said (1994), Dropping Anchors (2006), Songs Pointed and Pointless (2007), Songs of the Bushmen (2008) and Greed and Fear (2010). His most recent CD, Greed and Fear is mainly about Wall Street economic issues, rather than politics like his previous albums. Shearer decided to make the album when he"started getting amused by the language of the economic meltdown – when 'toxic assets' suddenly became 'troubled assets,' going from something poisoning the system to just a bunch of delinquent youth with dirty faces that needed not removal from the system but just ... understanding." In May 2006, Shearer received an honorary doctorate from Goucher College.
The Big Uneasy
Shearer is the director of The Big Uneasy (2010), a documentary film about the impacts of Hurricane Katrina on New Orleans. Narrated by actor John Goodman, the film describes levee failures and catastrophic flooding in the New Orleans metropolitan area, and includes extended interviews with former LSU professor Ivor Van Heerden, Robert Bea, an engineering professor at the University of California at Berkeley, and Maria Garzino, an engineer and contract specialist for the Los Angeles district of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. The film is critical of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and its management of flood protection projects in Southern Louisiana. Shearer draws on numerous technical experts to maintain that Hurricane Katrina's "... tragic floods creating widespread damage were caused by manmade errors in engineering and judgment." On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 71% based on 24 reviews, with an average rating of 6.85/10. The website's critical consensus reads, "The Big Uneasy offers an admittedly uneven – yet still worthy and well-intentioned – look at a horrific disaster's aftermath."
Personal life
Shearer married folk singer Penelope Nichols in 1974. They divorced in 1977. He has been married to Welsh singer-songwriter Judith Owen since 1993. In 2005, the couple launched their own record label called Courgette Records. Shearer has homes in Santa Monica, California, the French Quarter of New Orleans, Louisiana, and Notting Hill, London. He first went to New Orleans in 1988 and has attended every New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival since.
Shearer often speaks and writes about the failure of the Federal levee system which flooded New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina, blasting the coverage of it in the mainstream media and criticizing the role of the United States Army Corps of Engineers. Prior to the DVD release of his film, The Big Uneasy, Shearer would hold screenings of the film at different venues and take questions from audience members.
Filmography
Film
Television
Video games
Web
Music video
Discography
Bibliography
Awards
Shearer was the last of the six regular voice actors from The Simpsons to win the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Character Voice-Over Performance. His win came for the season 25 episode "Four Regrettings and a Funeral".
References
Bibliography
.
External links
Harry Shearer's official site
Harry Shearer's blog at the Huffington Post
Harry Shearer at Voice Chasers
New Documentary, Shearer on Hurricane Katrina – video interview by Democracy Now!
Harry Shearer Interview NAMM Oral History Library (2017)
1943 births
Living people
20th-century American comedians
20th-century American male actors
21st-century American comedians
21st-century American male actors
American comedy musicians
American documentary filmmakers
American impressionists (entertainers)
American male child actors
American male film actors
American male radio actors
American male television actors
American male television writers
American male video game actors
American male voice actors
American people of Austrian-Jewish descent
American people of Polish-Jewish descent
American radio personalities
American satirists
American sketch comedians
American television writers
Audiobook narrators
Comedians from California
Harvard University alumni
HuffPost bloggers
HuffPost writers and columnists
Jewish American male comedians
Jewish American male actors
Louisiana Democrats
Male actors from Los Angeles
Musicians from Los Angeles
Primetime Emmy Award winners
Screenwriters from California
University of California, Los Angeles alumni | [
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14336 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High%20fantasy | High fantasy | High fantasy, or epic fantasy, is a subgenre of fantasy defined by the epic nature of its setting or by the epic stature of its characters, themes or plot. The term "high fantasy" was coined by Lloyd Alexander in a 1971 essay, "High Fantasy and Heroic Romance", which was originally given at the New England Round Table of Children's Librarians in October 1969.
Characteristics
High fantasy is set in an alternative, fictional ("secondary") world, rather than the "real" or "primary" world. This secondary world is usually internally consistent, but its rules differ from those of the primary world. By contrast, low fantasy is characterized by being set on Earth, the primary or real world, or a rational and familiar fictional world with the inclusion of magical elements.
The romances of William Morris, such as The Well at the World's End, set in an imaginary medieval world, are sometimes regarded as the first examples of high fantasy. The works of J. R. R. Tolkien—especially The Lord of the Rings—are regarded as archetypal works of high fantasy. Also, Lloyd Alexander's The Chronicles of Prydain, Stephen R. Donaldson's The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant and David Eddings' The Belgariad are good examples of high fantasy series.
Many high fantasy stories are told from the viewpoint of one main hero. Often, much of the plot revolves around their heritage or mysterious nature, along with a world-threatening problem. In many novels the hero is an orphan or unusual sibling, and frequently portrayed with an extraordinary talent for magic or combat. They begin the story young, if not as an actual child, or are portrayed as being very weak and/or useless. In other works the hero is a completely developed individual with a unique character and spirit.
The hero often begins as a childlike figure, but matures rapidly, experiencing a considerable gain in fighting/problem-solving abilities along the way. The hero's fight against the evil forces is often depicted as a bildungsroman, or "coming of age" story.
The progress of the story leads to the character's learning the nature of the unknown forces against them, that they constitute a force with great power and malevolence. The villains in such stories are usually completely evil and unrelatable.
"High fantasy" often serves as a broad term to include a number of different flavors of the fantasy genre, including heroic fantasy, epic fantasy, mythic fantasy, dark fantasy, and wuxia. It typically isn't considered to include the sword and sorcery genre.
High fantasy is traditionally considered to evoke a sense of wonder.
Themes
High fantasy has often been defined by its themes and messages. Good versus evil is a common one in high fantasy, and defining the character of evil is often an important theme in a work of high fantasy, as in The Lord of the Rings. The importance of the concept of good and evil can be regarded as the distinguishing mark between high fantasy and sword and sorcery. In many works of high fantasy, this conflict marks a deep concern with moral issues; in other works, the conflict is a power struggle, with, for instance, wizards behaving irresponsibly whether they are "good" or "evil".
There is often some evil that must be defeated, sometimes, a mysterious Dark Lord, often obsessed with taking over the world and killing the main hero. The evil character is sometimes an evil wizard or sorcerer, or sometimes a kind of god or demon. The antagonist usually commands a large army or a group of highly feared servants, and the protagonists appear outmatched.
Game settings
Role-playing games such as Dungeons & Dragons with campaign settings like Dragonlance by Tracy Hickman and Margaret Weis and Forgotten Realms by Ed Greenwood are a common basis for many fantasy books and many other authors continue to contribute to the settings.
See also
E. R. Eddison was a pre-Tolkien high fantasy writer
The Worm Ouroboros
The Zimiamvian Trilogy
Heroic fantasy
Historical fantasy
List of genres
List of high fantasy fiction
Low fantasy
Medieval fantasy
Sword and sorcery
References
External links
"Fantasy Genre Lecture"—A paper by Michael Joseph discussing high fantasy and referencing Alexander's theories, via Rutgers' School of Communication and Information.
"The Flat-Heeled Muse" by Lloyd Alexander, the inventor of the term "high fantasy", discusses fantasy world-building and "the problems and disciplines of fantasy"
"Fantasy book writing: 7 tips"—Now Novel discusses the origin of the term, referencing Lloyd Alexander and offering high fantasy writing tips
Fantasy genres
1970s neologisms | [
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14337 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human%20sexual%20activity | Human sexual activity | Human sexual activity, human sexual practice or human sexual behaviour is the manner in which humans experience and express their sexuality. People engage in a variety of sexual acts, ranging from activities done alone (e.g., masturbation) to acts with another person (e.g., sexual intercourse, non-penetrative sex, oral sex, etc.) in varying patterns of frequency, for a wide variety of reasons. Sexual activity usually results in sexual arousal and physiological changes in the aroused person, some of which are pronounced while others are more subtle. Sexual activity may also include conduct and activities which are intended to arouse the sexual interest of another or enhance the sex life of another, such as strategies to find or attract partners (courtship and display behaviour), or personal interactions between individuals (for instance, foreplay or BDSM). Sexual activity may follow sexual arousal.
Human sexual activity has sociological, cognitive, emotional, behavioural and biological aspects; these include personal bonding, sharing emotions and the physiology of the reproductive system, sex drive, sexual intercourse and sexual behaviour in all its forms.
In some cultures, sexual activity is considered acceptable only within marriage, while premarital and extramarital sex are taboo. Some sexual activities are illegal either universally or in some countries or subnational jurisdictions, while some are considered contrary to the norms of certain societies or cultures. Two examples that are criminal offences in most jurisdictions are sexual assault and sexual activity with a person below the local age of consent.
Types
Sexual activity can be classified in a number of ways. The practices may be preceded by or consist solely of foreplay. Acts which involve one person (also called autoeroticism) may include sexual fantasy or masturbation. If two or more people are involved, they may engage in vaginal sex, anal sex, oral sex or mutual masturbation. Penetrative sex between two people may be described as sexual intercourse, but definitions vary. If there are more than two participants in a sex act, it may be referred to as group sex. Autoerotic sexual activity can involve use of dildos, vibrators, butt plugs, and other sex toys, though these devices can also be used with a partner.
Sexual activity can be classified into the gender and sexual orientation of the participants, as well as by the relationship of the participants. The relationships can be ones of marriage, intimate partners, casual sex partners or anonymous. Sexual activity can be regarded as conventional or as alternative, involving, for example, fetishism or BDSM activities.
Fetishism can take many forms, including the desire for certain body parts (partialism) such as breasts, navels, or feet. The object of desire can be shoes, boots, lingerie, clothing, leather or rubber items. Some non-conventional autoerotic practices can be dangerous. These include erotic asphyxiation and self-bondage. The potential for injury or even death that exists while engaging in the partnered versions of these fetishes (choking and bondage, respectively) becomes drastically increased in the autoerotic case due to the isolation and lack of assistance in the event of a problem.
Sexual activity that is consensual is sexual activity in which both or all participants agree to take part and are of the age that they can consent. If sexual activity takes place under force or duress, it is considered rape or another form of sexual assault. In different cultures and countries, various sexual activities may be lawful or illegal in regards to the age, gender, marital status or other factors of the participants, or otherwise contrary to social norms or generally accepted sexual morals.
Mating strategies
In evolutionary psychology and behavioral ecology, human mating strategies are a set of behaviors used by individuals to attract, select, and retain mates. Mating strategies overlap with reproductive strategies, which encompass a broader set of behaviors involving the timing of reproduction and the trade-off between quantity and quality of offspring (see life history theory).
Relative to other animals, human mating strategies are unique in their relationship with cultural variables such as the institution of marriage. Humans may seek out individuals with the intention of forming a long-term intimate relationship, marriage, casual relationship, or friendship. The human desire for companionship is one of the strongest human drives. It is an innate feature of human nature, and may be related to the sex drive. The human mating process encompasses the social and cultural processes whereby one person may meet another to assess suitability, the courtship process and the process of forming an interpersonal relationship. Commonalities, however, can be found between humans and nonhuman animals in mating behavior.
Stages of physiological arousal during sexual stimulation
The physiological responses during sexual stimulation are fairly similar for both men and women and there are four phases.
During the excitement phase, muscle tension and blood flow increase in and around the sexual organs, heart and respiration increase and blood pressure rises. Men and women experience a "sex flush" on the skin of the upper body and face. Typically, a woman's vagina becomes lubricated and her clitoris becomes swollen. A man's penis will become erect.
During the plateau phase, heart rate and muscle tension increase further. A man's urinary bladder closes to prevent urine from mixing with semen. A woman's clitoris may withdraw slightly and there is more lubrication, outer swelling and muscles tighten and reduction of diameter.
During the orgasm phase, breathing becomes extremely rapid and the pelvic muscles begin a series of rhythmic contractions. Both men and women experience quick cycles of muscle contraction of lower pelvic muscles and women often experience uterine and vaginal contractions; this experience can be described as intensely pleasurable, but roughly 15% of women never experience orgasm and half report having faked it. A large genetic component is associated with how often women experience orgasm.
During the resolution phase, muscles relax, blood pressure drops, and the body returns to its resting state. Though generally reported that women do not experience a refractory period and thus can experience an additional orgasm, or multiple orgasms soon after the first, some sources state that both men and women experience a refractory period because women may also experience a period after orgasm in which further sexual stimulation does not produce excitement. This period may last from minutes to days and is typically longer for men than women.
Sexual dysfunction is the inability to react emotionally or physically to sexual stimulation in a way projected of the average healthy person; it can affect different stages in the sexual response cycles, which are desire, excitement and orgasm. In the media, sexual dysfunction is often associated with men, but in actuality, it is more commonly observed in females (43 percent) than males (31 percent).
Psychological aspects
Sexual activity can lower blood pressure and overall stress levels. It serves to release tension, elevate mood, and possibly create a profound sense of relaxation, especially in the postcoital period. From a biochemical perspective, sex causes the release of oxytocin and endorphins and boosts the immune system.
Motivations
People engage in sexual activity for any of a multitude of possible reasons. Although the primary evolutionary purpose of sexual activity is reproduction, research on college students suggested that people have sex for four general reasons: physical attraction, as a means to an end, to increase emotional connection, and to alleviate insecurity.
Most people engage in sexual activity because of pleasure they derive from the arousal of their sexuality, especially if they can achieve orgasm. Sexual arousal can also be experienced from foreplay and flirting, and from fetish or BDSM activities, or other erotic activities. Most commonly, people engage in sexual activity because of the sexual desire generated by a person to whom they feel sexual attraction; but they may engage in sexual activity for the physical satisfaction they achieve in the absence of attraction for another, as in the case of casual or social sex. At times, a person may engage in a sexual activity solely for the sexual pleasure of their partner, such as because of an obligation they may have to the partner or because of love, sympathy or pity they may feel for the partner.
A person may engage in sexual activity for purely monetary considerations, or to obtain some advantage from either the partner or the activity. A man and woman may engage in sexual intercourse with the objective of conception. Some people engage in hate sex, which occurs between two people who strongly dislike or annoy each other. It is related to the idea that opposition between two people can heighten sexual tension, attraction and interest.
Self-determination theory
Research has found that people also engage in sexual activity for reasons associated with self-determination theory. The self-determination theory can be applied to a sexual relationship when the participants have positive feelings associated with the relationship. These participants do not feel guilty or coerced into the partnership. Researchers have proposed the model of self-determined sexual motivation. The purpose of this model is to connect self-determination and sexual motivation. This model has helped to explain how people are sexually motivated when involved in self-determined dating relationships. This model also links the positive outcomes, (satisfying the need for autonomy, competence, and relatedness) gained from sexual motivations.
According to the completed research associated with this model, it was found that people of both sexes who engaged in sexual activity for self-determined motivation had more positive psychological well-being. While engaging in sexual activity for self-determined reasons, the participants also had a higher need for fulfillment. When this need was satisfied, they felt better about themselves. This was correlated with greater closeness to their partner and higher overall satisfaction in their relationship. Though both sexes engaged in sexual activity for self-determined reasons, there were some differences found between males and females. It was concluded that females had more motivation than males to engage in sexual activity for self-determined reasons. Females also had higher satisfaction and relationship quality than males did from the sexual activity. Overall, research concluded that psychological well-being, sexual motivation, and sexual satisfaction were all positively correlated when dating couples partook in sexual activity for self-determined reasons.
Frequency
The frequency of sexual activity might range from zero to 15 or 20 times a week. Frequency of intercourse tends to decline with age. Some post-menopausal women experience declines in frequency of sexual intercourse, while others do not. According to the Kinsey Institute, the average frequency of sexual intercourse in the US for individuals who have partners is 112 times per year (age 18–29), 86 times per year (age 30–39), and 69 times per year (age 40–49).
Adolescents
The age at which adolescents tend to become sexually active varies considerably between different cultures and from time to time. (See Prevalence of virginity.) The first sexual act of a child or adolescent is sometimes referred to as the sexualization of the child, and may be considered as a milestone or a change of status, as the loss of virginity or innocence. Youth are legally free to have intercourse after they reach the age of consent.
A 1999 survey of students indicated that approximately 40% of ninth graders across the United States report having had sexual intercourse. This figure rises with each grade. Males are more sexually active than females at each of the grade levels surveyed. Sexual activity of young adolescents differs in ethnicity as well. A higher percent of African American and Hispanic adolescents are shown to be more sexually active than White adolescents.
Research on sexual frequency has also been conducted solely on female adolescents who engage in sexual activity. Female adolescents tended to engage in more sexual activity due to positive mood. In female teenagers, engaging in sexual activity was directly positively correlated with being older, greater sexual activity in the previous week or prior day, and more positive mood the previous day or the same day as the sexual activity occurred. Decreased sexual activity was associated with prior or current day negative mood or menstruating.
Although opinions differ, others suggest that sexual activity is an essential part of humans, and that teenagers need to experience sex. According to a research study, sexual experiences help teenagers understand pleasure and satisfaction. In relation to hedonic and eudaimonic well-being, it stated that teenagers can positively benefit from sexual activity. The cross-sectional study was conducted in 2008 and 2009 at a rural upstate New York community. Teenagers who had their first sexual experience at age 16 revealed a higher well-being than those who were sexually inexperienced or who were first sexually active at a later age of 17. Furthermore, teenagers who had their first sexual experience at age 15 or younger, or who had many sexual partners were not negatively affected and did not have associated lower well-being.
Health and safety
Sexual activity is an innately physiological function, but like other physical activity, it comes with risks. There are four main types of risks that may arise from sexual activity: unwanted pregnancy, contracting a sexually transmitted infection (STI/STD), physical injury, and psychological injury.
Unwanted pregnancy
Any sexual activity that involves the introduction of semen into a woman's vagina, such as during sexual intercourse, or contact of semen with her vulva, may result in a pregnancy. To reduce the risk of unintended pregnancies, some people who engage in penile-vaginal sex may use contraception, such as birth control pills, a condom, diaphragms, spermicides, hormonal contraception or sterilization. The effectiveness of the various contraceptive methods in avoiding pregnancy varies considerably, and depends on the method rather than the user.
Sexually transmitted infections
Sexual activity that involves skin-to-skin contact, exposure to an infected person's bodily fluids or mucous membranes carries the risk of contracting a sexually transmitted infection. People may not be able to detect that their sexual partner has one or more STIs, for example if they are asymptomatic (show no symptoms). The risk of STIs can be reduced by safe sex practices, such as using condoms. Both partners may opt to be tested for STIs before engaging in sex. The exchange of body fluids is not necessary to contract an infestation of crab lice. Crab lice typically are found attached to hair in the pubic area but sometimes are found on coarse hair elsewhere on the body (for example, eyebrows, eyelashes, beard, mustache, chest, armpits, etc.). Pubic lice infestations (pthiriasis) are spread through direct contact with someone who is infested with the louse.
Some STIs like HIV/AIDS can also be contracted by using IV drug needles after their use by an infected person, as well as through childbirth or breastfeeding.
Aging
Factors such as biological and psychological factors, diseases, mental conditions, boredom with the relationship, and widowhood have been found to contribute to a decrease in sexual interest and activity in old age, but older age does not eliminate the ability to enjoy sexual activity.
Orientations and society
Heterosexuality
Heterosexuality is the romantic or sexual attraction to the opposite sex. Heterosexual practices are institutionally privileged in most countries. In some countries, mostly those where religion has a strong influence on social policy, marriage laws serve the purpose of encouraging people to have sex only within marriage. Sodomy laws have been used to discourage same-sex sexual practices, but they may also affect opposite-sex sexual practices. Laws also ban adults from committing sexual abuse, committing sexual acts with anyone under an age of consent, performing sexual activities in public, and engaging in sexual activities for money (prostitution). Though these laws cover both same-sex and opposite-sex sexual activities, they may differ in regard to punishment, and may be more frequently (or exclusively) enforced on those who engage in same-sex sexual activities.
Different-sex sexual practices may be monogamous, serially monogamous, or polyamorous, and, depending on the definition of sexual practice, abstinent or autoerotic (including masturbation). Additionally, different religious and political movements have tried to influence or control changes in sexual practices including courting and marriage, though in most countries changes occur at a slow rate.
Homosexuality
Homosexuality is the romantic or sexual attraction to the same sex. People with a homosexual orientation can express their sexuality in a variety of ways, and may or may not express it in their behaviors. Research indicates that many gay men and lesbians want, and succeed in having, committed and durable relationships. For example, survey data indicate that between 40% and 60% of gay men and between 45% and 80% of lesbians are currently involved in a romantic relationship.
It is possible for a person whose sexual identity is mainly heterosexual to engage in sexual acts with people of the same sex. Gay and lesbian people who pretend to be heterosexual are often referred to as being closeted (hiding their sexuality in "the closet"). "Closet case" is a derogatory term used to refer to people who hide their sexuality. Making that orientation public can be called "coming out of the closet" in the case of voluntary disclosure or "outing" in the case of disclosure by others against the subject's wishes (or without their knowledge). Among some communities (called "men on the DL" or "down-low"), same-sex sexual behavior is sometimes viewed as solely for physical pleasure. Men who have sex with men, as well as women who have sex with women, or men on the "down-low" may engage in sex acts with members of the same sex while continuing sexual and romantic relationships with the opposite sex.
People who engage exclusively in same-sex sexual practices may not identify themselves as gay or lesbian. In sex-segregated environments, individuals may seek relationships with others of their own gender (known as situational homosexuality). In other cases, some people may experiment or explore their sexuality with same (or different) sex sexual activity before defining their sexual identity. Despite stereotypes and common misconceptions, there are no forms of sexual acts exclusive to same-sex sexual behavior that cannot also be found in opposite-sex sexual behavior, except those involving the meeting of the genitalia between same-sex partners – tribadism (generally vulva-to-vulva rubbing, commonly known by its "scissoring" position) and frot (generally penis-to-penis rubbing).
Bisexuality and pansexuality
People who have a romantic or sexual attraction to both sexes are referred to as bisexual. People who have a distinct but not exclusive preference for one sex/gender over the other may also identify themselves as bisexual. Like gay and lesbian individuals, bisexual people who pretend to be heterosexual are often referred to as being closeted.
Pansexuality (also referred to as omnisexuality) may or may not be subsumed under bisexuality, with some sources stating that bisexuality encompasses sexual or romantic attraction to all gender identities. Pansexuality is characterized by the potential for aesthetic attraction, romantic love, or sexual desire towards people without regard for their gender identity or biological sex. Some pansexuals suggest that they are gender-blind; that gender and sex are insignificant or irrelevant in determining whether they will be sexually attracted to others. As defined in the Oxford English Dictionary, pansexuality "encompasses all kinds of sexuality; not limited or inhibited in sexual choice with regards to gender or practice".
Other social aspects
General attitudes
Alex Comfort and others propose three potential social aspects of sexual intercourse in humans, which are not mutually exclusive: reproductive, relational, and recreational. The development of the contraceptive pill and other highly effective forms of contraception in the mid- and late 20th century has increased people's ability to segregate these three functions, which still overlap a great deal and in complex patterns. For example: A fertile couple may have intercourse while using contraception to experience sexual pleasure (recreational) and also as a means of emotional intimacy (relational), thus deepening their bonding, making their relationship more stable and more capable of sustaining children in the future (deferred reproductive). This same couple may emphasize different aspects of intercourse on different occasions, being playful during one episode of intercourse (recreational), experiencing deep emotional connection on another occasion (relational), and later, after discontinuing contraception, seeking to achieve pregnancy (reproductive, or more likely reproductive and relational).
Religious and ethical
Human sexual activity is generally influenced by social rules that are culturally specific and vary widely.
Sexual ethics, morals, and norms relate to issues including deception/honesty, legality, fidelity and consent. Some activities, known as sex crimes in some locations, are illegal in some jurisdictions, including those conducted between (or among) consenting and competent adults (examples include sodomy law and adult-adult incest).
Some people who are in a relationship but want to hide polygamous activity (possibly of opposite sexual orientation) from their partner, may solicit consensual sexual activity with others through personal contacts, online chat rooms, or, advertising in select media.
Swinging involves singles or partners in a committed relationship engaging in sexual activities with others as a recreational or social activity. The increasing popularity of swinging is regarded by some as arising from the upsurge in sexual activity during the sexual revolution of the 1960s.
Some people engage in various sexual activities as a business transaction. When this involves having sex with, or performing certain actual sexual acts for another person in exchange for money or something of value, it is called prostitution. Other aspects of the adult industry include phone sex operators, strip clubs, and pornography.
Gender roles and the expression of sexuality
Social gender roles can influence sexual behavior as well as the reaction of individuals and communities to certain incidents; the World Health Organization states that, "Sexual violence is also more likely to occur where beliefs in male sexual entitlement are strong, where gender roles are more rigid, and in countries experiencing high rates of other types of violence." Some societies, such as those where the concepts of family honor and female chastity are very strong, may practice violent control of female sexuality, through practices such as honor killings and female genital mutilation.
The relation between gender equality and sexual expression is recognized, and promotion of equity between men and women is crucial for attaining sexual and reproductive health, as stated by the UN International Conference on Population and Development Program of Action:
"Human sexuality and gender relations are closely interrelated and together affect the ability of men and women to achieve and maintain sexual health and manage their reproductive lives. Equal relationships between men and women in matters of sexual relations and reproduction, including full respect for the physical integrity of the human body, require mutual respect and willingness to accept responsibility for the consequences of sexual behaviour. Responsible sexual behaviour, sensitivity and equity in gender relations, particularly when instilled during the formative years, enhance and promote respectful and harmonious partnerships between men and women."
BDSM
BDSM is a variety of erotic practices or roleplaying involving bondage, dominance and submission, sadomasochism, and other interpersonal dynamics. Given the wide range of practices, some of which may be engaged in by people who do not consider themselves as practicing BDSM, inclusion in the BDSM community or subculture usually being dependent on self-identification and shared experience. BDSM communities generally welcome anyone with a non-normative streak who identifies with the community; this may include cross-dressers, extreme body modification enthusiasts, animal players, latex or rubber aficionados, and others.
B/D (bondage and discipline) is a part of BDSM. Bondage includes the restraint of the body or mind. D/s means "Dominant and submissive". A Dominant is one who takes control of a person who wishes to surrender control and a submissive is one who surrenders control to a person who wishes to take control. S/M (sadism and masochism) is the other pat of BDSM. A sadist is an individual who takes pleasure in the pain or humiliation of others and a masochist is an individual who takes pleasure from their own pain or humiliation.
Unlike the usual "power neutral" relationships and play styles commonly followed by couples, activities and relationships within a BDSM context are often characterized by the participants' taking on complementary, but unequal roles; thus, the idea of informed consent of both the partners becomes essential. Participants who exert dominance (sexual or otherwise) over their partners are known as Dominants or Tops, while participants who take the passive, receiving, or obedient role are known as submissives or bottoms.
These terms are sometimes shortened so that a dominant person may be referred to as a "Dom" (a woman may choose to use the feminine "Domme") and a submissive may be referred to as a "sub". Individuals who can change between Top/Dominant and bottom/submissive roles – whether from relationship to relationship or within a given relationship – are known as switches. The precise definition of roles and self-identification is a common subject of debate within the community.
In a 2013 study, researchers stated that BDSM is a sexual act where participants play role games, use restraint, use power exchange,
use suppression and pain is sometimes involved depending on individual(s). The study serves to challenge the widespread notion that BDSM could be in some way linked to psychopathology. According to the findings, one who participates in BDSM may have greater strength socially and mentally as well as greater independence than those who do not practice BDSM. It suggests that people who participate in BDSM play have higher subjective well-being, and that this might be due to the fact that BDSM play requires extensive communication. Before any act occurs, the partners must discuss their agreement of their relationship. They discuss how long the play will last, the intensity, their actions, what each participant needs or desires, and what, if any, sexual activities may be included. All acts must be consensual and pleasurable to both parties.
In a 2015 study, interviewed BDSM participants have mentioned that the activities have helped to create higher levels of connection, intimacy, trust and communication between partners. The study suggests that Dominants and submissives exchange control for each other's pleasure and to satisfy a need. The participants have remarked that they enjoy pleasing their partner in any way they can and many surveyed have felt that this is one of the best things about BDSM. It gives a submissive pleasure to do things in general for their Dominant while a Dominant enjoys making their encounters all about their submissive and enjoy doing things that makes their submissive happy. The findings indicate that the surveyed submissives and Dominants found BDSM makes play more pleasurable and fun. The participants have also mentioned improvements in their personal growth, romantic relationships, sense of community and self, the dominant's confidence, and their coping with everyday things by giving them a psychological release.
Legal issues
There are many laws and social customs which prohibit, or in some way affect sexual activities. These laws and customs vary from country to country, and have varied over time. They cover, for example, a prohibition to non-consensual sex, to sex outside marriage, to sexual activity in public, besides many others. Many of these restrictions are non-controversial, but some have been the subject of public debate.
Most societies consider it a serious crime to force someone to engage in sexual acts or to engage in sexual activity with someone who does not consent. This is called sexual assault, and if sexual penetration occurs it is called rape, the most serious kind of sexual assault. The details of this distinction may vary among different legal jurisdictions. Also, what constitutes effective consent in sexual matters varies from culture to culture and is frequently debated. Laws regulating the minimum age at which a person can consent to have sex (age of consent) are frequently the subject of debate, as is adolescent sexual behavior in general. Some societies have forced marriage, where consent may not be required.
Same-sex laws
Many locales have laws that limit or prohibit same-sex sexual activity.
Sex outside marriage
In the West, sex before marriage is not illegal. There are social taboos and many religions condemn pre-marital sex. In many Muslim countries, such as Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran, Kuwait, Maldives, Morocco, Oman, Mauritania, United Arab Emirates, Sudan, Yemen, any form of sexual activity outside marriage is illegal. Those found guilty, especially women, may be forced to wed the sexual partner, publicly beaten, or stoned to death. In many African and native tribes, sexual activity is not viewed as a privilege or right of a married couple, but rather as the unification of bodies and is thus not frowned upon.
Other studies have analyzed the changing attitudes about sex that American adolescents have outside marriage. Adolescents were asked how they felt about oral and vaginal sex in relation to their health, social, and emotional well-being. Overall, teenagers felt that oral sex was viewed as more socially positive amongst their demographic. Results stated that teenagers believed that oral sex for dating and non-dating adolescents was less threatening to their overall values and beliefs than vaginal sex was. When asked, teenagers who participated in the research viewed oral sex as more acceptable to their peers, and their personal values than vaginal sex.
Minimum age of sexual activity (age of consent)
The laws of each jurisdiction set the minimum age at which a young person is allowed to engage in sexual activity. This age of consent is typically between 14 and 18 years, but laws vary. In many jurisdictions, age of consent is a person's mental or functional age. As a result, those above the set age of consent may still be considered unable to legally consent due to mental immaturity. Many jurisdictions regard any sexual activity by an adult involving a child as child sexual abuse.
Age of consent may vary by the type of sexual act, the sex of the actors, or other restrictions such as abuse of a position of trust. Some jurisdictions also make allowances for young people engaged in sexual acts with each other.
Incestuous relationships
Most jurisdictions prohibit sexual activity between certain close relatives. These laws vary to some extent; such acts are called incestuous.
Incest laws may involve restrictions on marriage rights, which also vary between jurisdictions. When incest involves an adult and a child, it is considered to be a form of child sexual abuse.
Sexual abuse
Non-consensual sexual activity or subjecting an unwilling person to witnessing a sexual activity are forms of sexual abuse, as well as (in many countries) certain non-consensual paraphilias such as frotteurism, telephone scatophilia (indecent phonecalls), and non-consensual exhibitionism and voyeurism (known as "indecent exposure" and "peeping tom" respectively).
Prostitution and survival sex
People sometimes exchange sex for money or access to other resources. Work takes place under many varied circumstances. The person who receives payment for sexual services is known as a prostitute and the person who receives such services is referred to by a multitude of terms, such as being a client. Prostitution is one of the branches of the sex industry. The legal status of prostitution varies from country to country, from being a punishable crime to a regulated profession. Estimates place the annual revenue generated from the global prostitution industry to be over $100 billion. Prostitution is sometimes referred to as "the world's oldest profession". Prostitution may be a voluntary individual activity or facilitated or forced by pimps.
Survival sex is a form of prostitution engaged in by people in need, usually when homeless or otherwise disadvantaged people trade sex for food, a place to sleep, or other basic needs, or for drugs. The term is used by sex trade and poverty researchers and aid workers.
See also
Child sexuality
Erotic plasticity
History of human sexuality
Human female sexuality
Human male sexuality
Lesbian sexual practices
Mechanics of human sexuality
Orgasm control
Orgastic potency
Sexual activity during pregnancy
Sociosexual orientation
Transgender sexuality
References
Further reading
Durex Global Sex Survey 2005 (PDF) at data360.org
Ryan, Christopher & Jetha, Cacilda, (2010). Sex at Dawn: The Prehistoric Origins of Modern Sexuality. New York: Harper.
Human sexual activity
Intimate relationships
Evolutionary psychology | [
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14340 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydraulic%20ram | Hydraulic ram | A hydraulic ram, or hydram, is a cyclic water pump powered by hydropower. It takes in water at one "hydraulic head" (pressure) and flow rate, and outputs water at a higher hydraulic head and lower flow rate. The device uses the water hammer effect to develop pressure that allows a portion of the input water that powers the pump to be lifted to a point higher than where the water originally started. The hydraulic ram is sometimes used in remote areas, where there is both a source of low-head hydropower and a need for pumping water to a destination higher in elevation than the source. In this situation, the ram is often useful, since it requires no outside source of power other than the kinetic energy of flowing water.
History
The Alhambra, built by Nasrid Sultan Ibn al-Ahmar of Granada beginning AD1238, used a hydram to raise water. Through a first reservoir, filled by a channel from the Darro River, water emptied via a large vertical channel into a second reservoir beneath, creating a whirlpool that in turn propelled water through a much smaller pipe up six metres whilst most water drained into a second, slightly larger pipe.
In 1772, John Whitehurst of Cheshire, England, invented a manually controlled precursor of the hydraulic ram called the "pulsation engine" and installed the first one at Oulton, Cheshire to raise water to a height of . In 1783, he installed another in Ireland. He did not patent it, and details are obscure, but it is known to have had an air vessel.
The first self-acting ram pump was invented by the Frenchman Joseph Michel Montgolfier (best known as a co-inventor of the hot air balloon) in 1796 for raising water in his paper mill at Voiron. His friend Matthew Boulton took out a British patent on his behalf in 1797. The sons of Montgolfier obtained a British patent for an improved version in 1816, and this was acquired, together with Whitehurst's design, in 1820 by Josiah Easton, a Somerset-born engineer who had just moved to London.
Easton's firm, inherited by his son James (1796–1871), grew during the nineteenth century to become one of the more important engineering manufacturers in England, with a large works at Erith, Kent. They specialised in water supply and sewerage systems worldwide, as well as land drainage projects. Eastons had a good business supplying rams for water supply purposes to large country houses, farms, and village communities. Some of their installations still survived as of 2004, one such example being at the hamlet of Toller Whelme, in Dorset. Until about 1958 when the mains water arrived, the hamlet of East Dundry just south of Bristol had three working rams – their noisy "thump" every minute or so resonated through the valley night and day: these rams served farms that needed much water for their dairy herds.
The firm closed in 1909, but the ram business was continued by James R. Easton. In 1929, it was acquired by Green & Carter of Winchester, Hampshire, who were engaged in the manufacturing and installation of Vulcan and Vacher Rams.
The first US patent was issued to Joseph Cerneau (or Curneau) and Stephen (Étienne) S. Hallet (1755-1825) in 1809. US interest in hydraulic rams picked up around 1840, as further patents were issued and domestic companies started offering rams for sale. Toward the end of the 19th century, interest waned as electricity and electric pumps became widely available.
Priestly's Hydraulic Ram, built in 1890 in Idaho, was a "marvelous" invention, apparently independent, which lifted water to provide irrigation. The ram survives and is listed on the U.S. National Register of Historic Places.
By the end of the twentieth century, interest in hydraulic rams has revived, due to the needs of sustainable technology in developing countries, and energy conservation in developed ones. An example is Aid Foundation International in the Philippines, who won an Ashden Award for their work developing ram pumps that could be easily maintained for use in remote villages. The hydraulic ram principle has been used in some proposals for exploiting wave power, one of which was discussed as long ago as 1931 by Hanns Günther in his book In hundert Jahren.
Some later ram designs in the UK called compound rams were designed to pump treated water using an untreated drive water source, which overcomes some of the problems of having drinking water sourced from an open stream.
In 1996 English engineer Frederick Philip Selwyn patented a more compact hydraulic ram pump where the waste valve used the venturi effect and was arranged concentrically around the input pipe. It is currently sold as the "Papa Ram Pump".
Construction and principle of operation
A traditional hydraulic ram has only two moving parts, a spring or weight loaded "waste" valve sometimes known as the "clack" valve and a "delivery" check valve, making it cheap to build, easy to maintain, and very reliable.
Priestly's Hydraulic Ram, described in detail in the 1947 Encyclopedia Britannica, has no moving parts.
Sequence of operation
A simplified hydraulic ram is shown in Figure 2. Initially, the waste valve [4] is open (i.e. lowered) because of its own weight, and the delivery valve [5] is closed under the pressure caused by the water column from the outlet [3]. The water in the inlet pipe [1] starts to flow under the force of gravity and picks up speed and kinetic energy until the increasing drag force lifts the waste valve's weight and closes it. The momentum of the water flow in the inlet pipe against the now closed waste valve causes a water hammer that raises the pressure in the pump beyond the pressure caused by the water column pressing down from the outlet. This pressure differential now opens the delivery valve [5], and forces some water to flow into the delivery pipe [3]. Because this water is being forced uphill through the delivery pipe farther than it is falling downhill from the source, the flow slows; when the flow reverses, the delivery check valve [5] closes. Meanwhile, the water hammer from the closing of the waste valve also produces a pressure pulse which propagates back up the inlet pipe to the source where it converts to a suction pulse that propagates back down the inlet pipe. This suction pulse, with the weight or spring on the valve, pulls the waste valve back open and allows the process to begin again.
A pressure vessel [6] containing air cushions the hydraulic pressure shock when the waste valve closes, and it also improves the pumping efficiency by allowing a more constant flow through the delivery pipe. Although the pump could in theory work without it, the efficiency would drop drastically and the pump would be subject to extraordinary stresses that could shorten its life considerably. One problem is that the pressurized air will gradually dissolve into the water until none remains. One solution to this problem is to have the air separated from the water by an elastic diaphragm (similar to an expansion tank); however, this solution can be problematic in developing countries where replacements are difficult to procure. Another solution is a snifting valve installed close to the drive side of the delivery valve. This automatically inhales a small amount of air each time the delivery valve shuts and the partial vacuum develops. Another solution is to insert an inner tube of a car or bicycle tire into the pressure vessel with some air in it and the valve closed. This tube is in effect the same as the diaphragm, but it is implemented with more widely available materials. The air in the tube cushions the shock of the water the same as the air in other configurations does.
Efficiency
A typical energy efficiency is 60%, but up to 80% is possible. This should not be confused with the volumetric efficiency, which relates the volume of water delivered to total water taken from the source. The portion of water available at the delivery pipe will be reduced by the ratio of the delivery head to the supply head. Thus if the source is 2 meters above the ram and the water is lifted to 10 meters above the ram, only 20% of the supplied water can be available, the other 80% being spilled via the waste valve. These ratios assume 100% energy efficiency. Actual water delivered will be further reduced by the energy efficiency factor. In the above example, if the energy efficiency is 70%, the water delivered will be 70% of 20%, i.e. 14%. Assuming a 2-to-1 supply-head-to-delivery-head ratio and 70% efficiency, the delivered water would be 70% of 50%, i.e. 35%. Very high ratios of delivery to supply head usually result in lowered energy efficiency. Suppliers of rams often provide tables giving expected volume ratios based on actual tests.
Drive and delivery pipe design
Since both efficiency and reliable cycling depend on water hammer effects, the drive pipe design is important. It should be between 3 and 7 times longer than the vertical distance between the source and the ram. Commercial rams may have an input fitting designed to accommodate this optimum slope. The diameter of the supply pipe would normally match the diameter of the input fitting on the ram, which in turn is based on its pumping capacity. The drive pipe should be of constant diameter and material, and should be as straight as possible. Where bends are necessary, they should be smooth, large diameter curves. Even a large spiral is allowed, but elbows are to be avoided. PVC will work in some installations, but steel pipe is preferred, although much more expensive. If valves are used they should be a free flow type such as a ball valve or gate valve.
The delivery pipe is much less critical since the pressure vessel prevents water hammer effects from traveling up it. Its overall design would be determined by the allowable pressure drop based on the expected flow. Typically the pipe size will be about half that of the supply pipe, but for very long runs a larger size may be indicated. PVC pipe and any necessary valves are not a problem.
Starting operation
A ram newly placed into operation or which has stopped cycling should start automatically if the waste valve weight or spring pressure is adjusted correctly, but it can be restarted as follows: If the waste valve is in the raised (closed) position, it must be pushed down manually into the open position and released. If the flow is sufficient, it will then cycle at least once. If it does not continue to cycle, it must be pushed down repeatedly until it cycles continuously on its own, usually after three or four manual cycles. If the ram stops with the waste valve in the down (open) position it must be lifted manually and kept up for as long as necessary for the supply pipe to fill with water and for any air bubbles to travel up the pipe to the source. This may take some time, depending on supply pipe length and diameter. Then it can be started manually by pushing it down a few times as described above. Having a valve on the delivery pipe at the ram makes starting easier. Closing the valve until the ram starts cycling, then gradually opening it to fill the delivery pipe. If opened too quickly it will stop the cycle. Once the delivery pipe is full the valve can be left open.
Common operational problems
Failure to deliver sufficient water may be due to improper adjustment of the waste valve, having too little air in the pressure vessel, or simply attempting to raise the water higher than the level of which the ram is capable.
The ram may be damaged by freezing in winter, or loss of air in the pressure vessel leading to excess stress on the ram parts. These failures will require welding or other repair methods and perhaps parts replacement.
It is not uncommon for an operating ram to require occasional restarts. The cycling may stop due to poor adjustment of the waste valve, or insufficient water flow at the source. Air can enter if the supply water level is not at least a few inches above the input end of the supply pipe. Other problems are blockage of the valves with debris, or improper installation, such as using a supply pipe of non-uniform diameter or material, having sharp bends or a rough interior, or one that is too long or short for the drop, or is made of an insufficiently rigid material. A PVC supply pipe will work in some installations but a steel pipe is better.
See also
Boost converter - electronic–hydraulic analog of the hydraulic ram.
Pulser pump, a similar device made from a trompe connected to an airlift pump
Heron's fountain
Water rocket
References
Further reading
External links
Ram pump complete blueprints
Articles containing video clips
Liquid-piston pumps
Pumps
Water
it:Pompa fluidodinamica#Pompa ad ariete idraulico | [
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14347 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homininae | Homininae | {{Automatic taxobox
| fossil_range =
| image = Secretary_Leonard_Carmichael.jpg
| image_caption = Three hominines: a human holding a young gorilla and a young chimpanzee.
| taxon = Homininae
| authority = Gray, 1825
| type_species = Homo sapiens
| type_species_authority = Linnaeus, 1758
| subdivision_ranks = Tribe
| subdivision =
†Dryopithecini
Gorillini Hominini
sister: Ponginae
}}
Homininae (), also called "African hominids" or "African apes", is a subfamily of Hominidae. It includes two tribes, with their extant as well as extinct species: 1) the tribe Hominini (with the genus Homo including modern humans and numerous extinct species; the subtribe Australopithecina, comprising at least two extinct genera; and the subtribe Panina, represented only by the genus Pan, which includes chimpanzees and bonobos)―and 2) the tribe Gorillini (gorillas). Alternatively, the genus Pan is sometimes considered to belong to its own third tribe, Panini. Homininae comprises all hominids that arose after orangutans (subfamily Ponginae) split from the line of great apes. The Homininae cladogram has three main branches, which lead to gorillas (through the tribe Gorillini), and to humans and chimpanzees via the tribe Hominini and subtribes Hominina and Panina (see the evolutionary tree below). There are two living species of Panina (chimpanzees and bonobos) and two living species of gorillas, but only one extant human species. Traces of extinct Homo species, including Homo floresiensis have been found with dates as recent as 40,000 years ago. Organisms in this subfamily are described as hominine or hominines (not to be confused with the terms hominins or hominini).
History of discoveries and classification
Until 1970, the family (and term) Hominidae meant humans only; the non-human great apes were assigned to the family Pongidae. Later discoveries led to revised classifications, with the great apes then united with humans (now in subfamily Homininae) as members of family Hominidae
By 1990, it was recognized that gorillas and chimpanzees are more closely related to humans than they are to orangutans, leading to their (gorillas' and chimpanzees') placement in subfamily Homininae as well.
The subfamily Homininae can be further subdivided into three branches: the tribe Gorillini (gorillas), the tribe Hominini with subtribes Panina (chimpanzees) and Hominina (humans and their extinct relatives), and the extinct tribe Dryopithecini. The Late Miocene fossil Nakalipithecus nakayamai, described in 2007, is a basal member of this clade, as is, perhaps, its contemporary Ouranopithecus; that is, they are not assignable to any of the three extant branches. Their existence suggests that the Homininae tribes diverged not earlier than about 8 million years ago (see Human evolutionary genetics).
Today, chimpanzees and gorillas live in tropical forests with acid soils that rarely preserve fossils. Although no fossil gorillas have been reported, four chimpanzee teeth about 500,000 years old have been discovered in the East-African rift valley (Kapthurin Formation, Kenya), where many fossils from the human lineage (hominins) have been found. This shows that some chimpanzees lived close to Homo (H. erectus or H. rhodesiensis) at the time; the same is likely true for gorillas.
Taxonomic classification
Homininae
Tribe Dryopithecini†
Kenyapithecus Kenyapitheus wickeri Ouranopithecus Ouranopithecus macedoniensis Otavipithecus Otavipithecus namibiensis Morotopithecus Morotopithecus bishopi Oreopithecus
Oreopithecus bambolii Nakalipithecus Nakalipithecus nakayamai Anoiapithecus Anoiapithecus brevirostris Dryopithecus
Dryopithecus wuduensis Dryopithecus fontani Hispanopithecus
Hispanopithecus laietanus Hispanopithecus crusafonti Neopithecus
Neopithecus brancoi Pierolapithecus Pierolapithecus catalaunicus Rudapithecus Rudapithecus hungaricus Samburupithecus Samburupithecus kiptalami Udabnopithecus Udabnopithecus garedziensis Danuvius Danuvius guggenmosi Tribe Gorillini
Chororapithecus †
Chororapithecus abyssinicus Genus Gorilla Western gorilla, Gorilla gorilla Western lowland gorilla, Gorilla gorilla gorilla Cross River gorilla, Gorilla gorilla diehli Eastern gorilla, Gorilla beringei Mountain gorilla, Gorilla beringei beringei Eastern lowland gorilla, Gorilla beringei graueri Tribe Hominini
Subtribe Panina
Genus Pan Chimpanzee (common chimpanzee), Pan troglodytes Central chimpanzee, Pan troglodytes troglodytes Western chimpanzee, Pan troglodytes verus Nigeria-Cameroon chimpanzee, Pan troglodytes ellioti Eastern chimpanzee, Pan troglodytes schweinfurthii Bonobo (pygmy chimpanzee), Pan paniscus Subtribe Hominina
Graecopithecus †
Graecopithecus freybergi. Note: Graecopithecus has also been subsumed by other authors into Dryopithecus. The placement of Graecopithecus within the Hominina, as shown here, represents a hypothesis, but not scientific consensus.
Sahelanthropus†
Sahelanthropus tchadensis Orrorin†
Orrorin tugenensis Ardipithecus†
Ardipithecus ramidus Ardipithecus kadabba Kenyanthropus†
Kenyanthropus platyops Praeanthropus†
Praeanthropus bahrelghazali (Australopithecus bahrelghazali) Praeanthropus anamensis (Australopithecus anamensis) Praeanthropus afarensis (Australopithecus afarensis) Australopithecus†
Australopithecus africanus Australopithecus garhi Australopithecus sediba Paranthropus†
Paranthropus aethiopicus Paranthropus robustus Paranthropus boisei Homo – immediate ancestors of modern humans
Homo gautengensis†
Homo rudolfensis†
Homo habilis†
Homo floresiensis†
Homo erectus†
Homo ergaster†
Homo antecessor†
Homo heidelbergensis†
Homo cepranensis†
Denisovans (scientific name has not yet been assigned)†
Homo neanderthalensis†
Homo rhodesiensis†
Homo sapiens Anatomically modern human, Homo sapiens sapiens Homo sapiens idaltu†
Archaic Homo sapiens (Cro-magnon)†
Red Deer Cave people† (scientific name has not yet been assigned; perhaps a race of modern humans or a hybrid of modern humans and Denisovans)
Evolution
The age of the subfamily Homininae (of the Homininae–Ponginae last common ancestor) is estimated at some 14 to 12.5 million years (Sivapithecus).
Its separation into Gorillini and Hominini (the "gorilla–human last common ancestor", GHLCA) is estimated to have occurred at about (TGHLCA) during the late Miocene, close to the age of Nakalipithecus nakayamai.
There is evidence there was interbreeding of Gorillas and the Pan–Homo ancestors until right up to the Pan–Homo split.
Evolution of bipedalism
Recent studies of Ardipithecus ramidus (4.4 million years old) and Orrorin tugenensis (6 million years old) suggest some degree of bipedalism. Australopithecus and early Paranthropus may have been bipedal. Very early hominins such as Ardipithecus ramidus may have possessed an arboreal type of bipedalism.
Brain size evolution
There has been a gradual increase in brain volume (brain size) as the ancestors of modern humans progressed along the timeline of human evolution, starting from about 600 cm3 in Homo habilis up to 1500 cm3 in Homo neanderthalensis. However, modern Homo sapiens have a brain volume slightly smaller (1250 cm3) than Neanderthals, women have a brain slightly smaller than men and the Flores hominids (Homo floresiensis), nicknamed hobbits, had a cranial capacity of about 380 cm3 (considered small for a chimpanzee), about a third of the Homo erectus average. It is proposed that they evolved from H. erectus as a case of insular dwarfism. In spite of their smaller brain, there is evidence that H. floresiensis used fire and made stone tools at least as sophisticated as those of their proposed ancestors H. erectus. In this case, it seems that for intelligence, the structure of the brain is more important than its size.
Evolution of family structure and sexuality
Sexuality is related to family structure and partly shapes it. The involvement of fathers in education is quite unique to humans, at least when compared to other Homininae. Concealed ovulation and menopause in women both also occur in a few other primates however, but are uncommon in other species. Testis and penis size seems to be related to family structure: monogamy or promiscuity, or harem, in humans, chimpanzees or gorillas, respectively. The levels of sexual dimorphism are generally seen as a marker of sexual selection. Studies have suggested that the earliest hominins were dimorphic and that this lessened over the course of the evolution of the genus Homo'', correlating with humans becoming more monogamous, whereas gorillas, who live in harems, show a large degree of sexual dimorphism. Concealed (or "hidden") ovulation means that the phase of fertility is not detectable in women, whereas chimpanzees advertise ovulation via an obvious swelling of the genitals. Women can be partly aware of their ovulation along the menstrual phases, but men are essentially unable to detect ovulation in women. Most primates have semi-concealed ovulation, thus one can think that the common ancestor had semi-concealed ovulation, that was inherited by gorillas, and that later evolved in concealed ovulation in humans and advertised ovulation in chimpanzees. Menopause also occurs in rhesus monkeys, and possibly in chimpanzees, but does not in gorillas and is quite uncommon in other primates (and other mammal groups).
See also
Chimpanzee–human last common ancestor
Orangutan–human last common ancestor
Gibbon–human last common ancestor
List of human evolution fossils
Notes
Citations
http://www.bas.bg/en/2019/11/07/remains-of-a-new-hominid-from-germany-more-than-11-5-million-years-old-change-our-views-on-the-evolution-of-great-apes-and-humans/
References
External links
Human Timeline (Interactive) – Smithsonian, National Museum of Natural History (August 2016).
Apes
Extant Miocene first appearances
Mammal subfamilies
Taxa named by John Edward Gray | [
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14348 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo%20habilis | Homo habilis | Homo habilis ("handy man") is an extinct species of archaic human from the Early Pleistocene of East and South Africa about 2.3 to 1.65 million years ago (mya). Upon species description in 1964, H. habilis was highly contested, with many researchers recommending it be synonymised with Australopithecus africanus, the only other early hominin known at the time, but H. habilis received more recognition as time went on and more relevant discoveries were made. By the 1980s, H. habilis was proposed to have been a human ancestor, directly evolving into Homo erectus which directly led to modern humans. This viewpoint is now debated. Several specimens with insecure species identification were assigned to H. habilis, leading to arguments for splitting, namely into "H. rudolfensis" and "H. gautengensis" of which only the former has received wide support.
Like contemporary Homo, H. habilis brain size generally varied from . The body proportions of H. habilis are only known from two highly fragmentary skeletons, and is based largely on assuming a similar anatomy to the earlier australopithecines. Because of this, it has also been proposed H. habilis be moved to the genus Australopithecus as Australopithecus habilis. However, the interpretation of H. habilis as a small-statured human with inefficient long distance travel capabilities has been challenged. The presumed female specimen OH 62 is traditionally interpreted as having been in height and in weight assuming australopithecine-like proportions, but assuming humanlike proportions she would have been about and . Nonetheless, H. habilis may have been at least partially arboreal like what is postulated for australopithecines. Early hominins are typically reconstructed as having thick hair and marked sexual dimorphism with males much larger than females, though relative male and female size is not definitively known.
H. habilis manufactured the Oldowan stone-tool industry and mainly used tools in butchering. Early Homo, compared to australopithecines, are generally thought to have consumed high quantities of meat and, in the case of H. habilis, scavenged meat. Typically, early hominins are interpreted as having lived in polygynous societies, though this is highly speculative. Assuming H. habilis society was similar to that of modern savanna chimpanzees and baboons, groups may have numbered 70–85 members, with multiple males to defend against open savanna predators, such as big cats, hyenas and crocodiles. H. habilis coexisted with H. rudolfensis, H. ergaster / H. erectus and Paranthropus boisei.
Taxonomy
Research history
The first recognised remains—OH 7, partial juvenile skull, hand, and foot bones dating to 1.75 million years ago (mya)—were discovered in Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania, in 1960 by Jonathan Leakey. However, the actual first remains—OH 4, a molar—were discovered by the senior assistant of Louis and Mary Leakey (Jonathan's parents), Heselon Mukiri, in 1959, but this was not realised at the time. By this time, the Leakeys had spent 29 years excavating in Olduvai Gorge for early hominin remains, but had instead recovered mainly other animal remains as well as the Oldowan stone-tool industry. The industry had been ascribed to Paranthropus boisei (at the time "Zinjanthropus") in 1959 as it was the first and only hominin recovered in the area, but this was revised upon OH 7's discovery. In 1964, Louis, South African palaeoanthropologist Phillip V. Tobias, and British primatologist John R. Napier officially assigned the remains into the genus Homo as, on recommendation by Australian anthropologist Raymond Dart, H. habilis, the specific name meaning "able, handy, mentally skillful, vigorous" in Latin. The specimen's association with the Oldowan (then considered evidence of advanced cognitive ability) was also used as justification for classifying it into Homo. OH 7 was designated the holotype specimen.
After description, it was hotly debated if H. habilis should be reclassified into Australopithecus africanus (the only other early hominin known at the time), in part because the remains were so old and at the time Homo was presumed to have evolved in Asia (with the australopithecines having no living descendants). Also, the brain size was smaller than what Wilfrid Le Gros Clark proposed in 1955 when considering Homo. The classification H. habilis began to receive wider acceptance as more fossil elements and species were unearthed. In 1983, Tobias proposed that A. africanus was a direct ancestor of Paranthropus and Homo (the two were sister taxa), and that A. africanus evolved into H. habilis which evolved into H. erectus which evolved into modern humans (by a process of cladogenesis). He further said that there was a major evolutionary leap between A. africanus and H. habilis, and thereupon human evolution progressed gradually because H. habilis brain size had nearly doubled compared to australopithecine predecessors.
Many had accepted Tobias' model and assigned Late Pliocene to Early Pleistocene hominin remains outside the range of Paranthropus and H. erectus into H. habilis. For non-skull elements, this was done on the basis of size as there was a lack of clear diagnostic characteristics. Because of these practices, the range of variation for the species became quite wide, and the terms H. habilis sensu stricto ("in the strict sense") and H. habilis sensu lato ("in the broad sense") were in use to include and exclude, respectively, more discrepant morphs. To address this, in 1985, English palaeoanthropologist Bernard Wood proposed that the comparatively massive skull KNM-ER 1470 from Lake Turkana, Kenya, discovered in 1972 and assigned to H. habilis, actually represented a different species, now referred to as Homo rudolfensis. It is also argued that instead it represents a male specimen whereas other H. habilis specimens are female. Early Homo from South Africa have variously been assigned to H. habilis or H. ergaster / H. erectus, but species designation has largely been unclear. In 2010, Australian archaeologist Darren Curoe proposed splitting off South African early Homo into a new species, "Homo gautengensis".
In 1986, OH 62, a fragmentary skeleton, was discovered by American anthropologist Tim D. White in association with H. habilis skull fragments, definitively establishing aspects of H. habilis skeletal anatomy for the first time, and revealing more Australopithecus-like than Homo-like features. Because of this, as well as similarities in dental adaptations, Wood and biological anthropologist Mark Collard suggested moving the species to Australopithecus in 1999. However, reevaluation of OH 62 to a more humanlike physiology, if correct, would cast doubt on this. The discovery of the 1.8 Ma Georgian Dmanisi skulls in the early 2000s, which exhibit several similarities with early Homo, has led to suggestions that all contemporary groups of early Homo in Africa, including H. habilis and H. rudolfensis, are the same species and should be assigned to H. erectus.
Classification
There is still no wide consensus as to whether or not H. habilis is ancestral to H. ergaster / H. erectus or is an offshoot of the human line, and whether or not all specimens assigned to H. habilis are correctly assigned or the species is an assemblage of different Australopithecus and Homo species. Nonetheless, H. habilis and H. rudolfensis generally are recognised members of the genus at the base of the family tree, with arguments for synonymisation or removal from the genus not widely adopted.
Though it is now largely agreed upon that Homo evolved from Australopithecus, the timing and placement of this split has been much debated, with many Australopithecus species having been proposed as the ancestor. The discovery of LD 350-1, the oldest Homo specimen, dating to 2.8 mya, in the Afar Region of Ethiopia may indicate that the genus evolved from A. afarensis around this time. The species LD 350-1 belongs to could be the ancestor of H. habilis, but this is unclear. The oldest H. habilis specimen, A.L. 666-1, dates to 2.3 mya, but is anatomically more derived (has less ancestral, or basal, traits) than the younger OH 7, suggesting derived and basal morphs lived concurrently, and that the H. habilis lineage began before 2.3 mya. Based on 2.1-million-year-old stone tools from Shangchen, China, H. habilis or an ancestral species may have dispersed across Asia. The youngest H. habilis specimen, OH 13, dates to about 1.65 mya.
Anatomy
Skull
It has generally been thought that brain size increased along the human line especially rapidly at the transition between species, with H. habilis brain size smaller than that of H. ergaster / H. erectus, jumping from about in H. habilis to about in H. ergaster and H. erectus. However, a 2015 study showed that the brain sizes of H. habilis, H. rudolfensis, and H. ergaster generally ranged between after reappraising the brain volume of OH 7 from to . This does, nonetheless, indicate a jump from australopithecine brain size which generally ranged from .
The brain anatomy of all Homo features an expanded cerebrum in comparison to australopithecines. The pattern of striations on the teeth of OH 65 slanting right, which may have been accidentally self-inflicted when the individual was pulling a piece of meat with its teeth and the left hand while trying to cut it with a stone tool using the right hand. If correct, this could indicate right handedness, and handedness is associated with major reorganisation of the brain and the lateralisation of brain function between the left and right hemispheres. This scenario has also been hypothesised for some Neanderthal specimens. Lateralisation could be implicated in tool use. In modern humans, lateralisation is weakly associated with language.
The tooth rows of H. habilis were V-shaped as opposed to U-shaped in later Homo, and the mouth jutted outwards (was prognathic), though the face was flat from the nose up.
Build
Based on the fragmentary skeletons OH 62 (presumed female) and KNM-ER 3735 (presumed male), H. habilis body anatomy has generally been considered to have been more apelike than even that of the earlier A. afarensis and consistent with an at least partially arboreal lifestyle in the trees as is assumed in australopithecines. Based on OH 62 and assuming comparable body dimensions to australopithecines, H. habilis has generally been interpreted as having been small-bodied like australopithecines, with OH 62 generally estimated at about in height and in weight. However, assuming longer, modern humanlike legs, OH 62 would have been about and , and KNM-ER 3735 about the same size. For comparison, modern human men and women in the year 1900 averaged and , respectively. It is generally assumed that pre-H. ergaster hominins, including H. habilis, exhibited notable sexual dimorphism with males markedly bigger than females. However, relative female body mass is unknown in this species.
Early hominins, including H. habilis, are thought to have had thick body hair coverage like modern non-human apes because they appear to have inhabited cooler regions and are thought to have had a less active lifestyle than (presumed hairless) post-ergaster species. Consequently, they probably required thick body hair to stay warm. Based on dental development rates, H. habilis is assumed to have had an accelerated growth rate compared to modern humans, more like that of modern non-human apes.
Limbs
The arms of H. habilis and australopithecines have generally been considered to have been proportionally long and so adapted for climbing and swinging. In 2004, anthropologists Martin Haeusler and Henry McHenry argued that, because the humerus to femur ratio of OH 62 is within the range of variation for modern humans, and KNM-ER 3735 is close to the modern human average, it is unsafe to assume apelike proportions. Nonetheless, the humerus of OH 62 measured long and the ulna (forearm) , which is closer to the proportion seen in chimpanzees. The hand bones of OH 7 suggest precision gripping, important in dexterity, as well as adaptations for climbing. In regard to the femur, traditionally comparisons with the A. afarensis specimen AL 288-1 have been used to reconstruct stout legs for H. habilis, but Haeusler and McHenry suggested the more gracile OH 24 femur (either belonging to H. ergaster / H. erectus or P. boisei) may be a more apt comparison. In this instance, H. habilis would have had longer, humanlike legs and have been effective long-distance travellers as is assumed to have been the case in H. ergaster. However, estimating the unpreserved length of a fossil is highly problematic. The thickness of the limb bones in OH 62 is more similar to chimpanzees than H. ergaster / H. erectus and modern humans, which may indicate different load bearing capabilities more suitable for arboreality in H. habilis. The strong fibula of OH 35 (though this may belong to P. boisei) is more like that of non-human apes, and consistent with arboreality and vertical climbing.
OH 8, a foot, is better suited for terrestrial movement than the foot of A. afarensis, though still retains many apelike features consistent with climbing. However, the foot has projected toe bone and compacted mid-foot joint structures, which restrict rotation between the foot and ankle as well as at the front foot. Foot stability enhances the efficiency of force transfer between the leg and the foot and vice versa, and is implicated in the plantar arch elastic spring mechanism which generates energy while running (but not walking). This could possibly indicate H. habilis was capable of some degree of endurance running, which is typically thought to have evolved later in H. ergaster / H. erectus.
Culture
Society
Typically, H. ergaster / H. erectus is considered to have been the first human to have lived in a monogamous society, and all preceding hominins were polygynous. However, it is highly difficult to speculate with any confidence the group dynamics of early hominins. The degree of sexual dimorphism and the size disparity between males and females is often used to correlate between polygyny with high disparity and monogamy with low disparity based on general trends (though not without exceptions) seen in modern primates. Rates of sexual dimorphism are difficult to determine as early hominin anatomy is poorly known, and are largely based on few specimens. In some cases, sex is arbitrarily determined in large part based on perceived size and apparent robustness in the absence of more reliable elements in sex identification (namely the pelvis). Mating systems are also based on dental anatomy, but early hominins possess a mosaic anatomy of different traits not seen together in modern primates; the enlarged cheek teeth would suggest marked size-related dimorphism and thus intense male–male conflict over mates and a polygynous society, but the small canines should indicate the opposite. Other selective pressures, including diet, can also dramatically impact dental anatomy. The spatial distribution of tools and processed animal bones at the FLK Zinj and PTK sites in Olduvai Gorge indicate the inhabitants used this area as a communal butchering and eating grounds, as opposed to the nuclear family system of modern hunter gatherers where the group is subdivided into smaller units each with their own butchering and eating grounds.
The behaviour of early Homo, including H. habilis, is sometimes modelled on that of savanna chimps and baboons. These communities consist of several males (as opposed to a harem society) in order to defend the group on the dangerous and exposed habitat, sometimes engaging in a group display of throwing sticks and stones against enemies and predators. The left foot OH 8 seems to have been bitten off by a crocodile, possibly Crocodylus anthropophagus, and the leg OH 35, which either belongs to P. boisei or H. habilis, shows evidence of leopard predation. H. habilis and contemporary hominins were likely predated upon by other large carnivores of the time, such as (in Olduvai Gorge) the hunting hyena Chasmaporthetes nitidula, and the saber-toothed cats Dinofelis and Megantereon. In 1993, American palaeoanthropologist Leslie C. Aiello and British evolutionary psychologist Robin Dunbar estimated that H. habilis group size ranged from 70–85 members—on the upper end of chimp and baboon group size—based on trends seen in neocortex size and group size in modern non-human primates.
H. habilis coexisted with H. rudolfensis, H. ergaster / H. erectus, and P. boisei. It is unclear how all of these species interacted. To explain why P. boisei was associated with Olduwan tools despite not being the knapper (the one who made the tools), Leakey and colleagues, when describing H. habilis, suggested that one possibility was P. boisei was killed by H. habilis, perhaps as food. However, when describing P. boisei five years earlier, Louis Leakey said, "There is no reason whatever, in this case, to believe that the skull represents the victim of a cannibalistic feast by some hypothetical more advanced type of man."
Diet
It is thought H. habilis derived meat from scavenging rather than hunting (scavenger hypothesis), acting as a confrontational scavenger and stealing kills from smaller predators such as jackals or cheetahs. Fruit was likely also an important dietary component, indicated by dental erosion consistent with repetitive exposure to acidity. Based on dental microwear-texture analysis, H. habilis (like other early Homo) likely did not regularly consume tough foods. Microwear-texture complexity is, on average, somewhere between that of tough-food eaters and leaf eaters (folivores), and points to an increasingly generalised and omnivorous diet.
It is typically thought that the diets of H. habilis and other early Homo had a greater proportion of meat than Australopithecus, and that this led to brain growth. The main hypotheses regarding this are: meat is energy- and nutrient-rich and put evolutionary pressure on developing enhanced cognitive skills to facilitate strategic scavenging and monopolise fresh carcasses, or meat allowed the large and calorie-expensive ape gut to decrease in size allowing this energy to be diverted to brain growth. Alternatively, it is also suggested that early Homo, in a drying climate with scarcer food options, relied primarily on underground storage organs (such as tubers) and food sharing, which facilitated social bonding among both male and female group members. However, unlike what is presumed for H. ergaster and later Homo, short-statured early Homo are generally considered to have been incapable of endurance running and hunting, and the long and Australopithecus-like forearm of H. habilis could indicate early Homo were still arboreal to a degree. Also, organised hunting and gathering is thought to have emerged in H. ergaster. Nonetheless, the proposed food-gathering models to explain large brain growth necessitate increased daily travel distance. It has also been argued that H. habilis instead had long, modern humanlike legs and was fully capable of effective long distance travel, while still remaining at least partially arboreal.
Large incisor size in H. habilis compared to Australopithecus predecessors implies this species relied on incisors more. The bodies of the mandibles of H. habilis and other early Homo are thicker than those of modern humans and all living apes, more comparable to Australopithecus. The mandibular body resists torsion from the bite force or chewing, meaning their jaws could produce unusually powerful stresses while eating. The greater molar cusp relief in H. habilis compared to Australopithecus suggests the former used tools to fracture tough foods (such as pliable plant parts or meat), otherwise the cusps would have been more worn down. Nonetheless, the jaw adaptations for processing mechanically challenging food indicates technological advancement did not greatly affect diet.
Technology
H. habilis is associated with the Early Stone Age Oldowan stone tool industry. Individuals likely used these tools primarily to butcher and skin animals and crush bones, but also sometimes to saw and scrape wood and cut soft plants. Knappers - individuals shaping stones, appear to have carefully selected lithic cores and knew that certain rocks would break in a specific way when struck hard enough and on the right spot, and they produced several different types, including choppers, polyhedrons, and discoids. Nonetheless, specific shapes were likely not thought of in advance, and probably stem from a lack of standardisation in producing such tools as well as the types of raw materials at the knappers' disposal. For example, spheroids are common at Olduvai which features an abundance of large and soft quartz and quartzite pieces, whereas Koobi Fora lacks spheroids and provides predominantly hard basalt lava rocks. Unlike the later Acheulean culture invented by H. ergaster / H. erectus, Oldowan technology does not require planning and foresight to manufacture, and thus does not indicate high cognition in Oldowan knappers, though it does require a degree of coordination and some knowledge of mechanics. Oldowan tools infrequently exhibit retouching and were probably discarded immediately after use most of the time.
The Olduwan was first reported in 1934, but it was not until the 1960s that it become widely accepted as the earliest culture, dating to 1.8 mya, and as having been manufactured by H. habilis. Since then, more discoveries have placed the origins of material culture substantially backwards in time, with the Oldowan being discovered in Ledi-Geraru and Gona in Ethiopia dating to 2.6 mya, perhaps associated with the evolution of the genus. Australopithecines are also known to have manufactured tools, such as the 3.3 Ma Lomekwi stone tool industry, and some evidence of butchering from about 3.4 mya. Nonetheless, the comparatively sharp-edged Oldowan culture was a major innovation from australopithecine technology, and it would have allowed different feeding strategies and the ability to process a wider range of foods, which would have been advantageous in the changing climate of the time. It is unclear if the Oldowan was independently invented or if it was the result of hominin experimentation with rocks over hundreds of thousands of years across multiple species.
In 1962, a circle made with volcanic rocks was discovered in Olduvai Gorge. At intervals, rocks were piled up to high. Mary Leakey suggested the rock piles were used to support poles stuck into the ground, possibly to support a windbreak or a rough hut. Some modern-day nomadic tribes build similar low-lying rock walls to build temporary shelters upon, bending upright branches as poles and using grasses or animal hide as a screen. Dating to 1.75 mya, it is attributed to some early Homo, and is the oldest-claimed evidence of architecture.
See also
References
External links
Reconstructions of H. habilis by John Gurche
Archaeology Info
Homo habilis – The Smithsonian Institution's Human Origins Program
Human Timeline (Interactive) – Smithsonian, National Museum of Natural History (August 2016).
1962 archaeological discoveries
Lower Paleolithic
Early species of Homo
Hominini
Transitional fossils
Mammals described in 1964
Fossil taxa described in 1964
Prehistoric Tanzania
Pleistocene mammals of Africa
Prehistoric Kenya
Pleistocene primates
Taxa named by Richard Leakey | [
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14349 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harmonica | Harmonica | The harmonica, also known as a French harp or mouth organ, is a free reed wind instrument used worldwide in many musical genres, notably in blues, American folk music, classical music, jazz, country, and rock. The many types of harmonica include diatonic, chromatic, tremolo, octave, orchestral, and bass versions. A harmonica is played by using the mouth (lips and tongue) to direct air into or out of one (or more) holes along a mouthpiece. Behind each hole is a chamber containing at least one reed. The most common is the diatonic Richter-tuned with ten air passages and twenty reeds, often called the blues harp. A harmonica reed is a flat, elongated spring typically made of brass, stainless steel, or bronze, which is secured at one end over a slot that serves as an airway. When the free end is made to vibrate by the player's air, it alternately blocks and unblocks the airway to produce sound.
Reeds are tuned to individual pitches. Tuning may involve changing a reed’s length, the weight near its free end, or the stiffness near its fixed end. Longer, heavier, and springier reeds produce deeper, lower sounds; shorter, lighter, and stiffer reeds make higher-pitched sounds. If, as on most modern harmonicas, a reed is affixed above or below its slot rather than in the plane of the slot, it responds more easily to air flowing in the direction that initially would push it into the slot, i.e., as a closing reed. This difference in response to air direction makes it possible to include both a blow reed and a draw reed in the same air chamber and to play them separately without relying on flaps of plastic or leather (valves, wind-savers) to block the nonplaying reed.
An important technique in performance is bending, causing a drop in pitch by making embouchure adjustments. Bending isolated reeds is possible, as on chromatic and other harmonica models with wind-savers, but also to both lower, and raise (overbend, overblow, overdraw) the pitch produced by pairs of reeds in the same chamber, as on a diatonic or other unvalved harmonica. Such two-reed pitch changes actually involve sound production by the normally silent reed, the opening reed (for instance, the blow reed while the player is drawing).
Parts
The basic parts of the harmonica are the comb, reed plates, and cover plates.
Comb
The comb is the main body of the instrument, which, when assembled with the reed plates, forms air chambers for the reeds. The term "comb" may originate from the similarity between this part of a harmonica and a hair comb. Harmonica combs were traditionally made from wood, but now are also made from plastic (ABS) or metal (including titanium for high-end instruments). Some modern and experimental comb designs are complex in the way that they direct the air.
Dispute exists among players about whether comb material affects the tone of a harmonica. Those saying no argue that unlike the soundboard of a piano or the top piece of a violin or guitar, a harmonica's comb is neither large enough nor able to vibrate freely enough to substantially augment or change the sound. Among those saying yes are those who are convinced by their ears. Few dispute that comb surface smoothness and air tightness when mated with the reed plates can greatly affect tone and playability. The main advantage of a particular comb material over another one is its durability. In particular, a wooden comb can absorb moisture from the player's breath and contact with the tongue. This can cause the comb to expand slightly, making the instrument uncomfortable to play, and to then contract, potentially compromising air tightness. Various types of wood and treatments have been devised to reduce the degree of this problem.
An even more serious problem with wooden combs, especially in chromatic harmonicas (with their thin dividers between chambers), is that, as the combs expand and shrink over time, cracks can form in the combs, because the comb is held immobile by nails, resulting in disabling leakage. Serious players devote significant effort to restoring wood combs and sealing leaks. Some players used to soak wooden-combed harmonicas (diatonics, without wind-savers) in water to cause a slight expansion, which they intended to make the seal between the comb, reed plates, and covers more airtight. Modern wooden-combed harmonicas are less prone to swelling and contracting, but modern players still dip their harmonicas in water for the way it affects tone and ease of bending notes.
Reed plate
The reed plate is a grouping of several reeds in a single housing. The reeds are usually made of brass, but steel, aluminium, and plastic are occasionally used. Individual reeds are usually riveted to the reed plate, but they may also be welded or screwed in place. Reeds fixed on the inner side of the reed plate (within the comb's air chamber) respond to blowing, while those fixed on the outer side respond to suction.
Most harmonicas are constructed with the reed plates screwed or bolted to the comb or each other. A few brands still use the traditional method of nailing the reed plates to the comb. Some experimental and rare harmonicas also have had the reed plates held in place by tension, such as the WWII-era all-American models. If the plates are bolted to the comb, the reed plates can be replaced individually. This is useful because the reeds eventually go out of tune through normal use, and certain notes of the scale can fail more quickly than others.
A notable exception to the traditional reed plate design is the all-plastic harmonicas designed by Finn Magnus in the 1950s, in which the reed and reed plate were molded out of a single piece of plastic. The Magnus design had the reeds, reed plates, and comb made of plastic and either molded or permanently glued together.
Cover plates
Cover plates cover the reed plates and are usually made of metal, though wood and plastic have also been used. The choice of these is personal; because they project sound, they determine the tonal quality of the harmonica. Two types of cover plates are used: traditional open designs of stamped metal or plastic, which are simply there to be held; and enclosed designs (such as the Hohner Meisterklasse and Super 64, Suzuki Promaster and SCX), which offer a louder tonal quality. From these two basic types, a few modern designs have been created, such as the Hohner CBH-2016 chromatic and the Suzuki Overdrive diatonic, which have complex covers that allow for specific functions not usually available in the traditional design. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, harmonicas not uncommonly had special features on the covers, such as bells, which could be rung by pushing a button.
Wind-savers
Wind-savers are one-way valves made from thin strips of plastic, knit paper, leather, or Teflon glued to the reed plate. They are typically found in chromatic harmonicas, chord harmonicas, and many octave-tuned harmonicas. Wind-savers are used when two reeds share a cell and leakage through the nonplaying reed would be significant. For example, when a draw note is played, the valve on the blow reed-slot is sucked shut, preventing air from leaking through the inactive blow reed. An exception to this is the now-discontinued Hohner XB-40, on which valves are placed not to isolate single reeds, but rather to isolate entire chambers from being active, a design that made playing traditional blues bends possible on all reeds.
Mouthpiece
The mouthpiece is placed between the air chambers of the instrument and the player's mouth. This can be integral with the comb (the diatonic harmonicas; the Hohner Chrometta); part of the cover (as in Hohner's CX-12); or may be a separate unit, secured by screws, which is typical of chromatics. In many harmonicas, the mouthpiece is purely an ergonomic aid designed to make playing more comfortable. In the traditional slider-based chromatic harmonica, it is essential to the functioning of the instrument because it provides a groove for the slide.
Accessories
Amplification devices
Since the 1950s, many blues harmonica players have amplified their instrument with microphones and tube amplifiers. One of the early innovators of this approach was Marion "Little Walter" Jacobs, who played the harmonica near a "Bullet" microphone marketed for use by radio taxi dispatchers. This gave his harmonica tone a "punchy" midrange sound that could be heard above an electric guitar. Also, tube amplifiers produce a natural growling overdrive when cranked at higher volumes, which adds body, fullness, and "grit" to the sound. Little Walter also cupped his hands around the instrument, tightening the air around the harp, giving it a powerful, distorted sound, somewhat reminiscent of a saxophone, hence the term "Mississippi saxophone". Some harmonica players in folk use a regular vocal microphone, such as a Shure SM 58, for their harmonica, which gives a clean, natural sound.
As technology in amplification has progressed, harmonica players have introduced other effects units to their rigs, as well, such as reverb, tremolo, delay, octave, additional overdrive pedals, and chorus effect. John Popper of Blues Traveler uses a customized microphone that encapsulates several of these effects into one handheld unit, as opposed to several units in sequence. Many harmonica players still prefer tube amplifiers to solid-state ones, owing to the perceived difference in tone generated by the vacuum tubes. Players perceive tubes as having a "warmer" tone and a more "natural" overdrive sound. Many amplifiers designed for electric guitar are also used by harmonica players, such as the Kalamazoo Model Two, Fender Bassman, and the Danelectro Commando. Some expensive handmade boutique amplifiers are built from the ground up with characteristics that are optimal for amplified harmonica.
Rack or holder
Harmonica players who play the instrument while performing on another instrument with their hands (e.g., an acoustic guitar) often use an accessory called a neck rack or harmonica holder to position the instrument in front of their mouths. A harmonica holder clamps the harmonica between two metal brackets, which are attached to a curved loop of metal that rests on the shoulders. The original harmonica racks were made from wire or coat hangers. Models of harmonica racks vary widely by quality and ease of use, and experimenting with more than one model of harmonica rack is often needed to find one that feels suitable for each individual player. This device is used by folk musicians, one-man bands, and singer-songwriters such as Bob Dylan, Edoardo Bennato, Tom Harmon, Neil Young, Eddie Vedder, Billy Joel, Bruce Springsteen, and blues singers Jimmy Reed and John Hammond Jr.
Types
Chromatic
The chromatic harmonica uses a button-activated sliding bar to redirect air from the hole in the mouthpiece to the selected reed-plate, though one design—the "Machino-Tone"—controlled airflow by means of a lever-operated flap on the rear of the instrument. Also, a "hands-free" modification to the Hohner 270 (12-hole) lets the player shift the tones by moving the mouthpiece up and down with the lips, leaving the hands free to play another instrument. While the Richter-tuned 10-hole chromatic is intended to play in only one key, the 12-, 14-, and 16-hole models (which are tuned to equal temperament) allow the musician to play in any key desired with only one harmonica. This harp can be used for any style, including Celtic, classical, jazz, or blues (commonly in third position).
Diatonic
Strictly speaking, diatonic denotes any harmonica designed to play in a single key—though the standard Richter-tuned harmonica diatonic can play other keys by forcing its reeds to play tones that are not part of its basic scale. Depending on the country, "diatonic harmonica" may mean either the tremolo harmonica (in East Asia) or blues harp (in Europe and North America). Other diatonic harmonicas include octave harmonicas.
Here is the note layout for a standard diatonic in the key of G major:
{|class="wikitable" style="text-align:center"
! !! style="width: 20px;" | 1 !! style="width: 20px;" | 2 !! style="width: 20px;" | 3 !! style="width: 20px;" | 4 !! style="width: 20px;" | 5 !! style="width: 20px;" | 6 !! style="width: 20px;" | 7 !! style="width: 20px;" | 8 !! style="width: 20px;" | 9 !! style="width: 20px;" | 10
|-
! blow
| G || B || D || G || B || D || G || B || D || G
|-
! draw
| A || D || F || A || C || E || F || A || C || E
|}
Each hole is the same interval (here, a perfect fifth) from its key of C counterpart; on the diatonic scale, a G is a perfect fifth from C. The interval between keys can be used to find the note layout of any standard diatonic.
Tremolo-tuned
The distinguishing feature of the tremolo-tuned harmonica is that it has two reeds per note, with one slightly sharp and the other slightly flat. This provides a unique wavering or warbling sound created by the two reeds being slightly out of tune with each other and the difference in their subsequent waveforms interacting with each other (its beat). The East Asian version, which can produce all 12 semitones, is used often in East Asian rock and pop music.
Orchestral
Orchestral harmonicas are primarily designed for use in ensemble playing.
Melody
There are eight kinds of orchestral melody harmonica; the most common are the horn harmonicas often found in East Asia. These consist of a single large comb with blow-only reed-plates on the top and bottom. Each reed sits inside a single cell in the comb. One version mimics the layout of a piano or mallet instrument, with the natural notes of a C diatonic scale in the lower reed plate and the sharps and flats in the upper reed plate in groups of two and three holes with gaps in between like the black keys of a piano. Another version has one "sharp" reed directly above its "natural" on the lower plate, with the same number of reeds on both plates (therefore including E and B).
Horn harmonicas are available in several pitch ranges, with the lowest pitched starting two octaves below middle C and the highest beginning on middle C itself; they usually cover a two- or three-octave range. They are chromatic instruments and are usually played in an East Asian harmonica orchestra instead of the "push-button" chromatic harmonica that is more common in the European and American tradition. Their reeds are often larger, and the enclosing "horn" gives them a different timbre, so that they often function in place of a brass section. In the past, they were referred to as horn harmonicas.
The other type of orchestral melodic harmonica is the polyphonia, (though some are marked "chromatica"). These have all twelve chromatic notes laid out on the same row. In most cases, they have both blow and draw of the same tone, though the No. 7 is blow only, and the No. 261, also blow only, has two reeds per hole, tuned an octave apart (all these designations refer to products of M. Hohner).
Chord
The chord harmonica has up to 48 chords: major, seventh, minor, augmented and diminished for ensemble playing. It is laid out in four-note clusters, each sounding a different chord on inhaling or exhaling. Typically each hole has two reeds for each note, tuned to one octave of each other. Less expensive models often have only one reed per note. Quite a few orchestra harmonicas are also designed to serve as both bass and chord harmonica, with bass notes next to chord groupings. There are also other chord harmonicas, such as the Chordomonica (which operates similar to a chromatic harmonica), and the junior chord harmonicas (which typically provide six chords).
The Suzuki SSCH-56 Compact Chord harmonica is a 48-chord harmonica built in a 14-hole chromatic harmonica enclosure. The first three holes play a major chord on blow and draw, with and without the slide. Holes 2, 3, and 4 play a diminished chord; holes 3, 4, and 5 play a minor chord; and holes 4, 5, and 6 play an augmented, for a total of sixteen chords. This pattern is repeated starting on hole 5, a whole step higher; and again starting on hole 9, for a total of 48 chords.
ChengGong
The ChengGong harmonica has a main body, and a sliding mouthpiece. The body is a 24-hole diatonic harmonica that ranges from B2 to D6 (covering 3 octaves). Its 11-hole mouthpiece can slide along the front of the harmonica, which gives numerous chord choices and voicings (seven triads, three 6th chords, seven 7th chords, and seven 9th chords, for a total of 24 chords). As well, it is capable of playing single-note melodies and double stops over a range of three diatonic octaves. Unlike conventional harmonicas, blowing and drawing produce the same notes because its tuning is closer to the note layout of a typical East Asian tremolo harmonica or the Polyphonias.
Pitch pipe
The pitch pipe is a simple specialty harmonica that provides a reference pitch to singers and other instruments. The only difference between some early pitch-pipes and harmonicas is the name of the instrument, which reflected the maker's target audience. Chromatic pitch pipes, which are used by singers and choirs, give a full chromatic (12-note) octave. Pitch pipes are also sold for string players, such as violinists and guitarists; these pitch pipes usually provide the notes corresponding to the open strings.
Techniques
Vibrato is a technique commonly used while playing the harmonica and many other instruments, to give the note a 'shaking' sound. This technique can be accomplished in a number of ways. The most common way is to change how the harmonica is held. For example, the vibrato effect can be achieved by opening and closing the hands around the harmonica very rapidly. The vibrato might also be achieved via rapid glottal (vocal fold) opening and closing, especially on draws (inhalation) simultaneous to bending, or without bending. This obviates the need for cupping and waving the hands around the instrument during play. An effect similar to vibrato is that of the 'trill' (or 'roll', or 'warble, or 'shake'); this technique has the player move their lips between two holes very quickly, either by shaking the head in a rapid motion or moving the harmonica from side to side within the embouchure. This gives a quick pitch-alternating technique that is slightly more than vibrato and achieves the same aural effect on sustained notes, albeit by using two different tones instead of varying the amplitude of one.
In addition to the 19 notes readily available on the diatonic harmonica, players can play other notes by adjusting their embouchure and forcing the reed to resonate at a different pitch. This technique is called bending, a term possibly borrowed from guitarists, who literally bend a string to subtly change the pitch. Bending also creates the glissandos characteristic of much blues harp and country harmonica playing. Bends are essential for most blues and rock harmonica due to the soulful sounds the instrument can bring out. The "wail" of the blues harp typically requires bending. In the 1970s, Howard Levy developed the over bending technique (also known as "overblowing" and "overdrawing".) Over Bending, combined with bending, allowed players to play the entire chromatic scale.
In addition to playing the diatonic harmonica in its original key, it is also possible to play it in other keys by playing in other "positions" using different keynotes. Using just the basic notes on the instrument would mean playing in a specific mode for each position. For example the Mixolydian mode (root note is the second draw or third blow), produces a major dominant seventh key that is frequently used by blues players because it contains the harmonically rich dominant seventh note, while the Dorian mode (root note is four draw) produces a minor dominant seventh key. Harmonica players (especially blues players) have developed terminology around different "positions," which can be confusing to other musicians, for example the slang terminology for the most common positions (1st being 'straight', 2nd being 'cross', 3rd being 'slant', etc.).
Another technique, seldom used to its full potential, is altering the size of the mouth cavity to emphasize certain natural overtones. When this technique is employed while playing chords, care must be taken in overtone selection as the overtones stemming from the non-root pitch can cause extreme dissonance.
Harmonica players who amplify their instrument with microphones and tube amplifiers, such as blues harp players, also have a range of techniques that exploit properties of the microphone and the amplifier, such as changing the way the hands are cupped around the instrument and the microphone or rhythmically breathing or chanting into the microphone while playing.
History
The harmonica was developed in Europe in the early part of the 19th century. Free-reed instruments like the Chinese sheng were fairly common in East Asia since ancient times. They became relatively well known in Europe after being introduced by the French Jesuit Jean Joseph Marie Amiot (1718–1793), who lived in Qing-era China. Around 1820, free-reed designs began being created in Europe. Christian Friedrich Ludwig Buschmann is often cited as the inventor of the harmonica in 1821, but other inventors developed similar instruments at the same time. In 1829, Charles Wheatstone developed a mouth-organ under the name "Aeolina" (inspired by the Aeolian harp). Mouth-blown free-reed instruments appeared in the United States, South America, the United Kingdom and Europe at roughly the same time. These instruments were made for playing classical music.
Early instruments
The harmonica first appeared in Vienna, where harmonicas with chambers were sold before 1824 (see also Anton Reinlein and Anton Haeckl). Richter tuning, invented by Joseph Richter (who also is credited with inventing the blow and draw mechanism), was created in 1826 and was eventually adopted nearly universally. In Germany, violin manufacturer Johann Georg Meisel from Klingenthal bought a harmonica with chambers (Kanzellen) at an exhibition in Braunschweig in 1824. He and the ironworker Langhammer copied the instruments in Graslitz three miles away; by 1827 they had produced hundreds of harmonicas. Many others followed in Germany and also nearby Bohemia that would later become Czechoslovakia. In 1829, Johann Wilhelm Rudolph Glier also began making harmonicas.
In 1830, Christian Messner, a cloth maker and weaver from Trossingen, copied a harmonica his neighbour had brought from Vienna. He had such success that eventually his brother and some relatives also started to make harmonicas. From 1840, his nephew Christian Weiss was also involved in the business. By 1855, there were at least three harmonica-making businesses: C. A. Seydel Söhne, Christian Messner & Co., and Württ. Harmonikafabrik Ch. Weiss. (Currently, only C.A. Seydel is still in business.) Owing to competition between the harmonica factories in Trossingen and Klingenthal, machines were invented to punch the covers for the reeds.
In 1857, Matthias Hohner, a clockmaker from Trossingen, started producing harmonicas. Eventually he became the first to mass-produce them. He used a mass-produced wooden comb that he had made by machine-cutting firms. By 1868, he began supplying the United States. By the 1920s, the diatonic harmonica had largely reached its modern form. Other types followed soon thereafter, including the various tremolo and octave harmonicas.
By the late 19th century, harmonica production was a big business, having evolved into mass production. New designs were still developed in the 20th century, including the chromatic harmonica, first made by Hohner in 1924, the bass harmonica, and the chord harmonica. In the 21st century, radical new designs have been developed and are still being introduced into the market, such as the Suzuki Overdrive, Hohner XB-40, and the ill-fated Harrison B-Radical.
Diatonic harmonicas were designed primarily for playing German and other European folk music and have succeeded well in those styles. Over time, the basic design and tuning proved adaptable to other types of music such as the blues, country, old-time and more. The harmonica was a success almost from the very start of production, and while the center of the harmonica business has shifted from Germany, the output of the various harmonica manufacturers is still very high. Major companies are now found in Germany (Seydel and Hohner – the dominant manufacturer in the world), Japan (Suzuki, Tombo – the manufacturer of the popular Lee Oskar harmonica, and Yamaha also made harmonicas until the 1970s), China (Huang, Easttop, Johnson, Leo Shi, Suzuki, Hohner, Swan, AXL), and Brazil (Hering, Bends). The United States had two significant harmonica manufacturers, and both were based in Union, New Jersey. One was Magnus Harmonica Corporation, whose founder Finn Magnus is credited with the development of plastic harmonica reeds. The other was Wm. Kratt Company, which, founded by German-American William Jacob "Bill" Kratt Sr., originally made pitch pipes and later, in 1952, secured a patent for combs made of plastic. Both companies ceased harmonica production. The only recent American contender in the harmonica market was Harrison Harmonicas, which folded in July 2011. It was announced soon thereafter that the rights to the Harrison design had been sold to another company to finish production of orders already placed. In October 2012, it was revealed that a Beloit, Wisconsin, investment corporation, R&R Opportunities, had bought the assets of Harrison Harmonicas and that a feasibility study was under way to assess the possibilities of continued production of the Harrison B-Radical harmonica. Recently, responding to increasingly demanding performance techniques, the market for high-quality instruments has grown.
Europe and North America
Some time before Hohner began manufacturing harmonicas in 1857, he shipped some to relatives who had emigrated to the United States. Its music rapidly became popular, and the country became an enormous market for Hohner's goods. US president Abraham Lincoln carried a harmonica in his pocket, and harmonicas provided solace to soldiers on both the Union and Confederate sides of the American Civil War. Frontiersmen Wyatt Earp and Billy the Kid played the instrument, and it became a fixture of the American musical landscape.
Harmonicas were heard on a handful of recordings in the early 1900s, generally labeled as a "mouth organ". The first jazz or traditional music recordings of harmonicas were made in the U.S. in the mid-1920s. Recordings known at the time as "race records", intended for the black market of the southern states, included solo recordings by DeFord Bailey and duo recordings with a guitarist (Hammie Nixon, Walter Horton, or Sonny Terry). Hillbilly styles were also recorded, intended for white audiences, by Frank Hutchison, Gwen Foster and several other musicians. There are also recordings featuring the harmonica in jug bands, of which the Memphis Jug Band is the most famous. But the harmonica still represented a toy instrument in those years and was associated with the poor. It is also during those years that musicians started experimenting with new techniques such as tongue-blocking, hand effects and the most important innovation of all, the second position, or cross-harp.
A significant contributor to the expanding popularity of the harmonica was a New York-based radio program called the Hohner Harmony Hour, which taught listeners how to play. Listeners could play along with the program to increase their proficiency. The radio program gained wide popularity after the unveiling of the 1925 White House Christmas tree, which was adorned with fifty harmonicas.
The harmonica's versatility brought it to the attention of classical musicians during the 1930s. American Larry Adler was one of the first harmonica players to perform major works written for the instrument by the composers Ralph Vaughan Williams, Malcolm Arnold, Darius Milhaud, and Arthur Benjamin.
Harmonicas were in short supply in the United States during World War II. Wood and metal materials for harmonicas were in short supply because of military demand. Furthermore, the primary harmonica manufacturers were based in Germany and Japan, the enemies of the United States and the Allied forces in the war. During this time, Finn Haakon Magnus, a Danish-American factory worker and entrepreneur, developed and perfected the molded plastic harmonica. The plastic harmonica used molded plastic combs and far fewer pieces than traditional metal or wood harmonicas, which made the harmonica more economical to mass-produce and more sanitary. Though the plastic reeds in these harmonicas produced a less distinctive (and, to many ears, inferior) sound than their metallic counterparts, Magnus harmonicas and several imitators soon became commonplace, particularly among children. The patent for the plastic comb was awarded to William Kratt of Wm. Kratt Company in 1952. During World War II, the War Department allotted a rationed supply of brass to Kratt's factory so they could continue to produce harmonicas that the Red Cross distributed to American troops overseas to boost morale.
East Asia
In 1898, the harmonica was brought to Japan, where the Tremolo harmonica was the most popular instrument. After about 30 years, the Japanese developed scale tuning and semitone harmonicas that could play Japanese folk songs.
Japanese tremolo tuning
In Europe and the United States, tremolo harmonica uses the Richter tuning, developed in Germany. In 1913, Shōgo Kawaguchi (), known in Japan as the "Father of the harmonica", devised an alternate tuning, which is more suited to playing Japanese folk tunes. This tuning is also suited to local music throughout East Asia, and harmonicas using the tuning became popular in the region.
Minor key tuning
Initial diatonic harmonica tunings were major key only. In 1931, Hiderō Satō () announced the development of a minor key harmonica. There are two types of minor key tunings, "natural minor" suitable for folk and contemporary music, and Latin American music, and the "harmonic minor" suitable for some famous Japanese pieces.
Hong Kong and Taiwan
The harmonica started to gain popularity in Hong Kong in the 1930s. Individual tremolo harmonica players from China moved to Hong Kong and established numerous harmonica organizations such as The Chinese Y.M.C.A. Harmonica Orchestra, the China Harmonica Society, and the Heart String Harmonica Society. During the 1950s, chromatic harmonica became popular in Hong Kong, and players such as Larry Adler and John Sebastian Sr. were invited to perform.
Local players such as Lau Mok () and Fung On () promoted the chromatic harmonica. The chromatic harmonica gradually became the main instrument used by the Chinese Y.M.C.A. Harmonica Orchestra. The Chinese YMCA Harmonica Orchestra started in the 1960s, with 100 members, most of whom played harmonicas. Non-harmonica instruments were also used, such as double bass, accordion, piano, and percussion such as timpani and xylophone.
In the 1970s, the Haletone Harmonica Orchestra () was set up at Wong Tai Sin Community Centre. Fung On and others continued to teach harmonica and also set up harmonica orchestras. In the 1980s, numbers of harmonica students steadily decreased. In the 1990s, harmonica players from Hong Kong began to participate in international harmonica competitions, including the World Harmonica Festival in Germany and the Asia Pacific Harmonica Festival. In the 2000s, the Hong Kong Harmonica Association (H.K.H.A.) () was established.
The history of the harmonica in Taiwan began around 1945. By the 1980s, though, as living standards improved, many instruments once beyond the budgets of most Taiwanese started to become more accessible and popular in preference to the harmonica.
Medical use
Playing the harmonica requires inhaling and exhaling strongly against resistance. This action helps develop a strong diaphragm and deep breathing using the entire lung volume. Pulmonary specialists have noted that playing the harmonica resembles the kind of exercise used to rehabilitate COPD patients such as using a PFLEX inspiratory muscle trainer or the inspiratory spirometer. Learning to play a musical instrument also offers motivation in addition to the exercise component. Many pulmonary rehabilitation programs therefore have begun to incorporate the harmonica.
When President Ronald Reagan suffered a punctured lung in the 1981 attempt on his life, his breathing therapist was Howard McDonald, of the Cambridge Harmonica Orchestra. Orchestra director Pierre Beauregard had hoped that Reagan's therapeutic harmonica experience would help them get a chance to play at the White House, but that didn't pan out.
Related instruments
The concertina, diatonic and chromatic accordions and the melodica are all free-reed instruments that developed alongside the harmonica. Indeed, the similarities between harmonicas and so-called "diatonic" accordions or melodeons is such that in German the name for the former is "Mundharmonika" and the latter "Handharmonika," which translate as "mouth harmonica" and "hand harmonica." In Scandinavian languages, an accordion is called variants of "trekkspill" (pull play) or "trekkharmonika" whereas a harmonica is called "munnspill" (mouth play) or "mundharmonika" (mouth harmonica). The names for the two instruments in the Slavic languages are also either similar or identical. The harmonica shares similarities to all other free-reed instruments by virtue of the method of sound production.
The glass harmonica has the word "harmonica" in its name, but it is not related to free-reed instruments. The glass harmonica is a musical instrument formed from a nested set of graduated glass cups mounted sideways on an axle. Each of the glass cups is tuned to a different note, and they are arranged in a scalar order. It is played by touching the rotating cups with wetted fingers, causing them to vibrate and produce a sustained "singing" tone.
See also
List of harmonicists
References
External links
Layout of 12 Keys of Richter-tuned Diatonic Harmonica
12 Keys of Pentatonic Scales on one Richter-tuned Diatonic Harmonica in C
MP3 file
Disclaimer - IMSLP: Free Sheet Music PDF Download
Disclaimer - IMSLP: Free Sheet Music PDF Download
World Harmonica Festival
German musical instruments
Blues instruments
Folk music instruments | [
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14352 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hops | Hops | Hops are the flowers (also called seed cones or strobiles) of the hop plant Humulus lupulus, a member of the Cannabaceae family of flowering plants. They are used primarily as a bittering, flavouring, and stability agent in beer, to which, in addition to bitterness, they impart floral, fruity, or citrus flavours and aromas. Hops are also used for various purposes in other beverages and herbal medicine. The hops plants have separate female and male plants, and only female plants are used for commercial production. The hop plant is a vigorous, climbing, herbaceous perennial, usually trained to grow up strings in a field called a hopfield, hop garden (nomenclature in the South of England), or hop yard (in the West Country and United States) when grown commercially. Many different varieties of hops are grown by farmers around the world, with different types used for particular styles of beer.
The first documented use of hops in beer is from the 9th century, though Hildegard of Bingen, 300 years later, is often cited as the earliest documented source. Before this period, brewers used a "gruit", composed of a wide variety of bitter herbs and flowers, including dandelion, Burdock root, marigold, horehound (the old German name for horehound, Berghopfen, means "mountain hops"), ground ivy, and heather. Early documents include mention of a hop garden in the will of Charlemagne's father, Pepin III.
Hops are also used in brewing for their antibacterial effect over less desirable microorganisms and for purported benefits including balancing the sweetness of the malt with bitterness and a variety of flavours and aromas. Historically, traditional herb combinations for beers were believed to have been abandoned when beers made with hops were noticed to be less prone to spoilage.
History
The first documented hop cultivation was in 736, in the Hallertau region of present-day Germany, although the first mention of the use of hops in brewing in that country was 1079. However, in a will of Pepin the Short, the father of Charlemagne, hop gardens were left to the Cloister of Saint-Denis in 768.
Not until the 13th century did hops begin to start threatening the use of gruit for flavouring. Gruit was used when the nobility levied taxes on hops. Whichever was taxed made the brewer then quickly switch to the other.
In Britain, hopped beer was first imported from Holland around 1400, yet hops were condemned as late as 1519 as a "wicked and pernicious weed". In 1471, Norwich, England, banned use of the plant in the brewing of ale ("beer" was the name for fermented malt liquors bittered with hops; only in recent times are the words often used as synonyms).
In Germany, using hops was also a religious and political choice in the early 16th century. There was no tax on hops to be paid to the Catholic church, unlike on gruit. For this reason the Protestants preferred hopped beer.
Hops used in England were imported from France, Holland and Germany and were subject to import duty; it was not until 1524 that hops were first grown in the southeast of England (Kent), when they were introduced as an agricultural crop by Dutch farmers. Consequently many words used in the hop industry derive from the Dutch language. Hops were then grown as far north as Aberdeen, near breweries for convenience of infrastructure.
According to Thomas Tusser's 1557 Five Hundred Points of Good Husbandry:
"The hop for his profit I thus do exalt,It strengtheneth drink and it flavoureth malt;And being well-brewed long kept it will last,And drawing abide, if ye draw not too fast."
In England there were many complaints over the quality of imported hops, the sacks of which were often contaminated by stalks, sand or straw to increase their weight. As a result, in 1603, King James I approved an Act of Parliament banning the practice by which "the Subjects of this Realm have been of late years abused &c. to the Value of £20,000 yearly, besides the Danger of their Healths".
Hop cultivation was begun in the present-day United States in 1629 by English and Dutch farmers. Before prohibition, cultivation was mainly centred around New York, California, Oregon, and Washington state. Problems with powdery mildew and downy mildew devastated New York's production by the 1920s, and California only produces hops on a small scale.
World production
Hops production is concentrated in moist temperate climates, with much of the world's production occurring near the 48th parallel north. Hop plants prefer the same soils as potatoes and the leading potato-growing states in the United States are also major hops-producing areas; however, not all potato-growing areas can produce good hops naturally: soils in the Maritime Provinces of Canada, for example, lack the boron that hops prefer. Historically, hops were not grown in Ireland, but were imported from England. In 1752 more than 500 tons of English hops were imported through Dublin alone.
Important production centres today are the Hallertau in Germany, the Žatec (Saaz) in the Czech Republic, the Yakima (Washington) and Willamette (Oregon) valleys, and western Canyon County, Idaho (including the communities of Parma, Wilder, Greenleaf, and Notus). The principal production centres in the UK are in Kent (which produces Kent Goldings hops), Herefordshire, and Worcestershire. Essentially all of the harvested hops are used in beer making.
Cultivation and harvest
Although hops are grown in most of the continental United States and Canada, cultivation of hops for commercial production requires a particular environment. As hops are a climbing plant, they are trained to grow up trellises made from strings or wires that support the plants and allow them significantly greater growth with the same sunlight profile. In this way, energy that would have been required to build structural cells is also freed for crop growth.
The hop plant's reproduction method is that male and female flowers develop on separate plants, although occasionally a fertile individual will develop which contains both male and female flowers. Because pollinated seeds are undesirable for brewing beer, only female plants are grown in hop fields, thus preventing pollination. Female plants are propagated vegetatively, and male plants are culled if plants are grown from seeds.
Hop plants are planted in rows about apart. Each spring, the roots send forth new bines that are started up strings from the ground to an overhead trellis. The cones grow high on the bine, and in the past, these cones were picked by hand. Harvesting of hops became much more efficient with the invention of the mechanical hops separator, patented by Emil Clemens Horst in 1909.
Hops are harvested at the end of summer. The bines are cut down, separated, and then dried in an oast house to reduce moisture content. To be dried, the hops are spread out on the upper floor of the oast house and heated by heating units on the lower floor. The dried hops are then compressed into bales by a baler.
Hop cones contain different oils, such as lupulin, a yellowish, waxy substance, an oleoresin, that imparts flavour and aroma to beer. Lupulin contains lupulone and humulone, which possess antibiotic properties, suppressing bacterial growth favoring brewer's yeast to grow. After lupulin has been extracted in the brewing process the papery cones are discarded.
Migrant labor and social impact
The need for massed labor at harvest time meant hop-growing had a big social impact. Around the world, the labor-intensive harvesting work involved large numbers of migrant workers who would travel for the annual hop harvest. Whole families would participate and live in hoppers' huts, with even the smallest children helping in the fields. The final chapters of W. Somerset Maugham's Of Human Bondage and a large part of George Orwell's A Clergyman's Daughter contain a vivid description of London families participating in this annual hops harvest. In England, many of those picking hops in Kent were from eastern areas of London. This provided a break from urban conditions that was spent in the countryside. People also came from Birmingham and other Midlands cities to pick hops in the Malvern area of Worcestershire. Some photographs have been preserved.
The often-appalling living conditions endured by hop pickers during the harvest became a matter of scandal across Kent and other hop-growing counties. Eventually, the Rev. John Young Stratton, Rector of Ditton, Kent, began to gather support for reform, resulting in 1866 in the formation of the Society for the Employment and Improved Lodging of Hop Pickers.
Particularly in Kent, because of a shortage of small-denomination coin of the realm, many growers issued their own currency to those doing the labor. In some cases, the coins issued were adorned with fanciful hops images, making them quite beautiful.
In the United States, Prohibition had a serious adverse effect on hops production, but remnants of this significant industry in the western states are still noticeable in the form of old hop kilns that survive throughout Sonoma County, California, among others. Florian Dauenhauer, of Santa Rosa in Sonoma County, became a manufacturer of hop-harvesting machines in 1940, in part because of the hop industry's importance to the county. This mechanization helped destroy the local industry by enabling large-scale mechanized production, which moved to larger farms in other areas. Dauenhauer Manufacturing Company remains a current producer of hop harvesting machines.
Chemical composition
In addition to water, cellulose, and various proteins, the chemical composition of hops consists of compounds important for imparting character to beer.
Alpha acids
Probably the most important chemical compound within hops are the alpha acids or humulones. During wort boiling, the humulones are thermally isomerized into iso-alpha acids or isohumulones, which are responsible for the bitter taste of beer.
Beta acids
Hops contain beta acids or lupulones. These are desirable for their aroma contributions to beer.
Essential oils
The main components of hops essential oils are terpene hydrocarbons consisting of myrcene, humulene and caryophyllene. Myrcene is responsible for the pungent smell of fresh hops. Humulene and its oxidative reaction products may give beer its prominent hop aroma. Together, myrcene, humulene, and caryophyllene represent 80 to 90% of the total hops essential oil.
Flavonoids
Xanthohumol is the principal flavonoid in hops. The other well-studied prenylflavonoids are 8-Prenylnaringenin and isoxanthohumol. Xanthohumol is under basic research for its potential properties, while 8-prenylnaringenin is a potent phytoestrogen.
Brewing
Hops are usually dried in an oast house before they are used in the brewing process.
Undried or "wet" hops are sometimes (since c. 1990) used.
The wort (sugar-rich liquid produced from malt) is boiled with hops before it is cooled down and yeast is added, to start fermentation.
The effect of hops on the finished beer varies by type and use, though there are two main hop types: bittering and aroma.
Bittering hops have higher concentrations of alpha acids, and are responsible for the large majority of the bitter flavour of a beer. European (so-called "noble") hops typically average 5–9% alpha acids by weight (AABW), and the newer American cultivars typically range from 8–19% AABW.
Aroma hops usually have a lower concentration of alpha acids (~5%) and are the primary contributors of hop aroma and (nonbitter) flavour.
Bittering hops are boiled for a longer period of time, typically 60–90 minutes, to maximize the isomerization of the alpha acids. They often have inferior aromatic properties, as the aromatic compounds evaporate during the boil.
The degree of bitterness imparted by hops depends on the degree to which alpha acids are isomerized during the boil, and the impact of a given amount of hops is specified in International Bitterness Units.
Unboiled hops are only mildly bitter. On the other hand, the nonbitter flavour and aroma of hops come from the essential oils, which evaporate during the boil.
Aroma hops are typically added to the wort later to prevent the evaporation of the essential oils, to impart "hop taste" (if during the final 30 minutes of boil) or "hop aroma" (if during the final 10 minutes, or less, of boil). Aroma hops are often added after the wort has cooled and while the beer ferments, a technique known as "dry hopping", which contributes to the hop aroma. Farnesene is a major component in some hops. The composition of hop essential oils can differ between varieties and between years in the same variety, having a significant influence on flavour and aroma.
Today, a substantial amount of "dual-use" hops are used, as well. These have high concentrations of alpha acids and good aromatic properties. These can be added to the boil at any time, depending on the desired effect. Hop acids also contribute to and stabilize the foam qualities of beer.
Flavours and aromas are described appreciatively using terms which include "grassy", "floral", "citrus", "spicy", "piney", "lemony", "grapefruit", and "earthy".
Many pale lagers have fairly low hop influence, while lagers marketed as Pilsener or brewed in the Czech Republic may have noticeable noble hop aroma. Certain ales (particularly the highly hopped style known as India Pale Ale, or IPA) can have high levels of hop bitterness.
Brewers may use software tools to control the bittering levels in the boil and adjust recipes to account for a change in the hop bill or seasonal variations in the crop that may lead to the need to compensate for a difference in alpha acid contribution. Data may be shared with other brewers via BeerXML allowing the reproduction of a recipe allowing for differences in hop availability.
Varieties
Breeding programmes
There are many different varieties of hops used in brewing today. Historically, hops varieties were identified by geography (such as Hallertau, Spalt, and Tettnang from Germany), by the farmer who is recognized as first cultivating them (such as Goldings or Fuggles from England), or by their growing habit (e.g., Oregon Cluster).
Around 1900, a number of institutions began to experiment with breeding specific hop varieties. The breeding program at Wye College in Wye, Kent, was started in 1904 and rose to prominence through the work of Prof. E. S. Salmon. Salmon released Brewer's Gold and Brewer's Favorite for commercial cultivation in 1934, and went on to release more than two dozen new cultivars before his death in 1959. Brewer's Gold has become the ancestor of the bulk of new hop releases around the world since its release.
Wye College continued its breeding program and again received attention in the 1970s, when Dr. Ray A. Neve released Wye Target, Wye Challenger, Wye Northdown, Wye Saxon and Wye Yeoman. More recently, Wye College and its successor institution Wye Hops Ltd., have focused on breeding the first dwarf hop varieties, which are easier to pick by machine and far more economical to grow. Wye College have also been responsible for breeding hop varieties that will grow with only 12 hours of daily light for the South African hop farmers. Wye College was closed in 2009 but the legacy of their hop breeding programs, particularly that of the dwarf varieties, is continuing as already the US private and public breeding programs are using their stock material.
Particular hop varieties are associated with beer regions and styles, for example pale lagers are usually brewed with European (often German, Polish or Czech) noble hop varieties such as Saaz, Hallertau and Strissel Spalt. British ales use hop varieties such as Fuggles, Goldings and W.G.V. North American beers often use Cascade hops, Columbus hops, Centennial hops, Willamette, Amarillo hops and about forty more varieties as the US have lately been the more significant breeders of new hop varieties, including dwarf hop varieties.
Hops from New Zealand, such as Pacific Gem, Motueka and Nelson Sauvin, are used in a "Pacific Pale Ale" style of beer with increasing production in 2014.
Noble hops
The term "noble hops" is a marketing term that traditionally refers to varieties of hops low in bitterness and high in aroma. They are the European cultivars or races Hallertau, Tettnanger, Spalt, and Saaz. Some proponents assert that the English varieties Fuggle, East Kent Goldings and Goldings might qualify as "noble hops" due to the similar composition, but such terms never applied to English varieties. Their low relative bitterness, but strong aroma, are often distinguishing characteristics of European-style lagers, such as Pilsener, Dunkel, and Oktoberfest/Märzen. In beer, they are considered aroma hops (as opposed to bittering hops); see Pilsner Urquell as a classic example of the Bohemian Pilsener style, which showcases noble hops.
As with grapes, the location where hops are grown affects the hops' characteristics. Much as Dortmunder beer may within the EU be labelled "Dortmunder" only if it has been brewed in Dortmund, noble hops may officially be considered "noble" only if they were grown in the areas for which the hop varieties (races) were named.
Hallertau or Hallertauer – The original German lager hop; named after Hallertau or Holledau region in central Bavaria. Due to susceptibility to crop disease, it was largely replaced by Hersbrucker in the 1970s and 1980s. (Alpha acid 3.5–5.5% / beta acid 3–4%)
Spalt – Traditional German noble hop from the Spalter region south of Nuremberg. With a delicate, spicy aroma. (Alpha acid 4–5% / beta acid 4–5%)
Tettnang – Comes from Tettnang, a small town in southern Baden-Württemberg in Germany. The region produces significant quantities of hops, and ships them to breweries throughout the world. Noble German dual-use hop used in European pale lagers, sometimes with Hallertau. Soft bitterness. (Alpha acid 3.5–5.5% / beta acid 3.5–5.5%)
Žatec (Saaz) – Noble hop, named after Žatec town, used extensively in Bohemia to flavour pale Czech lagers such as Pilsner Urquell. Soft aroma and bitterness. (Alpha acid 3–4.5% /Beta acid 3–4.5%)
Noble hops are characterized through analysis as having an aroma quality resulting from numerous factors in the essential oil, such as an alpha:beta ratio of 1:1, low alpha-acid levels (2–5%) with a low cohumulone content, low myrcene in the hop oil, high humulene in the oil, a ratio of humulene:caryophyllene above three, and poor storability resulting in them being more prone to oxidation. In reality, this means they have a relatively consistent bittering potential as they age, due to beta-acid oxidation, and a flavor that improves as they age during periods of poor storage.
Other uses
In addition to beer, hops are used in herbal teas and in soft drinks. These soft drinks include Julmust (a carbonated beverage similar to soda that is popular in Sweden during December), Malta (a Latin American soft drink) and kvass. Hops can be eaten; the young shoots of the vine are edible and can be cooked like asparagus.
Hops may be used in herbal medicine in a way similar to valerian, as a treatment for anxiety, restlessness, and insomnia. A pillow filled with hops is a popular folk remedy for sleeplessness, and animal research has shown a sedative effect. The relaxing effect of hops may be due, in part, to the specific degradation product from alpha acids, 2-methyl-3-buten-2-ol, as demonstrated from nighttime consumption of non-alcoholic beer. 2-methyl-3-buten-2-ol is structurally similar to tert-amyl alcohol which was historically used as an anesthetic. Hops tend to be unstable when exposed to light or air and lose their potency after a few months' storage.
Hops are of interest for hormone replacement therapy and are under basic research for potential relief of menstruation-related problems.
Toxicity
Dermatitis sometimes results from harvesting hops. Although few cases require medical treatment, an estimated 3% of the workers suffer some type of skin lesions on the face, hands, and legs. Hops are toxic to dogs.
Fiction
Hops and hops picking form the milieu and atmosphere in the British detective novel, Death in the Hopfields (1937) by John Rhode. The novel was subsequently issued in the United States under the title The Harvest Murder.
See also
Gruit, an old-fashioned herb mixture used for bittering and flavouring beer, popular before the extensive use of hops
Humulus lupulus, the hop plant
Mugwort, an herb historically used as a bitter in beer production
Oast house, a building designed for drying hops
Rhamnus prinoides, a plant whose leaves are used in the Ethiopian variety of mead called tej
References
External links
Brewing ingredients
Crops originating from Europe
Medicinal plants
Medieval agriculture
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14355 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hack | Hack | Hack may refer to:
Arts, entertainment, and media
Games
Hack (Unix video game), a 1984 roguelike video game
.hack (video game series), a series of video games by the multimedia franchise .hack
Music
Hack (album), a 1990 album by Information Society
Film
Hack!, a 2007 film starring Danica McKellar
Hacked (film), a 2011 Bollywood thriller film
The Den (2013 film), a 2013 American film also known as Hacked
Other uses in arts, entertainment, and media
Hack (comedy), a joke that is considered obvious, frequently used, or stolen
Hack (comics), a Marvel Comics Universe mutant character
Hack (radio program), an Australian current affairs program
Hack (TV series), an American television series
.hack, a Japanese multimedia franchise
Lifehacker, a weblog about life hacks and software
Computing
Hack (computer science), an inelegant but effective solution to a computing problem
Hack (computer security), to break into computers and computer networks
Hack (programming language), a programming language developed by Facebook
Hack (typeface), an open source typeface designed for source code editing
Domain hack, a domain name that suggests a word, phrase, or name
Animals
Hack (falconry), training method for young falcons
Hack (horse), an animal used for pleasure riding, as well as the verb form (hacking, to hack) for the activity
Sports
Hack, a piece of equipment used for traction in the sport of curling
Hack, a goal in a game of hacky sack, or the footbag circle kicking game
Hack squat, a variant of the squat exercise
Transport
Hack, a motorcycle with a sidecar attached
Hack, an illegal taxicab operation
Hackney carriage, a London cab also known as a hack
Other uses
Hack (masonry), a row of stacked unfired bricks protected from the rain
Hack (name), a surname, given name and nickname
Hack Circle, an amphitheatre in Christchurch, New Zealand, also known as Hack
Hack writer or hack, a writer or journalist who produces low-quality articles or books
Life hack, productivity techniques used by programmers to solve everyday problems
MIT hack, a clever, benign, and ethical prank or practical joke at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Political hack, a person who devotes him/herself to party-political machinations
Backslash, also known as hack
See also
Hacker (disambiguation)
Hacking (disambiguation)
Hacks (disambiguation) | [
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14356 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huey%2C%20Dewey%2C%20and%20Louie | Huey, Dewey, and Louie | Huey, Dewey, and Louie are triplet cartoon characters created by writer Ted Osborne and cartoonist Al Taliaferro, and are owned by The Walt Disney Company. Huey, Dewey, and Louie are the nephews of Donald Duck, sons of Della Duck, the grand-nephews of Scrooge McDuck, and the friends of Webby Vanderquack. Like their maternal uncles, the brothers are anthropomorphic white ducks with yellow-orange bills and feet. They typically wear shirts and colorful baseball caps, which are sometimes used to distinguish them, since Louie always wears green, Huey wears red, and Dewey wears blue. Huey, Dewey, and Louie have made several animated appearances in both films and television, but comics remain their primary medium. The trio are collectively the 11th most published comic book characters in the world, and outside of the superhero genre, second only to their uncle Donald.
While the boys were originally created as mischief-makers to provoke Donald's famous temper, later appearances, beginning especially with the comic book stories by Carl Barks, showed them growing to be heroes in their own right and valuable assets to him and Uncle Scrooge on their adventures. All three of the triplets are members of the fictional scouting organization the Junior Woodchucks.
Origins
Huey, Dewey, and Louie were the idea of Al Taliaferro, the artist for the Silly Symphony comic strip, which featured Donald Duck. The Walt Disney Productions Story Dept. on February 5, 1937, sent Taliaferro a memo recognizing him as the source of the idea for the planned short, Donald's Nephews. The nephews debuted in Taliaferro's comic strip, which by this time had been renamed Donald Duck, on Sunday, October 17, 1937, beating the theatrical release of Donald's Nephews by almost six months. The names were devised by Disney gag man Dana Coty, who took them from Huey Long, Thomas Dewey, and Louis Schmitt, an animator at the Disney Studio in the 1930s and 1940s. Taliaferro's introduction of the nephews emulated the three nephews in the Happy Hooligan comic strip and was also influenced by Mickey Mouse's nephews, Morty and Ferdie Fieldmouse.
In translations of Disney works the nephews have different local-sounding names that often follow the repetition (parachesis) of the English names. Examples include Hugo, Paco and Luis (American Spanish); Tupu, Hupu and Lupu (Finnish) and Hyzio, Dyzio and Zyzio (Polish).
Character background
Huey, Dewey, and Louie are the sons of Donald's sister Della Duck; in Donald's Nephews, their mother is instead named Dumbella. In the original theatrical shorts, they were originally sent to visit Donald for only one day; in the comics, the three were sent to stay with Donald on a temporary basis, until their father came back from the hospital (the boys ended up sending him there after a practical joke of putting firecrackers under his chair). In both the comics and animated shorts, the boys' parents were never heard from or mentioned again after these instances, with the boys ending up permanently living with Donald. All four of them live in the fictional city of Duckburg, in the fictional state of Calisota.
The three ducklings are noted for their identical appearances and personalities. A running joke involves the three sometimes even finishing each other's sentences. In the theatrical shorts, Huey, Dewey, and Louie often behave in a rambunctious and mischievous manner, and they sometimes commit retaliation or revenge on their maternal uncle Donald Duck. In the comics, however, as developed by Al Taliaferro and Carl Barks, the young ducks are more usually portrayed as well-behaved, preferring to assist their maternal uncle Donald Duck and maternal great-uncle Scrooge McDuck in the adventure at hand. In the early Barks comics, the ducklings were still wild and unruly, but their character improved considerably due to their membership in the Junior Woodchucks and the good influence of their wise old maternal great-grandmother Elvira. According to Don Rosa, Huey, Dewey and Louie became members of the Junior Woodchucks when they were around 11 years old.
Features
Colors of Huey, Dewey, and Louie's outfits
In early comic books and shorts, the caps of Huey, Dewey, and Louie were colored randomly, depending on the whim of the colorist.
On few occasions until 1945 and most cartoons shortly afterward, all three nephews wore identical outfits (most commonly red). It was not until the 1980s when it became established that Huey is dressed in red, Dewey in blue, and Louie in green. Disney's archivist Dave Smith, in "Disney A to Z", said, "Note that the brightest hue of the three is red (Huey), the color of water, dew, is blue (Dewey), and that leaves Louie, and leaves are green (Louie)." A few random combinations appear in early Disney merchandise and books, such as orange and yellow. Another combination that shows up from time to time is Huey in blue, Dewey in green, and Louie in red. In-story, this inconsistency is explained away as a result of the ducklings borrowing each other's clothes.
In Donald Duck and Uncle Scrooge comics the trio have occasionally been known to dress in their usual outfits, but rather than have their usual colors they all wear black (or the same dark color), rendering them visually identical, leaving their hat color available if they care to be distinguished.
The Don Rosa story An Eye for Detail in Donald Duck comics was based around Donald spending so much time trying to tell his three nephews apart that he developed a heightened sense of sight.
Voices
Clarence Nash, Donald's voice actor, gave the voices to the nephews in the cartoon shorts, making them just as unintelligible as Donald's. Huey, Dewey, and Louie were all voiced by Russi Taylor in DuckTales. In Quack Pack, they were voiced by Jeannie Elias, Pamela Segall, and Elizabeth Daily, respectively. Tony Anselmo voiced the characters in Down and Out with Donald Duck (1987), Mickey Mouse Works, House of Mouse, and the Have a Laugh! shorts, but Russi Taylor still voiced the trio in other projects, such as the video games Donald Duck: Goin' Quackers and Mickey's Speedway USA, and the direct-to-video films Mickey's Once and Twice Upon a Christmas. Russi Taylor also reprised her role as the nephews in the DuckTales: Remastered video game and the post-2013 Mickey Mouse shorts until her death in 2019. Danny Pudi, Ben Schwartz, and Bobby Moynihan voice the trio in the 2017 reboot. It is currently unknown if a new voice actress would voice all three nephews for future appearances outside of DuckTales after Taylor's death.
Phooey Duck
On a few occasions, an artist by error drew four nephews and the error was published. This fourth nephew has been named Phooey Duck by Disney comic editor Bob Foster.
The six-page Dutch Egmont-licensed Disney comic Much Ado About Phooey (1999), plotted by Lars Jensen, written by Jack Sutter and drawn by Tino Santanach Hernandez, used Phooey as a character and explained Phooey's sporadic appearances as a freak incident of nature. (The text in the two speech balloons says "It is a fourth nephew! An exact copy of the others! / Yes, it's probably best that I explain".) Phooey also made a cameo appearance in the 2017 DuckTales animated series episode, "A Nightmare on Killmotor Hill!", during a dream sequence.
Character appearances
Films
List of animated short films
After the era of theatrical shorts ended, they appeared in:
Donald Duck Presents (1983)
DuckTales (1987)
Sport Goofy in Soccermania (1987)
DuckTales the Movie: Treasure of the Lost Lamp (1990)
Quack Pack (1996)
Mickey Mouse Works (1999)
Mickey's Once Upon a Christmas (1999)
House of Mouse (2001)
Mickey's Magical Christmas: Snowed in at the House of Mouse (2001)
Mickey's House of Villains (2002)
Mickey's Twice Upon a Christmas (2004)
DuckTales (2017)
In the 1988 film Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Huey, Dewey, and Louie appear in a picture on a newspaper in Eddie Valiant's office, implying they have been kidnapped by an unknown kidnapper. In 1990, the boys also made an appearance in the anti-drug TV special Cartoon All-Stars to the Rescue. They also make a cameo in Mickey's Christmas Carol.
They also appeared with Uncle Scrooge but without Donald in Scrooge McDuck and Money.
Comics
Within the comics, Huey, Dewey, and Louie often play a major role in most stories involving either their uncle Donald or great-uncle Scrooge McDuck, accompanying them on most of their adventures. Also seen in the comics is the boys' membership in the Boy Scouts of America-like organization, the Junior Woodchucks, including their use of the Junior Woodchucks Guidebook, a manual containing all manner of information on virtually every subject possible (however, there are some resources, such as the ancient libraries of Tralla La, that hold information not found in the guidebook). This excellent youth organization, which has twin goals of preserving knowledge and preserving the environment, was instrumental in transforming the three brothers from little hellions to upstanding young ducks.
In Disney comic writer Don Rosa's continuity, Huey, Dewey, and Louie Duck were born around 1940 in Duckburg. True to his jocular style, Rosa occasionally makes subtle references to the untold mystery of the three boys' life: What became of their parents? In his epic comic series, Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck, Rosa pictures how Scrooge first met Donald and his nephews, saying: "I'm not used to relatives, either! The few I had seem to have... disappeared!" Huey, Dewey, and Louie answer: "We know how that feels, Unca Scrooge!"
In Some Heir Over the Rainbow by Carl Barks, Huey, Dewey, and Louie, along with Donald Duck and Gladstone Gander, are tested by Scrooge McDuck, who wants to pick an heir to his fortune. Using the legend of a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow, Scrooge secretly gives US$3,000 (One thousand to Huey, Dewey, and Louie, another for Gladstone, and the last one for Donald). Donald uses his money for a down payment of a new car, now being $1,000 in debt. Gladstone, considering himself too lucky to need the money this soon, hides the money for when and if he needs it, causing Scrooge to consider him a better option than Donald. Huey, Dewey, and Louie lend their money to a man who claims to need the money to search for a treasure. Initially thinking they were tricked out of the money, Scrooge actually considers leaving his fortune to Gladstone, even though he sees that as "an awful injustice to the world", but the man actually finds the treasure and pays the kids back. Scrooge makes Huey, Dewey, and Louie his heirs. Although this is disregarded in a number of later comics, it seems to be the most solidly canon indication of Scrooge's plans.
Television
Huey, Dewey, and Louie starred in the 1987 animated television series DuckTales, in which they went on adventures with their great-uncle, Scrooge McDuck, after Donald left them with him to enlist in the U.S. Navy. The boys' personalities in this series were mainly based on their comic book appearances versus the theatrical shorts. In the 1996 series Quack Pack, the three were portrayed as teenagers and given distinct personalities, with Huey serving as the group's leader, Dewey as a computer whiz, and Louie as enjoying sports. After Quack Pack, the boys were reverted to their original ages for nearly all future appearances, including the 1999 series Mickey Mouse Works. The lone exception was the 2001 series House of Mouse, in which they served as the house band in a variety of different styles (most commonly as "The Quackstreet Boys"). The triplets also feature prominently in a segment of the computer-animated film, Mickey's Twice Upon a Christmas from 2004.
In the 2017 DuckTales series, the three brothers are once again given distinct designs, voices, and personalities: Huey is intelligent and logical, Dewey is adventurous and excitable, and Louie is laid-back and cunning. In the new installment, the brothers move to Scrooge's mansion with Donald after Dewey accidentally destroys their houseboat and travel the world on adventures with their uncles. The triplets also have different roles: Huey is a Junior Woodchuck, Dewey likes to go on adventures, and Louie wants to be like Scrooge and likes to do everything the easy way. This iteration also changed Dewey's real name to Dewford, while making Dingus his middle name, and Louie's real name to Llewellyn, a fact which he seems to be embarrassed by. In the second season, the boys are reunited with their long-lost mother Della, who reveals she intended to name them "Jet, Turbo, and Rebel" before she disappeared, after which Donald named them instead.
Video games
Huey, Dewey, and Louie appear in the third Magical Quest game. The object of the game is to rescue them from the clutches of the villainous King Pete. The trio also appear in Quackshot piloting Donald's plane as he travels the world in search of a lost treasure.
They also appear in The Lucky Dime Caper for the Sega Master system, where they are kidnapped by Magica De Spell. Donald must find Scrooge's lucky dime and barter for their safety.
They also appear in Donald Duck: Goin' Quackers, aiding Donald to rescue Daisy and beat Gladstone to her, while he rescues their hexed play toys.
They even appear in Mickey's Speedway USA as unlockable lightweight characters.
They also appear in DuckTales, aiding their Uncle Scrooge in finding treasure.
They also appear on Dance Dance Revolution: Disney Mix, where they appear as DJ's on certain music tracks.
They are playable characters in Disney Magic Kingdoms.
Kingdom Hearts
In Kingdom Hearts they work in the item shop in the First District of Traverse Town. In Kingdom Hearts II, they individually run an item shop (Huey), a weapon shop (Louie), and an accessory shop (Dewey) in Hollow Bastion/Radiant Garden. In both endings, they are all seen going back to Disney Castle. They reappear in Kingdom Hearts: Birth By Sleep in Disney Town, recreating Ice Cream flavors, this time with a speaking role. They appear once more in the mobile game Kingdom Hearts Unchained as special Support medals that grant the player's other medals a set number of experience points based on the medal's star value. They appear in the Tram Common area of Twilight Town in Kingdom Hearts III, where they each take turns running the gummi shop. In all of their Kingdom Hearts appearances, they appear similar to their appearance in the original DuckTales.
Parks and attractions
Huey, Dewey and Louie appear as characters only at Tokyo Disney and Disneyland Paris.
Tokyo Disney
Huey, Dewey and Louie only appeared in seasonal Parades Easter, Halloween and Christmas 2011 after a long absence. They also appeared in the Countdown Party Parade 2011.
Disneyland Paris
Huey, Dewey and Louie appear more regularly in Paris. They appeared during the Christmas season 2010 in their daytime and nighttime Parades at the Disneyland Park "Disneyland Paris's Magic Kingdom" Disney's Once Upon a Dream Parade and in the Disney's Fantillusion Parade in glittery outfits. They made another appearance at Disneyland Paris for meet and greet at the Disneyland Hotel on April 2, 2011, the day of the Press Event for the launch of their new season "Magical Moments Festival". They also appeared at the Disney's Once Upon a Dream Parade at the Disneyland Park in special outfits for the Parade and at the Disney's Stars 'n' Cars Parade at the Walt Disney Studios Park in a unique directors outfits.
The Three Nephews appeared at Disneyland Paris's Halloween season 2011. They have their own show during "Mickey's Not-So-Scary Halloween Parties" at the Disneyland Park in Disneyland Paris, titled "Huey, Dewey and Louie's Trick or Treat Party". They also made an appearance for meet and greet at Disneyland Paris's "Disney's Halloween Party" on October 31, 2011. This is the first time ever that the three nephews appear for meet and greet at any of the Disney Parks for regular park guests. They were also part of the Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve 2011–2012 celebrations at the Disneyland Hotel.
References
External links
Toonopedia page about Huey, Dewey, and Louie
Disney shorts encyclopedia page about Huey, Dewey, and Louie
The boys' profile on the Disney HooZoo
Anthropomorphic birds
Child characters in animated films
Child characters in comics
Child characters in television
Male characters in animation
Male characters in comics
Male characters in television
Comics characters introduced in 1937
Disney comics characters
Disney core universe characters
Fictional adoptees
Fictional characters from Calisota
Film characters introduced in 1938
Comics characters introduced in 1938
Fictional ducks
Fictional explorers
Fictional triplets
Kingdom Hearts characters
Fictional trios
Characters created by Ted Osborne
Characters created by Al Taliaferro
Clan McDuck
Disney animated birds | [
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14358 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hammurabi | Hammurabi | Hammurabi () was the sixth king of the First Babylonian dynasty of the Amorite tribe, reigning from c. 1792 BC to c. 1750 BC (according to the Middle Chronology). He was preceded by his father, Sin-Muballit, who abdicated due to failing health. During his reign, he conquered Elam and the city-states of Larsa, Eshnunna, and Mari. He ousted Ishme-Dagan I, the king of Assyria, and forced his son Mut-Ashkur to pay tribute, bringing almost all of Mesopotamia under Babylonian rule.
Hammurabi is best known for having issued the Code of Hammurabi, which he claimed to have received from Shamash, the Babylonian god of justice. Unlike earlier Sumerian law codes, such as the Code of Ur-Nammu, which had focused on compensating the victim of the crime, the Law of Hammurabi was one of the first law codes to place greater emphasis on the physical punishment of the perpetrator. It prescribed specific penalties for each crime and is among the first codes to establish the presumption of innocence. Although its penalties are extremely harsh by modern standards, they were intended to limit what a wronged person was permitted to do in retribution. The Code of Hammurabi and the Law of Moses in the Torah contain numerous similarities.
Hammurabi was seen by many as a god within his own lifetime. After his death, Hammurabi was revered as a great conqueror who spread civilization and forced all peoples to pay obeisance to Marduk, the national god of the Babylonians. Later, his military accomplishments became de-emphasized and his role as the ideal lawgiver became the primary aspect of his legacy. For later Mesopotamians, Hammurabi's reign became the frame of reference for all events occurring in the distant past. Even after the empire he built collapsed, he was still revered as a model ruler, and many kings across the Near East claimed him as an ancestor. Hammurabi was rediscovered by archaeologists in the late nineteenth century and has since been seen as an important figure in the history of law.
Reign and conquests
Hammurabi was an Amorite First Dynasty king of the city-state of Babylon, and inherited the power from his father, Sin-Muballit, in . Babylon was one of the many largely Amorite ruled city-states that dotted the central and southern Mesopotamian plains and waged war on each other for control of fertile agricultural land. Though many cultures co-existed in Mesopotamia, Babylonian culture gained a degree of prominence among the literate classes throughout the Middle East under Hammurabi. The kings who came before Hammurabi had founded a relatively minor City State in 1894 BC, which controlled little territory outside of the city itself. Babylon was overshadowed by older, larger, and more powerful kingdoms such as Elam, Assyria, Isin, Eshnunna, and Larsa for a century or so after its founding. However, his father Sin-Muballit had begun to consolidate rule of a small area of south central Mesopotamia under Babylonian hegemony and, by the time of his reign, had conquered the minor city-states of Borsippa, Kish, and Sippar.
Thus Hammurabi ascended to the throne as the king of a minor kingdom in the midst of a complex geopolitical situation. The powerful kingdom of Eshnunna controlled the upper Tigris River while Larsa controlled the river delta. To the east of Mesopotamia lay the powerful kingdom of Elam, which regularly invaded and forced tribute upon the small states of southern Mesopotamia. In northern Mesopotamia, the Assyrian king Shamshi-Adad I, who had already inherited centuries old Assyrian colonies in Asia Minor, had expanded his territory into the Levant and central Mesopotamia, although his untimely death would somewhat fragment his empire.
The first few years of Hammurabi's reign were quite peaceful. Hammurabi used his power to undertake a series of public works, including heightening the city walls for defensive purposes, and expanding the temples. In , the powerful kingdom of Elam, which straddled important trade routes across the Zagros Mountains, invaded the Mesopotamian plain. With allies among the plain states, Elam attacked and destroyed the kingdom of Eshnunna, destroying a number of cities and imposing its rule on portions of the plain for the first time.
In order to consolidate its position, Elam tried to start a war between Hammurabi's Babylonian kingdom and the kingdom of Larsa. Hammurabi and the king of Larsa made an alliance when they discovered this duplicity and were able to crush the Elamites, although Larsa did not contribute greatly to the military effort. Angered by Larsa's failure to come to his aid, Hammurabi turned on that southern power, thus gaining control of the entirety of the lower Mesopotamian plain by .
As Hammurabi was assisted during the war in the south by his allies from the north such as Yamhad and Mari, the absence of soldiers in the north led to unrest. Continuing his expansion, Hammurabi turned his attention northward, quelling the unrest and soon after crushing Eshnunna. Next the Babylonian armies conquered the remaining northern states, including Babylon's former ally Mari, although it is possible that the conquest of Mari was a surrender without any actual conflict.
Hammurabi entered into a protracted war with Ishme-Dagan I of Assyria for control of Mesopotamia, with both kings making alliances with minor states in order to gain the upper hand. Eventually Hammurabi prevailed, ousting Ishme-Dagan I just before his own death. Mut-Ashkur, the new king of Assyria, was forced to pay tribute to Hammurabi.
In just a few years, Hammurabi succeeded in uniting all of Mesopotamia under his rule. The Assyrian kingdom survived but was forced to pay tribute during his reign, and of the major city-states in the region, only Aleppo and Qatna to the west in the Levant maintained their independence. However, one stele of Hammurabi has been found as far north as Diyarbekir, where he claims the title "King of the Amorites".
Vast numbers of contract tablets, dated to the reigns of Hammurabi and his successors, have been discovered, as well as 55 of his own letters. These letters give a glimpse into the daily trials of ruling an empire, from dealing with floods and mandating changes to a flawed calendar, to taking care of Babylon's massive herds of livestock. Hammurabi died and passed the reins of the empire on to his son Samsu-iluna in , under whose rule the Babylonian empire quickly began to unravel.
Code of laws
The Code of Hammurabi is not the earliest surviving law code; it is predated by the Code of Ur-Nammu, the Laws of Eshnunna, and the Code of Lipit-Ishtar. Nonetheless, the Code of Hammurabi shows marked differences from these earlier law codes and ultimately proved more influential.
The Code of Hammurabi was inscribed on a stele and placed in a public place so that all could see it, although it is thought that few were literate. The stele was later plundered by the Elamites and removed to their capital, Susa; it was rediscovered there in 1901 in Iran and is now in the Louvre Museum in Paris. The code of Hammurabi contains 282 laws, written by scribes on 12 tablets. Unlike earlier laws, it was written in Akkadian, the daily language of Babylon, and could therefore be read by any literate person in the city. Earlier Sumerian law codes had focused on compensating the victim of the crime, but the Code of Hammurabi instead focused on physically punishing the perpetrator. The Code of Hammurabi was one of the first law code to place restrictions on what a wronged person was allowed to do in retribution.
The structure of the code is very specific, with each offense receiving a specified punishment. The punishments tended to be very harsh by modern standards, with many offenses resulting in death, disfigurement, or the use of the "Eye for eye, tooth for tooth" (Lex Talionis "Law of Retaliation") philosophy. The code is also one of the earliest examples of the idea of presumption of innocence, and it also suggests that the accused and accuser have the opportunity to provide evidence. However, there is no provision for extenuating circumstances to alter the prescribed punishment.
A carving at the top of the stele portrays Hammurabi receiving the laws from Shamash, the Babylonian god of justice, and the preface states that Hammurabi was chosen by Shamash to bring the laws to the people. Parallels between this narrative and the giving of the Covenant Code to Moses by Yahweh atop Mount Sinai in the Biblical Book of Exodus and similarities between the two legal codes suggest a common ancestor in the Semitic background of the two. Nonetheless, fragments of previous law codes have been found and it is unlikely that the Mosaic laws were directly inspired by the Code of Hammurabi. Some scholars have disputed this; David P. Wright argues that the Jewish Covenant Code is "directly, primarily, and throughout" based upon the Laws of Hammurabi. In 2010, a team of archaeologists from Hebrew University discovered a cuneiform tablet dating to the eighteenth or seventeenth century BC at Hazor in Israel containing laws clearly derived from the Code of Hammurabi.
Legacy
Commemoration after his death
Hammurabi was honored above all other kings of the second millennium BC and he received the unique honor of being declared to be a god within his own lifetime. The personal name "Hammurabi-ili" meaning "Hammurabi is my god" became common during and after his reign. In writings from shortly after his death, Hammurabi is commemorated mainly for three achievements: bringing victory in war, bringing peace, and bringing justice. Hammurabi's conquests came to be regarded as part of a sacred mission to spread civilization to all nations. A stele from Ur glorifies him in his own voice as a mighty ruler who forces evil into submission and compels all peoples to worship Marduk. The stele declares: "The people of Elam, Gutium, Subartu, and Tukrish, whose mountains are distant and whose languages are obscure, I placed into [Marduk's] hand. I myself continued to put straight their confused minds." A later hymn also written in Hammurabi's own voice extols him as a powerful, supernatural force for Marduk:
I am the king, the brace that grasps wrongdoers, that makes people of one mind,
I am the great dragon among kings, who throws their counsel in disarray,
I am the net that is stretched over the enemy,
I am the fear-inspiring, who, when lifting his fierce eyes, gives the disobedient the death sentence,
I am the great net that covers evil intent,
I am the young lion, who breaks nets and scepters,
I am the battle net that catches him who offends me.
After extolling Hammurabi's military accomplishments, the hymn finally declares: "I am Hammurabi, the king of justice." In later commemorations, Hammurabi's role as a great lawgiver came to be emphasized above all his other accomplishments and his military achievements became de-emphasized. Hammurabi's reign became the point of reference for all events in the distant past. A hymn to the goddess Ishtar, whose language suggests it was written during the reign of Ammisaduqa, Hammurabi's fourth successor, declares: "The king who first heard this song as a song of your heroism is Hammurabi. This song for you was composed in his reign. May he be given life forever!" For centuries after his death, Hammurabi's laws continued to be copied by scribes as part of their writing exercises and they were even partially translated into Sumerian.
Political legacy
During the reign of Hammurabi, Babylon usurped the position of "most holy city" in southern Mesopotamia from its predecessor, Nippur. Under the rule of Hammurabi's successor Samsu-iluna, the short-lived Babylonian Empire began to collapse. In northern Mesopotamia, both the Amorites and Babylonians were driven from Assyria by Puzur-Sin a native Akkadian-speaking ruler, . Around the same time, native Akkadian speakers threw off Amorite Babylonian rule in the far south of Mesopotamia, creating the Sealand Dynasty, in more or less the region of ancient Sumer. Hammurabi's ineffectual successors met with further defeats and loss of territory at the hands of Assyrian kings such as Adasi and Bel-ibni, as well as to the Sealand Dynasty to the south, Elam to the east, and to the Kassites from the northeast. Thus was Babylon quickly reduced to the small and minor state it had once been upon its founding.
The coup de grace for the Hammurabi's Amorite Dynasty occurred in 1595 BC, when Babylon was sacked and conquered by the powerful Hittite Empire, thereby ending all Amorite political presence in Mesopotamia. However, the Indo-European-speaking Hittites did not remain, turning over Babylon to their Kassite allies, a people speaking a language isolate, from the Zagros mountains region. This Kassite Dynasty ruled Babylon for over 400 years and adopted many aspects of the Babylonian culture, including Hammurabi's code of laws. Even after the fall of the Amorite Dynasty, however, Hammurabi was still remembered and revered. When the Elamite king Shutruk-Nahhunte I raided Babylon in 1158 BC and carried off many stone monuments, he had most of the inscriptions on these monuments erased and new inscriptions carved into them. On the stele containing Hammurabi's laws, however, only four or five columns were wiped out and no new inscription was ever added. Over a thousand years after Hammurabi's death, the kings of Suhu, a land along the Euphrates river, just northwest of Babylon, claimed him as their ancestor.
Modern rediscovery
In the late nineteenth century, the Code of Hammurabi became a major center of debate in the heated Babel und Bibel ("Babylon and Bible") controversy in Germany over the relationship between the Bible and ancient Babylonian texts. In January 1902, the German Assyriologist Friedrich Delitzsch gave a lecture at the Sing-Akademie zu Berlin in front of the Kaiser and his wife, in which he argued that the Mosaic Laws of the Old Testament were directly copied off the Code of Hammurabi. Delitzsch's lecture was so controversial that, by September 1903, he had managed to collect 1,350 short articles from newspapers and journals, over 300 longer ones, and twenty-eight pamphlets, all written in response to this lecture, as well as the preceding one about the Flood story in the Epic of Gilgamesh. These articles were overwhelmingly critical of Delitzsch, though a few were sympathetic. The Kaiser distanced himself from Delitzsch and his radical views and, in fall of 1904, Delitzsch was forced to give his third lecture in Cologne and Frankfurt am Main rather than in Berlin. The putative relationship between the Mosaic Law and the Code of Hammurabi later became a major part of Delitzsch's argument in his 1920–21 book Die große Täuschung (The Great Deception) that the Hebrew Bible was irredeemably contaminated by Babylonian influence and that only by eliminating the human Old Testament entirely could Christians finally believe in the true, Aryan message of the New Testament. In the early twentieth century, many scholars believed that Hammurabi was Amraphel, the King of Shinar in the Book of Genesis 14:1. This view has now been largely rejected, and Amraphael's existence is not attested in any writings from outside the Bible.
Because of Hammurabi's reputation as a lawgiver, his depiction can be found in several United States government buildings. Hammurabi is one of the 23 lawgivers depicted in marble bas-reliefs in the chamber of the U.S. House of Representatives in the United States Capitol. A frieze by Adolph Weinman depicting the "great lawgivers of history", including Hammurabi, is on the south wall of the U.S. Supreme Court building. At the time of Saddam Hussein, the Iraqi Army's 1st Hammurabi Armoured Division was named after the ancient king as part of an effort to emphasize the connection between modern Iraq and the pre-Arab Mesopotamian cultures.
Minor planet 7207 Hammurabi is named in his honour.
See also
Babylonian law
Cuneiform law
Short chronology timeline
Manusmṛti
Notes
References
Sources
Further reading
External links
A Closer Look at the Code of Hammurabi (Louvre museum)
19th-century BC births
18th-century BC deaths
18th-century BC Babylonian kings
First dynasty of Babylon
Amorite kings
Ancient legislators
Year of birth unknown
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14359 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huygens%E2%80%93Fresnel%20principle | Huygens–Fresnel principle | The Huygens–Fresnel principle (named after Dutch physicist Christiaan Huygens and French physicist Augustin-Jean Fresnel) is a method of analysis applied to problems of wave propagation both in the far-field limit and in near-field diffraction and also reflection. It states that every point on a wavefront is itself the source of spherical wavelets, and the secondary wavelets emanating from different points mutually interfere. The sum of these spherical wavelets forms the wavefront.
History
In 1678, Huygens proposed that every point to which a luminous disturbance reaches becomes a source of a spherical wave; the sum of these secondary waves determines the form of the wave at any subsequent time. He assumed that the secondary waves travelled only in the "forward" direction and it is not explained in the theory why this is the case. He was able to provide a qualitative explanation of linear and spherical wave propagation, and to derive the laws of reflection and refraction using this principle, but could not explain the deviations from rectilinear propagation that occur when light encounters edges, apertures and screens, commonly known as diffraction effects. The resolution of this error was finally explained by David A. B. Miller in 1991. The resolution is that the source is a dipole (not the monopole assumed by Huygens), which cancels in the reflected direction.
In 1818, Fresnel showed that Huygens's principle, together with his own principle of interference could explain both the rectilinear propagation of light and also diffraction effects. To obtain agreement with experimental results, he had to include additional arbitrary assumptions about the phase and amplitude of the secondary waves, and also an obliquity factor. These assumptions have no obvious physical foundation but led to predictions that agreed with many experimental observations, including the Poisson spot.
Poisson was a member of the French Academy, which reviewed Fresnel's work. He used Fresnel's theory to predict that a bright spot ought to appear in the center of the shadow of a small disc, and deduced from this that the theory was incorrect. However, Arago, another member of the committee, performed the experiment and showed that the prediction was correct. (Lisle had observed this fifty years earlier.) This was one of the investigations that led to the victory of the wave theory of light over then predominant corpuscular theory.
In antenna theory and engineering, the reformulation of the Huygens–Fresnel principle for radiating current sources is known as surface equivalence principle.
Huygens' principle as a microscopic model
The Huygens–Fresnel principle provides a reasonable basis for understanding and predicting the classical wave propagation of light. However, there are limitations to the principle, namely the same approximations done for deriving the Kirchhoff's diffraction formula and the approximations of near field due to Fresnel. These can be summarized in the fact that the wavelength of light is much smaller than the dimensions of any optical components encountered.
Kirchhoff's diffraction formula provides a rigorous mathematical foundation for diffraction, based on the wave equation. The arbitrary assumptions made by Fresnel to arrive at the Huygens–Fresnel equation emerge automatically from the mathematics in this derivation.
A simple example of the operation of the principle can be seen when an open doorway connects two rooms and a sound is produced in a remote corner of one of them. A person in the other room will hear the sound as if it originated at the doorway. As far as the second room is concerned, the vibrating air in the doorway is the source of the sound.
Modern physics interpretations
Not all experts agree that the Huygens' principle is an accurate microscopic representation of reality. For instance, Melvin Schwartz argued that "Huygens' principle actually does give the right answer but for the wrong reasons".
This can be reflected in the following facts:
The microscopic mechanics to create photons and of emission, in general, is essentially acceleration of electrons.
The original analysis of Huygens included amplitudes only. It includes neither phases nor waves propagating at different speeds (due to diffraction within continuous media), and therefore does not take into account interference.
The Huygens analysis also does not include polarization for light which imply a vector potential, where instead sound waves can be described with a scalar potential and there is no unique and natural translation between the two.
In the Huygens description, there is no explanation of why we choose only the forward-going (retarded wave or forward envelope of wave fronts) versus the backward-propagating advanced wave (backward envelope).
In the Fresnel approximation there is a concept of non-local behavior due to the sum of spherical waves with different phases that comes from the different points of the wave front, and non local theories are subject of many debates (e.g., not being Lorentz covariant) and of active research.
The Fresnel approximation can be interpreted in a quantum probabilistic manner but is unclear how much this sum of states (i.e., wavelets on the wavefront) is a complete list of states that are meaningful physically or represents more of an approximation on a generic basis like in the linear combination of atomic orbitals (LCAO) method.
The Huygens' principle is essentially compatible with quantum field theory in the far field approximation, considering effective fields in the center of scattering, considering small perturbations, and in the same sense that quantum optics is compatible with classical optics, other interpretations are subject of debates and active research.
The Feynman model where every point in an imaginary wave front as large as the room is generating a wavelet, shall also be interpreted in these approximations and in a probabilistic context, in this context remote points can only contribute minimally to the overall probability amplitude.
Quantum field theory does not include any microscopic model for photon creation and the concept of single photon is also put under scrutiny on a theoretical level.
Mathematical expression of the principle
Consider the case of a point source located at a point P0, vibrating at a frequency f. The disturbance may be described by a complex variable U0 known as the complex amplitude. It produces a spherical wave with wavelength λ, wavenumber . Within a constant of proportionality, the complex amplitude of the primary wave at the point Q located at a distance r0 from P0 is:
Note that magnitude decreases in inverse proportion to the distance travelled, and the phase changes as k times the distance travelled.
Using Huygens's theory and the principle of superposition of waves, the complex amplitude at a further point P is found by summing the contributions from each point on the sphere of radius r0. In order to get agreement with experimental results, Fresnel found that the individual contributions from the secondary waves on the sphere had to be multiplied by a constant, −i/λ, and by an additional inclination factor, K(χ). The first assumption means that the secondary waves oscillate at a quarter of a cycle out of phase with respect to the primary wave, and that the magnitude of the secondary waves are in a ratio of 1:λ to the primary wave. He also assumed that K(χ) had a maximum value when χ = 0, and was equal to zero when χ = π/2, where χ is the angle between the normal of the primary wave front and the normal of the secondary wave front. The complex amplitude at P, due to the contribute of secondary waves, is then given by:
where S describes the surface of the sphere, and s is the distance between Q and P.
Fresnel used a zone construction method to find approximate values of K for the different zones, which enabled him to make predictions that were in agreement with experimental results. The integral theorem of Kirchhoff includes the basic idea of Huygens–Fresnel principle. Kirchhoff showed that in many cases, the theorem can be approximated to a simpler form that is equivalent to the formation of Fresnel's formulation.
For an aperture illumination consisting of a single expanding spherical wave, if the radius of the curvature of the wave is sufficiently large, Kirchhoff gave the following expression for K(χ):
K has a maximum value at χ = 0 as in the Huygens–Fresnel principle; however, K is not equal to zero at χ = π/2, but at χ = π.
Above derivation of K(χ) assumed that the diffracting aperture is illuminated by a single spherical wave with a sufficiently large radius of curvature. However, the principle holds for more general illuminations. An arbitrary illumination can be decomposed into a collection of point sources, and the linearity of the wave equation can be invoked to apply the principle to each point source individually. K(χ) can be generally expressed as:
In this case, K satisfies the conditions stated above (maximum value at χ = 0 and zero at χ = π/2).
Generalized Huygens' principle
Many books and references e.g. and refer to the Generalized Huygens' Principle as the one referred by Feynman in this publication.
Feynman defines the generalized principle in the following way:
This clarifies the fact that in this context the generalized principle reflects the linearity of quantum mechanics and the fact that the quantum mechanics equations are first order in time. Finally only in this case the superposition principle fully apply, i.e. the wave function in a point P can be expanded as a superposition of waves on a border surface enclosing P. Wave functions can be interpreted in the usual quantum mechanical sense as probability densities where the formalism of Green's functions and propagators apply. What is note-worthy is that this generalized principle is applicable for "matter waves" and not for light waves any more. The phase factor is now clarified as given by the action and there is no more confusion why the phases of the wavelets are different from the one of the original wave and modified by the additional Fresnel parameters.
As per Greiner the generalized principle can be expressed for in the form:
Where G is the usual Green function that propagates in time the wave function . This description resembles and generalize the initial Fresnel's formula of the classical model.
Huygens' theory and the modern photon wave function
Huygens' theory served as a fundamental explanation of the wave nature of light interference and was further developed by Fresnel and Young but did not fully resolve all observations such as the low-intensity double-slit experiment first performed by G. I. Taylor in 1909. It was not until the early and mid-1900s that quantum theory discussions, particularly the early discussions at the 1927 Brussels Solvay Conference, where Louis de Broglie proposed his de Broglie hypothesis that the photon is guided by a wave function. The wave function presents a much different explanation of the observed light and dark bands in a double slit experiment. In this conception, the photon follows a path which is a random choice of one of many possible paths. These possible paths form the pattern: in dark areas, no photons are landing, and in bright areas, many photons are landing. The set of possible photon paths is determined by the surroundings: the photon's originating point (atom), the slit, and the screen. The wave function is a solution to this geometry. The wave function approach was further supported by additional double-slit experiments in Italy and Japan in the 1970s and 1980s with electrons.
Huygens' principle and quantum field theory
Huygens' principle can be seen as a consequence of the homogeneity of space—space is uniform in all locations. Any disturbance created in a sufficiently small region of homogenous space (or in a homogenous medium) propagates from that region in all geodesic directions. The waves produced by this disturbance, in turn, create disturbances in other regions, and so on. The superposition of all the waves results in the observed pattern of wave propagation.
Homogeneity of space is fundamental to quantum field theory (QFT) where the wave function of any object propagates along all available unobstructed paths. When integrated along all possible paths, with a phase factor proportional to the action, the interference of the wave-functions correctly predicts observable phenomena. Every point on the wavefront acts as the source of secondary wavelets that spread out in the light cone with the same speed as the wave. The new wavefront is found by constructing the surface tangent to the secondary wavelets.
In other spatial dimensions
In 1900, Jacques Hadamard observed that Huygens' principle was broken when the number of spatial dimensions is even. From this, he developed a set of conjectures that remain an active topic of research. In particular, it has been discovered that Huygens' principle holds on a large class of homogenous spaces derived from the Coxeter group (so, for example, the Weyl groups of simple Lie algebras).
The traditional statement of Huygens' principle for the D'Alembertian gives rise to the KdV hierarchy; analogously, the Dirac operator gives rise to the AKNS hierarchy.
See also
Fraunhofer diffraction
Kirchhoff's diffraction formula
Green's function
Green's theorem
Green's identities
Near-field diffraction pattern
Double-slit experiment
Knife-edge effect
Fermat's principle
Fourier optics
Surface equivalence principle
Wave field synthesis
References
Further reading
Stratton, Julius Adams: Electromagnetic Theory, McGraw-Hill, 1941. (Reissued by Wiley – IEEE Press, ).
B.B. Baker and E.T. Copson, The Mathematical Theory of Huygens' Principle, Oxford, 1939, 1950; AMS Chelsea, 1987.
Wave mechanics
Diffraction
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14361 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honey | Honey | Honey is a sweet, viscous food substance made by honey bees and some other bees. Bees produce honey from the sugary secretions of plants (floral nectar) or from secretions of other insects (such as honeydew), by regurgitation, enzymatic activity, and water evaporation. Honey bees store honey in wax structures called honeycombs, whereas stingless bees store honey in pots made of wax and resin. The variety of honey produced by honey bees (the genus Apis) is the best-known, due to its worldwide commercial production and human consumption. Honey is collected from wild bee colonies, or from hives of domesticated bees, a practice known as beekeeping or apiculture (meliponiculture in the case of stingless bees).
Honey gets its sweetness from the monosaccharides fructose and glucose, and has about the same relative sweetness as sucrose (table sugar). of honey provides around of food energy. It has attractive chemical properties for baking and a distinctive flavor when used as a sweetener. Most microorganisms do not grow in honey, so sealed honey does not spoil, even after thousands of years.
Honey use and production have a long and varied history as an ancient activity. Several cave paintings in Cuevas de la Araña in Spain depict humans foraging for honey at least 8,000 years ago. Large-scale meliponiculture has been practiced by the Mayans since pre-Columbian times.
Formation
Honey is produced by bees collecting nectar and honeydew for use as sugars consumed to support metabolism of muscle activity during foraging or to be stored as a long-term food supply. During foraging, bees use part of the nectar collected to support metabolic activity of flight muscles, with the majority of collected nectar destined for regurgitation, digestion, and storage as honey. In cold weather or when other food sources are scarce, adult and larval bees use stored honey as food.
By contriving for honey bee swarms to nest in human-made hives, people have been able to semidomesticate the insects and harvest excess honey. In the hive or in a wild nest, the three types of bees are:
a single female queen bee
a seasonally variable number of male drone bees to fertilize new queens
20,000 to 40,000 female worker bees
Leaving the hive, a foraging bee collects sugar-rich flower nectar, sucking it through its proboscis and placing it in its proventriculus (honey stomach or crop), which lies just dorsal to its food stomach. In Apis mellifera, the honey stomach holds about 40 mg of nectar, or roughly 50% of the bee's unloaded weight, which can require over a thousand flowers and more than an hour to fill. The nectar generally begins with a water content of 70 to 80%. Salivary enzymes and proteins from the bee's hypopharyngeal gland are added to the nectar to begin breaking down the sugars, raising the water content slightly. The forager bees then return to the hive, where they regurgitate and transfer nectar to the hive bees. The hive bees then use their honey stomachs to ingest and regurgitate the nectar, forming bubbles between their mandibles repeatedly until it is partially digested. The bubbles create a large surface area per volume and a portion of the water is removed through evaporation. The bee's digestive enzymes hydrolyze converts sucrose to a mixture of glucose and fructose, and break down other starches and proteins, increasing the acidity.
The bees work together as a group with the regurgitation and digestion for as long as 20 minutes, passing the nectar from one bee to the next, until the product reaches the honeycombs in storage quality. It is then placed in honeycomb cells and left unsealed while still high in water content (about 50 to 70%) and natural yeasts which, unchecked, would cause the sugars in the newly formed honey to ferment. Bees are among the few insects that can generate large amounts of body heat, and the hive bees constantly regulate the hive temperature, either heating with their bodies or cooling with water evaporation, to maintain a fairly constant temperature of about in the honey-storage areas. The process continues as hive bees flutter their wings constantly to circulate air and evaporate water from the honey to a content around 18%, raising the sugar concentration beyond the saturation point and preventing fermentation. The bees then cap the cells with wax to seal them. As removed from the hive by a beekeeper, honey has a long shelf life and will not ferment if properly sealed.
Some wasp species, such as Brachygastra lecheguana and Brachygastra mellifica found in South and Central America, are known to feed on nectar and produce honey.
Some wasps, such as Polistes versicolor, consume honey, alternating between feeding on pollen in the middle of their lifecycles and feeding on honey, which can better provide for their energy needs.
Production
Collection
Honey is collected from wild bee colonies or from domesticated beehives. On average, a hive will produce about of honey per year. Wild bee nests are sometimes located by following a honeyguide bird.
To safely collect honey from a hive, beekeepers typically pacify the bees using a bee smoker. The smoke triggers a feeding instinct (an attempt to save the resources of the hive from a possible fire), making them less aggressive, and obscures the pheromones the bees use to communicate. The honeycomb is removed from the hive and the honey may be extracted from it either by crushing or by using a honey extractor. The honey is then usually filtered to remove beeswax and other debris.
Before the invention of removable frames, bee colonies were often sacrificed to conduct the harvest. The harvester would take all the available honey and replace the entire colony the next spring. Since the invention of removable frames, the principles of husbandry led most beekeepers to ensure that their bees have enough stores to survive the winter, either by leaving some honey in the beehive or by providing the colony with a honey substitute such as sugar water or crystalline sugar (often in the form of a "candyboard"). The amount of food necessary to survive the winter depends on the variety of bees and on the length and severity of local winters.
Many animal species are attracted to wild or domestic sources of honey.
Preservation
Because of its composition and chemical properties, honey is suitable for long-term storage, and is easily assimilated even after long preservation. Honey, and objects immersed in honey, have been preserved for centuries. The key to preservation is limiting access to humidity. In its cured state, honey has a sufficiently high sugar content to inhibit fermentation. If exposed to moist air, its hydrophilic properties pull moisture into the honey, eventually diluting it to the point that fermentation can begin.
The long shelf life of honey is attributed to an enzyme found in the stomach of bees. The bees mix glucose oxidase with expelled nectar they previously consumed, creating two byproducts – gluconic acid and hydrogen peroxide, which are partially responsible for honey acidity and suppression of bacterial growth.
Adulteration
Honey is sometimes adulterated by the addition of other sugars, syrups, or compounds to change its flavor or viscosity, reduce cost, or increase the fructose content to stave off crystallization. Adulteration of honey has been practiced since ancient times, when honey was sometimes blended with plant syrups such as maple, birch, or sorghum and sold to customers as pure honey. Sometimes crystallized honey was mixed with flour or other fillers, hiding the adulteration from buyers until the honey was liquefied. In modern times the most common adulterant became clear, almost-flavorless corn syrup; the adulterated mixture can be very difficult to distinguish from pure honey.
According to the Codex Alimentarius of the United Nations, any product labeled as "honey" or "pure honey" must be a wholly natural product, although labeling laws differ between countries. In the United States, according to the National Honey Board (NHB; supervised by the United States Department of Agriculture), "honey stipulates a pure product that does not allow for the addition of any other substance... this includes, but is not limited to, water or other sweeteners".
Isotope ratio mass spectrometry can be used to detect addition of corn syrup and cane sugar by the carbon isotopic signature. Addition of sugars originating from corn or sugar cane (C4 plants, unlike the plants used by bees, and also sugar beet, which are predominantly C3 plants) skews the isotopic ratio of sugars present in honey, but does not influence the isotopic ratio of proteins. In an unadulterated honey, the carbon isotopic ratios of sugars and proteins should match. Levels as low as 7% of addition can be detected.
Worldwide production
In 2019, global production of honey was 1.9million tonnes, led by China with 24% of the world total (table). Other major producers were Turkey, Canada, Argentina, and Iran.
Modern uses
Food
Over its history as a food, the main uses of honey are in cooking, baking, desserts, as a spread on bread, as an addition to various beverages such as tea, and as a sweetener in some commercial beverages.
Due to its energy density, honey is an important food for virtually all hunter-gatherer cultures in warm climates, with the Hadza people ranking honey as their favorite food. Honey hunters in Africa have a mutualistic relationship with certain species of Honeyguide birds.
Fermentation
Possibly the world's oldest fermented beverage, dating from 9,000 years ago, mead ("honey wine") is the alcoholic product made by adding yeast to honey-water must and fermenting it for weeks or months. The yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae is commonly used in modern mead production.
Mead varieties include drinks called metheglin (with spices or herbs), melomel (with fruit juices, such as grape, specifically called pyment), hippocras (with cinnamon), and sack mead (high concentration of honey), many of which have been developed as commercial products numbering in the hundreds in the United States. Honey is also used to make mead beer, called "braggot".
Physical and chemical properties
The physical properties of honey vary, depending on water content, the type of flora used to produce it (pasturage), temperature, and the proportion of the specific sugars it contains. Fresh honey is a supersaturated liquid, containing more sugar than the water can typically dissolve at ambient temperatures. At room temperature, honey is a supercooled liquid, in which the glucose precipitates into solid granules. This forms a semisolid solution of precipitated glucose crystals in a solution of fructose and other ingredients.
The density of honey typically ranges between 1.38 and 1.45 kg/l at 20 °C.
Phase transitions
The melting point of crystallized honey is between , depending on its composition. Below this temperature, honey can be either in a metastable state, meaning that it will not crystallize until a seed crystal is added, or, more often, it is in a "labile" state, being saturated with enough sugars to crystallize spontaneously. The rate of crystallization is affected by many factors, but the primary factor is the ratio of the main sugars: fructose to glucose. Honeys that are supersaturated with a very high percentage of glucose, such as brassica honey, crystallize almost immediately after harvesting, while honeys with a low percentage of glucose, such as chestnut or tupelo honey, do not crystallize. Some types of honey may produce few but very large crystals, while others produce many small crystals.
Crystallization is also affected by water content, because a high percentage of water inhibits crystallization, as does a high dextrin content. Temperature also affects the rate of crystallization, with the fastest growth occurring between . Crystal nuclei (seeds) tend to form more readily if the honey is disturbed, by stirring, shaking, or agitating, rather than if left at rest. However, the nucleation of microscopic seed-crystals is greatest between . Therefore, larger but fewer crystals tend to form at higher temperatures, while smaller but more-numerous crystals usually form at lower temperatures. Below 5 °C, the honey will not crystallize, thus the original texture and flavor can be preserved indefinitely.
Honey is a supercooled liquid when stored below its melting point, as is normal. At very low temperatures, honey does not freeze solid; rather its viscosity increases. Like most viscous liquids, the honey becomes thick and sluggish with decreasing temperature. At , honey may appear or even feel solid, but it continues to flow at very low rates. Honey has a glass transition between . Below this temperature, honey enters a glassy state and becomes an amorphous solid (noncrystalline).
Rheology
The viscosity of honey is affected greatly by both temperature and water content. The higher the water percentage, the more easily honey flows. Above its melting point, however, water has little effect on viscosity. Aside from water content, the composition of most types of honey also has little effect on viscosity. At , honey with 14% water content generally has a viscosity around 400 poise, while a honey containing 20% water has a viscosity around 20 poise. Viscosity increases very slowly with moderate cooling; a honey containing 16% water, at , has a viscosity around 2 poise, while at , the viscosity is around 70 poise. With further cooling, the increase in viscosity is more rapid, reaching 600 poise at around . However, while honey is viscous, it has low surface tension of 50–60 mJ/m2, making its wettability similar to water, glycerin, or most other liquids. The high viscosity and wettability of honey cause stickiness, which is a time-dependent process in supercooled liquids between the glass-transition temperature (Tg) and the crystalline-melting temperature.
Most types of honey are Newtonian liquids, but a few types have non-Newtonian viscous properties. Honeys from heather or manuka display thixotropic properties. These types of honey enter a gel-like state when motionless, but liquefy when stirred.
Electrical and optical properties
Because honey contains electrolytes, in the form of acids and minerals, it exhibits varying degrees of electrical conductivity. Measurements of the electrical conductivity are used to determine the quality of honey in terms of ash content.
The effect honey has on light is useful for determining the type and quality. Variations in its water content alter its refractive index. Water content can easily be measured with a refractometer. Typically, the refractive index for honey ranges from 1.504 at 13% water content to 1.474 at 25%. Honey also has an effect on polarized light, in that it rotates the polarization plane. The fructose gives a negative rotation, while the glucose gives a positive one. The overall rotation can be used to measure the ratio of the mixture. Honey may vary in color between pale yellow and dark brown, but other bright colors may occasionally be found, depending on the source of the sugar harvested by the bees. Bee colonies that forage on Kudzu (Pueraria montana var. lobata) flowers, for example, produce honey that varies in color from red to purple.
Hygroscopy and fermentation
Honey has the ability to absorb moisture directly from the air, a phenomenon called hygroscopy. The amount of water the honey absorbs is dependent on the relative humidity of the air. Because honey contains yeast, this hygroscopic nature requires that honey be stored in sealed containers to prevent fermentation, which usually begins if the honey's water content rises much above 25%. Honey tends to absorb more water in this manner than the individual sugars allow on their own, which may be due to other ingredients it contains.
Fermentation of honey usually occurs after crystallization, because without the glucose, the liquid portion of the honey primarily consists of a concentrated mixture of fructose, acids, and water, providing the yeast with enough of an increase in the water percentage for growth. Honey that is to be stored at room temperature for long periods of time is often pasteurized, to kill any yeast, by heating it above .
Thermal characteristics
Like all sugar compounds, honey caramelizes if heated sufficiently, becoming darker in color, and eventually burns. However, honey contains fructose, which caramelizes at lower temperatures than glucose. The temperature at which caramelization begins varies, depending on the composition, but is typically between . Honey also contains acids, which act as catalysts for caramelization. The specific types of acids and their amounts play a primary role in determining the exact temperature. Of these acids, the amino acids, which occur in very small amounts, play an important role in the darkening of honey. The amino acids form darkened compounds called melanoidins, during a Maillard reaction. The Maillard reaction occurs slowly at room temperature, taking from a few to several months to show visible darkening, but speeds up dramatically with increasing temperatures. However, the reaction can also be slowed by storing the honey at colder temperatures.
Unlike many other liquids, honey has very poor thermal conductivity of 0.5 W/(m⋅K) at 13% water content (compared to 401 W/(m⋅K) of copper), taking a long time to reach thermal equilibrium. Due to its high kinematic viscosity honey does not transfer heat through momentum diffusion (convection) but rather through thermal diffusion (more like a solid), so melting crystallized honey can easily result in localized caramelization if the heat source is too hot or not evenly distributed. However, honey takes substantially longer to liquefy when just above the melting point than at elevated temperatures. Melting 20 kg of crystallized honey at can take up to 24 hours, while 50 kg may take twice as long. These times can be cut nearly in half by heating at ; however, many of the minor substances in honey can be affected greatly by heating, changing the flavor, aroma, or other properties, so heating is usually done at the lowest temperature and for the shortest time possible.
Acid content and flavor effects
The average pH of honey is 3.9, but can range from 3.4 to 6.1. Honey contains many kinds of acids, both organic and amino. However, the different types and their amounts vary considerably, depending on the type of honey. These acids may be aromatic or aliphatic (nonaromatic). The aliphatic acids contribute greatly to the flavor of honey by interacting with the flavors of other ingredients.
Organic acids comprise most of the acids in honey, accounting for 0.17–1.17% of the mixture, with gluconic acid formed by the actions of glucose oxidase as the most prevalent. Minor amounts of other organic acids are present, consisting of formic, acetic, butyric, citric, lactic, malic, pyroglutamic, propionic, valeric, capronic, palmitic, and succinic, among many others.
Volatile organic compounds
Individual honeys from different plant sources contain over 100 volatile organic compounds (VOCs), which play a primary role in determining honey flavors and aromas. VOCs are carbon-based compounds that readily vaporize into the air, providing aroma, including the scents of flowers, essential oils, or ripening fruit. The typical chemical families of VOCs found in honey include hydrocarbons, aldehydes, alcohols, ketones, esters, acids, benzenes, furans, pyrans, norisoprenoids, and terpenes, among many others and their derivatives. The specific VOCs and their amounts vary considerably between different types of honey obtained by bees foraging on different plant sources. By example, when comparing the mixture of VOCs in different honeys in one review, longan honey had a higher amount of volatiles (48 VOCs), while sunflower honey had the lowest number of volatiles (8 VOCs).
VOCs are primarily introduced into the honey from the nectar, where they are excreted by the flowers imparting individual scents. The specific types and concentrations of certain VOCs can be used to determine the type of flora used to produce monofloral honeys. The specific geography, soil composition and acidity used to grow the flora also have an effect on honey aroma properties, such as a "fruity" or "grassy" aroma from longan honey, or a "waxy" aroma from sunflower honey. Dominant VOCs in one study were linalool oxide, trans-linalool oxide, 2-phenylacetaldehyde, benzyl ethanol, isophorone, and methyl nonanoate.
VOCs can also be introduced from the bodies of the bees, be produced by the enzymatic actions of digestion, or from chemical reactions that occur between different substances within the honey during storage, and therefore may change, increase, or decrease over long periods of time. VOCs may be produced, altered, or greatly affected by temperature and processing. Some VOCs are heat labile, and are destroyed at elevated temperatures, while others can be created during non-enzymatic reactions, such as the Maillard reaction. VOCs are responsible for nearly all of the aroma produced by a honey, which may be described as "sweet", "flowery", "citrus", "almond" or "rancid", among other terms. In addition, VOCs play a large role in determining the specific flavor of the honey, both through the aromas and flavor. VOCs from honeys in different geographic regions can be used as floral markers of those regions, and as markers of the bees that foraged the nectars.
Classification
Honey is classified by its floral source, and divisions are made according to the packaging and processing used. Regional honeys are also identified. In the US, honey is also graded on its color and optical density by USDA standards, graded on the Pfund scale, which ranges from 0 for "water white" honey to more than 114 for "dark amber" honey.
Floral source
Generally, honey is classified by the floral source of the nectar from which it was made. Honeys can be from specific types of flower nectars or can be blended after collection. The pollen in honey is traceable to floral source and therefore region of origin. The rheological and melissopalynological properties of honey can be used to identify the major plant nectar source used in its production.
Blended
Most commercially available honey is a blend of two or more honeys differing in floral source, color, flavor, density, or geographic origin.
Polyfloral
Polyfloral honey, also known as wildflower honey, is derived from the nectar of many types of flowers. The taste may vary from year to year, and the aroma and the flavor can be more or less intense, depending on which flowers are blooming.
Monofloral
Monofloral honey is made primarily from the nectar of one type of flower. Monofloral honeys have distinctive flavors and colors because of differences between their principal nectar sources. To produce monofloral honey, beekeepers keep beehives in an area where the bees have access, as far as possible, to only one type of flower. In practice a small proportion of any monofloral honey will be from other flower types. Typical examples of North American monofloral honeys are clover, orange blossom, sage, tupelo, buckwheat, fireweed, mesquite, sourwood, cherry, and blueberry. Some typical European examples include thyme, thistle, heather, acacia, dandelion, sunflower, lavender, honeysuckle, and varieties from lime and chestnut trees. In North Africa (e.g. Egypt), examples include clover, cotton, and citrus (mainly orange blossoms). The unique flora of Australia yields a number of distinctive honeys, with some of the most popular being yellow box, blue gum, ironbark, bush mallee, Tasmanian leatherwood, and macadamia.
Honeydew honey
Instead of taking nectar, bees can take honeydew, the sweet secretions of aphids or other plant-sap-sucking insects. Honeydew honey is very dark brown, with a rich fragrance of stewed fruit or fig jam, and is not as sweet as nectar honeys. Germany's Black Forest is a well-known source of honeydew-based honeys, as are some regions in Bulgaria, Tara in Serbia, and Northern California in the United States. In Greece pine honey, a type of honeydew honey, constitutes 60–65% of honey production. Honeydew honey is popular in some areas, but in other areas, beekeepers have difficulty selling honeydew honey, due to its stronger flavor.
The production of honeydew honey has some complications and dangers. This honey has a much larger proportion of indigestibles than light floral honeys, thus causing dysentery to the bees, resulting in the death of colonies in areas with cold winters. Good beekeeping management requires the removal of honeydew prior to winter in colder areas. Bees collecting this resource also have to be fed protein supplements, as honeydew lacks the protein-rich pollen accompaniment gathered from flowers.
Honeydew honey is sometimes called "myelate".
Classification by packaging and processing
Generally, honey is bottled in its familiar liquid form, but it is sold in other forms, and can be subjected to a variety of processing methods.
Crystallized honey occurs when some of the glucose content has spontaneously crystallized from solution as the monohydrate. It is also called "granulated honey" or "candied honey". Honey that has crystallized (or is commercially purchased crystallized) can be returned to a liquid state by warming.
Pasteurized honey has been heated in a pasteurization process which requires temperatures of or higher. Pasteurization destroys yeast cells. It also liquefies any microcrystals in the honey, which delays the onset of visible crystallization. However, excessive heat exposure also results in product deterioration, as it increases the level of hydroxymethylfurfural (HMF) and reduces enzyme (e.g. diastase) activity. Heat also darkens the honey, and affects taste and fragrance.
Raw honey is as it exists in the beehive or as obtained by extraction, settling, or straining, without adding heat (although some honey that has been "minimally processed" is often labeled as raw honey). Raw honey contains some pollen and may contain small particles of wax.
Strained honey has been passed through a mesh material to remove particulate material (pieces of wax, propolis, other defects) without removing pollen, minerals, or enzymes.
Filtered honey of any type has been filtered to the extent that all or most of the fine particles, pollen grains, air bubbles, or other materials normally found in suspension, have been removed. The process typically heats honey to to more easily pass through the filter. Filtered honey is very clear and will not crystallize as quickly, making it preferred by supermarkets. The most common method involves the addition of diatomaceous earth to honey that is heated to and passed through filter paper or canvas until a filter cake of diatomaceous earth builds up on the filter.
Ultrasonicated honey has been processed by ultrasonication, a nonthermal processing alternative for honey. When honey is exposed to ultrasonication, most of the yeast cells are destroyed. Those cells that survive sonication generally lose their ability to grow, which reduces the rate of honey fermentation substantially. Ultrasonication also eliminates existing crystals and inhibits further crystallization in honey. Ultrasonically aided liquefaction can work at substantially lower temperatures around and can reduce liquefaction time to less than 30 seconds.
Creamed honey, also called whipped honey, spun honey, churned honey, honey fondant, and, in the UK, set honey, has been processed to control crystallization. Creamed honey contains a large number of small crystals, which prevent the formation of larger crystals that can occur in unprocessed honey. The processing also produces a honey with a smooth, spreadable consistency.
Dried honey has the moisture extracted from liquid honey to create completely solid, nonsticky granules. This process may or may not include the use of drying and anticaking agents. Dried honey is used in baked goods, and to garnish desserts.
Comb honey is still in the honeybees' wax comb. It is traditionally collected using standard wooden frames in honey supers. The frames are collected and the comb is cut out in chunks before packaging. As an alternative to this labor-intensive method, plastic rings or cartridges can be used that do not require manual cutting of the comb, and speed packaging. Comb honey harvested in the traditional manner is also referred to as "cut-comb honey".
Chunk honey is packed in wide-mouthed containers; it consists of one or more pieces of comb honey immersed in extracted liquid honey.
Honey decoctions are made from honey or honey byproducts which have been dissolved in water, then reduced (usually by means of boiling). Other ingredients may then be added. (For example, abbamele has added citrus.) The resulting product may be similar to molasses.
Baker's honey is outside the normal specification for honey, due to a "foreign" taste or odor, or because it has begun to ferment or has been overheated. It is generally used as an ingredient in food processing. Additional requirements exist for labeling baker's honey, including that it may not be sold labeled simply as "honey".
Grading
Countries have differing standards for grading honey.
In the US, honey grading is performed voluntarily based upon USDA standards. USDA offers inspection and grading "as on-line (in-plant) or lot inspection...upon application, on a fee-for-service basis." Honey is graded based upon a number of factors, including water content, flavor and aroma, absence of defects, and clarity. Honey is also classified by color, though it is not a factor in the grading scale.
The honey grade scale is:
India certifies honey grades based on additional factors, such as the Fiehe's test, and other empirical measurements.
Indicators of quality
High-quality honey can be distinguished by fragrance, taste, and consistency. Ripe, freshly collected, high-quality honey at should flow from a knife in a straight stream, without breaking into separate drops. After falling down, the honey should form a bead. The honey, when poured, should form small, temporary layers that disappear fairly quickly, indicating high viscosity. If not, it indicates honey with excessive water content of over 20%, not suitable for long-term preservation.
In jars, fresh honey should appear as a pure, consistent fluid, and should not set in layers. Within a few weeks to a few months of extraction, many varieties of honey crystallize into a cream-colored solid. Some varieties of honey, including tupelo, acacia, and sage, crystallize less regularly. Honey may be heated during bottling at temperatures of to delay or inhibit crystallization. Overheating is indicated by change in enzyme levels, for instance, diastase activity, which can be determined with the Schade or the Phadebas methods. A fluffy film on the surface of the honey (like a white foam), or marble-colored or white-spotted crystallization on a container's sides, is formed by air bubbles trapped during the bottling process.
A 2008 Italian study determined that nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy can be used to distinguish between different honey types, and can be used to pinpoint the area where it was produced. Researchers were able to identify differences in acacia and polyfloral honeys by the differing proportions of fructose and sucrose, as well as differing levels of aromatic amino acids phenylalanine and tyrosine. This ability allows greater ease of selecting compatible stocks.
Nutrition
One hundred grams of honey provides about of energy with no significant amounts of essential nutrients. Composed of 17% water and 82% carbohydrates, honey has low content of fat, dietary fiber, and protein.
Sugar profile
A mixture of sugars and other carbohydrates, honey is mainly fructose (about 38%) and glucose (about 32%), with remaining sugars including maltose, sucrose, and other complex carbohydrates. Its glycemic index ranges from 31 to 78, depending on the variety. The specific composition, color, aroma, and flavor of any batch of honey depend on the flowers foraged by bees that produced the honey.
One 1980 study found that mixed floral honey from several United States regions typically contains the following:
Fructose: 38.2%
Glucose: 31.3%
Maltose: 7.1%
Sucrose: 1.3%
Water: 17.2%
Higher sugars: 1.5%
Ash: 0.2%
Other/undetermined: 3.2%
A 2013 NMR spectroscopy study of 20 different honeys from Germany found that their sugar contents comprised:
Fructose: 28% to 41%
Glucose: 22% to 35%
The average ratio was 56% fructose to 44% glucose, but the ratios in the individual honeys ranged from a high of 64% fructose and 36% glucose (one type of flower honey; table 3 in reference) to a low of 50% fructose and 50% glucose (a different floral source). This NMR method was not able to quantify maltose, galactose, and the other minor sugars as compared to fructose and glucose.
Medical use and research
Wounds and burns
Honey is a folk treatment for burns and other skin injuries. Preliminary evidence suggests that it aids in the healing of partial thickness burns 4–5 days faster than other dressings, and moderate evidence suggests that post-operative infections treated with honey heal faster and with fewer adverse events than with antiseptic and gauze. The evidence for the use of honey in various other wound treatments is of low quality, and firm conclusions cannot be drawn. Evidence does not support the use of honey-based products for the treatment of venous stasis ulcers or ingrown toenail. Several medical-grade honey products have been approved by the FDA for use in treating minor wounds and burns.
Antibiotic
Honey has long been used as a topical antibiotic by practitioners of traditional and herbal medicine. Honey's antibacterial effects were first demonstrated by the Dutch scientist Bernardus Adrianus van Ketel in 1892. Since then, numerous studies have shown that honey has broad-spectrum antibacterial activity against gram-positive and gram-negative bacteria, although potency varies widely between different honeys. Due to the proliferation of antibiotic-resistant bacteria in the last few decades, there has been renewed interest in researching the antibacterial properties of honey. Components of honey under preliminary research for potential antibiotic use include methylglyoxal, hydrogen peroxide, and royalisin (also called defensin-1).
Cough
For chronic and acute coughs, a Cochrane review found no strong evidence for or against the use of honey. For treating children, the systematic review concluded with moderate to low evidence that honey helps more than no treatment, diphenhydramine, and placebo at giving relief from coughing. Honey does not appear to work better than dextromethorphan at relieving coughing in children. Other reviews have also supported the use of honey for treating children.
The UK Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency recommends avoiding giving over-the-counter cough and common cold medication to children under six, and suggests "a homemade remedy containing honey and lemon is likely to be just as useful and safer to take", but warns that honey should not be given to babies because of the risk of infant botulism. The World Health Organization recommends honey as a treatment for coughs and sore throats, including for children, stating that no reason exists to believe it is less effective than a commercial remedy.
Other
The use of honey has been recommended as a temporary intervention for known or suspected button cell battery ingestions to reduce the risk and severity of injury to the esophagus caused by the battery prior to its removal.
There is no evidence that honey is beneficial for treating cancer, although honey may be useful for controlling side effects of radiation therapy or chemotherapy used to treat cancer.
Consumption is sometimes advocated as a treatment for seasonal allergies due to pollen, but scientific evidence to support the claim is inconclusive. Honey is generally considered ineffective for the treatment of allergic conjunctivitis.
Although the majority of calories in honey is from fructose, honey does not cause increased weight gain and fructose by itself is not an independent factor for weight gain.
Health hazards
Honey is generally safe when taken in typical food amounts, but it may have various, potential adverse effects or interactions in combination with excessive consumption, existing disease conditions, or drugs. Included among these are mild reactions to high intake, such as anxiety, insomnia, or hyperactivity in about 10% of children, according to one study. No symptoms of anxiety, insomnia, or hyperactivity were detected with honey consumption compared to placebo, according to another study. Honey consumption may interact adversely with existing allergies, high blood sugar levels (as in diabetes), or anticoagulants used to control bleeding, among other clinical conditions.
People who have a weakened immune system may be at risk of bacterial or fungal infection from eating honey.
Botulism
Infants can develop botulism after consuming honey contaminated with Clostridium botulinum endospores.
Infantile botulism shows geographical variation. In the UK, only six cases were reported between 1976 and 2006, yet the US has much higher rates: 1.9 per 100,000 live births, 47.2% of which are in California. While the risk honey poses to infant health is small, taking the risk is not recommended until after one year of age, and then giving honey is considered safe.
Toxic honey
Mad honey intoxication is a result of eating honey containing grayanotoxins. Honey produced from flowers of rhododendrons, mountain laurels, sheep laurel, and azaleas may cause honey intoxication. Symptoms include dizziness, weakness, excessive perspiration, nausea, and vomiting. Less commonly, low blood pressure, shock, heart rhythm irregularities, and convulsions may occur, with rare cases resulting in death. Honey intoxication is more likely when using "natural" unprocessed honey and honey from farmers who may have a small number of hives. Commercial processing, with pooling of honey from numerous sources, is thought to dilute any toxins.
Toxic honey may also result when bees are proximate to tutu bushes (Coriaria arborea) and the vine hopper insect (Scolypopa australis). Both are found throughout New Zealand. Bees gather honeydew produced by the vine hopper insects feeding on the tutu plant. This introduces the poison tutin into honey. Only a few areas in New Zealand (the Coromandel Peninsula, Eastern Bay of Plenty and the Marlborough Sounds) frequently produce toxic honey. Symptoms of tutin poisoning include vomiting, delirium, giddiness, increased excitability, stupor, coma, and violent convulsions. To reduce the risk of tutin poisoning, humans should not eat honey taken from feral hives in the risk areas of New Zealand. Since December 2001, New Zealand beekeepers have been required to reduce the risk of producing toxic honey by closely monitoring tutu, vine hopper, and foraging conditions within of their apiary. Intoxication is rarely dangerous.
In addition, cooking or adding honey to boiling or hot liquids can release harmful substances to the body. Adding honey to hot drinks destroys many of its enzymes and may cause gastrointestinal problems in the long run.
Folk medicine
In myths and folk medicine, honey was used both orally and topically to treat various ailments including gastric disturbances, ulcers, skin wounds, and skin burns by ancient Greeks and Egyptians, and in Ayurveda and traditional Chinese medicine.
History
Honey collection is an ancient activity. A Mesolithic rock painting in a cave in Valencia, Spain, dating back at least 8,000 years, depicts two honey foragers collecting honey and honeycomb from a wild bees' nest. The figures are depicted carrying baskets or gourds, and using a ladder or series of ropes to reach the nest. Humans followed the greater honeyguide bird to wild beehives; this behavior may have evolved with early hominids. The oldest known honey remains were found in Georgia during the construction of the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline: archaeologists found honey remains on the inner surface of clay vessels unearthed in an ancient tomb, dating back between 4,700 and 5,500 years. In ancient Georgia, several types of honey were buried with a person for their journey into the afterlife, including linden, berry, and meadow-flower varieties.
The first written records of beekeeping are from ancient Egypt, where honey was used to sweeten cakes, biscuits, and other foods and as a base for unguents in Egyptian hieroglyphs. The dead were often buried in or with honey in Egypt, Mesopotamia and other regions. Bees were kept at temples to produce honey for temple offerings, mummification and other uses.
In ancient Greece, honey was produced from the Archaic to the Hellenistic periods. In 594 BC beekeeping around Athens was so widespread that Solon passed a law about it: "He who sets up hives of bees must put them away from those already installed by another". Greek archaeological excavations of pottery located ancient hives. According to Columella, Greek beekeepers of the Hellenistic period did not hesitate to move their hives over rather long distances to maximize production, taking advantage of the different vegetative cycles in different regions. The spiritual and supposed therapeutic use of honey in ancient India was documented in both the Vedas and the Ayurveda texts.
Biblical references include the description of Israel as the "land of milk and honey". The Book of Proverbs says, "Eat honey, my son, for it is good" (Prov. 24:13), but also, "It is not good to eat much honey" (Prov. 25:27). Early Christians used honey as a symbol of spiritual perfection in christening ceremonies. St. John the Baptist was said to have sustained himself on a diet of honey and locusts.
Religious significance
In ancient Greek religion, the food of Zeus and the twelve Gods of Olympus was honey in the form of nectar and ambrosia.
In Hinduism, honey (Madhu) is one of the five elixirs of life (Panchamrita). In temples, honey is poured over the deities in a ritual called Madhu abhisheka. The Vedas and other ancient literature mention the use of honey as a great medicinal and health food.
In Jewish tradition, honey is a symbol for the new year, Rosh Hashanah. At the traditional meal for that holiday, apple slices are dipped in honey and eaten to bring a sweet new year. Some Rosh Hashanah greetings show honey and an apple, symbolizing the feast. In some congregations, small straws of honey are given out to usher in the new year.
The Hebrew Bible contains many references to honey. In the Book of Judges, Samson found a swarm of bees and honey in the carcass of a lion (14:8). Biblical law covered offerings made in the temple to God. The Book of Leviticus says that "Every grain offering you bring to the Lord must be made without yeast, for you are not to burn any yeast or honey in a food offering presented to the Lord" (2:11). In the Books of Samuel, Jonathan is forced into a confrontation with his father King Saul after eating honey in violation of a rash oath Saul has made. Proverbs 16:24 in the JPS Tanakh 1917 version says "Pleasant words are as a honeycomb, Sweet to the soul, and health to the bones." Book of Exodus famously describes the Promised Land as a "land flowing with milk and honey" (33:3). However, most Biblical commentators write that the original Hebrew in the Bible (דבש devash) refers to the sweet syrup produced from the juice of dates (silan). In 2005 an apiary dating from the 10th century BC was found in Tel Rehov, Israel that contained 100 hives, estimated to produce half a ton of honey annually. Pure honey is considered kosher (permitted to be eaten by religious Jews), though it is produced by a flying insect, a non-kosher creature; eating other products of non-kosher animals is forbidden. It belongs among the parve (neutral) foods, containing neither meat nor dairy products and allowed to be eaten together with either.
In Buddhism, honey plays an important role in the festival of Madhu Purnima, celebrated in India and Bangladesh. The day commemorates Buddha's making peace among his disciples by retreating into the wilderness. According to legend, while he was there a monkey brought him honey to eat. On Madhu Purnima, Buddhists remember this act by giving honey to monks. The monkey's gift is frequently depicted in Buddhist art.
The Christian New Testament says that John the Baptist lived for a long of time in the wilderness on a diet of locusts and honey.
In Islam, an entire chapter (Surah) in the Qur'an is called an-Nahl (the Bees). According to his teachings (hadith), Muhammad strongly recommended honey for healing purposes.The Qur'an promotes honey as a nutritious and healthy food, saying:
See also
Bee pollen
Honey hunting
List of spreads
More than Honeya 2012 Swiss documentary film on the current state of honey bees and beekeeping
National Honey Show
Royal jelly
References
Bibliography
External links
Beekeeping and Sustainable Livelihoods (2004), Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations
Beekeeping
Demulcents
Non-timber forest products
Sugar substitutes
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14365 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hengist%20and%20Horsa | Hengist and Horsa | Hengist and Horsa are Germanic brothers said to have led the Angles, Saxons and Jutes in their invasion of Britain in the 5th century. Tradition lists Hengist as the first of the Jutish kings of Kent.
Most modern scholarly consensus now regards Hengist and Horsa to be mythical figures, and much scholarship has emphasised the likelihood of this based on their alliterative animal names, the seemingly constructed nature of their geneaology, and the unknowable quality of the earliest sources of information for their reports in the works of Bede. Their later detailed representation in texts such as the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle can tell us more about ninth-century attitudes to the past than anything about the time in which they are said to have existed.
According to early sources, Hengist and Horsa arrived in Britain at Ebbsfleet on the Isle of Thanet. For a time, they served as mercenaries for Vortigern, King of the Britons, but later they turned against him (British accounts have them betraying him in the Treachery of the Long Knives). Horsa was killed fighting the Britons, but Hengist successfully conquered Kent, becoming the forefather of its kings.
A figure named Hengest, possibly identifiable with the leader of British legend, appears in the Finnesburg Fragment and in Beowulf.
Hengist was historically said to have been buried at Hengistbury Head in Dorset.
Etymology
The Old English names Hengest and Horsa mean "stallion" and "horse", respectively.
The original Old English word for a horse was eoh. Eoh derives from the Proto-Indo-European base *ekwo, hence Latin equus which gave rise to the modern English words equine and equestrian. Hors is derived from the Proto-Indo-European base *kurs, to run, which also gave rise to hurry, carry and current (the latter two are borrowings from French). Hors eventually replaced eoh, fitting a pattern elsewhere in Germanic languages where the original names of sacred animals are abandoned for adjectives; for example, the word bear, meaning 'the brown one'. While the Ecclesiastical History and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle refer to the brother as Horsa, in the History of the Britons his name is simply Hors. It has been suggested that Horsa may be a pet form of a compound name with the first element "horse".
Attestations
Ecclesiastical History of the English People
In his 8th-century Ecclesiastical History, Bede records that the first chieftains among the Angles, Saxons and Jutes in England were said to have been Hengist and Horsa. He relates that Horsa was killed in battle against the Britons and was thereafter buried in East Kent, where at the time of writing a monument still stood to him. According to Bede, Hengist and Horsa were the sons of Wictgils, son of Witta, son of Wecta, son of Woden.
Anglo-Saxon Chronicle
The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, which exists in nine manuscripts and fragments, compiled from the 9th to the 12th centuries, records that in the year 449 Hengist and Horsa were invited to Britain by Vortigern to assist his forces in fighting the Picts. They landed at Eopwinesfleot (Ebbsfleet), and went on to defeat the Picts wherever they fought them. Hengist and Horsa sent word home to Germany describing "the worthlessness of the Britons, and the richness of the land" and asked for assistance. Their request was granted and support arrived. Afterward, more people arrived in Britain from "the three powers of Germany; the Old Saxons, the Angles, and the Jutes". The Saxons populated Essex, Sussex, and Wessex; the Jutes Kent, the Isle of Wight, and part of Hampshire; and the Angles East Anglia, Mercia, and Northumbria (leaving their original homeland, Angeln, deserted). The Worcester Chronicle (Chronicle D, compiled in the 11th century), and the Peterborough Chronicle (Chronicle E, compiled in the 12th century), include the detail that these forces were led by the brothers Hengist and Horsa, sons of Wihtgils, son of Witta, son of Wecta, son of Woden, but this information is not included in the A, B, C, or F versions.
In the entry for the year 455 the Chronicle details that Hengist and Horsa fought with Vortigern at Aylesford and that Horsa died there. Hengist took control of the kingdom with his son Esc. In 457, Hengist and Esc fought against British forces in Crayford "and there slew four thousand men". The Britons left the land of Kent and fled to London. In 465, Hengest and Esc fought again at the Battle of Wippedesfleot, probably near Ebbsfleet, and slew twelve British leaders. In the year 473, the final entry in the Chronicle mentioning Hengist or Horsa, Hengist and Esc are recorded as having taken "immense booty" and the Britons having "fled from the English like fire".
History of the Britons
The 9th century History of the Britons, attributed to the Briton Nennius, records that, during the reign of Vortigern in Britain, three vessels that had been exiled from Germany arrived in Britain, commanded by Hengist and Horsa. The narrative then gives a genealogy of the two: Hengist and Horsa were sons of Guictglis, son of Guicta, son of Guechta, son of Vouden, son of Frealof, son of Fredulf, son of Finn, son of Foleguald, son of Geta. Geta was said to be the son of a god, yet "not of the omnipotent God and our Lord Jesus Christ," but rather "the offspring of one of their idols, and whom, blinded by some demon, they worshipped according to the custom of the heathen." In 447 AD, Vortigern received Hengist and Horsa "as friends" and gave to the brothers the Isle of Thanet.
After the Saxons had lived on Thanet for "some time" Vortigern promised them supplies of clothing and other provisions on condition that they assist him in fighting the enemies of his country. As the Saxons increased in number the Britons became unable to keep their agreement, and so told them their assistance was no longer needed and they should go home.
Vortigern allowed Hengist to send for more of his countrymen to come over to fight for him. Messengers were sent to "Scythia", where "a number" of warriors were selected, and, with sixteen ships, the messengers returned. With the men came Hengist's beautiful daughter. Hengist prepared a feast, inviting Vortigern, Vortigern's officers, and Ceretic, his translator. Prior to the feast, Hengist enjoined his daughter to serve the guests plenty of wine and ale so that they would become drunk. At the feast Vortigern became enamored with her and promised Hengist whatever he liked in exchange for her betrothal. Hengist, having "consulted with the Elders who attended him of the Angle race," demanded Kent. Without the knowledge of the then-ruler of Kent, Vortigern agreed.
Hengist's daughter was given to Vortigern, who slept with her and deeply loved her. Hengist told him that he would now be both his father and adviser and that he would know no defeat with his counsel, "for the people of my country are strong, warlike, and robust." With Vortigern's approval, Hengist would send for his son and his brother to fight against the Scots and those who dwelt near the wall. Vortigern agreed and Ochta and Ebissa arrived with 40 ships, sailed around the land of the Picts, conquered "many regions," and assaulted the Orkney Islands. Hengist continued to send for more ships from his country, so that some islands where his people had previously dwelt are now free of inhabitants.
Vortigern had meanwhile incurred the wrath of Germanus, Bishop of Auxerre (by taking his own daughter for a wife and having a son by her) and had gone into hiding at the advice of his counsel. But at length his son Vortimer engaged Hengist and Horsa and their men in battle, drove them back to Thanet and there enclosed them and beset them on the western flank. The war waxed and waned; the Saxons repeatedly gained ground and were repeatedly driven back. Vortimer attacked the Saxons four times: first enclosing the Saxons in Thanet, secondly fighting at the river Derwent, the third time at Epsford, where both Horsa and Vortigern's son Catigern died, and lastly "near the stone on the shore of the Gallic sea," where the Saxons were defeated and fled to their ships.
After a "short interval" Vortimer died and the Saxons became established, "assisted by foreign pagans". Hengist convened his forces and sent to Vortigern an offer of peace. Vortigern accepted, and Hengist prepared a feast to bring together the British and Saxon leaders. However, he instructed his men to conceal knives beneath their feet. At the right moment, Hengist shouted nima der sexa (get your knives) and his men massacred the unsuspecting Britons. However, they spared Vortigern, who ransomed himself by giving the Saxons Essex, Sussex, Middlesex and other unnamed districts.
Germanus of Auxerre was acclaimed as commander of the British forces. By praying, singing hallelujah and crying to God, the Saxons were driven to the sea. Germanus then prayed for three days and nights at Vortigern's castle and fire fell from heaven and engulfed the castle. Vortigern, Hengist's daughter, Vortigern's other wives, and all other inhabitants burned to death. Potential alternate fates for Vortigern are provided. However, the Saxons continued to increase in numbers, and after Hengist died his son Ochta succeeded him.
History of the Kings of Britain
In his pseudo-historical twelfth century work The History of the Kings of Britain, Geoffrey of Monmouth adapted and greatly expanded the account in the History of the Britons. Hengist and Horsa appear in books 6 and 8:
Book 6
Geoffrey records that three brigantines or long galleys arrived in Kent, full of armed men and commanded by two brothers, Hengist and Horsa. Vortigern was then staying at Dorobernia (Canterbury), and ordered that the "tall strangers" be received peacefully and brought to him. When Vortigern saw the company, he immediately observed that the brothers "excelled all the rest both in nobility and in gracefulness of person." He asked what country they had come from and why they had come to his kingdom. Hengist ("whose years and wisdom entitled him to precedence") replied that they had left their homeland of Saxony to offer their services to Vortigern or some other prince, as part of a Saxon custom in which, when the country became overpopulated, able young men were chosen by lot to seek their fortunes in other lands. Hengist and Horsa were made generals over the exiles, as befitted their noble birth.
Vortigern was aggrieved when he learned that the strangers were pagans, but nonetheless rejoiced at their arrival, since he was surrounded by enemies. He asked Hengist and Horsa if they would help him in his wars, offering them land and "other possessions." They accepted the offer, settled on an agreement, and stayed with Vortigern at his court. Soon after, the Picts came from Alba with an immense army and attacked the northern parts of Vortigern's kingdom. In the ensuing battle "there was little occasion for the Britons to exert themselves, for the Saxons fought so bravely, that the enemy, formerly victorious, were speedily put to flight."
In gratitude Vortigern increased the rewards he had promised to the brothers. Hengist was given "large possessions of lands in Lindsey for the subsistence of himself and his fellow-soldiers." A "man of experience and subtilty," Hengist told Vortigern that his enemies assailed him from every quarter, and that his subjects wished to depose him and make Aurelius Ambrosius king. He asked the king to allow him to send word to Saxony for more soldiers. Vortigern agreed, adding that Hengist could invite over whom he pleased and that "you shall have no refusal from me in whatever you shall desire."
Hengist bowed low in thanks, and made a further request, that he be made a consul or prince, as befitted his birth. Vortigern responded that it was not in his power to do this, reasoning that Hengist was a foreign pagan and would not be accepted by the British lords. Hengist asked instead for leave to build a fortress on a piece of land small enough that it could be encircled by a leather thong. Vortigern granted this and ordered Hengist to invite more Saxons.
After executing Vortigern's orders, Hengist took a bull's hide and made it into a single thong, which he used to encircle a carefully chosen rocky place (perhaps at Caistor in Lindsey). Here he built the castle of Kaercorrei, or in Saxon Thancastre: "thong castle."
The messengers returned from Germany with eighteen ships full of the best soldiers they could get, as well as Hengist's beautiful daughter Rowena. Hengist invited Vortigern to see his new castle and the newly arrived soldiers. A banquet was held in Thancastre, at which Vortigern drunkenly asked Hengist to let him marry Rowena. Horsa and the men all agreed that Hengist should allow the marriage, on the condition that Vortigern give him Kent.
Vortigern and Rowena were immediately married and Hengist was given Kent. The king was delighted with his new wife, but he incurred the hatred of his nobles and of his three sons.
As his new father-in-law, Hengist made further demands of Vortigern:
As I am your father, I claim the right of being your counsellor: do not therefore slight my advice, since it is to my countrymen you must owe the conquest of all your enemies. Let us invite over my son Octa, and his brother Ebissa, who are brave soldiers, and give them the countries that are in the northern parts of Britain, by the wall, between Deira and Alba. For they will hinder the inroads of the barbarians, and so you shall enjoy peace on the other side of the Humber.
Vortigern agreed. Upon receiving the invitation, Octa, Ebissa, and another lord, Cherdich, immediately left for Britain with three hundred ships. Vortigern received them kindly, and gave them ample gifts. With their assistance, Vortigern defeated his enemies in every engagement. All the while Hengist continued inviting over yet more ships, adding to his numbers daily. Witnessing this, the Britons tried to get Vortigern to banish the Saxons, but on account of his wife he would not. Consequently, his subjects turned against him and took his son Vortimer for their king. The Saxons and the Britons, led by Vortimer, met in four battles. In the second, Horsa and Vortimer's brother, Catigern, slew one another. By the fourth battle, the Saxons had fled to Thanet, where Vortimer besieged them. When the Saxons could no longer bear the British onslaughts, they sent out Vortigern to ask his son to allow them safe passage back to Germany. While discussions were taking place, the Saxons boarded their ships and left, leaving their wives and children behind.
The victorious Vortimer was poisoned by Rowena, and Vortigern returned to the throne. At his wife's request he invited Hengist back to Britain, but instructed him to bring only a small retinue. Hengist, knowing Vortimer to be dead, instead raised an army of 300,000 men. When Vortigern caught word of the imminent arrival of the vast Saxon fleet, he resolved to fight them. Rowena alerted her father of this, who, after considering various strategies, resolved to make a show of peace and sent ambassadors to Vortigern.
The ambassadors informed Vortigern that Hengist had only brought so many men because he did not know of Vortimer's death and feared further attacks from him. Now that there was no threat, Vortigern could choose from among the men the ones he wished to return to Germany. Vortigern was greatly pleased by these tidings, and arranged to meet Hengist on the first of May at the monastery of Ambrius.
Before the meeting, Hengist ordered his soldiers to carry long daggers beneath their clothing. At the signal Nemet oure Saxas (get your knives), the Saxons fell upon the unsuspecting Britons and massacred them, while Hengist held Vortigern by his cloak. 460 British barons and consuls were killed, as well as some Saxons whom the Britons beat to death with clubs and stones. Vortigern was held captive and threatened with death until he resigned control of Britain's chief cities to Hengist. Once free, he fled to Cambria.
Book 8
In Cambria, Merlin prophesied to Vortigern that the brothers Aurelius Ambrosius and Uther Pendragon, who had fled to Armorica as children after Vortigern killed their brother and father, would return to have their revenge and defeat the Saxons. They arrived the next day, and, after rallying the dispersed Britons, Aurelius was proclaimed king. Aurelius marched into Cambria and burned Vortigern alive in his tower, before setting his sights upon the Saxons.
Hengist was struck by terror at the news of Vortigern's death and fled with his army beyond the Humber. He took courage at the approach of Aurelius and selected the bravest among his men to defend. Hengist told these chosen men not to be afraid of Aurelius, for he had brought less than 10,000 Armorican Britons (the native Britons were hardly worth taking into account), while there were 200,000 Saxons. Hengist and his men advanced towards Aurelius in a field called Maisbeli (probably Ballifield, near Sheffield), intending to take the Britons by surprise, but Aurelius anticipated them.
As they marched to meet the Saxons, Eldol, Duke of Gloucester, told Aurelius that he greatly wished to meet Hengist in combat, noting that "one of the two of us should die before we parted." He explained that he had been at the Treachery of the Long Knives, but had escaped when God threw him a stake to defend himself with, making him the only Briton present to survive. Meanwhile, Hengist was placing his troops into formation, giving directions, and walking through the lines of troops, "the more to spirit them up."
With the armies in formation, battle began between the Britons and Saxons, both sides shedding "no small loss of blood." Eldol focused on attempting to find Hengist, but had no opportunity to fight him. "By the especial favour of God," the Britons took the upper hand, and the Saxons withdrew and made for Kaerconan (Conisbrough). Aurelius pursued them, killing or enslaving any Saxon he met on the way. Realizing Kaerconan would not hold against Aurelius, Hengist stopped outside the town and ordered his men to make a stand, "for he knew that his whole security now lay in his sword."
Aurelius reached Hengist, and a "most furious" fight ensued, with the Saxons maintaining their ground despite heavy losses. They came close to winning before a detachment of horses from the Armorican Britons arrived. When Gorlois, Duke of Cornwall, arrived, Eldol knew the day was won and grabbed Hengist's helmet, dragging him into the British ranks. The Saxons fled. Hengist's son Octa retreated to York and his kinsman Eosa to Alclud (Dumbarton).
Three days after the battle, Aurelius called together a council of principal officers to decide what would be done with Hengist. Eldol's brother Eldad, Bishop of Gloucester, said:
Though all should be unanimous for setting him at liberty, yet would I cut him to pieces. The prophet Samuel is my warrant, who, when he had Agag, king of Amalek, in his power, hewed him in pieces, saying, As thy sword hath made women childless, so shall thy mother be childless among women. Do therefore the same to Hengist, who is a second Agag.
Consequently, Eldol drew Hengist out of the city and cut off his head. Aurelius, "who showed moderation in all his conduct," arranged for him to be buried and for a mound to be raised over his corpse, according to the custom of pagans. Octa and Eosa surrendered to Aurelius, who granted them the country bordering Scotland and made a firm covenant with them.
Prose Edda
Hengist is briefly mentioned in Prologue, the first book of the Prose Edda, written by the Icelander Snorri Sturluson in the 13th century. In Prologue, a euhemerized account of Germanic history is given, including that Woden put three of his sons in charge of Saxony. The ruler of eastern Saxony was Veggdegg, one of whose sons was Vitrgils, the father of Vitta, the father of Hengist.
Horse-head gables
On farmhouses in Lower Saxony and Schleswig-Holstein, horse-head gables were referred to as "Hengst und Hors" (Low German for "stallion and mare") as late as around 1875. Rudolf Simek notes that these horse-head gables can still be seen today, and says that the horse-head gables confirm that Hengist and Horsa were originally considered mythological, horse-shaped beings. Martin Litchfield West comments that the horse heads may have been remnants of pagan religious practices in the area.
Theories
Finnesburg Fragment and Beowulf
A Hengest appears in line 34 of the Finnesburg Fragment, which describes the legendary Battle of Finnsburg. In Beowulf, a scop recites a composition summarizing the Finnsburg events, including information not provided in the fragment. Hengest is mentioned in lines 1082 and 1091.
Some scholars have proposed that the figure mentioned in both of these references is one and the same as the Hengist of the Hengist and Horsa accounts, though Horsa is not mentioned in either source. In his work Finn and Hengest, J. R. R. Tolkien argued that Hengist was a historical figure, and that Hengist came to Britain after the events recorded in the Finnesburg Fragment and Beowulf. Patrick Sims-Williams is more sceptical of the account, suggesting that Bede's Canterbury source, which he relied on for his account of Hengist and Horsa in the Ecclesiastical History, had confused two separate traditions.
Germanic twin brothers and divine Indo-European horse twins
Several sources attest that the Germanic peoples venerated a divine pair of twin brothers. The earliest reference to this practice derives from Timaeus (c. 345 – c. 250 BC). Timaeus records that the Celts of the North Sea were especially devoted to what he describes as Castor and Pollux. In his work Germania, Tacitus records the veneration of the Alcis, whom he identifies with Castor and Pollux. Germanic legends mention various brothers as founding figures. The 1st- or 2nd-century historian Cassius Dio cites the brothers Raos and Raptos as the leaders of the Astings. According to Paul the Deacon's 8th-century History of the Lombards, the Lombards migrated southward from Scandinavia led by Ibur and Aio, while Saxo Grammaticus records in his 12th-century Deeds of the Danes that this migration was prompted by Aggi and Ebbi. In related Indo-European cultures, similar traditions are attested, such as the Dioscuri. Scholars have theorized that these divine twins in Indo-European cultures stem from divine twins in prehistoric Proto-Indo-European culture.
J. P. Mallory comments on the great importance of the horse in Indo-European religion, as exemplified "most obviously" by various mythical brothers appearing in Indo-European legend, including Hengist and Horsa:
Some would maintain that the premier animal of the Indo-European sacrifice and ritual was probably the horse. We have already seen how its embedment in Proto-Indo-European society lies not just in its lexical reconstruction but also in the proliferation of personal names which contain "horse" as an element among the various Indo-European peoples. Furthermore, we witness the importance of the horse in Indo-European rituals and mythology. One of the most obvious examples is the recurrent depiction of twins such as the Indic Asvins "horsemen," the Greek horsemen Castor and Pollux, the legendary Anglo-Saxon settlers Horsa and Hengist [...] or the Irish twins of Macha, born after she had completed a horse race. All of these attest the existence of Indo-European divine twins associated with or represented by horses.
Uffington White Horse
In his 17th-century work Monumenta Britannica, John Aubrey ascribes the Uffington White Horse hill figure to Hengist and Horsa, stating that "the White Horse was their Standard at the Conquest of Britain". However, elsewhere he ascribes the origins of the horse to the pre-Roman Britons, reasoning that the horse resembles certain Iron Age British coins. As a result, advocates of a Saxon origin of the figure debated with those favouring an ancient British origin for three centuries after Aubrey's findings. In 1995, using optically stimulated luminescence dating, David Miles and Simon Palmer of the Oxford Archaeology Unit assigned the Uffington White Horse to the late Bronze Age.
Aschanes
The Brothers Grimm identified Hengist with Aschanes, mythical first King of the Saxons, in their notes for legend number 413 of their German Legends. Editor and translator Donald Ward, in his commentary on the tale, regards the identification as untenable on linguistic grounds.
Modern influence
Hengist and Horsa have appeared in a variety of media in the modern period. Written between 1616 and 1620, Thomas Middleton's play Hengist, King of Kent features portrayals of both Hengist and Horsa (as Hersus). On 6 July 1776, the first committee for the production of the Great Seal of the United States convened. One of three members of the committee, Thomas Jefferson, proposed that one side of the seal feature Hengist and Horsa, "the Saxon chiefs from whom we claim the honor of being descended, and whose political principles and form of government we assumed".
"Hengist and Horsus" appear as antagonists in the play Vortigern and Rowena, which was touted as a newly discovered work by William Shakespeare in 1796, but was soon revealed as a hoax by William Henry Ireland. The pair have plaques in the Walhalla Temple at Regensburg, Bavaria, which honours distinguished figures of German history.
During World War II, two British military gliders took their names from the brothers: the Slingsby Hengist and the Airspeed Horsa. The 20th-century American poet Robinson Jeffers composed a poem titled Ode to Hengist and Horsa.
In 1949, Prince Georg of Denmark came to Pegwell Bay in Kent to dedicate the longship Hugin, commemorating the landing of Hengest and Horsa at nearby Ebbsfleet 1500 years earlier in 449 AD.
Though Hengist and Horsa are not referenced in the medieval tales of King Arthur, some modern Arthurian tales do link them. For example, in Mary Stewart's Merlin Trilogy, Hengist and Horsa are executed by Ambrosius; Hengist is given full Saxon funeral honours, cremated with his weapons on a pyre. In Alfred Duggan's Conscience of the King, Hengist plays a major role in the early career of Cerdic Elesing, legendary founder of the kingdom of Wessex.
Part of the A299 road on the Isle of Thanet is named Hengist Way.
Retinue of Hengist and Band of Horsa also make an appearance as for hire mercenaries in the popular game Crusader Kings III by game developer Paradox Development Studio.
See also
Alcis (gods), Germanic horse brother deities venerated by the Naharvali, a Germanic people described by Tacitus in 1 AD
Saxon Steed, a heraldic motif
Notes
References
Lyon, Bryce. "From Hengist and Horsa to Edward of Caernarvon: Recent writing on English history" in Elizabeth Chapin Furber, ed. Changing views on British history: essays on historical writing since 1939 (Harvard University Press, 1966), pp 1–57; historiography
Lyon, Bryce. " Change or Continuity: Writing since 1965 on English History before Edward of Caernarvon," in Richard Schlatter, ed., Recent Views on British History: Essays on Historical Writing since 1966 (Rutgers UP, 1984), pp 1–34, historiography
External links
5th-century births
5th-century deaths
5th-century English monarchs
5th century in England
Anglo-Saxon warriors
British traditional history
Characters in works by Geoffrey of Monmouth
English heroic legends
Founding monarchs
Jutish people
Kent folklore
Kentish monarchs
Legendary English people
Origin myths
People whose existence is disputed
Sibling duos
Legendary progenitors | [
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14368 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hero%20System | Hero System | The Hero System is a generic role-playing game system that was developed from the superhero RPG Champions. After Champions fourth edition was released in 1989, a stripped-down version of its ruleset with no superhero or other genre elements was released as The Hero System Rulesbook in 1990. As a spinoff of Champions, the Hero System is considered to have started with 4th edition (as it is mechanically identical to Champions 4th edition), rather than on its own with a 1st edition. However, the first three editions of the game are typically referred to as Champions, rather than the Hero System, as the game for its first three editions was not sold as a universal toolkit, instead largely focusing on superheroes.
The Hero System is used as the underlying mechanics of other Hero Games role-playing games such as Fantasy Hero, Star Hero, and Pulp Hero. It is characterized by point-based character creation and the rigor with which it measures character abilities. It uses only six-sided dice.
System features
The Hero System uses Champions' key system features. Tasks are resolved using three six-sided dice and power effects (especially damage) are resolved by rolling a number of dice based on the power's strength.
Like Champions, it uses a tool-kit approach to creating effects. While the system does have more typical features of many RPGs, such as a skill system, most abilities in the Hero System rules are listed as generic "powers". Most powers are meant to be able to model a vast number of potential effects. When creating a character, a player decides on what effect they wish to create, then constructs this effect by consulting the powers in the rulebook. Most powers have a set of modifiers that alter their base performance to more finely-tune their representation of the effect desired. Each such modifier makes the power more or less capable, and correspondingly more or less expensive to purchase with character points (the "currency" used to buy powers; see the section following). The result is that many effects are possible from exactly the same base power. For example, while systems such as Dungeons & Dragons would list a wide variety of separate ranged attack powers that deal damage (such as a fireball, a lightning bolt, an acid spray, a magic missile, and dozens more), the vast majority of such effects in the Hero System would be constructed out of the same base two powers, "Blast" or "Killing Attack".
The Hero System rules only define an ability's very basic mechanical effects—the player is the one who defines what the ability looks like when used. For example, if a player wishes to model the ability to project a jet of fire, they could choose the "Blast" power. However, the power's text has no mention of what it looks like or how it operates beyond some very base notes concerning damage and range. To make it a jet of fire, the player simply states that this Blast is a jet of fire. To some degree this is simply cosmetic. However, in the game, that power now is treated as a fire attack, with all that implies as decided by the gamemaster in each situation: it has the possibility of starting secondary fires; it looks, smells and sounds like a jet of fire; will not work in water; will terrify people with a phobia of fire; etc. The system does have mechanical effect alterations as well: a Blast could be altered by any number of power modifiers such as "Explosion", "Area of Effect", "Megascale", etc.: both advantages and disadvantages are available. As players are typically attempting to model something with at least a partial real-life analogue, limitations on a power are as much about making it more accurate a representation as they are making it less expensive to purchase (for example, to model a firearm, the limitation that it requires ammunition is expected, regardless of the fact that this happens to make a firearm cost fewer character points). The system also allows players to construct very exacting modifiers not specifically detailed in the base rules. For example, a player could define one or more powers as not working when the moon is full, or when it is Tuesday, or any other limitation that the player can imagine and the gamemaster feels is applicable.
Also like Champions, the Hero System uses a point-based system for character creation. Instead of templates which define what a character is, how it performs mechanically, and the new abilities gained after a certain amount of play, a player is given a fixed number of points and allowed to create what they want. As this is a much more freeform process than in most games, the system encourages close involvement between players and gamemasters to ensure that all participants have the same understanding regarding the type of effects permitted, relative power levels, and the like.
Character creation
Each player creates his character starting with a pool of points to buy abilities (such as "Energy Blast" and "Armor"), increase characteristics (such as "Strength" and "Intelligence") and buy skills (such as "Computer Programming" and "Combat Driving"). This pool can be increased by taking disadvantages for your character (such as being hunted by an enemy, a dependency of some sort or having people who depend on your character in some way). The initial pool, as well as the final pool size, is determined by the Game Master (GM), as well as the point limits on each individual ability.
Unlike the d20 System and many other game systems, experience awards are in the form of character points, which have the same value as those used in character creation and can be applied directly to the character's abilities upon receipt.
Powers
The powers system are the variables players can manipulate in the characters of Hero System. The powers in the Hero System are categorized roughly as follows:
Adjustment Powers — Modify the Characteristics of self or another.
Attack Powers — Inflict physical damage or some other negative effect on an opponent.
Body-Affecting Powers — Change shape, size, density, etc.
Defense Powers — Protect against an attack or mishap.
Mental Powers — Detect and/or affect the mind of another.
Movement Powers — Employ various forms of movement.
Sense-Affecting Powers — Alter or hinder a character's senses.
Sensory Powers — Improve or expand upon the sensory abilities.
Size Powers — Growth and Shrinking.
Special Powers — Powers with some unusual quality, including ones that do not fall into the other categories.
Standard Powers — A "catch-all" for Powers that are not Adjustment, Mental, Movement, Size, or Special Powers.
Within each of these categories are multiple Powers that have more specialized effects. Thus for the movement category there are powers that can be used for Running, Swimming, Climbing, Leaping, Gliding, Flying, Tunneling through solid surfaces, and even Teleportation. For certain game genres there are even powers for traveling to other dimensions or moving faster than light.
Also, many Powers appear in at least two categories. For example, most Attack Powers are also Standard Powers, and Size Powers are basically just a subcategory of Body-Affecting Powers. Darkness is in three categories — Standard, Attack, and Sense-Affecting.
Point Cost
Each power has a base point cost for a given effect. This could be, for example, a certain number of points per six-sided-die (or "d6") of damage inflicted upon a foe.
Powers can have both advantages and limitations. Both are modifiers applied at different stages in calculating cost. These modifiers are typically changes of ±, but can range up to ±2 or even higher.
After the base cost is calculated, advantages are applied. These, which can make a power more useful, typically expand its effectiveness or make it more powerful, and thus make it more expensive. Once advantages are applied, the base cost becomes the Active Cost.
The Active Cost is calculated as an intermediate step as it is required to calculate certain figures, such as range, END usage, difficulty of activation rolls, and other things.
The formula for calculating the Active Cost is:
Active Cost = Base Cost × (1 + Advantages)
Once Active Cost is calculated, limitations are applied. These represent shortcomings in the power, lessened reliability or situations in which the power can not be used. Limitations are added separately as positive numbers, even though they are listed as negative.
The Real Cost of the power is then determined by:
Real Cost = Active Cost / (1 + Limitations)
The Real Cost is the amount the character must actually pay for the Power.
Power Frameworks
The rules also include schemes for providing a larger number of powers to a character for a given cost. These power frameworks reduce the cost either by requiring the group of powers to have a common theme as in an Elemental Control Framework, or by limiting the number of powers that can be active at one time with a Multipower Framework. Powers within a framework can share common limitations, further reducing the cost. A third type of power framework, the Variable Power Pool (VPP), trades thrift for flexibility. With it, powers can be arbitrarily chosen on the fly, granting enhanced in-game flexibility. The price is a premium on points, called the Control Cost. Additionally, it is marked as potentially unbalancing, so not all GMs will permit VPP's.
Elemental Controls were eliminated in the Sixth Edition.
Publishing history
Although several games based on what would become known as the Hero System were published in the 1980s, including Champions, Danger International, Justice, Inc., Robot Warriors and the original versions of Fantasy Hero and Star Hero, each of the RPGs was self-contained, much as Chaosium's Basic Role-Playing games are. The Hero System itself was not released as an independent entity until 1990, as Steve Jackson Games' GURPS (Generic Universal Roleplaying System) became more popular. As a joint venture between Hero Games and Iron Crown Enterprises, a stand-alone Hero System Rulebook was published alongside the fourth edition of Champions. The content was identical to the opening sections of the Champions rules, but all genre-related material was removed. Afterward, genre books such as Ninja Hero (written by Aaron Allston) and Fantasy Hero were published as sourcebooks for the Hero System Rulebook as opposed to being independent games.
With the collapse of the Hero-ICE alliance, the Hero System went into limbo for several years. The Champions franchise released a new version under the Fuzion system, which had been a joint development with R. Talsorian Games, called Champions: the New Millennium. Although two editions were published, it was very poorly received by Champions fans. In 2001, a reconstituted Hero Games was formed under the leadership of Steven S. Long, who had written several books for the earlier version of the system. It regained the rights to the Hero System and to the Champions trademark.
In 2001, the Fifth Edition of the Hero System Rulebook was released, incorporating heavy revisions by Long. A large black hardcover, it was critically well received and attained a degree of commercial success. (Following problems with fragile bindings on Fourth Edition rulebooks, the planned binding for the larger Fifth Edition was tested using a clothes dryer.) The Fifth Edition is often referred to as "FREd", which is a backronym for "Fifth Rules Edition". The name actually comes from Steve S. Long's reply when asked what the standard abbreviation for the Fifth Edition would be: "I don't care if you call it 'Fred', as long as you buy it." This was made the unofficial nickname by several replies on the same board affirming it after a reply from Willpower, who coined the backronym by saying, "OK. FREd it is, "Fifth Rules Edition"!"
A revised version () was issued in 2004, along with Hero System Sidekick, a condensed version of the rulebook with a cover price of under $10. Fans often call the revised Fifth Edition "Fiver," ReFREd," or "5ER" (from "Fifth Edition revised"; "Fiver" also alludes to Watership Down). This rulebook is so big (592 pages) that some fans speculated that it might be bulletproof, and it did indeed stop some bullets when tested by Hero Games staffers.
On February 28, 2008, Cryptic Studios purchased the Champions intellectual property, and sold the rights back to Hero Games to publish the 6th edition books. One of the new features will be to allow players to adapt their Champions Online characters to the pen-and-paper game.
In late 2009, Hero Games released the 6th Edition of the Hero System. The game has so far had a mostly positive reception, with little in the way of 'Edition Wars'. The largest rules change was the removal of Figured Characteristics (meaning that character stats that were previously linked intrinsically—such as Speed automatically increasing when sufficient amounts of Dexterity were purchased—were no longer connected, and instead bought entirely separately). Other, more minor rules changes include folding Armor and Force field into Resistant Defense and reestablishing Regeneration as a separate power. The rules were released in two volumes, with the first covering character creation in depth and the second describing campaigns and the running of games. The new genre book for Champions came out shortly thereafter, and a new Fantasy Hero was released in the summer of 2010. A new version of Sidekick was released in late 2009 under the title The Hero System Basic Rulebook, while an Advanced Player Guide was published that had additional options for character creation. Other recent releases included a large book of pre-constructed Powers, a set of pre-generated Martial Arts styles, abilities and skills, a large bestiary, a new grimoire for Fantasy Hero and a three-volume set of villains for Champions. A new edition of Star Hero was released in 2011, along with a second Advanced Player Guide.
On 28 November 2011, Hero Games announced a restructuring, with Darren Watts and long-time developer Steven S. Long relinquishing their full-time statuses to work freelance. In late 2012 Champions Complete was released, which contained all of the core 6th edition rules as well as enough information to play a superhero campaign in a single 240-page book. This compact presentation reflected criticism that the 6th edition rules had become too unwieldy.
Hero Games now maintains an irregular release schedule, with a minimal staff, and has successfully used Kickstarter to raise funds for new projects. One of these new products, Fantasy Hero Complete, was released in early 2015.
Computer Release
Heromaker, an MS-DOS program, was distributed with some versions of Champions. Today, Hero Designer for the Fifth and Sixth Editions is available on several platforms, and is supported by numerous character packs and other extensions linked to Hero Games book releases. In late 2008, Hero released a licensed RPG for Aaron Williams's popular comic PS238 using a simplified version of the Fifth Edition rules.
Reviews
Pyramid - Fifth Edition
References
External links
Hero Games Company website
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14369 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humphry%20Davy | Humphry Davy | Sir Humphry Davy, 1st Baronet, (17 December 177829 May 1829) was an English chemist and inventor from Cornwall who invented the Davy lamp and a very early form of arc lamp. He is also remembered for isolating, by using electricity, a series of elements for the first time: potassium and sodium in 1807 and calcium, strontium, barium, magnesium and boron the following year, as well as for discovering the elemental nature of chlorine and iodine. Davy also studied the forces involved in these separations, inventing the new field of electrochemistry. Davy is also credited to have been the first to discover clathrate hydrates in his lab.
In 1799 he experimented with nitrous oxide and was astonished at how it made him laugh, so he nicknamed it "laughing gas" and wrote about its potential anaesthetic properties in relieving pain during surgery.
Davy was a baronet, President of the Royal Society (PRS), Member of the Royal Irish Academy (MRIA), Fellow of the Geological Society (FGS), and a member of the American Philosophical Society (elected 1810). Berzelius called Davy's 1806 Bakerian Lecture On Some Chemical Agencies of Electricity "one of the best memoirs which has ever enriched the theory of chemistry."
Early life: 1778–1798
Education, apprenticeship and poetry
Davy was born in Penzance, Cornwall, in the Kingdom of Great Britain on 17 December 1778, the eldest of the five children of Robert Davy, a woodcarver, and his wife Grace Millett. According to his brother and fellow chemist John Davy, their hometown was characterised by "an almost unbounded credulity respecting the supernatural and monstrous ... Amongst the middle and higher classes, there was little taste for literature, and still less for science ... Hunting, shooting, wrestling, cockfighting, generally ending in drunkenness, were what they most delighted in." At the age of six, Davy was sent to the grammar school at Penzance. Three years later, his family moved to Varfell, near Ludgvan, and subsequently, in term-time Davy boarded with John Tonkin, his godfather and later his guardian. On leaving Penzance grammar school in 1793, Tonkin paid for Davy to attend Truro Grammar School to finish his education under the Rev Dr Cardew, who, in a letter to Davies Gilbert, said dryly, "I could not discern the faculties by which he was afterwards so much distinguished." Yet, Davy entertained his school friends by writing poetry, composing Valentines, and telling stories from One Thousand and One Nights. Reflecting on his school days in a letter to his mother, Davy wrote, "Learning naturally is a true pleasure; how unfortunate then it is that in most schools it is made a pain." "I consider it fortunate," he continued, "I was left much to myself as a child, and put upon no particular plan of study ... What I am I made myself." His brother, moreover, claimed Davy possessed a "native vigour" and "the genuine quality of genius, or of that power of intellect which exalts its possessor above the crowd."
After Davy's father died in 1794, Tonkin apprenticed him to John Bingham Borlase, a surgeon with a practice in Penzance. While becoming a chemist in the apothecary's dispensary, he began conducting his earliest experiments at home, much to the annoyance of his friends and family. His older sister, for instance, complained his corrosive substances were destroying her dresses, and at least one friend thought it likely the "incorrigible" Davy would eventually "blow us all into the air." In 1797, after he learned French from a refuge priest, Davy read Lavoisier's Traité élémentaire de chimie. This exposure influenced much of his future work, which can be seen as reaction against Lavoisier's work and the dominance of French chemists.
As a poet, over one hundred and sixty manuscript poems were written by Davy, the majority of which are found in his personal notebooks. Most of his written poems were not published, and he chose instead to share a few of them with his friends. Eight of his known poems were published. His poems reflected his views on both his career and also his perception of certain aspects of human life. He wrote on human endeavours and aspects of life like death, metaphysics, geology, natural theology and chemistry.
John Ayrton Paris remarked that poems written by the young Davy "bear the stamp of lofty genius". Davy's first preserved poem entitled The Sons of Genius is dated 1795 and marked by the usual immaturity of youth. Other poems written in the following years, especially On the Mount's Bay and St Michael's Mount, are descriptive verses, showing sensibility but no true poetic imagination. Three of Davy's paintings from around 1796 have been donated to the Penlee House museum at Penzance. One is of the view from above Gulval showing the church, Mount's Bay and the Mount, while the other two depict Loch Lomond in Scotland.
At 17, he discussed the question of the materiality of heat with his Quaker friend and mentor Robert Dunkin. Dunkin remarked: 'I tell thee what, Humphry, thou art the most quibbling hand at a dispute I ever met with in my life.' One winter day he took Davy to the Larigan River, To show him that rubbing two plates of ice together developed sufficient energy by motion, to melt them, and that after the motion was suspended, the pieces were united by regelation. It was a crude form of analogous experiment exhibited by Davy in the lecture-room of the Royal Institution that elicited considerable attention. As professor at the Royal Institution, Davy repeated many of the ingenious experiments he learned from his friend and mentor, Robert Dunkin.
Even though he initially started writing his poems, albeit haphazardly, as a reflection of his views on his career and on life generally, most of his final poems concentrated on immortality and death. This was after he started experiencing failing health and a decline both in health and career.
Early Career: 1798–1802
Scientific Interests
Davies Giddy met Davy in Penzance carelessly swinging on the half-gate of Dr Borlase's house, and interested by his talk invited him to his house at Tredrea and offered him the use of his library. This led to his introduction to Dr Edwards, who lived at Hayle Copper House. Edwards was a lecturer in chemistry in the school of St. Bartholomew's Hospital. He permitted Davy to use his laboratory and possibly directed his attention to the floodgates of the port of Hayle, which were rapidly decaying as a result of the contact between copper and iron under the influence of seawater. Galvanic corrosion was not understood at that time, but the phenomenon prepared Davy's mind for subsequent experiments on ships' copper sheathing. Gregory Watt, son of James Watt, visited Penzance for his health's sake, and while lodging at the Davys' house became a friend and gave him instructions in chemistry. Davy was acquainted with the Wedgwood family, who spent a winter at Penzance.
Thomas Beddoes and John Hailstone were engaged in a geological controversy on the rival merits of the Plutonian and Neptunist hypotheses. They travelled together to examine the Cornish coast accompanied by Davies Gilbert and made Davy's acquaintance. Beddoes, who had established at Bristol a 'Pneumatic Institution,' needed an assistant to superintend the laboratory. Gilbert recommended Davy, and in 1798 Gregory Watt showed Beddoes the Young man's Researches on Heat and Light, which were subsequently published by him in the first volume of West-Country Contributions. After prolonged negotiations, mainly by Gilbert, Mrs Davy and Borlase consented to Davy's departure, but Tonkin wished him to remain in his native town as a surgeon, and altered his will when he found that Davy insisted on going to Dr Beddoes.
In 1802, Humphry Davy had what was then the most powerful electrical battery in the world at the Royal Institution. With it, Davy created the first incandescent light by passing electric current through a thin strip of platinum, chosen because the metal had an extremely high melting point. It was neither sufficiently bright nor long lasting enough to be of practical use, but demonstrated the principle. By 1806 he was able to demonstrate a much more powerful form of electric lighting to the Royal Society in London. It was an early form of arc light which produced its illumination from an electric arc created between two charcoal rods.
Pneumatic Institution
On 2 October 1798, Davy joined the Pneumatic Institution at Bristol. It had been established to investigate the medical powers of factitious airs and gases (gases produced experimentally or artificially), and Davy was to superintend the various experiments. The arrangement agreed between Dr Beddoes and Davy was generous, and enabled Davy to give up all claims on his paternal property in favour of his mother. He did not intend to abandon the medical profession and was determined to study and graduate at Edinburgh, but he soon began to fill parts of the institution with voltaic batteries. While living in Bristol, Davy met the Earl of Durham, who was a resident in the institution for his health, and became close friends with Gregory Watt, James Watt, Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey, all of whom became regular users of nitrous oxide (laughing gas). The gas was first synthesized in 1772 by the natural philosopher and chemist Joseph Priestley, who called it phlogisticated nitrous air (see phlogiston). Priestley described his discovery in the book Experiments and Observations on Different Kinds of Air (1775), in which he described how to produce the preparation of "nitrous air diminished", by heating iron filings dampened with nitric acid.
James Watt built a portable gas chamber to facilitate Davy's experiments with the inhalation of nitrous oxide. At one point the gas was combined with wine to judge its efficacy as a cure for hangover (his laboratory notebook indicated success). The gas was popular among Davy's friends and acquaintances, and he noted that it might be useful for performing surgical operations. Anesthetics were not regularly used in medicine or dentistry until decades after Davy's death.
Davy threw himself energetically into the work of the laboratory and formed a long romantic friendship with Mrs Anna Beddoes, the novelist Maria Edgeworth's sister, who acted as his guide on walks and other fine sights of the locality. The critic Maurice Hindle was the first to reveal that Davy and Anna had written poems for each other. Wahida Amin has transcribed and discussed a number of poems written between 1803 and 1808 to "Anna" and one to her infant child. In December 1799 Davy visited London for the first time and extended his circle of friends. Davy features in the diary of William Godwin, with their first meeting recorded for 4 December 1799.
In the gas experiments Davy ran considerable risks. His respiration of nitric oxide which may have combined with air in the mouth to form nitric acid (HNO3), severely injured the mucous membrane, and in Davy's attempt to inhale four quarts of "pure hydrocarbonate" gas in an experiment with carbon monoxide he "seemed sinking into annihilation." On being removed into the open air, Davy faintly articulated, "I do not think I shall die," but some hours elapsed before the painful symptoms ceased. Davy was able to take his own pulse as he staggered out of the laboratory and into the garden, and he described it in his notes as "threadlike and beating with excessive quickness".
In this year the first volume of the West-Country Collections was issued. Half consisted of Davy's essays On Heat, Light, and the Combinations of Light, On Phos-oxygen and its Combinations, and on the Theory of Respiration. On 22 February 1799 Davy, wrote to Davies Gilbert, "I am now as much convinced of the non-existence of caloric as I am of the existence of light." In another letter to Gilbert, on 10 April, Davy informs him: "I made a discovery yesterday which proves how necessary it is to repeat experiments. The gaseous oxide of azote (the laughing gas) is perfectly respirable when pure. It is never deleterious but when it contains nitrous gas. I have found a mode of making it pure." He said that he breathed sixteen quarts of it for nearly seven minutes, and that it "absolutely intoxicated me."
Davy became increasingly well known in 1799 due to his experiments with the physiological action of some gases, including laughing gas (nitrous oxide). In addition to himself, his enthusiastic experimental subjects included his poet friends Robert Southey and Samuel Taylor Coleridge.
During 1799, Beddoes and Davy published Contributions to physical and medical knowledge, principally from the west of England and Essays on heat, light, and the combinations of light, with a new theory of respiration. On the generation of oxygen gas, and the causes of the colors of organic beings. Their experimental work was poor, and the publications were harshly criticized. In after years Davy regretted he had ever published these immature hypotheses, which he subsequently designated "the dreams of misemployed genius which the light of experiment and observation has never conducted to truth."
These criticisms, however, led Davy to refine and improve his experimental techniques, spending his later time at the institution increasingly in experimentation.
In 1800, Davy informed Gilbert that he had been "repeating the galvanic experiments with success" in the intervals of the experiments on the gases, which "almost incessantly occupied him from January to April." In 1800, Davy published his Researches, Chemical and Philosophical, chiefly concerning Nitrous Oxide and its Respiration, and received a more positive response.
William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge moved to the Lake District in 1800, and asked Davy to deal with the Bristol publishers of the Lyrical Ballads, Biggs & Cottle. Coleridge asked Davy to proofread the second edition, the first to contain Wordsworth's "Preface to the Lyrical Ballads", in a letter dated 16 July 1800: "Will you be so kind as just to look over the sheets of the lyrical Ballads". Wordsworth subsequently wrote to Davy on 29 July 1800, sending him the first manuscript sheet of poems and asking him specifically to correct: "any thing you find amiss in the punctuation a business at which I am ashamed to say I am no adept". Wordsworth was ill in the autumn of 1800 and slow in sending poems for the second edition; the volume appeared on 26 January 1801 even though it was dated 1800. While it is impossible to know whether Davy was at fault, this edition of the Lyrical Ballads contained many errors, including the poem "Michael" being left incomplete. In a personal notebook marked on the front cover "Clifton 1800 From August to Novr", Davy wrote his own Lyrical Ballad: "As I was walking up the street". Wordsworth features in Davy's poem as the recorder of ordinary lives in the line: "By poet Wordsworths Rymes" [sic].
Royal Institution
In 1799, Count Rumford had proposed the establishment in London of an 'Institution for Diffusing Knowledge', i.e. the Royal Institution. The house in Albemarle Street was bought in April 1799. Rumford became secretary to the institution, and Dr Thomas Garnett was the first lecturer.
In February 1801 Davy was interviewed by the committee of the Royal Institution, comprising Joseph Banks, Benjamin Thompson (who had been appointed Count Rumford) and Henry Cavendish. Davy wrote to Davies Gilbert on 8 March 1801 about the offers made by Banks and Thompson, a possible move to London and the promise of funding for his work in galvanism. He also mentioned that he might not be collaborating further with Beddoes on therapeutic gases. The next day Davy left Bristol to take up his new post at the Royal Institution, it having been resolved 'that Humphry Davy be engaged in the service of the Royal Institution in the capacity of assistant lecturer in chemistry, director of the chemical laboratory, and assistant editor of the journals of the institution, and that he be allowed to occupy a room in the house, and be furnished with coals and candles, and that he be paid a salary of 100l. per annum.'
On 25 April 1801, Davy gave his first lecture on the relatively new subject of 'Galvanism'. He and his friend Coleridge had had many conversations about the nature of human knowledge and progress, and Davy's lectures gave his audience a vision of human civilisation brought forward by scientific discovery. "It [science] has bestowed on him powers which may almost be called creative; which have enabled him to modify and change the beings surrounding him, and by his experiments to interrogate nature with power, not simply as a scholar, passive and seeking only to understand her operations, but rather as a master, active with his own instruments." The first lecture garnered rave reviews, and by the June lecture Davy wrote to John King that his last lecture had attendance of nearly 500 people. "There was Respiration, Nitrous Oxide, and unbounded Applause. Amen!"
Davy revelled in his public status.
Davy's lectures included spectacular and sometimes dangerous chemical demonstrations along with scientific information, and were presented with considerable showmanship by the young and handsome man.
Davy also included both poetic and religious commentary in his lectures, emphasizing that God's design was revealed by chemical investigations. Religious commentary was in part an attempt to appeal to women in his audiences. Davy, like many of his enlightenment contemporaries, supported female education and women's involvement in scientific pursuits, even proposing that women be admitted to evening events at the Royal Society.
Davy acquired a large female following around London. In a satirical cartoon by Gillray, nearly half of the attendees pictured are female. His support of women caused Davy to be subjected to considerable gossip and innuendo, and to be criticized as unmanly.
When Davy's lecture series on Galvanism ended, he progressed to a new series on Agricultural Chemistry, and his popularity continued to skyrocket. By June 1802, after just over a year at the Institution and at the age of 23, Davy was nominated to full lecturer at the Royal Institution of Great Britain. Garnett quietly resigned, citing health reasons.
In November 1804 Davy became a Fellow of the Royal Society, over which he would later preside. He was one of the founding members of the Geological Society in 1807 and was elected a foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in 1810 and a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1822.
Mid-Career: 1802–1820
Photographic Enlargements
In June 1802 Davy published in the first issue of the Journals of the Royal Institution of Great Britain his An Account of a Method of Copying Paintings upon Glass, and of Making Profiles, by the Agency of Light upon Nitrate of Silver. Invented by T. Wedgwood, Esq. With Observations by H. Davy in which he described their experiments with the photosensitivity of silver nitrate. He recorded that "images of small objects, produced by means of the solar microscope, may be copied without difficulty on prepared paper." Josef Maria Eder, in his History of Photography, though crediting Wedgwood, because of his application of this quality of silver nitrate to the making of images, as "the first photographer in the world," proposes that it was Davy who realised the idea of photographic enlargement using a solar microscope to project images onto sensitised paper. Neither found a means of fixing their images, and Davy devoted no more of his time to furthering these early discoveries in photography. The principle of image projection using solar illumination was applied to the construction of the earliest form of photographic enlarger, the 'solar camera.'
Elements
Davy was a pioneer in the field of electrolysis using the voltaic pile to split common compounds and thus prepare many new elements. He went on to electrolyse molten salts and discovered several new metals, including sodium and potassium, highly reactive elements known as the alkali metals. Davy discovered potassium in 1807, deriving it from caustic potash (KOH). Before the 19th century, no distinction had been made between potassium and sodium. Potassium was the first metal that was isolated by electrolysis. Davy isolated sodium in the same year by passing an electric current through molten sodium hydroxide.
During the first half of 1808, Davy conducted a series of further electrolysis experiments on alkaline earths including lime, magnesia, strontites and barytes. At the beginning of June, Davy received a letter from the Swedish chemist Berzelius claiming that he, in conjunction with Dr. Pontin, had successfully obtained amalgams of calcium and barium by electrolysing lime and barytes using a mercury cathode. Davy managed to successfully repeat these experiments almost immediately and expanded Berzelius' method to strontites and magnesia. He noted that while these amalgams oxidized in only a few minutes when exposed to air they could be preserved for lengthy periods of time when submerged in naphtha before becoming covered with a white crust.
On 30 June 1808 Davy reported to the Royal Society that he had successfully isolated four new metals which he named barium, calcium, strontium and magnium (later changed to magnesium) which were subsequently published in the Philosophical Transactions. Although Davy conceded magnium was an "undoubtedly objectionable" name he argued the more appropriate name magnesium was already being applied to metallic manganese and wished to avoid creating an equivocal term.
The observations gathered from these experiments also led to Davy isolating boron in 1809.
Chlorine was discovered in 1774 by Swedish chemist Carl Wilhelm Scheele, who called it "dephlogisticated marine acid" (see phlogiston theory) and mistakenly thought it contained oxygen. Davy showed that the acid of Scheele's substance, called at the time oxymuriatic acid, contained no oxygen. This discovery overturned Lavoisier's definition of acids as compounds of oxygen. In 1810, chlorine was given its current name by Humphry Davy, who insisted that chlorine was in fact an element. The name chlorine, chosen by Davy for "one of [the substance's] obvious and characteristic properties – its colour", comes from the Greek χλωρος (chlōros), meaning green-yellow.
Laboratory Incident
Davy seriously injured himself in a laboratory accident with nitrogen trichloride. French chemist Pierre Louis Dulong had first prepared this compound in 1811, and had lost two fingers and an eye in two separate explosions with it. In a letter to John Children, on 16 November 1812, Davy wrote: "It must be used with great caution. It is not safe to experiment upon a globule larger than a pin's head. I have been severely wounded by a piece scarcely bigger. My sight, however, I am informed, will not be injured". Davy's accident induced him to hire Michael Faraday as a co-worker, particularly for assistance with handwriting and record keeping. He had recovered from his injuries by April 1813.
Travels
European Tour
In 1812, Davy was knighted and gave up his lecturing position at the Royal Institution. He was given the title of Honorary Professor of Chemistry. He gave a farewell lecture to the Institution, and married a wealthy widow, Jane Apreece. (While Davy was generally acknowledged as being faithful to his wife, their relationship was stormy, and in later years he travelled to continental Europe alone.)
Davy then published his Elements of Chemical Philosophy, part 1, volume 1, though other parts of this title were never completed. He made notes for a second edition, but it was never required.
In October 1813, he and his wife, accompanied by Michael Faraday as his scientific assistant (also treated as a valet), travelled to France to collect the second edition of the prix du Galvanisme, a medal that Napoleon Bonaparte had awarded Davy for his electro-chemical work. Faraday noted "Tis indeed a strange venture at this time, to trust ourselves in a foreign and hostile country, where so little regard is had to protestations of honour, that the slightest suspicion would be sufficient to separate us for ever from England, and perhaps from life". Davy's party sailed from Plymouth to Morlaix by cartel, where they were searched.
Upon reaching Paris, Davy was a guest of honour at a meeting of the First Class of the Institut de France and met with André-Marie Ampère and other French chemists. It was later reported that Davy's wife had thrown the medal onto the sea, near her Cornish home, "as it raised bad memories". The Royal Society of Chemistry has offered over £1,800 for the recovery of the medal.
While in Paris, Davy attended lectures at the Ecole Polytechnique, including those by Joseph Louis Gay-Lussac on a mysterious substance isolated by Bernard Courtois. Davy wrote a paper for the Royal Society on the element, which is now called iodine. This led to a dispute between Davy and Gay-Lussac on who had the priority on the research.
Davy's party did not meet Napoleon in person, but they did visit the Empress Joséphine de Beauharnais at the Château de Malmaison. The party left Paris in December 1813, travelling south to Italy. They sojourned in Florence, where using the burning glass of the Grand Duke of Tuscany in a series of experiments conducted with Faraday's assistance, Davy succeeded in using the sun's rays to ignite diamond, proving it is composed of pure carbon.
Davy's party continued to Rome, where he undertook experiments on iodine and chlorine and on the colours used in ancient paintings. This was the first chemical research on the pigments used by artists.
He also visited Naples and Mount Vesuvius, where he collected samples of crystals. By June 1814, they were in Milan, where they met Alessandro Volta, and then continued north to Geneva. They returned to Italy via Munich and Innsbruck, and when their plans to travel to Greece and Istanbul were abandoned after Napoleon's escape from Elba, they returned to England.
After the Battle of Waterloo, Davy wrote to Lord Liverpool urging that the French be treated with severity:
Davy lamp
After his return to England in 1815, Davy began experimenting with lamps that could be used safely in coal mines. The Revd Dr Robert Gray of Bishopwearmouth in Sunderland, founder of the Society for Preventing Accidents in Coalmines, had written to Davy suggesting that he might use his 'extensive stores of chemical knowledge' to address the issue of mining explosions caused by firedamp, or methane mixed with oxygen, which was often ignited by the open flames of the lamps then used by miners. Incidents such as the Felling mine disaster of 1812 near Newcastle, in which 92 men were killed, not only caused great loss of life among miners but also meant that their widows and children had to be supported by the public purse. The Revd Gray and a fellow clergyman also working in a north-east mining area, the Revd John Hodgson of Jarrow, were keen that action should be taken to improve underground lighting and especially the lamps used by miners.
Davy conceived of using an iron gauze to enclose a lamp's flame, and so prevent the methane burning inside the lamp from passing out to the general atmosphere. Although the idea of the safety lamp had already been demonstrated by William Reid Clanny and by the then unknown (but later very famous) engineer George Stephenson, Davy's use of wire gauze to prevent the spread of flame was used by many other inventors in their later designs. George Stephenson's lamp was very popular in the north-east coalfields, and used the same principle of preventing the flame reaching the general atmosphere, but by different means. Unfortunately, although the new design of gauze lamp initially did seem to offer protection, it gave much less light, and quickly deteriorated in the wet conditions of most pits. Rusting of the gauze quickly made the lamp unsafe, and the number of deaths from firedamp explosions rose yet further.
There was some discussion as to whether Davy had discovered the principles behind his lamp without the help of the work of Smithson Tennant, but it was generally agreed that the work of both men had been independent. Davy refused to patent the lamp, and its invention led to his being awarded the Rumford medal in 1816.
Acid Studies
In 1815 Davy also suggested that acids were substances that contained replaceable hydrogen ions;– hydrogen that could be partly or totally replaced by reactive metals which are placed above hydrogen in the reactivity series. When acids reacted with metals they formed salts and hydrogen gas. Bases were substances that reacted with acids to form salts and water. These definitions worked well for most of the nineteenth century.
Herculaneum papyri
Humphry Davy experimented on fragments of the Herculaneum papyri before his departure to Naples in 1818. His early experiments showed hope of success. In his report to the Royal Society Davy writes that:
'When a fragment of a brown MS. in which the layers were strongly adhered, was placed in an atmosphere of chlorine, there was an immediate action, the papyrus smoked and became yellow, and the letters appeared much more distinct; and by the application of heat the layers separated from each other, giving fumes of muriatic acid.'
The success of the early trials prompted Davy to travel to Naples to conduct further research on the Herculaneum papyri. Accompanied by his wife, they set off on 26 May 1818 to stay in Flanders where Davy was invited by the coal miners to speak. They then traveled to Carniola (now Slovenia) which proved to become 'his favourite Alpine retreat' before finally arriving in Italy. In Italy, they befriended Lord Byron in Rome and then went on to travel to Naples.
Initial experiments were again promising and his work resulted in 'partially unrolling 23 MSS., from which fragments of writing were obtained' but after returning to Naples on 1 December 1819 from a summer in the Alps, Davy complained that 'the Italians at the museum [were] no longer helpful but obstructive'. Davy decided to renounce further work on the papyri because 'the labour, in itself difficult and unpleasant, been made more so, by the conduct of the persons at the head of this department in the Museum'.
Later life: 1820–1829
Protection of Ship's bottoms
From 1761 onwards, copper plating had been fitted to the undersides of Royal Navy ships to protect the wood from attack by shipworms. However, the copper bottoms were gradually corroded by exposure to the salt water. Between 1823 and 1825, Davy, assisted by Michael Faraday, attempted to protect the copper by electrochemical means. He attached to the copper sacrificial pieces of zinc or iron , which provided cathodic protection to the host metal. It was discovered, however, that protected copper became foul quickly, i.e. pieces of weed and/or marine creatures became attached to the hull, which had a detrimental effect on the handling of the ship.
The Navy Board approached Davy in 1823, asking for help with the corrosion. Davy conducted a number of tests in Portsmouth Dockyard, which led to the Navy Board adopting the use of Davy's "protectors". By 1824, it had become apparent that fouling of the copper bottoms was occurring on the majority of protected ships. By the end of 1825, the Admiralty ordered the Navy Board to cease fitting the protectors to sea-going ships, and to remove those that had already been fitted. Davy's scheme was seen as a public failure, despite success of the corrosion protection as such. As Frank A. J. L. James explains, "[Because] the poisonous salts from [corroding] copper were no longer entering the water, there was nothing to kill the barnacles and the like in the vicinity of a ship. This meant that barnacles [and the like] could now attach themselves to the bottom of a vessel, thus impeding severely its steerage, much to the anger of the captains who wrote to the Admiralty to complain about Davy's protectors."
President of the Royal Society
Elections took place on St Andrew's Day and Davy was elected on 30 November 1820. Although he was unopposed, other candidates had received initial backing. These candidates embodied the factional difficulties that beset Davy's presidency and which eventually defeated him.
The Society was in transition from a club for gentlemen interested in natural philosophy, connected with the political and social elite, to an academy representing increasingly specialised sciences. The previous president, Joseph Banks, had held the post for over 40 years and had presided autocratically over what David Philip Miller calls the "Banksian Learned Empire", in which natural history was prominent.
Banks had groomed the engineer, author and politician Davies Gilbert to succeed him and preserve the status quo, but Gilbert declined to stand. Fellows who thought royal patronage was important proposed Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg (later Leopold I of Belgium), who also withdrew, as did the Whig Edward St Maur, 11th Duke of Somerset. Davy was the outstanding scientist but some fellows did not approve of his popularising work at the Royal Institution.
The strongest alternative had been William Hyde Wollaston, who was supported by the "Cambridge Network" of outstanding mathematicians such as Charles Babbage and John Herschel, who tried to block Davy. They were aware that Davy supported some modernisation, but thought that he would not sufficiently encourage aspiring young mathematicians, astronomers and geologists, who were beginning to form specialist societies. Davy was only 41, and reformers were fearful of another long presidency.
In his early years Davy was optimistic about reconciling the reformers and the Banksians. In his first speech as president he declared, "I trust that, with these new societies, we shall always preserve the most amicable relations ... I am sure there is no desire in [the Royal Society] to exert anything like patriarchal authority in relation to these institutions".
Davy spent much time juggling the factions but, as his reputation declined in the light of failures such as his research into copper-bottomed ships, he lost popularity and authority. This was compounded by a number of political errors. In 1825 his promotion of the new Zoological Society, of which he was a founding fellow, courted the landed gentry and alienated expert zoologists. He offended the mathematicians and reformers by failing to ensure that Babbage received one of the new Royal Medals (a project of his) or the vacant secretaryship of the Society in 1826. In November 1826 the mathematician Edward Ryan recorded that: "The Society, every member almost ... are in the greatest rage at the President's proceedings and nothing is now talked of but removing him."
In the event he was again re-elected unopposed, but he was now visibly unwell. In January 1827 he set off to Italy for reasons of his health. It did not improve and, as the 1827 election loomed, it was clear that he would not stand again. He was succeeded by Davies Gilbert.
Final years
In 1818, Davy was awarded a baronetcy. Although Sir Francis Bacon (also later made a peer) and Sir Isaac Newton had already been knighted, this was, at the time, the first such honour ever conferred on a man of science in Britain. This was followed a year later with the Presidency of the Royal Society.
Davy's laboratory assistant, Michael Faraday, went on to enhance Davy's work and would become the more famous and influential scientist. Davy is supposed to have even claimed Faraday as his greatest discovery. Davy later accused Faraday of plagiarism, however, causing Faraday (the first Fullerian Professor of Chemistry) to cease all research in electromagnetism until his mentor's death.
According to one of Davy's biographers, June Z. Fullmer, he was a deist.
Of a sanguine, somewhat irritable temperament, Davy displayed characteristic enthusiasm and energy in all his pursuits. As is shown by his verses and sometimes by his prose, his mind was highly imaginative; the poet Coleridge declared that if he "had not been the first chemist, he would have been the first poet of his age", and Southey said that "he had all the elements of a poet; he only wanted the art." In spite of his ungainly exterior and peculiar manner, his happy gifts of exposition and illustration won him extraordinary popularity as a lecturer, his experiments were ingenious and rapidly performed, and Coleridge went to hear him "to increase his stock of metaphors." The dominating ambition of his life was to achieve fame; occasional petty jealousy did not diminish his concern for the "cause of humanity", to use a phrase often employed by him in connection with his invention of the miners' lamp. Careless about etiquette, his frankness sometimes exposed him to annoyances he might have avoided by the exercise of tact.
In 1826 he suffered a stroke from which he never fully recovered. He spent the last months of his life writing Consolations in Travel, an immensely popular, somewhat freeform compendium of poetry, thoughts on science and philosophy. Published posthumously, the work became a staple of both scientific and family libraries for several decades afterward. Davy spent the winter in Rome, hunting in the Campagna on his fiftieth birthday. But on 20 February 1829 he had another stroke. After spending many months attempting to recuperate, Davy died in a room at L'Hotel de la Couronne, in the Rue du Rhone, in Geneva, Switzerland, on 29 May 1829. He had wished to be buried where he died, but had also wanted the burial delayed in case he was only comatose. He refused to allow a post-mortem for similar reasons. But the laws of Geneva did not allow any delay and he was given a public funeral on the following Monday, 1 June, in the Plainpalais Cemetery, outside the city walls.
Honours
Geographical locations
Shortly after his funeral, his wife organised a memorial tablet for him in Westminster Abbey at a cost of £142.
In 1872, a statue of Davy was erected in front of the Market Building, Penzance, (now owned by Lloyds TSB) at the top of Market Jew Street, Penzance.
A commemorative slate plaque on 4 Market Jew Street, Penzance, claims the location as his birthplace. a secondary school in Coombe Road, Penzance, is named Humphry Davy School.
A pub at 32 Alverton Street, Penzance, is named "The Sir Humphry Davy".
One of the science buildings of the University of Plymouth is named The Davy Building.
There is a road named Humphry Davy Way adjacent to the docks in Bristol.
Outside the entrance to Sunderland Football Club's Stadium of Light stands a giant Davy Lamp, in recognition of local mining heritage and the importance of Davy's safety lamp to the mining industry.
There is a street named Humphry-Davy-Straße in the industrial quarter of the town of Cuxhaven, Schleswig-Holstein, Germany.
A satellite of the University of Sheffield at Golden Smithies Lane in Wath upon Dearne (Manvers) was called Humphry Davy House and was home to the School of Nursing and Midwifery until April 2009.
Davy Sound in Greenland was named in his honour by William Scoresby (1789–1857).
There is a 'zone of activity' commercial area in La Grand Combe, Gard, France, a former mining town, named after Davy.
Scientific and literary recognition
in 1827, the mineral davyne was named in his honour by W. Haidinger.
Annually since 1877, the Royal Society of London has awarded the Davy Medal "for an outstandingly important recent discovery in any branch of chemistry."
The Davy lunar crater is named after him. It has a diameter of 34 km and its coordinates are 11.8S, 8.1W.
Davy's passion for fly-fishing earned him the informal title "the father of modern fly-fishing", and his book Salmonia is often considered to be "the fly-fisherman bible".
In popular culture
Novels and poetry
Davy is the subject of a humorous song by Richard Gendall, recorded in 1980 by folk-singer Brenda Wootton in the album Boy Jan Cornishman, the seven verses of which each recall a day of the week on which Davy purportedly made a particular discovery.
English playwright Nick Darke wrote Laughing Gas (2005) a comedy script about the life of Sir Humphry Davy, unfinished at the time of Nick Darke's death; completed posthumously by actor and playwright Carl Grose and produced by the Truro-based production company O-region.
Edmund Clerihew Bentley's first clerihew, published in 1905, was written about Sir Humphry Davy:
Sir Humphry Davy
Abominated gravy.
He lived in the odium
Of having discovered sodium.
There is a humorous rhyme of unknown origin about the statue in Penzance:
Sir Humphrey Davy's kindly face,
Is turned away from Market Place
Towards St Michael's Mount
So, if he do want to tell the time
He've got to wait till the clock do chime
Then he's forced to count.
Jules Verne refers to Davy's geological theories in his 1864 novel Journey to the Centre of the Earth
Publications
See Fullmer's work for a full list of Davy's articles.
Humphry Davy's books are as follows:
(on Davy's safety lamp)
Davy also contributed articles on chemistry to Rees's Cyclopædia, but the topics are not known.
His collected works were published in 1839–1840:
References
Bibliograhy
Sources
Primary sources
External links
(Davy's first name is spelled incorrectly in this book.)
The Collected Works of Humphry Davy
Journal of a Tour made in the years 1828, 1829, through Styria, Carniola, and Italy, whilst accompanying the late Sir Humphry Davy by J. J. Tobin (1832)
Humphry Davy, Poet and Philosopher by Thomas Edward Thorpe, New York: Macmillan, 1896
Young Humphry Davy: The Making of an Experimental Chemist by June Z. Fullmer, Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 2000
1778 births
1829 deaths
Baronets in the Baronetage of the United Kingdom
English chemists
19th-century British inventors
British deists
Discoverers of chemical elements
Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
Fellows of the Royal Society
Fellows of the Zoological Society of London
People educated at Truro Cathedral School
People from Penzance
People of the Industrial Revolution
People associated with electricity
Presidents of the Royal Society
Recipients of the Copley Medal
Royal Medal winners
Members of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences
18th-century British chemists
18th-century English writers
18th-century English male writers
18th-century English poets
19th-century British chemists
19th-century English writers
Poets from Cornwall
Scientists from Cornwall
Burials at Cimetière des Rois
Calcium
Sodium
Potassium
Magnesium
Barium
Boron
Humphry
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14372 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hecate | Hecate | Hecate or Hekate is a goddess in ancient Greek religion and mythology, most often shown holding a pair of torches, a key, snakes or accompanied by dogs and in later periods depicted in triple form. She is variously associated with crossroads, entrance-ways, night, light, magic, witchcraft, knowledge of herbs and poisonous plants, ghosts, necromancy, and sorcery. Her earliest appearance in literature was in Hesiod's Theogony in the 8th century BCE as a goddess of great honour with domains in sky, earth, and sea. Her place of origin is debated by scholars, but she had popular followings amongst the witches of Thessaly and an important sanctuary among the Carian Greeks of Asia Minor in Lagina.
Hecate was one of several deities worshipped in ancient Athens as a protector of the oikos (household), alongside Zeus, Hestia, Hermes, and Apollo. In the post-Christian writings of the Chaldean Oracles (2nd–3rd century CE) she was also regarded with (some) rulership over earth, sea, and sky, as well as a more universal role as Savior (Soteira), Mother of Angels and the Cosmic World Soul.
Regarding the nature of her cult, it has been remarked, "she is more at home on the fringes than in the centre of Greek polytheism. Intrinsically ambivalent and polymorphous, she straddles conventional boundaries and eludes definition."
The Romans knew her by the epithet of Trivia, an epithet she shares with Diana/Artemis, each in their roles as protector of travel and of the crossroads (trivia, “three ways”).
Name and origin
The origin of the name Hecate (Ἑκάτη, Hekátē) and the original country of her worship are both unknown, though several theories have been proposed.
Greek origin
Whether or not Hecate's worship originated in Greece, some scholars have suggested that the name derives from a Greek root, and several potential source words have been identified. For example, ἑκών "willing" (thus, "she who works her will" or similar), may be related to the name Hecate. However, no sources suggested list will or willingness as a major attribute of Hecate, which makes this possibility unlikely. Another Greek word suggested as the origin of the name Hecate is Ἑκατός Hekatos, an obscure epithet of Apollo interpreted as "the far reaching one" or "the far-darter". This has been suggested in comparison with the attributes of the goddess Artemis, strongly associated with Apollo and frequently equated with Hecate in the classical world. Supporters of this etymology suggest that Hecate was originally considered an aspect of Artemis prior to the latter's adoption into the Olympian pantheon. Artemis would have, at that point, become more strongly associated with purity and maidenhood, on the one hand, while her originally darker attributes like her association with magic, the souls of the dead, and the night would have continued to be worshipped separately under her title Hecate. Though often considered the most likely Greek origin of the name, the Ἑκατός theory does not account for her worship in Asia Minor, where her association with Artemis seems to have been a late development, and the competing theories that the attribution of darker aspects and magic to Hecate were themselves not originally part of her cult.
R. S. P. Beekes rejected a Greek etymology and suggested a Pre-Greek origin.
Egyptian origin
A possibility for foreign origin of the name may be ḥqt or ḥqꜣt, an Egyptian goddess of fertility and childbirth, who, like Hecate, was also associated with ḥqꜣ, ruler.
Anatolian origin
Hecate possibly originated among the Carians of Anatolia, the region where most theophoric names invoking Hecate, such as Hecataeus or Hecatomnus, the father of Mausolus, are attested, and where Hecate remained a Great Goddess into historical times, at her unrivalled cult site in Lagina. While many researchers favour the idea that she has Anatolian origins, it has been argued that "Hecate must have been a Greek goddess." The monuments to Hecate in Phrygia and Caria are numerous but of late date.
William Berg observes, "Since children are not called after spooks, it is safe to assume that Carian theophoric names involving hekat- refer to a major deity free from the dark and unsavoury ties to the underworld and to witchcraft associated with the Hecate of classical Athens." In particular, there is some evidence that she might be derived from the local sun goddesses (see also Arinna) based on similar attributes.
If Hecate's cult spread from Anatolia into Greece, then it possibly presented a conflict, as her role was already filled by other more prominent deities in the Greek pantheon, above all by Artemis and Selene. This line of reasoning lies behind the widely accepted hypothesis that she was a foreign deity who was incorporated into the Greek pantheon. Other than in the Theogony, the Greek sources do not offer a consistent story of her parentage or of her relations in the Greek pantheon: sometimes Hecate is related as a Titaness, and a mighty helper and protector of humans.
Later development
In Early Modern English, the name was also pronounced disyllabically (as ) and sometimes spelled Hecat. It remained common practice in English to pronounce her name in two syllables, even when spelled with final e, well into the 19th century.
The spelling Hecat is due to Arthur Golding's 1567 translation of Ovid's Metamorphoses, and this spelling without the final E later appears in plays of the Elizabethan-Jacobean period.
Webster's Dictionary of 1866 particularly credits the influence of Shakespeare for the then-predominant disyllabic pronunciation of the name.
Iconography
Hecate was generally represented as three-formed or triple-bodied, though the earliest known images of the goddess are singular. Her earliest known representation is a small terracotta statue found in Athens. An inscription on the statue is a dedication to Hecate, in writing of the style of the 6th century, but it otherwise lacks any other symbols typically associated with the goddess. She is seated on a throne, with a chaplet around her head; the depiction is otherwise relatively generic. Farnell states: "The evidence of the monuments as to the character and significance of Hecate is almost as full as that of to express her manifold and mystic nature." A 6th century fragment of pottery from Boetia depicts a goddess which may be Hecate in a maternal or fertility mode. Crowned with leafy branches as in later descriptions, she is depicted offering a "maternal blessing" to two maidens who embrace her. The figure is flanked by lions, an animal associated with Hecate both in the Chaldean Oracles, coinage, and reliefs from Asia Minor. In artwork, she is often portrayed in three statues standing back to back, each with is own special attributes (torch, keys, daggers, snakes, dogs).
The 2nd-century travel writer Pausanias stated that Hecate was first depicted in triplicate by the sculptor Alcamenes in the Greek Classical period of the late 5th century BC, whose sculpture was placed before the temple of the Wingless Nike in Athens. Though Alcamenes' original statue is lost, hundreds of copies exist, and the general motif of a triple Hecate situated around a central pole or column, known as a hekataion, was used both at crossroads shrines as well as at the entrances to temples and private homes. These typically depict her holding a variety of items, including torches, keys, serpents, and daggers. Some hekataia, including a votive sculpture from Attica of the 3rd century BC, include additional dancing figures identified as the Charites circling the triple Hecate and her central column. It is possible that the representation of a triple Hecate surrounding a central pillar was originally derived from poles set up at three-way crossroads with masks hung on them, facing in each road direction. In the 1st century AD, Ovid wrote: "Look at Hecate, standing guard at the crossroads, one face looking in each direction."
Apart from traditional hekataia, Hecate's triplicity is depicted in the vast frieze of the great Pergamon Altar, now in Berlin, wherein she is shown with three bodies, taking part in the battle with the Titans. In the Argolid, near the shrine of the Dioscuri, Pausanias saw the temple of Hecate opposite the sanctuary of Eileithyia; He reported the image to be the work of Scopas, stating further, "This one is of stone, while the bronze images opposite, also of Hecate, were made respectively by Polycleitus and his brother Naucydes, son of Mothon."
While Greek anthropomorphic conventions of art generally represented Hecate's triple form as three separate bodies, the iconography of the triple Hecate eventually evolved into representations of the goddess with a single body, but three faces. In Egyptian-inspired Greek esoteric writings connected with Hermes Trismegistus, and in the Greek Magical Papyri of Late Antiquity, Hecate is described as having three heads: one dog, one serpent, and one horse. In other representations, her animal heads include those of a cow and a boar.
The east frieze of a Hellenistic temple of hers at Lagina shows her helping protect the newborn Zeus from his father Cronus; this frieze is the only evidence of Hecate's involvement in his birth.
Sacred animals
Dogs were closely associated with Hecate in the Classical world. "In art and in literature Hecate is constantly represented as dog-shaped or as accompanied by a dog. Her approach was heralded by the howling of a dog. The dog was Hecate's regular sacrificial animal, and was often eaten in solemn sacrament." The sacrifice of dogs to Hecate is attested for Thrace, Samothrace, Colophon, and Athens. A 4th-century BCE marble relief from Crannon in Thessaly was dedicated by a race-horse owner. It shows Hecate, with a hound beside her, placing a wreath on the head of a mare. It has been claimed that her association with dogs is "suggestive of her connection with birth, for the dog was sacred to Eileithyia, Genetyllis, and other birth goddesses. Images of her attended by a dog are also found at times when she is shown as in her role as mother goddess with child, and when she is depicted alongside the god Hermes and the goddess Cybele in reliefs. Although in later times Hecate's dog came to be thought of as a manifestation of restless souls or demons who accompanied her, its docile appearance and its accompaniment of a Hecate who looks completely friendly in many pieces of ancient art suggests that its original signification was positive and thus likelier to have arisen from the dog's connection with birth than the dog's underworld associations." The association with dogs, particularly female dogs, could be explained by a metamorphosis myth in Lycophron: the friendly looking female dog accompanying Hecate was originally the Trojan Queen Hekabe, who leapt into the sea after the fall of Troy and was transformed by Hecate into her familiar.
The polecat is also associated with Hecate. Antoninus Liberalis used a myth to explain this association:
"At Thebes Proitos had a daughter Galinthias. This maiden was playmate and companion of Alkmene, daughter of Elektryon. As the birth throes for Herakles were pressing on Alkmene, the Moirai (Fates) and Eileithyia (Birth-Goddess), as a favour to Hera, kept Alkmene in continuous birth pangs. They remained seated, each keeping their arms crossed. Galinthias, fearing that the pains of her labour would drive Alkmene mad, ran to the Moirai and Eleithyia and announced that by desire of Zeus a boy had been born to Alkmene and that their prerogatives had been abolished. At all this, consternation of course overcame the Moirai and they immediately let go their arms. Alkmene’s pangs ceased at once and Herakles was born. The Moirai were aggrieved at this and took away the womanly parts of Galinthias since, being but a mortal, she had deceived the gods. They turned her into a deceitful weasel (or polecat), making her live in crannies and gave her a grotesque way of mating. She is mounted through the ears and gives birth by bringing forth her young through the throat. Hekate felt sorry for this transformation of her appearance and appointed her a sacred servant of herself." Aelian told a different story of a woman transformed into a polecat: ""I have heard that the polecat was once a human being. It has also reached my hearing that Gale was her name then; that she was a dealer in spells and a sorceress (Pharmakis); that she was extremely incontinent, and that she was afflicted with abnormal sexual desires. Nor has it escaped my notice that the anger of the goddess Hekate transformed it into this evil creature. May the goddess be gracious to me: fables and their telling I leave to others."
Athenaeus of Naucratis, drawing on the etymological speculation of Apollodorus of Athens, notes that the red mullet is sacred to Hecate, "on account of the resemblance of their names; for that the goddess is trimorphos, of a triple form". The Greek word for mullet was trigle and later trigla. He goes on to quote a fragment of verse "O mistress Hecate, Trioditis / With three forms and three faces / Propitiated with mullets". In relation to Greek concepts of pollution, Parker observes, "The fish that was most commonly banned was the red mullet (trigle), which fits neatly into the pattern. It 'delighted in polluted things,' and 'would eat the corpse of a fish or a man'. Blood-coloured itself, it was sacred to the blood-eating goddess Hecate. It seems a symbolic summation of all the negative characteristics of the creatures of the deep." At Athens, it is said there stood a statue of Hecate Triglathena, to whom the red mullet was offered in sacrifice. After mentioning that this fish was sacred to Hecate, Alan Davidson writes, "Cicero, Horace, Juvenal, Martial, Pliny, Seneca and Suetonius have left abundant and interesting testimony to the red mullet fever which began to affect wealthy Romans during the last years of the Republic and really gripped them in the early Empire. The main symptoms were a preoccupation with size, the consequent rise to absurd heights of the prices of large specimens, a habit of keeping red mullet in captivity, and the enjoyment of the highly specialized aesthetic experience induced by watching the color of the dying fish change."
In her three-headed representations, discussed above, Hecate often has one or more animal heads, including cow, dog, boar, serpent and horse. Lions are associated with Hecate in early artwork from Asia Minor, as well as later coins and literature, including the Chaldean Oracles. The frog, which was also the symbol of the similarly named Egyptian goddess Heqet, has also become sacred to Hecate in modern pagan literature, possibly due in part to its ability to cross between two elements.
Comparative mythologist Alexander Haggerty Krappe cited that Hecate was also named ιππεύτρια ('the equestrienne'), since the horse was "the chthonic animal par excellence".
Sacred plants
Hecate was closely associated with plant lore and the concoction of medicines and poisons. In particular she was thought to give instruction in these closely related arts. Apollonius of Rhodes, in the Argonautica mentions that Medea was taught by Hecate, "I have mentioned to you before a certain young girl whom Hecate, daughter of Perses, has taught to work in drugs."
The goddess is described as wearing oak in fragments of Sophocles' lost play The Root Diggers (or The Root Cutters), and an ancient commentary on Apollonius of Rhodes' Argonautica (3.1214) describes her as having a head surrounded by serpents, twining through branches of oak.
The yew in particular was sacred to Hecate.
Hecate was said to favour offerings of garlic, which was closely associated with her cult. She is also sometimes associated with cypress, a tree symbolic of death and the underworld, and hence sacred to a number of chthonic deities.
A number of other plants (often poisonous, medicinal and/or psychoactive) are associated with Hecate. These include aconite (also called hecateis), belladonna, dittany, and mandrake. It has been suggested that the use of dogs for digging up mandrake is further corroboration of the association of this plant with Hecate; indeed, since at least as early as the 1st century CE, there are a number of attestations to the apparently widespread practice of using dogs to dig up plants associated with magic.
Functions
As a goddess of boundaries
Hecate was associated with borders, city walls, doorways, crossroads and, by extension, with realms outside or beyond the world of the living. She appears to have been particularly associated with being 'between' and hence is frequently characterized as a "liminal" goddess. "Hecate mediated between regimes—Olympian and Titan—but also between mortal and divine spheres." This liminal role is reflected in a number of her cult titles: Apotropaia (that turns away/protects); Enodia (on the way); Propulaia/Propylaia (before the gate); Triodia/Trioditis (who frequents crossroads); Klêidouchos (holding the keys), etc.
This function would appear to have some relationship with the iconographic association of Hecate with keys, and might also relate to her appearance with two torches, which when positioned on either side of a gate or door illuminated the immediate area and allowed visitors to be identified. "In Byzantium small temples in her honour were placed close to the gates of the city. Hecate's importance to Byzantium was above all as a deity of protection. When Philip of Macedon was about to attack the city, according to the legend she alerted the townspeople with her ever present torches, and with her pack of dogs, which served as her constant companions." This suggests that Hecate's close association with dogs derived in part from the use of watchdogs, who, particularly at night, raised an alarm when intruders approached. Watchdogs were used extensively by Greeks and Romans.
Cult images and altars of Hecate in her triplicate or trimorphic form were placed at three-way crossroads (though they also appeared before private homes and in front of city gates). In what appears to be a 7th-century indication of the survival of cult practices of this general sort, Saint Eligius, in his Sermo warns the sick among his recently converted flock in Flanders against putting "devilish charms at springs or trees or crossroads", and, according to Saint Ouen would urge them "No Christian should make or render any devotion to the deities of the trivium, where three roads meet...".
As a goddess of the underworld
Thanks to her association with boundaries and the liminal spaces between worlds, Hecate is also recognized as a chthonic (underworld) goddess. As the holder of the keys that can unlock the gates between realms, she can unlock the gates of death, as described in a 3rd-century BCE poem by Theocritus. In the 1st century CE, Virgil described the entrance to hell as "Hecate's Grove", though he says that Hecate is equally "powerful in Heaven and Hell." The Greek Magical Papyri describe Hecate as the holder of the keys to Tartaros. Like Hermes, Hecate takes on the role of guardian not just of roads, but of all journeys, including the journey to the afterlife. In art and myth, she is shown, along with Hermes, guiding Persephone back from the underworld with her torches.
By the 5th century BCE, Hecate had come to be strongly associated with ghosts, possibly due to conflation with the Thessalian goddess Enodia (meaning "traveller"), who travelled the earth with a retinue of ghosts and was depicted on coinage wearing a leafy crown and holding torches, iconography strongly associated with Hecate.
As a goddess of witchcraft
By the 1st century CE, Hecate's chthonic and nocturnal character had led to her transformation into a goddess heavily associated with witchcraft, witches, magic, and sorcery. In Lucan's Pharsalia, the witch Erichtho invokes Hecate as "Persephone, who is the third and lowest aspect of Hecate, the goddess we witches revere", and describes her as a "rotting goddess" with a "pallid decaying body", who has to "wear a mask when [she] visit[s] the gods in heaven."
Like Hecate, "[t]he dog is a creature of the threshold, the guardian of doors and portals, and so it is appropriately associated with the frontier between life and death, and with demons and ghosts which move across the frontier. The yawning gates of Hades were guarded by the monstrous watchdog Cerberus, whose function was to prevent the living from entering the underworld, and the dead from leaving it."
As a goddess of the moon
Hecate was seen as a triple deity, identified with the goddesses Luna (moon) in the sky and Diana (hunting) on the earth, while she represents the Underworld. Hecate's association with Helios in literary sources and especially in cursing magic has been cited as evidence for her lunar nature, although this evidence is pretty late; no artwork before the Roman period connecting Hecate to the Moon exists. Nevertheless, the Homeric Hymn to Demeter shows Helios and Hecate inform Demeter of Persephone's abduction, a common theme found in many parts of the world where the Sun and the Moon are questioned concerning events that happen on earth based on their ability to witness everything. Another work connecting Hecate to Helios possibly as a moon goddess is Sophocles' lost play The Root Cutters, where Helios is described as Hecate's spear:
O Sun our lord and sacred fire, the spear of Hecate of the
roads, which she carries as she attends her mistress in the sky
This speech from the Root Cutters may or may not be an intentional association of Hecate with the Moon. In Seneca's Medea, the titular Medea invokes her patron Hecate whom she addresses as "moon, orb of the night" and "triple form".
From her father Perses, Hecate is often called “Perseis” (meaning “daughter of Perses”) which is also the name of one of the Oceanid nymphs, Helios’ wife and Circe’s mother in other versions. Karl Kerenyi noted the similarity between the names, perhaps denoting a chthonic connection among the two and the goddess Persephone; it is possible that this epithet gives evidence of a lunar aspect of Hecate. Fowler also noted that the pairing (i. e. Helios and Perse) made sense given Hecate’s association with the moon.
Cult
Worship of Hecate existed alongside other deities in major public shrines and temples in antiquity, and she had a significant role as household deity. Shrines to Hecate were often placed at doorways to homes, temples, and cities with the belief that it would protect from restless dead and other spirits. Home shrines often took the form of a small Hekataion, a shrine centred on a wood or stone carving of a triple Hecate facing in three directions on three sides of a central pillar. Larger Hekataions, often enclosed within small walled areas, were sometimes placed at public crossroads near important sites – for example, there was one on the road leading to the Acropolis. Likewise, shrines to Hecate at three way crossroads were created where food offerings were left at the new moon to protect those who did so from spirits and other evils.
Dogs were sacred to Hecate and associated with roads, domestic spaces, purification, and spirits of the dead. Dogs were also sacrificed to the road.
This can be compared to Pausanias' report that in the Ionian city of Colophon in Asia Minor a sacrifice of a black female puppy was made to Hecate as "the wayside goddess", and Plutarch's observation that in Boeotia dogs were killed in purificatory rites. Dogs, with puppies often mentioned, were offered to Hecate at crossroads, which were sacred to the goddess.
History
The earliest definitive record of Hecate's worship dates to the 6th century B.C.E., in the form of a small terracotta statue of a seated goddess, identified as Hekate in its inscription. This and other early depictions of Hecate lack distinctive attributes that would later be associated with her, such as a triple form or torches, and can only be identified as Hecate thanks to their inscriptions. Otherwise, they are typically generic, or Artemis-like.
Hecate's cult became established in Athens about 430 B.C.E. At this time, the sculptor Alcamenes made the earliest known triple-formed Hecate statue for use at her new temple. While this sculpture has not survived to the present day, numerous later copies are extant. It has been speculated that this triple image, usually situated around a pole or pillar, was derived from earlier representations of the goddess using three masks hung on actual wooden poles, possibly placed at crossroads and gateways.
Sanctuaries
Hecate was a popular divinity, and her cult was practiced with many local variations all over Greece and Western Anatolia. Caria was a major center of worship and her most famous temple there was located in the town of Lagina. The oldest known direct evidence of Hecate's cult comes from Selinunte (near modern-day Trapani in Sicily), where she had a temple in the 6th–5th centuries BC.
There was a Temple of Hecate in Argolis:Over against the sanctuary of Eileithyia is a temple of Hekate [the goddess probably here identified with the apotheosed Iphigenia, and the image is a work of Skopas. This one is of stone, while the bronze images opposite, also of Hekate, were made respectively by Polykleitos and his brother Naukydes. There were also a shrine to Hecate in Aigina, where she was very popular:
Of the gods, the Aiginetans worship most Hekate, in whose honour every year they celebrate mystic rites which, they say, Orpheus the Thrakian established among them. Within the enclosure is a temple; its wooden image is the work of Myron, and it has one face and one body. It was Alkamenes, in my opinion, who first made three images of Hekate attached to one another [in Athens].
Aside from her own temples, Hecate was also worshipped in the sanctuaries of other gods, where she was apparently sometimes given her own space. A round stone altar dedicated to the goddess was found in the Delphinion (a temple dedicated to Apollo) at Miletus. Dated to the 7th century BCE, this is one of the oldest known artefacts dedicated to the worship of Hecate. In association with her worship alongside Apollo at Miletus, worshipers used a unique form of offering: they would place stone cubes, often wreathes, known as γυλλοι (gylloi) as protective offerings at the door or gateway. There was an area sacred to Hecate in the precincts of the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus, where the priests, megabyzi, officiated. This sanctuary was called Hekatesion (Shrine of Hekate). Hecate was also worshipped in the Temple of Athena in Titane: "In Titane there is also a sanctuary of Athena, into which they bring up the image of Koronis [mother of Asklepios] ... The sanctuary is built upon a hill, at the bottom of which is an Altar of the Winds, and on it the priest sacrifices to the winds one night in every year. He also performs other secret rites [of Hekate] at four pits, taming the fierceness of the blasts [of the winds], and he is said to chant as well the charms of Medea." She was most commonly worshipped in nature, where she had many natural sanctuaries. An important sanctuary of Hecate was a holy cave on the island of Samothrake called Zerynthos:
In Samothrake there were certain initiation-rites, which they supposed efficacious as a charm against certain dangers. In that place were also the mysteries of the Korybantes [Kabeiroi] and those of Hekate and the Zerinthian cave, where they sacrificed dogs. The initiates supposed that these things save [them] from terrors and from storms.
Cult at Lagina
Hecate's most important sanctuary was Lagina, a theocratic city-state in which the goddess was served by eunuchs.
The temple is mentioned by Strabo:
Stratonikeia [in Karia, Asia Minor] is a settlement of Makedonians ... There are two temples in the country of the Stratonikeians, of which the most famous, that of Hekate, is at Lagina; and it draws great festal assemblies every year.
Lagina, where the famous temple of Hecate drew great festal assemblies every year, lay close to the originally Macedonian colony of Stratonikeia, where she was the city's patron. In Thrace she played a role similar to that of lesser-Hermes, namely a ruler of liminal regions, particularly gates, and the wilderness.
Cult at Byzantium
Hecate was greatly worshipped in Byzantium. She was said to have saved the city from Philip II of Macedon, warning the citizens of a night time attack by a light in the sky, for which she was known as Hecate Lampadephoros. The tale is preserved in the Suda.
As Hecate Phosphorus (Venus) she is said to have lit the sky during the Siege of Philip II in 340 BC, revealing the attack to its inhabitants. The Byzantines dedicated a statue to her as the "lamp carrier". According to Hesychius of Miletus there was once a statue of Hecate at the site of the Hippodrome in Constantinople.
Deipnon
The Athenian Greeks honoured Hekate during the Deipnon. In Greek, deipnon means the evening meal, usually the largest meal of the day. Hekate's Deipnon is, at its most basic, a meal served to Hekate and the restless dead once a lunar month during the new moon. The Deipnon is always followed the next day by the Noumenia, when the first sliver of the sunlit Moon is visible, and then the Agathos Daimon the day after that.
The main purpose of the Deipnon was to honour Hekate and to placate the souls in her wake who "longed for vengeance." A secondary purpose was to purify the household and to atone for bad deeds a household member may have committed that offended Hekate, causing her to withhold her favour from them. The Deipnon consists of three main parts: 1) the meal that was set out at a crossroads, usually in a shrine outside the entryway to the home 2) an expiation sacrifice, and 3) purification of the household.
Epithets
Hecate was known by a number of epithets:
Apotropaia (Ἀποτρόπαια), the one that turns away/protects.
Chthonia (Χθωνία), of the earth/underworld.
Enodia (Ἐννοδία), she on the way/road.
Klêidouchos (Κλειδοῦχος), holding the keys.
Kourotrophos (Κουροτρόφος), nurse of children.
Krokopeplos (Κροκόπεπλος), saffron cloaked.
Melinoe (Μηλινόη).
Phosphoros, Lampadephoros (Φωσφόρος, Λαμπαδηφόρος), bringing or bearing light.
Propolos (Πρόπολος), who serves/attends.
Propulaia/Propylaia (Προπύλαια), before the gate.
Soteria (Σωτηρία), savior.
Trimorphe (Τρίμορφη), three-formed.
Triodia/Trioditis (Τριοδία, Τριοδίτης), who frequents crossroads.
Historical and literary sources
Archaic period
Hecate has been characterized as a pre-Olympian chthonic goddess. The first literature mentioning Hecate is the Theogony (c. 700 BCE) by Hesiod:
According to Hesiod, she held sway over many things:
Hesiod's inclusion and praise of Hekate in the Theogony has been troublesome for scholars, in that he seems to hold her in high regard, while the testimony of other writers, and surviving evidence, suggests that this may have been the exception. One theory is that Hesiod's original village had a substantial Hekate following and that his inclusion of her in the Theogony was a way of adding to her prestige by spreading word of her among his readers. Another theory is that Hekate was mainly a household god and humble household worship could have been more pervasive and yet not mentioned as much as temple worship. In Athens Hekate, along with Zeus, Hermes, Hestia, and Apollo, were very important in daily life as they were the main gods of the household. However, it is clear that the special position given to Hekate by Zeus is upheld throughout her history by depictions found on coins depicting Hekate on the hand of Zeus as highlighted in more recent research presented by d'Este and Rankine.
In the Homeric Hymn to Demeter (composed c. 600 BCE), Hekate is called "tender-hearted", a euphemism perhaps intended to emphasize her concern with the disappearance of Persephone, when she assisted Demeter with her search for Persephone following her abduction by Hades, suggesting that Demeter should speak to the god of the Sun, Helios. Subsequently, Hekate became Persephone's companion on her yearly journey to and from the realms of Hades; serving as a psychopomp. Because of this association, Hekate was one of the chief goddesses of the Eleusinian Mysteries, alongside Demeter and Persephone, and there was a temple dedicated to her near the main sanctuary at Eleusis.
Classical period
Variations in interpretations of Hekate's role or roles can be traced in classical Athens. In two fragments of Aeschylus she appears as a great goddess. In Sophocles and Euripides she is characterized as the mistress of witchcraft and the Keres.
One surviving group of stories suggests how Hekate might have come to be incorporated into the Greek pantheon without affecting the privileged position of Artemis. Here, Hekate is a mortal priestess often associated with Iphigenia. She scorns and insults Artemis, who in retribution eventually brings about the mortal's suicide.
In the Argonautica, a 3rd-century BCE Alexandrian epic based on early material, Jason placates Hecate in a ritual prescribed by Medea, her priestess: bathed at midnight in a stream of flowing water, and dressed in dark robes, Jason is to dig a round pit and over it cut the throat of a ewe, sacrificing it and then burning it whole on a pyre next to the pit as a holocaust. He is told to sweeten the offering with a libation of honey, then to retreat from the site without looking back, even if he hears the sound of footsteps or barking dogs. All these elements betoken the rites owed to a chthonic deity.
Late Antiquity
During the Gigantomachy, Hecate fought by the side of the Olympian gods, and slew the giant Clytius using her torches. Hecate is depicted fighting Clytius in the east frieze of the Gigantomahy, in the Pergamon Altar next to Artemis; she appears with a different weapon in each of her three right hands, a torch, a sword and a lance. Her fight with the Giant appears in a number of ancient vase paintings and other artwork.
Hecate is the primary feminine figure in the Chaldean Oracles (2nd–3rd century CE), where she is associated in fragment 194 with a strophalos (usually translated as a spinning top, or wheel, used in magic) "Labour thou around the Strophalos of Hecate." This appears to refer to a variant of the device mentioned by Psellus.
In Hellenistic syncretism, Hecate also became closely associated with Isis. Lucius Apuleius in The Golden Ass (2nd century) equates Juno, Bellona, Hecate and Isis:
In the syncretism during Late Antiquity of Hellenistic and late Babylonian ("Chaldean") elements, Hecate was identified with Ereshkigal, the underworld counterpart of Inanna in the Babylonian cosmography. In the Michigan magical papyrus (inv. 7), dated to the late 3rd or early 4th century CE, Hecate Ereschigal is invoked against fear of punishment in the afterlife.
Hecate is also referenced in the Gnostic text Pistis Sophia.
Parents, consorts and children
In the earliest written source mentioning Hekate, Hesiod emphasized that she was an only child, the daughter of Perses and Asteria, the sister of Leto (the mother of Artemis and Apollo). Grandmother of the three cousins was Phoebe the ancient Titan goddess whose name was often used for the moon goddess. In various later accounts, Hekate was given different parents. She was said to be the daughter of Zeus and Asteria, according to Musaeus; the daughter of Aristaeus the son of Paion, according to Pherecydes; the daughter of Nyx, according to Bacchylides; the daughter of Perses, the son of Helios, by an unknown mother, according to Diodorus Siculus; while in Orphic literature, she was said to be the daughter of Demeter.
As a virgin goddess, she remained unmarried and had no regular consort, though some traditions named her as the mother of Scylla through either Apollo or Phorkys.
Sometimes she is also stated to be the mother (by Aeëtes) of the goddess Circe, who in later accounts was herself associated with magic while initially just being a herbalist goddess, similar to how Hecate's association with Underworld and Mysteries had her later converted into a deity of witchcraft.
Once, Hermes chased Hecate (or Persephone) with the aim to rape her; but the goddess snored or roared in anger, frightening him off so that he desisted, hence her earning the name "Brimo" ("angry").
Genealogy
Legacy
Strmiska (2005) claimed that Hecate, conflated with the figure of Diana, appears in late antiquity and in the early medieval period as part of an "emerging legend complex" known as "The Society of Diana" associated with gatherings of women, the Moon, and witchcraft that eventually became established "in the area of Northern Italy, southern Germany, and the western Balkans." This theory of the Roman origins of many European folk traditions related to Diana or Hecate was explicitly advanced at least as early as 1807 and is reflected in etymological claims by early modern lexicographers from the 17th to the 19th century, connecting hag, hexe "witch" to the name of Hecate. Such derivations are today proposed only by a minority
A medieval commentator has suggested a link connecting the word "jinx" with Hecate: "The Byzantine polymath Michael Psellus [...] speaks of a bullroarer, consisting of a golden sphere, decorated throughout with symbols and whirled on an oxhide thong. He adds that such an instrument is called a iunx (hence "jinx"), but as for the significance says only that it is ineffable and that the ritual is sacred to Hecate."
Shakespeare mentions Hecate both before the end of the 16th century (A Midsummer Night's Dream, 1594–1596), and just after, in Macbeth (1605): specifically, in the title character's "dagger" soliloquy: "Witchcraft celebrates pale Hecate's offerings..."
Shakespeare mentions Hecate also in "King Lear". While disclaiming all his paternal care for Cordelia,Lear says, "The mysteries of Hecate and the night,
By all the operations of the orbs
From whom we do exist and cease to be,
Here I disclaim all my paternal care" (The Arden Shakespeare,King Lear,Page no.165)
Modern reception
In 1929, Lewis Brown, an expert on religious cults, connected the 1920s Blackburn Cult (also known as, "The Cult of the Great Eleven,") with Hecate worship rituals. He noted that the cult regularly practiced dog sacrifice and had secretly buried the body of one of its "queens" with seven dogs. Researcher Samuel Fort noted additional parallels, to include the cult's focus on mystic and typically nocturnal rites, its female dominated membership, the sacrifice of other animals (to include horses and mules), a focus on the mystical properties of roads and portals, and an emphasis on death, healing, and resurrection.
As a "goddess of witchcraft", Hecate has been incorporated in various systems of modern witchcraft, Wicca, and neopaganism, in some cases associated with the Wild Hunt of Germanic tradition, in others as part of a reconstruction of specifically Greek polytheism, in English also known as "Hellenismos". In Wicca, Hecate has in some cases become identified with the "crone" aspect of the "Triple Goddess".
See also
Footnotes
Notes
References
Primary sources
Apollonius Rhodius, Argonautica, with an English translation by R. C. Seaton. Loeb Classical Library 1. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1912.
Hesiod, Theogony, in The Homeric Hymns and Homerica with an English Translation by Hugh G. Evelyn-White, Cambridge, MA., Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1914. Online version at the Perseus Digital Library.
Ovid, Metamorphoses, translated by Brookes More (1859-1942), from the Cornhill edition of 1922.
Pausanias, Pausanias Description of Greece with an English Translation by W.H.S. Jones, Litt.D., and H.A. Ormerod, M.A., in 4 Volumes. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1918. Online version at the Perseus Digital Library.
Strabo, The Geography of Strabo. Edition by H.L. Jones. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press; London: William Heinemann, Ltd. 1924. Online version at the Perseus Digital Library.
Secondary sources
Berg, William, "Hecate: Greek or "Anatolian"?", Numen 21.2 (August 1974:128-40)
Burkert, Walter, 1985. Greek Religion (Cambridge: Harvard University Press) Published in the UK as Greek Religion: Archaic and Classical, 1987. (Oxford: Blackwell) .
de’Este, Sorita. Circle for Hekate: volume 1. 1910191078
Farnell, Lewis Richard, (1896). "Hekate: Representations in Art", The Cults of the Greek States. Oxford University Press, Oxford.
Fowler, R. L. (2000), Early Greek Mythography: Volume 1: Text and Introduction, Oxford University Press, 2000. .
Gantz, Timothy, Early Greek Myth: A Guide to Literary and Artistic Sources, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996, Two volumes: (Vol. 1), (Vol. 2).
Green, C. M. C., Roman Religion and the Cult of Diana at Aricia, Cambridge University Press, University of Iowa, 2007, . Online text available at Google books.
Johnston, Sarah Iles, (1990). Hekate Soteira: A Study of Hekate's Role in the Chaldean Oracles and Related Literature.
Johnston, Sarah Iles, (1991). Restless Dead: Encounters Between the Living and the Dead in Ancient Greece.
Kerenyi, Karl. The Gods of the Greeks. 1951.
Kern, Otto. Orphicorum Fragmenta, Berlin, 1922. Internet Archive
Mallarmé, Stéphane, (1880). Les Dieux Antiques, nouvelle mythologie illustrée.
Rabinovich, Yakov. The Rotting Goddess. 1990.
Ruickbie, Leo. Witchcraft Out of the Shadows: A Complete History. Robert Hale, 2004.
Seyffert, Oskar, A Dictionary of Classical Antiquities, Mythology, Religion, Literature and Art, from the German of Dr. Oskar Seyffert, S. Sonnenschein, 1901.
The Classical Review, volume IX, 1985, Library of Illinois.
Von Rudloff, Robert. Hekate in Ancient Greek Religion. Horned Owl Publishing (July 1999)
External links
Myths of the Greek Goddess Hecate
Encyclopædia Britannica 1911: "Hecate"
The Rotting Goddess by Yakov Rabinovich, complete book included in the anthology "Junkyard of the Classics" published under the pseudonym Ellipsis Marx.
Theoi Project, Hecate Classical literary sources and art
Hekate in Greek esotericism: Ptolemaic and Gnostic transformations of Hecate
Cast of the Crannon statue, at the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford.
Anatolian deities
Characters in Macbeth
Crossroads mythology
Deities in the Aeneid
Dogs in religion
Greek goddesses
Greek Virgin goddesses
Liminal deities
Magic goddesses
Lunar goddesses
Night goddesses
Rape of Persephone
Snakes in religion
Titans (mythology)
Triple goddesses
Underworld goddesses
Witchcraft in folklore and mythology
Women of Hermes
Women of Apollo | [
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14374 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haematopoiesis | Haematopoiesis | Haematopoiesis (, from Greek , 'blood' and 'to make'; also hematopoiesis in American English; sometimes also h(a)emopoiesis) is the formation of blood cellular components. All cellular blood components are derived from haematopoietic stem cells. In a healthy adult person, approximately – new blood cells are produced daily in order to maintain steady state levels in the peripheral circulation.
Process
Haematopoietic stem cells (HSCs)
Haematopoietic stem cells (HSCs) reside in the medulla of the bone (bone marrow) and have the unique ability to give rise to all of the different mature blood cell types and tissues. HSCs are self-renewing cells: when they differentiate, at least some of their daughter cells remain as HSCs, so the pool of stem cells is not depleted. This phenomenon is called asymmetric division. The other daughters of HSCs (myeloid and lymphoid progenitor cells) can follow any of the other differentiation pathways that lead to the production of one or more specific types of blood cell, but cannot renew themselves. The pool of progenitors is heterogeneous and can be divided into two groups; long-term self-renewing HSC and only transiently self-renewing HSC, also called short-terms. This is one of the main vital processes in the body.
Cell types
All blood cells are divided into three lineages.
Red blood cells, also called erythrocytes, are the oxygen-carrying cells. Erythrocytes are functional and are released into the blood. The number of reticulocytes, immature red blood cells, gives an estimate of the rate of erythropoiesis.
Lymphocytes are the cornerstone of the adaptive immune system. They are derived from common lymphoid progenitors. The lymphoid lineage is composed of T-cells, B-cells and natural killer cells. This is lymphopoiesis.
Cells of the myeloid lineage, which include granulocytes, megakaryocytes and macrophages, are derived from common myeloid progenitors, and are involved in such diverse roles as innate immunity and blood clotting. This is myelopoiesis.
Granulopoiesis (or granulocytopoiesis) is haematopoiesis of granulocytes, except of mast cells which are granulocytes but with an extramedullar maturation.
Megakaryocytopoiesis is haematopoiesis of megakaryocytes.
Terminology
Between 1948 and 1950, the Committee for Clarification of the Nomenclature of Cells and Diseases of the Blood and Blood-forming Organs issued reports on the nomenclature of blood cells. An overview of the terminology is shown below, from earliest to final stage of development:
[root]blast
pro[root]cyte
[root]cyte
meta[root]cyte
mature cell name
The root for erythrocyte colony-forming units (CFU-E) is "rubri", for granulocyte-monocyte colony-forming units (CFU-GM) is "granulo" or "myelo" and "mono", for lymphocyte colony-forming units (CFU-L) is "lympho" and for megakaryocyte colony-forming units (CFU-Meg) is "megakaryo". According to this terminology, the stages of red blood cell formation would be: rubriblast, prorubricyte, rubricyte, metarubricyte, and erythrocyte. However, the following nomenclature seems to be, at present, the most prevalent:
Osteoclasts also arise from hemopoietic cells of the monocyte/neutrophil lineage, specifically CFU-GM.
Location
In developing embryos, blood formation occurs in aggregates of blood cells in the yolk sac, called blood islands. As development progresses, blood formation occurs in the spleen, liver and lymph nodes. When bone marrow develops, it eventually assumes the task of forming most of the blood cells for the entire organism. However, maturation, activation, and some proliferation of lymphoid cells occurs in the spleen, thymus, and lymph nodes. In children, haematopoiesis occurs in the marrow of the long bones such as the femur and tibia. In adults, it occurs mainly in the pelvis, cranium, vertebrae, and sternum.
Extramedullary
In some cases, the liver, thymus, and spleen may resume their haematopoietic function, if necessary. This is called extramedullary haematopoiesis. It may cause these organs to increase in size substantially. During fetal development, since bones and thus the bone marrow develop later, the liver functions as the main haematopoetic organ. Therefore, the liver is enlarged during development. Extramedullary haematopoiesis and myelopoiesis may supply leukocytes in cardiovascular disease and inflammation during adulthood. Splenic macrophages and adhesion molecules may be involved in regulation of extramedullary myeloid cell generation in cardiovascular disease.
Maturation
As a stem cell matures it undergoes changes in gene expression that limit the cell types that it can become and moves it closer to a specific cell type (cellular differentiation). These changes can often be tracked by monitoring the presence of proteins on the surface of the cell. Each successive change moves the cell closer to the final cell type and further limits its potential to become a different cell type.
Cell fate determination
Two models for haematopoiesis have been proposed: determinism and stochastic theory. For the stem cells and other undifferentiated blood cells in the bone marrow, the determination is generally explained by the determinism theory of haematopoiesis, saying that colony stimulating factors and other factors of the haematopoietic microenvironment determine the cells to follow a certain path of cell differentiation. This is the classical way of describing haematopoiesis. In stochastic theory, undifferentiated blood cells differentiate to specific cell types by randomness. This theory has been supported by experiments showing that within a population of mouse haematopoietic progenitor cells, underlying stochastic variability in the distribution of Sca-1, a stem cell factor, subdivides the population into groups exhibiting variable rates of cellular differentiation. For example, under the influence of erythropoietin (an erythrocyte-differentiation factor), a subpopulation of cells (as defined by the levels of Sca-1) differentiated into erythrocytes at a sevenfold higher rate than the rest of the population. Furthermore, it was shown that if allowed to grow, this subpopulation re-established the original subpopulation of cells, supporting the theory that this is a stochastic, reversible process. Another level at which stochasticity may be important is in the process of apoptosis and self-renewal. In this case, the haematopoietic microenvironment prevails upon some of the cells to survive and some, on the other hand, to perform apoptosis and die. By regulating this balance between different cell types, the bone marrow can alter the quantity of different cells to ultimately be produced.
Growth factors
Red and white blood cell production is regulated with great precision in healthy humans, and the production of leukocytes is rapidly increased during infection. The proliferation and self-renewal of these cells depend on growth factors. One of the key players in self-renewal and development of haematopoietic cells is stem cell factor (SCF), which binds to the c-kit receptor on the HSC. Absence of SCF is lethal. There are other important glycoprotein growth factors which regulate the proliferation and maturation, such as interleukins IL-2, IL-3, IL-6, IL-7. Other factors, termed colony-stimulating factors (CSFs), specifically stimulate the production of committed cells. Three CSFs are granulocyte-macrophage CSF (GM-CSF), granulocyte CSF (G-CSF) and macrophage CSF (M-CSF). These stimulate granulocyte formation and are active on either progenitor cells or end product cells.
Erythropoietin is required for a myeloid progenitor cell to become an erythrocyte. On the other hand, thrombopoietin makes myeloid progenitor cells differentiate to megakaryocytes (thrombocyte-forming cells). The diagram to the right provides examples of cytokines and the differentiated blood cells they give rise to.
Transcription factors
Growth factors initiate signal transduction pathways, which lead to activation of transcription factors. Growth factors elicit different outcomes depending on the combination of factors and the cell's stage of differentiation. For example, long-term expression of PU.1 results in myeloid commitment, and short-term induction of PU.1 activity leads to the formation of immature eosinophils. Recently, it was reported that transcription factors such as NF-κB can be regulated by microRNAs (e.g., miR-125b) in haematopoiesis.
The first key player of differentiation from HSC to a multipotent progenitor (MPP) is transcription factor CCAAT-enhancer binding protein α (C/EBPα). Mutations in C/EBPα are associated with acute myeloid leukaemia. From this point, cells can either differentiate along the Erythroid-megakaryocyte lineage or lymphoid and myeloid lineage, which have common progenitor, called lymphoid-primed multipotent progenitor. There are two main transcription factors. PU.1 for Erythroid-megakaryocyte lineage and GATA-1, which leads to a lymphoid-primed multipotent progenitor.
Other transcription factors include Ikaros (B cell development), and Gfi1 (promotes Th2 development and inhibits Th1) or IRF8 (basophils and mast cells). Significantly, certain factors elicit different responses at different stages in the haematopoiesis. For example, CEBPα in neutrophil development or PU.1 in monocytes and dendritic cell development. It is important to note that processes are not unidirectional: differentiated cells may regain attributes of progenitor cells.
An example is PAX5 factor, which is important in B cell development and associated with lymphomas. Surprisingly, pax5 conditional knock out mice allowed peripheral mature B cells to de-differentiate to early bone marrow progenitors. These findings show that transcription factors act as caretakers of differentiation level and not only as initiators.
Mutations in transcription factors are tightly connected to blood cancers, as acute myeloid leukemia (AML) or acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL). For example, Ikaros is known to be regulator of numerous biological events. Mice with no Ikaros lack B cells, Natural killer and T cells. Ikaros has six zinc fingers domains, four are conserved DNA-binding domain and two are for dimerization. Very important finding is, that different zinc fingers are involved in binding to different place in DNA and this is the reason for pleiotropic effect of Ikaros and different involvement in cancer, but mainly are mutations associated with BCR-Abl patients and it is bad prognostic marker.
Other animals
In some vertebrates, haematopoiesis can occur wherever there is a loose stroma of connective tissue and slow blood supply, such as the gut, spleen or kidney.
See also
Clonal hematopoiesis
Erythropoiesis-stimulating agents
Haematon
Haematopoietic stimulants:
Granulocyte colony-stimulating factor
Granulocyte macrophage colony-stimulating factor
Leukocyte extravasation
References
Further reading
External links
Hematopoietic cell lineage in KEGG
Hematopoiesis and bone marrow histology
Hematopoiesis
Histology | [
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14375 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hogmanay | Hogmanay | Hogmanay (; ) is the Scots word for the last day of the old year and is synonymous with the celebration of the New Year in the Scottish manner. It is normally followed by further celebration on the morning of New Year's Day (1 January) or in some cases, 2 January—a Scottish bank holiday.
The origins of Hogmanay are unclear, but it may be derived from Norse and Gaelic observances of the winter solstice. Customs vary throughout Scotland, and usually include gift-giving and visiting the homes of friends and neighbours, with special attention given to the first-foot, the first guest of the new year.
Etymology
The etymology of the word is obscure. The earliest proposed etymology comes from the 1693 Scotch Presbyterian Eloquence, which held that the term was a corruption of the (), or "holy month". The three main modern theories derive it from a French, Norse or Gaelic root.
The word is first recorded in a Latin entry in 1443 in the West Riding of Yorkshire as . The first appearance in English came in 1604 in the records of Elgin, as hagmonay. Subsequent 17th-century spellings include Hagmena (1677), Hogmynae night (1681), and Hagmane (1693) in an entry of the Scotch Presbyterian Eloquence.
Although Hogmanay is currently the predominant spelling and pronunciation, a number of variant spellings and pronunciations have been recorded, including:
Hoghmanay
Hagman(a)e
Hagmonay
Hagmonick
Hanginay (Roxburghshire)
Hangmanay
Hogernoany (Shetland)
Hogminay/Hogmenay/Hogmynae
Hoguemennay
Huggeranohni (Shetland)
Hu(i)gmanay
with the first syllable variously being , , , or .
Possible French etymologies
The term may have been introduced to Middle Scots via French. The most commonly cited explanation is a derivation from the northern French dialectal word , or variants such as , and , those being derived from 16th-century Middle French meaning either a gift given at New Year, a children's cry for such a gift, or New Year's Eve itself. The Oxford English Dictionary supports this theory, saying that the term is probably a borrowing of , a medieval French cry used to welcome the new year consisting of an unknown first element plus "" ("the new year").
This explanation is supported by a children's tradition, observed up to the 1960s in some parts of Scotland at least, of visiting houses in their locality on New Year's Eve and requesting and receiving small treats such as sweets or fruit. The second element would appear to be ('the New Year'), with some sources suggesting a druidical origin of the practice overall. Compare those to Norman and the obsolete customs in Jersey of crying , and in Guernsey of asking for an , for a New Year gift (see also ). In Québec, was a door-to-door collection for the poor.
Compare also the apparent Spanish cognate /, with a suggested Latin derivation of "in this year".
Other suggestions include ("lead to the mistletoe"), ('bring to the beggars'), ('at the mistletoe the new year', or ('(the) man is born').
Possible Goidelic etymologies
The word may have come from the Goidelic languages. Frazer and Kelley report a Manx new-year song that begins with the line To-night is New Year's Night, Hogunnaa but did not record the full text in Manx. Kelley himself uses the spelling whereas other sources parse this as and give the modern Manx form as Hob dy naa. Manx dictionaries though give (), generally glossing it as "Hallowe'en", same as many of the more Manx-specific folklore collections.
In this context it is also recorded that in the south of Scotland (for example Roxburghshire), there is no , the word thus being Hunganay, which could suggest the is intrusive.
Another theory occasionally encountered is a derivation from the phrase (, "I raised the cry"), which resembles Hogmanay in pronunciation and was part of the rhymes traditionally recited at New Year but it is unclear if this is simply a case of folk etymology.
Overall, Gaelic consistently refers to the New Year's Eve as ("the Night of the New Year") and ("the Night of the Calends").
Possible Norse etymologies
Some authors reject both the French and Goidelic theories, and instead suggest that the ultimate source both for the Norman French, Scots, and Goidelic variants of this word have a common Norse root. It is suggested that the full forms
"Hoginanaye-Trollalay/Hogman aye, Troll a lay" (with a Manx cognate )
"Hogmanay, Trollolay, give us of your white bread and none of your gray"
invoke the hill-men (Icelandic , compare Anglo-Saxon ) or "elves" and banishes the trolls into the sea (Norse 'into the sea'). Repp furthermore makes a link between "Trollalay/Trolla-laa" and the rhyme recorded in Percy's Relics: "Trolle on away, trolle on awaye. Synge heave and howe rombelowe trolle on away", which he reads as a straightforward invocation of troll-banning.
Origins
The roots of Hogmanay perhaps reach back to the celebration of the winter solstice among the Norse, as well as incorporating customs from the Gaelic celebration of Samhain. The Vikings celebrated Yule, which later contributed to the Twelve Days of Christmas, or the "Daft Days" as they were sometimes called in Scotland. Christmas was not celebrated as a festival and Hogmanay was the more traditional celebration in Scotland. This may have been a result of the Protestant Reformation after which Christmas was seen as "too Papist".
Hogmanay was also celebrated in the far north of England, down to and including Richmond. It was traditionally known as 'Hagmena' in Northumberland, 'Hogmina' in Cumberland, and 'Hagman-ha' or 'Hagman-heigh' in the North Riding of Yorkshire.
Customs
There are many customs, both national and local, associated with Hogmanay. The most widespread national custom is the practice of first-footing, which starts immediately after midnight. This involves being the first person to cross the threshold of a friend or neighbour and often involves the giving of symbolic gifts such as salt (less common today), coal, shortbread, whisky, and black bun (a rich fruit cake), intended to bring different kinds of luck to the householder. Food and drink (as the gifts) are then given to the guests. This may go on throughout the early hours of the morning and well into the next day (although modern days see people visiting houses well into the middle of January). The first-foot is supposed to set the luck for the rest of the year. Traditionally, tall, dark-haired men are preferred as the first-foot.
Local customs
An example of a local Hogmanay custom is the fireball swinging that takes place in Stonehaven, Aberdeenshire, in northeast Scotland. This involves local people making up "balls" of chicken wire filled with old newspaper, sticks, rags, and other dry flammable material up to a diameter of , each attached to about of wire, chain or nonflammable rope. As the Old Town House bell sounds to mark the new year, the balls are set alight and the swingers set off up the High Street from the Mercat Cross to the Cannon and back, swinging the burning balls around their heads as they go.
At the end of the ceremony, any fireballs that are still burning are cast into the harbour. Many people enjoy this display, and large crowds flock to see it, with 12,000 attending the 2007/2008 event. In recent years, additional attractions have been added to entertain the crowds as they wait for midnight, such as fire poi, a pipe band, street drumming and a firework display after the last fireball is cast into the sea. The festivities are now streamed live over the Internet.
Another example of a fire festival is the burning the clavie in the town of Burghead in Moray.
In the east coast fishing communities and Dundee, first-footers once carried a decorated herring. And in Falkland in Fife, local men marched in torchlight procession to the top of the Lomond Hills as midnight approached. Bakers in St Andrews baked special cakes for their Hogmanay celebration (known as "Cake Day") and distributed them to local children.
Institutions also had their own traditions. For example, amongst the Scottish regiments, officers waited on the men at special dinners while at the bells, the Old Year is piped out of barrack gates. The sentry then challenges the new escort outside the gates: "Who goes there?" The answer is "The New Year, all's well."
An old custom in the Highlands is to celebrate Hogmanay with the saining (Scots for 'protecting, blessing') of the household and livestock. Early on New Year's morning, householders drink and then sprinkle 'magic water' from 'a dead and living ford' around the house (a 'dead and living ford' refers to a river ford that is routinely crossed by both the living and the dead). After the sprinkling of the water in every room, on the beds and all the inhabitants, the house is sealed up tight and branches of juniper are set on fire and carried throughout the house and byre. The juniper smoke is allowed to thoroughly fumigate the buildings until it causes sneezing and coughing among the inhabitants. Then all the doors and windows are flung open to let in the cold, fresh air of the new year. The woman of the house then administers 'a restorative' from the whisky bottle, and the household sits down to its New Year breakfast.
"Auld Lang Syne"
The Hogmanay custom of singing "Auld Lang Syne" has become common in many countries. "Auld Lang Syne" is a Scots poem by Robert Burns, based on traditional and other earlier sources. It is now common to sing this in a circle of linked arms that are crossed over one another as the clock strikes midnight for New Year's Day, though it is only intended that participants link arms at the beginning of the final verse, before rushing in to the centre as a group.
In the media
Between 1957 and 1968, a New Year's Eve television programme, The White Heather Club, was presented to herald in the Hogmanay celebrations.
The show was presented by Andy Stewart, who always began by singing "Come in, come in, it's nice to see you...." The show always ended with Stewart and the cast singing, "Haste ye Back":
The performers were Jimmy Shand and band, Ian Powrie and his band, Scottish country dancers: Dixie Ingram and the Dixie Ingram Dancers, Joe Gordon Folk Four, James Urquhart, Ann & Laura Brand, Moira Anderson & Kenneth McKellar. All the male dancers and Andy Stewart wore kilts, and the female dancers wore long white dresses with tartan sashes.
Following the demise of the White Heather Club, Andy Stewart continued to feature regularly in TV Hogmanay shows until his retirement. His last appearance was in 1992.
In the 1980s comedian Andy Cameron presented the Hogmanay Show (on STV in 1983 and 1984 and from 1985 to 1990 on BBC Scotland) while Peter Morrison presented the show A Highland Hogmanay on STV/Grampian, axed in 1993.
For many years, a staple of New Year's Eve television programming in Scotland was the comedy sketch show Scotch and Wry, featuring the comedian Rikki Fulton, which invariably included a hilarious monologue from him as the gloomy Reverend I.M. Jolly.
Since 1993, the programmes that have been mainstays on BBC Scotland on Hogmanay have been Hogmanay Live and Jonathan Watson's football-themed sketch comedy show, Only an Excuse?.
Presbyterian influence
The 1693 Scotch Presbyterian Eloquence contained one of the first mentions of the holiday in official church records. Hogmanay was treated with general disapproval. Still, in Scotland Hogmanay and New Year's Day are as important as Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.
Although Christmas Day held its normal religious nature in Scotland amongst its Catholic and Episcopalian communities, the Presbyterian national church, the Church of Scotland, discouraged the celebration of Christmas for nearly 400 years; it only became a public holiday in Scotland in 1958. Conversely, 1 and 2 January are public holidays and Hogmanay still is associated with as much celebration as Christmas in Scotland.
Major celebrations
As in much of the world, the largest Scottish cities – Glasgow, Edinburgh and Aberdeen – hold all-night celebrations, as do Stirling and Inverness. The Edinburgh Hogmanay celebrations are among the largest in the world. Celebrations in Edinburgh in 1996–97 were recognised by the Guinness Book of Records as the world's largest New Years party, with approximately 400,000 people in attendance. Numbers were then restricted due to safety concerns.
In 2003-4 most of the organised events were cancelled at short notice due to very high winds. The Stonehaven Fireballs went ahead as planned, however, with some 6,000 people braving the stormy weather to watch 42 fireball swingers process along the High Street. Similarly, the 2006–07 celebrations in Edinburgh, Glasgow and Stirling were all cancelled on the day, again due to high winds and heavy rain. The Aberdeen celebration, however, went ahead, and was opened by pop music group Wet Wet Wet.
Many Hogmanay festivities were cancelled in 2020–21 and 2021–22 due to the COVID-19 pandemic in Scotland.
Ne'erday
Most Scots still celebrate New Year's Day with a special dinner, usually steak pie.
Handsel Day
Historically, presents were given in Scotland on the first Monday of the New Year. A roast dinner would be eaten to celebrate the festival. Handsel was a word for gift and hence "Handsel Day". In modern Scotland this practice has died out.
The period of festivities running from Christmas to Handsel Monday, including Hogmanay and Ne'erday, is known as the Daft Days.
Notes
See also
Christmas in Scotland
Calennig, the last day of the year in Wales
References
Observations on the Popular Antiquities of Great Britain, Brand, London, 1859
Dictiounnaire Angllais-Guernesiais, de Garis, Chichester, 1982
Dictionnaire Jersiais-Français, Le Maistre, Jersey, 1966
Dictionary of the Scots Language, Edinburgh
External links
Edinburgh's Hogmanay (official site)
Hogmanay.net
"The Origins, History and Traditions of Hogmanay", The British Newspaper Archive (31 December 2012)
Hogmanay traditional bonfire
Annual events in Scotland
December observances
Festivals in Scotland
Holidays in Scotland
New Year celebrations
Winter events in Scotland | [
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14376 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamster | Hamster | Hamsters are rodents (order Rodentia) belonging to the subfamily Cricetinae, which contains 19 species classified in seven genera. They have become established as popular small pets. The best-known species of hamster is the golden or Syrian hamster (Mesocricetus auratus), which is the type most commonly kept as pets. Other hamster species commonly kept as pets are the three species of dwarf hamster, Campbell's dwarf hamster (Phodopus campbelli), the winter white dwarf hamster (Phodopus sungorus) and the Roborovski hamster (Phodopus roborovskii).
Hamsters are more crepuscular than nocturnal and, in the wild, remain underground during the day to avoid being caught by predators. They feed primarily on seeds, fruits, and vegetation, and will occasionally eat burrowing insects. Physically, they are stout-bodied with distinguishing features that include elongated cheek pouches extending to their shoulders, which they use to carry food back to their burrows, as well as a short tail and fur-covered feet.
Classification
Taxonomists generally disagree about the most appropriate placement of the subfamily Cricetinae within the superfamily Muroidea. Some place it in a family Cricetidae that also includes voles, lemmings, and New World rats and mice; others group all these into a large family called Muridae. Their evolutionary history is recorded by 15 extinct fossil genera and extends back 11.2 million to 16.4 million years to the Middle Miocene Epoch in Europe and North Africa; in Asia it extends 6 million to 11 million years. Four of the seven living genera include extinct species. One extinct hamster of Cricetus, for example, lived in North Africa during the Middle Miocene, but the only extant member of that genus is the European or common hamster of Eurasia.
Subfamily Cricetinae
Genus Allocricetulus
Species A. curtatus—Mongolian hamster
Species A. eversmanni—Eversmann's or Kazakh hamster
Genus Cansumys
Species C. canus—Gansu hamster
Genus Cricetulus
Species C. alticola—Tibetan dwarf or Ladak hamster
Species C. barabensis, including "C. pseudogriseus" and "C. obscurus"—Chinese striped hamster, also called Chinese hamster; striped dwarf hamster
Species C. griseus—Chinese (dwarf) hamster, also called rat hamster
Species C. kamensis—Kam dwarf hamster or Tibetan hamster
Species C. longicaudatus—long-tailed dwarf hamster
Species C. migratorius—grey dwarf hamster, Armenian hamster, migratory grey hamster; grey hamster; migratory hamster
Species C. sokolovi—Sokolov's dwarf hamster
Genus Cricetus
Species C. cricetus—European hamster, also called common hamster or black-bellied field hamster
Genus Mesocricetus—golden hamsters
Species M. auratus—golden or Syrian hamster
Species M. brandti—Turkish hamster, also called Brandt's hamster; Azerbaijani hamster
Species M. newtoni—Romanian hamster
Species M. raddei—Ciscaucasian hamster
Genus Phodopus—dwarf hamsters
Species P. campbelli—Campbell's dwarf hamster
Species P. roborovskii—Roborovski hamster
Species P. sungorus—Djungarian hamster or winter-white Russian dwarf hamster
Genus Tscherskia
Species T. triton—greater long-tailed hamster, also called Korean hamster
Relationships among hamster species
Neumann et al. (2006) conducted a molecular phylogenetic analysis of 12 of the above 17 species using DNA sequence from three genes: 12S rRNA, cytochrome b, and von Willebrand factor. They uncovered the following relationships:
Phodopus group
The genus Phodopus was found to represent the earliest split among hamsters. Their analysis included both species. The results of another study suggest Cricetulus kamensis (and presumably the related C. alticola) might belong to either this Phodopus group or hold a similar basal position.
Mesocricetus group
The genus Mesocricetus also forms a clade. Their analysis included all four species, with M. auratus and M. raddei forming one subclade and M. brandti and M. newtoni another.
Remaining genera
The remaining genera of hamsters formed a third major clade. Two of the three sampled species within Cricetulus represent the earliest split. This clade contains C. barabensis (and presumably the related C. sokolovi) and C. longicaudatus.
Miscellaneous
The remaining clade contains members of Allocricetulus, Tscherskia, Cricetus, and C. migratorius. Allocricetulus and Cricetus were sister taxa. Cricetulus migratorius was their next closest relative, and Tscherskia was basal.
History
Although the Syrian hamster or golden hamster (Mesocricetus auratus) was first described scientifically by George Robert Waterhouse in 1839, researchers were not able to successfully breed and domesticate hamsters until 1939. The entire laboratory and pet populations of Syrian hamsters appear to be descendants of a single brother–sister pairing. These littermates were captured and imported in 1930 from Aleppo in Syria by Israel Aharoni, a zoologist of the University of Jerusalem. In Jerusalem, the hamsters bred very successfully. Years later, animals of this original breeding colony were exported to the United States, where Syrian hamsters became a common pet and laboratory animal. Comparative studies of domestic and wild Syrian hamsters have shown reduced genetic variability in the domestic strain. However, the differences in behavioral, chronobiological, morphometrical, hematological, and biochemical parameters are relatively small and fall into the expected range of interstrain variations in other laboratory animals.
Etymology
The name "hamster" is a loanword from the German, which itself derives from earlier Middle High German hamastra. It is possibly related to Old Church Slavonic khomestoru, which is either a blend of the root of Russian хомяк (khomyak) "hamster" and a Baltic word (cf. Lithuanian staras "hamster"); or of Persian origin (cf. Av hamaēstar "oppressor"). The collective noun for a group of hamsters is "horde". In German, the verb "hamstern" is derived from "Hamster". It means "Hoarding".
Description
Hamsters are typically stout-bodied, with tails shorter than body length, and have small, furry ears, short, stocky legs, and wide feet. They have thick, silky fur, which can be long or short, colored black, grey, honey, white, brown, yellow, red, or a mix, depending on the species. Two species of hamster belonging to the genus Phodopus, Campbell's dwarf hamster (P. campbelli) and the Djungarian hamster (P. sungorus), and two of the genus Cricetulus, the Chinese striped hamster (C. barabensis) and the Chinese hamster (C. griseus) have a dark stripe down their heads to their tails. The species of genus Phodopus are the smallest, with bodies long; the largest is the European hamster (Cricetus cricetus), measuring up to long, not including a short tail of up to .
The hamster tail can be difficult to see, as it is usually not very long (about the length of the body), with the exception of the Chinese hamster, which has a tail the same length as the body. One rodent characteristic that can be highly visible in hamsters is their sharp incisors; they have an upper pair and lower pair which grow continuously throughout life, so must be regularly worn down. Hamsters are very flexible, but their bones are somewhat fragile. They are extremely susceptible to rapid temperature changes and drafts, as well as extreme heat or cold.
Senses
Hamsters have poor eyesight; they are nearsighted and colorblind. Their eyesight leads to them not having a good sense of distance or knowing where they are. Even though their eyesight isn't good it doesn't stop a hamster from climbing their cages or even from them being adventurous. Hamsters can sense movement around at all times. This sense helps them protect themselves from harm in the wild but in a household situation it helps them sense when their owner may be near and might be going to pick them up. Hamsters have scent glands on their flanks (and abdomens in Chinese and dwarf hamsters) which they rub against the substrate, leaving a scent trail. Hamsters also use their sense of smell to distinguish between the sexes, and to locate food. Mother hamsters can also use their sense of smell to find their own babies and find out which ones aren't theirs. The scent glands can also be used to mark their territories, their babies, or their mate. Hamsters catch sounds by having their ears upright. They tend to learn similar noises and begin to know the sound of their food and even their owners voice. They are also particularly sensitive to high-pitched noises and can hear and communicate in the ultrasonic range.
Diet
Hamsters are omnivores which means they can eat meat and vegetables. Hamsters that live in the wild eat seeds, grass, and even insects. Although pet hamsters can survive on a diet of exclusively commercial hamster food, other items, such as vegetables, fruits, seeds, and nuts, can be given. Although store bought food is good for hamsters, it is best if fruits and vegetables were also in their diet because it keeps them healthier. Even though hamsters are allowed to have both fruits and vegetables, it is important to understand exactly which ones they can have and how much. Hamsters do best with fruits that don't have a lot of citrus in them and most green leafy vegetables. Hamsters should not be fed junk food, chocolate, garlic, or any salty/sugary foods. Hamsters tend to love peanut butter but it is important to feed it to them carefully because this sticky food can get stuck in their cheeks. Hamsters in the Middle East have been known to hunt in packs to find insects for food. Hamsters are hindgut fermenters and eat their own feces (coprophagy) to recover nutrients digested in the hind-gut, but not absorbed.
Behavior
Feeding
A behavioral characteristic of hamsters is food hoarding. They carry food in their spacious cheek pouches to their underground storage chambers. When full, the cheeks can make their heads double, or even triple in size. Hamsters lose weight during the autumn months in anticipation of winter. This occurs even when hamsters are kept as pets and is related to an increase in exercise.
Social behavior
Most hamsters are strictly solitary. If housed together, acute and chronic stress may occur, and they may fight fiercely, sometimes fatally. Dwarf hamster species may tolerate siblings or same-gender unrelated hamsters if introduced at an early enough age, but this cannot be guaranteed. Hamsters communicate through body language to one another and even to their owner. They communicate by sending a specific scent using their scent glands and also show body language to express how they are feeling.
Chronobiology
Hamsters can be described as nocturnal or crepuscular (active mostly at dawn and dusk). Khunen writes, "Hamsters are nocturnal rodents who are active during the night...", but others have written that because hamsters live underground during most of the day, only leaving their burrows for about an hour before sundown and then returning when it gets dark, their behavior is primarily crepuscular. Fritzsche indicated although some species have been observed to show more nocturnal activity than others, they are all primarily crepuscular.
In the wild Syrian hamsters can hibernate and allow their body temperature to fall close to ambient temperature. This kind of thermoregulation diminishes the metabolic rate to about 5% and helps the animal to considerably reduce the need for food during the winter. Hibernation can last up to one week but more commonly last 2–3 days. When kept as house pets the Syrian hamster does not hibernate.
Burrowing behavior
All hamsters are excellent diggers, constructing burrows with one or more entrances, with galleries connected to chambers for nesting, food storage, and other activities. They use their fore- and hindlegs, as well as their snouts and teeth, for digging. In the wild, the burrow buffers extreme ambient temperatures, offers relatively stable climatic conditions, and protects against predators. Syrian hamsters dig their burrows generally at a depth of 0.7 m. A burrow includes a steep entrance pipe (4–5 cm in diameter), a nesting and a hoarding chamber and a blind-ending branch for urination. Laboratory hamsters have not lost their ability to dig burrows; in fact, they will do this with great vigor and skill if they are provided with the appropriate substrate.
Wild hamsters will also appropriate tunnels made by other mammals; the Djungarian hamster, for instance, uses paths and burrows of the pika.
Reproduction
Fertility
Hamsters become fertile at different ages depending on their species. Both Syrian and Russian hamsters mature quickly and can begin reproducing at a young age (4–5 weeks), whereas Chinese hamsters will usually begin reproducing at two to three months of age, and Roborovskis at three to four months of age. The female's reproductive life lasts about 18 months, but male hamsters remain fertile much longer. Females are in estrus about every four days, which is indicated by a reddening of genital areas, a musky smell, and a hissing, squeaking vocalisation she will emit if she believes a male is nearby.
When seen from above, a sexually mature female hamster has a trim tail line; a male's tail line bulges on both sides. This might not be very visible in all species. Male hamsters typically have very large testes in relation to their body size. Before sexual maturity occurs, it is more difficult to determine a young hamster's sex. When examined, female hamsters have their anal and genital openings close together, whereas males have these two holes farther apart (the penis is usually withdrawn into the coat and thus appears as a hole or pink pimple).
Gestation and fecundity
Syrian hamsters are seasonal breeders and will produce several litters a year with several pups in each litter. The breeding season is from April to October in the Northern Hemisphere, with two to five litters of one to 13 young being born after a gestation period of 16 to 23 days. Dwarf hamsters breed all through the year. Gestation lasts 16 to 18 days for Syrian hamsters, 18 to 21 days for Russian hamsters, 21 to 23 days for Chinese hamsters and 23 to 30 for Roborovski hamsters. The average litter size for Syrian hamsters is about seven pups, but can be as great as 24, which is the maximum number of pups that can be contained in the uterus. Campbell's dwarf hamsters tend to have four to eight pups in a litter, but can have up to 13. Winter white hamsters tend to have slightly smaller litters, as do Chinese and Roborovski hamsters.
Intersexual aggression and cannibalism
Female Chinese and Syrian hamsters are known for being aggressive toward males if kept together for too long after mating. In some cases, male hamsters can die after being attacked by a female. If breeding hamsters, separation of the pair after mating is recommended, or they will attack each other.
Female hamsters are also particularly sensitive to disturbances while giving birth, and may even eat their own young if they think they are in danger, although sometimes they are just carrying the pups in their cheek pouches. If captive female hamsters are left for extended periods (three weeks or more) with their litter, they may cannibalize the litter, so the litter must be removed by the time the young can feed and drink independently.
Weaning
Hamsters are born hairless and blind in a nest the mother will have prepared in advance. After one week, they begin to explore outside the nest. Hamsters are capable of producing litters every month. Hamsters can be bred after they are three weeks old. It may be hard for the babies to not rely on their mother for nursing during this time, so it is important that they are supplied with food to make the transition from nursing to eating on their own easier. After the hamsters reach three weeks of age they are considered mature.
Longevity
Syrian hamsters typically live no more than two to three years in captivity, and less in the wild. Russian hamsters (Campbell's and Djungarian) live about two to four years in captivity, and Chinese hamsters –3 years. The smaller Roborovski hamster often lives to three years in captivity.
Society and culture
Hamsters as pets
The best-known species of hamster is the golden or Syrian hamster (Mesocricetus auratus), which is the type most commonly kept as pets. There are numerous Syrian hamster variations including long-haired varieties and different colors. British zoologist Leonard Goodwin claimed most hamsters kept in the United Kingdom were descended from the colony he introduced for medical research purposes during the Second World War. Hamsters were domesticated and kept as pets in the United States at least as early as 1942.
Other hamsters commonly kept as pets are the three species of dwarf hamster. Campbell's dwarf hamster (Phodopus campbelli) is the most common—they are also sometimes called "Russian dwarfs"; however, many hamsters are from Russia, so this ambiguous name does not distinguish them from other species appropriately. The coat of the winter white dwarf hamster (Phodopus sungorus) turns almost white during winter (when the hours of daylight decrease). The Roborovski hamster (Phodopus roborovskii) is extremely small and fast, making it difficult to keep as a pet.
Hamster shows
A hamster show is an event in which people gather hamsters to judge them against each other. Hamster shows are also places where people share their enthusiasm for hamsters among attendees. Hamster shows feature an exhibition of the hamsters participating in the judging.
The judging of hamsters usually includes a goal of promoting hamsters which conform to natural or established varieties of hamsters. By awarding hamsters which match standard hamster types, hamster shows encourage planned and careful hamster breeding.
Owner activism
When the first reported case of animal-to-human transmission of SARS-CoV-2 in Hong Kong took place via imported pet hamsters, researchers expressed difficulty in identifying some of the viral mutations within a global genomic data bank, leading city authorities to announce a mass cull of all hamsters purchased after December 22, 2021, which would affect roughly 2,000 animals. After the government 'strongly encouraged' citizens to turn in their pets, approximately 3,000 people joined underground activities to promote the adoption of abandoned hamsters throughout the city and to maintain pet ownership via methods such as the forgery of pet store purchase receipts. Some activists attempted to intercept owners who were on their way to turn in pet hamsters and encourage them to choose adoption instead, which the government subsequently warned would be subject to police action.
Hamsters as lab animals
The extracted cells of babies' kidneys and adults' ovaries are used to study cholesterol synthesis.
Similar animals
Some similar rodents sometimes called "hamsters" are not currently classified in the hamster subfamily Cricetinae. These include the maned hamster, or crested hamster, which is really the maned rat (Lophiomys imhausi). Others are the mouse-like hamsters (Calomyscus spp.), and the white-tailed rat (Mystromys albicaudatus).
See also
Syrian hamster care
Hamster cage
Hamster wheel
Hamster ball
Chinchilla
Ebichu
Gerbil
Guinea pig, a similar species
Hampster Dance
Hamster racing
Hamtaro
Rat
References
External links
National Hamster Council (UK)
Cricetidae
Articles containing video clips
Extant Miocene first appearances
Taxa named by Gotthelf Fischer von Waldheim | [
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14378 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History%20of%20Finland | History of Finland | The history of Finland begins around 9,000 BC during the end of the last glacial period. Stone Age cultures were Kunda, Comb Ceramic, Corded Ware, Kiukainen, and . The Finnish Bronze Age started in approximately 1,500 BC and the Iron Age started in 500 BC and lasted until 1,300 AD. Finnish Iron Age cultures can be separated into Finnish proper, Tavastian and Karelian cultures. The earliest written sources mentioning Finland start to appear from the 12th century onwards when the Catholic Church started to gain a foothold in Southwest Finland.
Due to the Northern Crusades and Swedish colonisation of some Finnish coastal areas, most of the region became a part of the Kingdom of Sweden and the realm of the Catholic Church from the 13th century onwards. After the Finnish War in 1809, Finland was ceded to the Russian Empire (excluding the areas of modern-day Northern Sweden where Meänkieli dialects of Finnish are spoken), making this area the autonomous Grand Duchy of Finland. The Lutheran religion dominated. Finnish nationalism emerged in the 19th century. It focused on Finnish cultural traditions, folklore, and mythology, including music and—especially—the highly distinctive language and lyrics associated with it. One product of this era was the Kalevala, one of the most significant works of Finnish literature. The catastrophic Finnish famine of 1866–1868 was followed by eased economic regulations and extensive emigration.
In 1917, Finland declared independence. A civil war between the Finnish Red Guards and the White Guard ensued a few months later, with the Whites gaining the upper hand during the springtime of 1918. After the internal affairs stabilized, the still mainly agrarian economy grew relatively quickly. Relations with the West, especially Sweden and Britain, were strong but tensions remained with the Soviet Union. During the Second World War, Finland fought twice against the Soviet Union, first defending its independence in the Winter War and then invading the Soviet Union in the Continuation War. In the peace settlement Finland ended up ceding a large part of Karelia and some other areas to the Soviet Union. However, Finland remained an independent democracy in Northern Europe.
In the latter half of its independent history, Finland has maintained a mixed economy. Since its post–World War II economic boom in the 1970s, Finland's GDP per capita has been among the world's highest. The expanded welfare state of Finland from 1970 and 1990 increased the public sector employees and spending and the tax burden imposed on the citizens. In 1992, Finland simultaneously faced economic overheating and depressed Western, Russian, and local markets. Finland joined the European Union in 1995, and replaced the Finnish markka with the euro in 2002. According to a 2016 poll, 61% of Finns preferred not to join NATO.
Stone Age
Paleolithic
If confirmed, the oldest archeological site in Finland would be the Wolf Cave in Kristinestad, in Ostrobothnia. The site would be the only pre-glacial (Neanderthal) site so far discovered in the Nordic Countries, and it is approximately 125,000 years old.
Mesolithic
The last ice age in the area of the modern-day Finland ended c. 9000 BC. Starting about that time, people migrated to the area of Finland from the South and South-East. Their culture represented mixture of Kunda, , and . At the same time, northern Finland was inhabited via the coast of Norway. The oldest confirmed evidence of the post-glacial human settlements in Finland are from the area of Ristola in Lahti and from Orimattila, from c. 8900 BC. Finland has been continuously inhabited at least since the end of the last ice age, up to the present. The earliest post-glacial inhabitants of the present-day area of Finland were probably mainly seasonal hunter-gatherers. Among finds is the net of Antrea, the oldest fishing net known ever to have been excavated (calibrated carbon dating: ca. 8300 BC).
Neolithic
By 5300 BC, pottery was present in Finland. The earliest samples belong to the Comb Ceramic cultures, known for their distinctive decorating patterns. This marks the beginning of the neolithic period for Finland, although subsistence was still based on hunting and fishing. Extensive networks of exchange existed across Finland and northeastern Europe during the 5th millennium BC. For example, flint from Scandinavia and the Valdai Hills, amber from Scandinavia and the Baltic region, and slate from Scandinavia and Lake Onega found their way into Finnish archaeological sites, while asbestos and soap stone from Finland (e.g. the area of Saimaa) were found in other regions. Rock paintings—apparently related to shamanistic and totemistic belief systems—have been found, especially in Eastern Finland, e.g. Astuvansalmi.
Between 3500 and 2000 BC, monumental stone enclosures colloquially known as Giant's Churches () were constructed in the Ostrobothnia region. The purpose of the enclosures is unknown.
In recent years, a dig in Kierikki site north of Oulu on River Ii has changed the image of Finnish neolithic Stone Age culture. The site had been inhabited year round and its inhabitants traded extensively. Kierikki culture is also seen as a subtype of Comb Ceramic culture. More of the site is excavated annually.
From 3200 BC onwards, either immigrants or a strong cultural influence from south of the Gulf of Finland settled in southwestern Finland. This culture was a part of the European Battle Axe cultures, which have often been associated with the movement of the Indo-European speakers. The Battle Axe, or Cord Ceramic, culture seems to have practiced agriculture and animal husbandry outside of Finland, but the earliest confirmed traces of agriculture in Finland date later, approximately to the 2nd millennium BC. Further inland, the societies retained their hunting-gathering lifestyles for the time being.
The Battle Axe and Comb Ceramic cultures eventually merged, giving rise to the Kiukainen culture that existed between 2300 BC, and 1500 BC, and was fundamentally a comb ceramic tradition with cord ceramic characteristics.
Bronze Age
The Bronze Age began some time after 1500 BC. The coastal regions of Finland were a part of the Nordic Bronze Culture, whereas in the inland regions the influences came from the bronze-using cultures of northern and eastern Russia.
Iron Age
The Iron Age in Finland is considered to last from c. 500 BC until c. 1300 AD. Written records of Finland become more common due to the Northern Crusades lead by the Catholic Church in the 12 and 13th century. As the Finnish Iron Age lasted almost two millennia, it is further divided into six sub-periods:
Pre-Roman period: 500 BC – 1 BC
Roman period: 1 AD – 400 AD
Migration period: 400 AD – 575 AD
Merovingian period: 575 AD – 800 AD
Viking age period: 800 AD – 1025 AD
Crusade period: 1033 AD – 1300 AD
Very few written records of Finland or its people remain in any language of the era. Written sources are of foreign origin, which include Tacitus' description of Fenni in his work Germania, runestones, the sagas written down by Snorri Sturluson, as well as the 12th- and 13th-century ecclesiastical letters by the Pope. Numerous other sources from the Roman period onwards contain brief mentions of ancient Finnish kings and place names, as such defining Finland as a kingdom and noting the culture of its people.
The oldest surviving mention of the word Suomi (Finland in Finnish) is in the annals of the Frankish Empire written between 741 and 829. At 811, annals mention a person named Suomi in connection with a peace agreement. The name Suomi as the name of Finland is now days used in Finnic languages, Sámi, Latvian, Lithuanian and Scottish Gaelic.
Currently the oldest known Scandinavian documents mentioning Finland are two runestones: Söderby, Sweden, with the inscription (U 582), and Gotland with the inscription (G 319) dating from the 11th century. However, as the long continuum of the Finnish Iron Age into the historical Medieval period of Europe suggests, the primary source of information of the era in Finland is based on archaeological findings and modern applications of natural scientific methods like those of DNA analysis or computer linguistics.
Production of iron during the Finnish Iron Age was adopted from the neighboring cultures in the east, west and south about the same time as the first imported iron artifacts appear. This happened almost simultaneously in various parts of the country.
Pre-Roman period: 500 BC – 1 BC
The Pre-Roman period of the Finnish Iron Age is scarcest in findings, but the known ones suggest that cultural connections to other Baltic cultures were already established. The archeological findings of Pernaja and Savukoski provides proof of this argument. Many of the era's dwelling sites are the same as those of the Neolithic. Most of the iron of the era was produced on site.
Roman period: 1 AD – 400 AD
The Roman period brought along an influx of imported iron (and other) artifacts like Roman wine glasses and dippers as well as various coins of the Empire. During this period the (proto) Finnish culture stabilized on the coastal regions and larger graveyards become commonplace. The prosperity of the Finns rose to the level that the vast majority of gold treasures found within Finland date back to this period.
Migration period: 400 AD – 575 AD
The Migration period saw the expansion of land cultivation inland, especially in Southern Bothnia, and the growing influence of Germanic cultures, both in artifacts like swords and other weapons and in burial customs. However most iron as well as its forging was of domestic origin, probably from bog iron.
Merovingian period: 575 AD – 800 AD
The Merovingian period in Finland gave rise to distinctive fine crafts culture of its own, visible in the original decorations of domestically produced weapons and jewelry. Finest luxury weapons were, however, imported from Western Europe. The very first Christian burials are from the latter part of this era as well. In the Leväluhta burial findings the average height of a man was originally thought to be just 158 cm and that of a woman 147 cm. but the recent research has corrected these numbers upwards and has confirmed that the people buried in Leväluhta were of average height for the era in Europe.
Recent findings suggest that Finnish trade connections already became more active during the 8th century bringing an influx of silver onto Finnish markets. The opening of the eastern route to Constantinople via Finland's southern coastline archipelago brought Arabic and Byzantine artifacts into the excavation findings of the era.
The earliest findings of imported iron blades and local iron working appear in 500 BC. From about 50 AD, there are indications of a more intense long-distance exchange of goods in coastal Finland. Inhabitants exchanged their products, presumably mostly furs, for weapons and ornaments with the Balts and the Scandinavians as well as with the peoples along the traditional eastern trade routes. The existence of richly furnished burials, usually with weapons, suggests that there was a chiefly elite in the southern and western parts of the country. Hillforts spread over most of southern Finland at the end of the Iron and early Medieval Age. There is no commonly accepted evidence of early state formations in Finland, and the presumably Iron Age origins of urbanization are contested.
Chronology of languages in Finland
The question of the timelines for the evolution and the spreading of the current Finnish languages is controversial, and new theories challenging older ones have been introduced continuously.
It is widely believed that Finno-Ugric (the western branch of the Uralic) languages were first spoken in Finland and the adjacent areas during the Comb Ceramic period, around 4000 BC at the latest. During the 2nd millennium BC these evolved—possibly under an Indo-European (most likely Baltic) influence—into proto-Sami (inland) and Proto-Finnic (coastland). In contrast, A. Aikio and K. Häkkinen propose that the Finno-Ugric languages arrived in the Gulf of Finland area around 2000 BC or later in the Bronze Age, as result of an early Bronze Age Uralic language expansion possibly connected to the Seima-Turbino phenomenon. This would also imply that Finno-Ugric languages in Finland were preceded by a Northwestern Indo-European language, at least to the extent the latter can be associated with the Cord Ceramic culture, as well as by hitherto unknown Paleo-European languages. The center of expansion for the Proto-Finnic language is posited to have been located on the southern coast of the Gulf of Finland. The Finnish language is thought to have started to differentiate during the Iron Age starting from the earliest centuries of the Common Era.
Cultural influences from a variety of places are visible in the Finnish archaeological finds from the very first settlements onwards. For example, archaeological finds from Finnish Lapland suggest the presence of the Komsa culture from Norway. The Sujala finds, which are equal in age with the earliest Komsa artifacts, may also suggest a connection to the Swiderian culture. Southwestern Finland belonged to the Nordic Bronze Age, which may be associated with Indo-European languages, and according to Finnish Germanist Jorma Koivulehto speakers of Proto-Germanic language in particular. Artifacts found in Kalanti and the province of Satakunta, which have long been monolingually Finnish, and their place names have made several scholars argue for an existence of a proto-Germanic speaking population component a little later, during the Early and Middle Iron Age.
The Swedish colonisation of the Åland Islands, Turku archipelago and Uusimaa could possibly have started in the 12th century but reached its height in the 13th and 14th centuries, when it also affected the Eastern Uusimaa and Pohjanmaa regions. The oldest Swedish place names in Finland are from this period as well as the Swedish-speaking population of Finland.
Finland under Swedish rule
Middle Ages
Contact between Sweden and what is now Finland was considerable even during pre-Christian times; the Vikings were known to the Finns due to their participation in both commerce and plundering. There is possible evidence of Viking settlement in the Finnish mainland. The Åland Islands probably had Swedish settlement during the Viking Period. However, some scholars claim that the archipelago was deserted during the 11th century.
According to the archaeological finds, Christianity gained a foothold in Finland during the 11th century. According to the very few written documents that have survived, the church in Finland was still in its early development in the 12th century. Later medieval legends from late 13th century describe Swedish attempts to conquer and Christianize Finland sometime in the mid-1150s.
In the early 13th century, Bishop Thomas became the first known bishop of Finland. There were several secular powers who aimed to bring the Finnish tribes under their rule. These were Sweden, Denmark, the Republic of Novgorod in northwestern Russia, and probably the German crusading orders as well. Finns had their own chiefs, but most probably no central authority. At the time there can be seen three cultural areas or tribes in Finland: Finns, Tavastians and Karelians. Russian chronicles indicate there were several conflicts between Novgorod and the Finnic tribes from the 11th or 12th century to the early 13th century.
It was the Swedish regent, Birger Jarl, who allegedly established Swedish rule in Finland through the Second Swedish Crusade, most often dated to 1249. The Eric Chronicle, the only source narrating the crusade, describes that it was aimed at Tavastians. A papal letter from 1237 states that the Tavastians had reverted from Christianity to their old ethnic faith.
Novgorod gained control in Karelia in 1278, the region inhabited by speakers of Eastern Finnish dialects. Sweden however gained the control of Western Karelia with the Third Swedish Crusade in 1293. Western Karelians were from then on viewed as part of the western cultural sphere, while eastern Karelians turned culturally to Russia and Orthodoxy. While eastern Karelians remain linguistically and ethnically closely related to the Finns, they are generally considered a separate people. Thus, the northern part of the border between Catholic and Orthodox Christendom came to lie at the eastern border of what would become Finland with the Treaty of Nöteborg with Novgorod in 1323.
During the 13th century, Finland was integrated into medieval European civilization. The Dominican order arrived in Finland around 1249 and came to exercise great influence there. In the early 14th century, the first records of Finnish students at the Sorbonne appear. In the southwestern part of the country, an urban settlement evolved in Turku. Turku was one of the biggest towns in the Kingdom of Sweden, and its population included German merchants and craftsmen. Otherwise the degree of urbanization was very low in medieval Finland. Southern Finland and the long coastal zone of the Gulf of Bothnia had a sparse farming settlements, organized as parishes and castellanies. In the other parts of the country a small population of Sami hunters, fishermen, and small-scale farmers lived. These were exploited by the Finnish and Karelian tax collectors. During the 12th and 13th centuries, great numbers of Swedish settlers moved to the southern and northwestern coasts of Finland, to the Åland Islands, and to the archipelago between Turku and the Åland Islands. In these regions, the Swedish language is widely spoken even today. Swedish came to be the language of the upper class in many other parts of Finland as well.
The name Finland originally signified only the southwestern province, which has been known as Finland Proper since the 18th century. The first known mention of Finland is in runestone Gs 13 from the 11th century. The original Swedish term for the realm's eastern part was ('Eastern Lands'), a plural, meaning the area of Finland Proper, Tavastia, and Karelia. This was later replaced by the singular form Österland, which was in use between 1350 and 1470. In the 15th century Finland began to be used synonymously with Österland. The concept of a Finnish country in the modern sense developed slowly from the 15th to 18th centuries.
During the 13th century, the bishopric of Turku was established. Turku Cathedral was the center of the cult of Saint Henry of Uppsala, and naturally the cultural center of the bishopric. The bishop had ecclesiastical authority over much of today's Finland, and was usually the most powerful man there. Bishops were often Finns, whereas the commanders of castles were more often Scandinavian or German noblemen. In 1362, representatives from Finland were called to participate in the elections for the king of Sweden. As such, that year is often considered when Finland was incorporated into the Kingdom of Sweden. As in the Scandinavian part of the kingdom, the gentry or (lower) nobility consisted of magnates and yeomen who could afford armament for a man and a horse; these were concentrated in the southern part of Finland.
The strong fortress of Viborg (Finnish: , Russian: ) guarded the eastern border of Finland. Sweden and Novgorod signed the Treaty of Nöteborg ( in Finnish) in 1323, but that did not last long. In 1348 the Swedish king Magnus Eriksson staged a failed crusade against Orthodox "heretics", managing only to alienate his supporters and ultimately lose his crown. The bones of contention between Sweden and Novgorod were the northern coastline of the Gulf of Bothnia and the wilderness regions of Savo in Eastern Finland. Novgorod considered these as hunting and fishing grounds of its Karelian subjects, and protested against the slow infiltration of Catholic settlers from the West. Occasional raids and clashes between Swedes and Novgorodians occurred during the late 14th and 15th centuries, but for most of the time an uneasy peace prevailed.
During the 1380s, a civil war in the Scandinavian part of Sweden brought unrest to Finland as well. The victor of this struggle was Queen Margaret I of Denmark, who brought the three Scandinavian kingdoms of Sweden, Denmark and, Norway under her rule (the Kalmar Union) in 1389. The next 130 years or so were characterized by attempts of different Swedish factions to break out of the Union. Finland was sometimes involved in these struggles, but in general the 15th century seems to have been a relatively prosperous time, characterized by population growth and economic development. Towards the end of the 15th century, however, the situation on the eastern border became more tense. The Principality of Moscow conquered Novgorod, preparing the way for a unified Russia, and from 1495 to 1497 a war was fought between Sweden and Russia. The fortress-town of Viborg withstood a Russian siege; according to a contemporary legend, it was saved by a miracle.
16th century
In 1521 the Kalmar Union collapsed and Gustav Vasa became the King of Sweden. During his rule, the Swedish church was reformed. The state administration underwent extensive reforms and development too, giving it a much stronger grip on the life of local communities—and ability to collect higher taxes. Following the policies of the Reformation, in 1551 Mikael Agricola, bishop of Turku, published his translation of the New Testament into the Finnish language.
In 1550 Helsinki was founded by Gustav Vasa under the name of Helsingfors, but remained little more than a fishing village for more than two centuries.
King Gustav Vasa died in 1560 and his crown was passed to his three sons in separate turns. King Erik XIV started an era of expansion when the Swedish crown took the city of Tallinn in Estonia under its protection in 1561. This action contributed to the early stages of the Livonian War which was a warlike era which lasted for 160 years. In the first phase, Sweden fought for the lordship of Estonia and Latvia against Denmark, Poland and Russia. The common people of Finland suffered because of drafts, high taxes, and abuse by military personnel. This resulted in the Cudgel War of 1596–1597, a desperate peasant rebellion, which was suppressed brutally and bloodily. A peace treaty (the Treaty of Teusina) with Russia in 1595 moved the border of Finland further to the east and north, very roughly where the modern border lies.
An important part of the 16th-century history of Finland was growth of the area settled by the farming population. The crown encouraged farmers from the province of Savonia to settle the vast wilderness regions in Middle Finland. This often forced the original Sami population to leave. Some of the wilderness settled was traditional hunting and fishing territory of Karelian hunters. During the 1580s, this resulted in a bloody guerrilla warfare between the Finnish settlers and Karelians in some regions, especially in Ostrobothnia.
17th century
In 1611–1632 Sweden was ruled by King Gustavus Adolphus, whose military reforms transformed the Swedish army from a peasant militia into an efficient fighting machine, possibly the best in Europe. The conquest of Livonia was now completed, and some territories were taken from internally divided Russia in the Treaty of Stolbova. In 1630, the Swedish (and Finnish) armies marched into Central Europe, as Sweden had decided to take part in the great struggle between Protestant and Catholic forces in Germany, known as the Thirty Years' War. The Finnish light cavalry was known as the Hakkapeliitat.
After the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, the Swedish Empire was one of the most powerful countries in Europe. During the war, several important reforms had been made in Finland:
1637–1640 and 1648–1654: Count Per Brahe functioned as general governor of Finland. Many important reforms were made and many towns were founded. His period of administration is generally considered very beneficial to the development of Finland.
1640: Finland's first university, the Academy of Åbo, was founded in Turku at the proposal of Count Per Brahe by Queen Christina of Sweden.
1642: the whole Bible was published in Finnish.
However, the high taxation, continuing wars and the cold climate (the Little Ice Age) made the Imperial era of Sweden rather gloomy times for Finnish peasants. In 1655–1660, the Northern Wars were fought, taking Finnish soldiers to the battle-fields of Livonia, Poland and Denmark. In 1676, the political system of Sweden was transformed into an absolute monarchy.
In Middle and Eastern Finland, great amounts of tar were produced for export. European nations needed this material for the maintenance of their fleets. According to some theories, the spirit of early capitalism in the tar-producing province of Ostrobothnia may have been the reason for the witch-hunt wave that happened in this region during the late 17th century. The people were developing more expectations and plans for the future, and when these were not realized, they were quick to blame witches—according to a belief system the Lutheran church had imported from Germany.
The Empire had a colony in the New World in the modern-day Delaware-Pennsylvania area between 1638 and 1655. At least half of the immigrants were of Finnish origin.
The 17th century was an era of very strict Lutheran orthodoxy. In 1608, the law of Moses was declared the law of the land, in addition to secular legislation. Every subject of the realm was required to confess the Lutheran faith and church attendance was mandatory. Ecclesiastical penalties were widely used. The rigorous requirements of orthodoxy were revealed in the dismissal of the Bishop of Turku, Johan Terserus, who wrote a catechism which was decreed heretical in 1664 by the theologians of the Academy of Åbo. On the other hand, the Lutheran requirement of the individual study of Bible prompted the first attempts at wide-scale education. The church required from each person a degree of literacy sufficient to read the basic texts of the Lutheran faith. Although the requirements could be fulfilled by learning the texts by heart, also the skill of reading became known among the population.
In 1696–1699, a famine caused by climate decimated Finland. A combination of an early frost, the freezing temperatures preventing grain from reaching Finnish ports, and a lackluster response from the Swedish government saw about one-third of the population die. Soon afterwards, another war determining Finland's fate began (the Great Northern War of 1700–21).
18th century
The Great Northern War (1700–1721) was devastating, as Sweden and Russia fought for control of the Baltic. Harsh conditions—worsening poverty and repeated crop failures—among peasants undermined support for the war, leading to Sweden's defeat. Finland was a battleground as both armies ravaged the countryside, leading to famine, epidemics, social disruption and the loss of nearly half the population. By 1721 only 250,000 remained. Landowners had to pay higher wages to keep their peasants. Russia was the winner, annexing the south-eastern part, including the town of Viborg, after the Treaty of Nystad. The border with Russia came to lie roughly where it returned to after World War II. Sweden's status as a European great power was forfeited, and Russia was now the leading power in the North. The absolute monarchy ended in Sweden. During this Age of Liberty, the Parliament ruled the country, and the two parties of the Hats and Caps struggled for control leaving the lesser Court party, i.e. parliamentarians with close connections to the royal court, with little to no influence. The Caps wanted to have a peaceful relationship with Russia and were supported by many Finns, while other Finns longed for revenge and supported the Hats.
Finland by this time was depopulated, with a population in 1749 of 427,000. However, with peace the population grew rapidly, and doubled before 1800. 90% of the population were typically classified as peasants, most being free taxed yeomen. Society was divided into four Estates: peasants (free taxed yeomen), the clergy, nobility and burghers. A minority, mostly cottagers, were estateless, and had no political representation. Forty-five percent of the male population were enfranchised with full political representation in the legislature—although clerics, nobles and townsfolk had their own chambers in the parliament, boosting their political influence and excluding the peasantry on matters of foreign policy.
The mid-18th century was a relatively good time, partly because life was now more peaceful. However, during the Lesser Wrath (1741–1742), Finland was again occupied by the Russians after the government, during a period of Hat party dominance, had made a botched attempt to reconquer the lost provinces. Instead the result of the Treaty of Åbo was that the Russian border was moved further to the west. During this time, Russian propaganda hinted at the possibility of creating a separate Finnish kingdom.
Both the ascending Russian Empire and pre-revolutionary France aspired to have Sweden as a client state. Parliamentarians and others with influence were susceptible to taking bribes which they did their best to increase. The integrity and the credibility of the political system waned, and in 1771 the young and charismatic king Gustav III staged a coup d'état, abolished parliamentarism and reinstated royal power in Sweden—more or less with the support of the parliament. In 1788, he started a new war against Russia. Despite a couple of victorious battles, the war was fruitless, managing only to bring disturbance to the economic life of Finland. The popularity of King Gustav III waned considerably. During the war, a group of officers made the famous Anjala declaration demanding peace negotiations and calling of the (Parliament). An interesting sideline to this process was the conspiracy of some Finnish officers, who attempted to create an independent Finnish state with Russian support. After an initial shock, Gustav III crushed this opposition. In 1789, the new constitution of Sweden strengthened the royal power further, as well as improving the status of the peasantry. However, the continuing war had to be finished without conquests—and many Swedes now considered the king as a tyrant.
With the interruption of the Gustav III's war (1788–1790), the last decades of the 18th century had been an era of development in Finland. New things were changing even everyday life, such as starting of potato farming after the 1750s. New scientific and technical inventions were seen. The first hot air balloon in Finland (and in the whole Swedish kingdom) was made in Oulu (Uleåborg) in 1784, only a year after it was invented in France. Trade increased and the peasantry was growing more affluent and self-conscious. The Age of Enlightenment's climate of broadened debate in the society on issues of politics, religion and morals would in due time highlight the problem that the overwhelming majority of Finns spoke only Finnish, but the cascade of newspapers, belles-lettres and political leaflets was almost exclusively in Swedish—when not in French.
The two Russian occupations had been harsh and were not easily forgotten. These occupations were a seed of a feeling of separateness and otherness, that in a narrow circle of scholars and intellectuals at the university in Turku was forming a sense of a separate Finnish identity representing the eastern part of the realm. The shining influence of the Russian imperial capital Saint Petersburg was also much stronger in southern Finland than in other parts of Sweden, and contacts across the new border dispersed the worst fears for the fate of the educated and trading classes under a Russian régime. At the turn of the 19th century, the Swedish-speaking educated classes of officers, clerics and civil servants were mentally well prepared for a shift of allegiance to the strong Russian Empire.
King Gustav III was assassinated in 1792, and his son Gustav IV Adolf assumed the crown after a period of regency. The new king was not a particularly talented ruler; at least not talented enough to steer his kingdom through the dangerous era of the French Revolution and Napoleonic wars.
Meanwhile, the Finnish areas belonging to Russia after the peace treaties in 1721 and 1743 (not including Ingria), called "Old Finland" were initially governed with the old Swedish laws (a not uncommon practice in the expanding Russian Empire in the 18th century). However, gradually the rulers of Russia granted large estates of land to their non-Finnish favorites, ignoring the traditional landownership and peasant freedom laws of Old Finland. There were even cases where the noblemen punished peasants corporally, for example by flogging. The overall situation caused decline in the economy and morale in Old Finland, worsened since 1797 when the area was forced to send men to the Imperial Army. The construction of military installations in the area brought thousands of non-Finnish people to the region. In 1812, after the Russian conquest of Finland, "Old Finland" was rejoined to the rest of the country but the landownership question remained a serious problem until the 1870s.
Peasants
While the king of Sweden sent in his governor to rule Finland, in day to day reality the villagers ran their own affairs using traditional local assemblies (called the ting) which selected a local , or lawman, to enforce the norms. The Swedes used the parish system to collect taxes. The (local parish) was at once a community religious organization and a judicial district that administered the king's law. The ting participated in the taxation process; taxes were collected by the bailiff, a royal appointee.
In contrast to serfdom in Germany and Russia, the Finnish peasant was typically a freeholder who owned and controlled his small plot of land. There was no serfdom in which peasants were permanently attached to specific lands, and were ruled by the owners of that land. In Finland (and Sweden) the peasants formed one of the four estates and were represented in the parliament. Outside the political sphere, however, the peasants were considered at the bottom of the social order—just above vagabonds. The upper classes looked down on them as excessively prone to drunkenness and laziness, as clannish and untrustworthy, and especially as lacking honor and a sense of national spirit. This disdain dramatically changed in the 19th century when everyone idealised the peasant as the true carrier of Finnishness and the national ethos, as opposed to the Swedish-speaking elites.
The peasants were not passive; they were proud of their traditions and would band together and fight to uphold their traditional rights in the face of burdensome taxes from the king or new demands by the landowning nobility. The great Cudgel War in the south in 1596–1597 attacked the nobles and their new system of state feudalism; this bloody revolt was similar to other contemporary peasant wars in Europe. In the north, there was less tension between nobles and peasants and more equality among peasants, due to the practice of subdividing farms among heirs, to non farm economic activities, and to the small numbers of nobility and gentry. Often the nobles and landowners were paternalistic and helpful. The Crown usually sided with the nobles, but after the "restitution" of the 1680s it ended the practice of the nobility extracting labor from the peasants and instead began a new tax system whereby royal bureaucrats collected taxes directly from the peasants, who disliked the efficient new system. After 1800 growing population pressure resulted in larger numbers of poor crofters and landless laborers and the impoverishment of small farmers.
Historical population of Finland
1150: 20,000–40,000
1550: 300,000
1750: 428,000
1770: 561,000
1790: 706,000
1810: 863,000
1830: 1,372,000
1850: 1,637,000
1870: 1,769,000
1890: 2,380,000
1910: 2,943,000
1930: 3,463,000
1950: 4,030,000
1970: 4,598,000
1990: 4,977,000
2010: 5,375,000
2015: 5,500,000
2020: 5,531,000
Russian Grand Duchy
During the Finnish War between Sweden and Russia, Finland was again conquered by the armies of Tsar Alexander I. The four Estates of occupied Finland were assembled at the Diet of Porvoo on March 29, 1809 to pledge allegiance to Alexander I of Russia. Following the Swedish defeat in the war and the signing of the Treaty of Fredrikshamn on September 17, 1809, Finland remained a Grand Duchy in the Russian Empire until the end of 1917, with the czar as Grand Duke. Russia assigned Karelia ("Old Finland") to the Grand Duchy in 1812. During the years of Russian rule the degree of autonomy varied. Periods of censorship and political prosecution occurred, particularly in the two last decades of Russian control, but the Finnish peasantry remained free (unlike the Russian serfs) as the old Swedish law remained effective (including the relevant parts from Gustav III's Constitution of 1772). The old four-chamber Diet was re-activated in the 1860s agreeing to supplementary new legislation concerning internal affairs. In addition, Finns remained free of obligations connected to the empire, such as the duty to serve in tsarist armies, and they enjoyed certain rights that citizens from other parts of the empire did not have.
Economy
Before 1860 overseas merchant firms and the owners of landed estates had accumulated wealth that became available for industrial investments. After 1860 the government liberalized economic laws and began to build a suitable physical infrastructure of ports, railroads and telegraph lines. The domestic market was small but rapid growth took place after 1860 in export industries drawing on forest resources and mobile rural laborers. Industrialization began during the mid-19th century from forestry to industry, mining and machinery and laid the foundation of Finland's current day prosperity, even though agriculture employed a relatively large part of the population until the post–World War II era.
The beginnings of industrialism took place in Helsinki. Alfred Kihlman (1825–1904) began as a Lutheran priest and director of the elite Helsingfors boys' school, the Swedish Normal Lyceum. He became a financier and member of the diet. There was little precedent in Finland in the 1850s for raising venture capital. Kihlman was well connected and enlisted businessmen and capitalists to invest in new enterprises. In 1869, he organized a limited partnership that supported two years of developmental activities that led to the founding of the Nokia company in 1871.
After 1890 industrial productivity stagnated because entrepreneurs were unable to keep up with technological innovations made by competitors in Germany, Britain and the United States. However, Russification opened up a large Russian market especially for machinery.
Nationalism
The Finnish national awakening in the mid-19th century was the result of members of the Swedish-speaking upper classes deliberately choosing to promote Finnish culture and language as a means of nation building, i.e. to establish a feeling of unity among all people in Finland including (and not of least importance) between the ruling elite and the ruled peasantry. The publication in 1835 of the Finnish national epic, the Kalevala, a collection of traditional myths and legends which is the folklore of the Karelian people (the Finnic Eastern Orthodox people who inhabit the Lake Ladoga-region of eastern Finland and present-day NW Russia), stirred the nationalism that later led to Finland's independence from Russia.
Particularly following Finland's incorporation into the Swedish central administration during the 16th and 17th centuries, Swedish was spoken by about 15% of the population, especially the upper and middle classes. Swedish was the language of administration, public institutions, education and cultural life. Only the peasants spoke Finnish. The emergence of Finnish to predominance resulted from a 19th-century surge of Finnish nationalism, aided by Russian bureaucrats attempting to separate Finns from Sweden and to ensure the Finns' loyalty.
In 1863, the Finnish language gained an official position in administration. In 1892 Finnish finally became an equal official language and gained a status comparable to that of Swedish. Nevertheless, the Swedish language continued to be the language of culture, arts and business all the way to the 1920s.
Movements toward Finnish national pride, as well as liberalism in politics and economics involved ethnic and class dimensions. The nationalist movement against Russia began with the Fennoman movement led by Hegelian philosopher Johan Vilhelm Snellman in the 1830s. Snellman sought to apply philosophy to social action and moved the basis of Finnish nationalism to establishment of the language in the schools, while remaining loyal to the czar. Fennomania became the Finnish Party in the 1860s.
Liberalism was the central issue of the 1860s to 1880s. The language issue overlapped both liberalism and nationalism, and showed some a class conflict as well, with the peasants pitted against the conservative Swedish-speaking landowners and nobles. Finnish activists divided themselves into "old" (no compromise on the language question and conservative nationalism) and "young" (liberation from Russia) Finns. The leading liberals were Swedish-speaking intellectuals who called for more democracy; they became the radical leaders after 1880. The liberals organized for social democracy, labor unions, farmer cooperatives, and women's rights.
Nationalism was contested by the pro-Russian element and by the internationalism of the labor movement. The result was a tendency to class conflict over nationalism, but the early 1900s the working classes split into the Valpas (class struggle emphasis) and Mäkelin (nationalist emphasis).
Religion
During Russian rule, Lutheranism and Eastern Orthodoxy were official religions of the Finnish Grand Duchy. The Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland was separated from Church of Sweden in the early 1800th century. Immediately after the Finnish War, Finnish Lutheran clergy feared state-led proselytism to Orthodoxy. The majority of Finns were Lutheran Christians, but an ancient prominent Orthodox minority lived in Karelian Isthmus and Ladoga Karelia. The monasteries of Valaam and Konevets were important religious centres and pilgrimage sites of Orthodox faithful. There were also Orthodox churches built in Finnish cities and towns, where there were Russian garrisons. During this period, Roman Catholism, Judaism and Islam came to Finland with Russian soldiers and merchants.
While the vast majority of Finns were Lutheran, there were two strains to Lutheranism that eventually merged to form the modern Finnish church. On the one hand was the high-church emphasis on ritual, with its roots in traditional peasant collective society. Paavo Ruotsalainen (1777–1852) on the other hand was a leader of the new pietism, with its subjectivity, revivalism, emphasis on personal morality, lay participation, and the social gospel. The pietism appealed to the emerging middle class. The Ecclesiastical Law of 1869 combined the two strains. Finland's political and Lutheran leaders considered both Eastern Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism to be threats to the emerging nation. Eastern Orthodoxy was rejected as a weapon of Russification, while anti-Catholicism was long-standing. Anti-Semitism was also a factor, so the Dissenter Law of 1889 upgraded the status only of the minor Protestant sects. Founding monasteries was forbidden.
Music
Before 1790 music was found in Lutheran churches and in folk traditions. In 1790 music lovers founded the Åbo Musical Society; it gave the first major stimulus to serious music by Finnish composers. In the 1880s, new institutions, especially the Helsinki Music Institute (since 1939 called the Sibelius Academy), the Institute of Music of Helsinki University and the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra, integrated Finland into the mainstream of European music. By far the most influential composer was Jean Sibelius (1865–1957); he composed nearly all his music before 1930. In April 1892 Sibelius presented his new symphony Kullervo in Helsinki. It featured poetry from the Kalevala, and was celebrated by critics as truly Finnish music.
Politics
Despite certain freedoms granted to Finland, the Grand Duchy was not a democratic state. The tsar retained supreme power and ruled through the highest official in the land, the governor general, almost always a Russian officer. Alexander dissolved the Diet of the Four Estates shortly after convening it in 1809, and it did not meet again for half a century. The tsar's actions were in accordance with the royalist constitution Finland had inherited from Sweden. The Finns had no guarantees of liberty, but depended on the tsar's goodwill for any freedoms they enjoyed. When Alexander II, the Tsar Liberator, convened the Diet again in 1863, he did so not to fulfill any obligation but to meet growing pressures for reform within the empire as a whole. In the remaining decades of the century, the Diet enacted numerous legislative measures that modernized Finland's system of law, made its public administration more efficient, removed obstacles to commerce, and prepared the ground for the country's independence in the next century.
Russification
The policy of Russification of Finland (1899–1905 and 1908–1917, called / ('times/years of oppression') in Finnish) was the policy of the Russian czars designed to limit the special status of the Grand Duchy of Finland and more fully integrate it politically, militarily, and culturally into the empire. Finns were strongly opposed and fought back by passive resistance and a strengthening of Finnish cultural identity. Key provisions were, first, the February Manifesto of 1899 which asserted the imperial government's right to rule Finland without the consent of local legislative bodies; second, the Language Manifesto of 1900 which made Russian the language of administration of Finland; and third, the conscription law of 1901 which incorporated the Finnish army into the imperial army and sent conscripts away to Russian training camps.
Democratic change
In 1906, as a result of the Russian Revolution of 1905 and the associated Finnish general strike of 1905, the old four-chamber Diet was replaced by a unicameral Parliament of Finland (the ). For the first time in Europe, universal suffrage (right to vote) and eligibility was implemented to include women: Finnish women were the first in Europe to gain full eligibility to vote; and have membership in an estate; land ownership or inherited titles were no longer required. However, on the local level things were different, as in the municipal elections the number of votes was tied to amount of tax paid. Thus, rich people could cast a number of votes, while the poor perhaps none at all. The municipal voting system was changed to universal suffrage in 1917 when a left-wing majority was elected to Parliament.
Emigration trends
Emigration was especially important 1890–1914, with many young men and some families headed to Finnish settlements in the United States, and also to Canada. They typically worked in lumber and mining, and many were active in Marxist causes on the one hand, or the Finnish Evangelical Lutheran Church of America on the other. In the 21st century about 700,000 Americans and 140,000 Canadians claim Finnish ancestry.
1880s: 26,000
1890s: 59,000
20th century: 159,000
1910s: 67,000
1920s: 73,000
1930s: 3,000
1940s: 7,000
1950s: 32,000
By 2000 about 6% of the population spoke Swedish as their first language, or 300,000 people. However, since the late 20th century there has been a steady migration of older, better educated Swedish speakers to Sweden.
Independence and Civil War
In the aftermath of the February Revolution in Russia, Finland received a new Senate, and a coalition Cabinet with the same power distribution as the Finnish Parliament. Based on the general election in 1916, the Social Democrats had a small majority, and the Social Democrat Oskari Tokoi became prime minister. The new Senate was willing to cooperate with the Provisional government of Russia, but no agreement was reached. Finland considered the personal union with Russia to be over after the dethroning of the Tsar—although the Finns had de facto recognized the Provisional government as the Tsar's successor by accepting its authority to appoint a new Governor General and Senate. They expected the Tsar's authority to be transferred to Finland's Parliament, which the Provisional government refused, suggesting instead that the question should be settled by the Russian Constituent Assembly.
For the Finnish Social Democrats it seemed as though the bourgeoisie was an obstacle on Finland's road to independence as well as on the proletariat's road to power. The non-Socialists in Tokoi's Senate were, however, more confident. They, and most of the non-Socialists in the Parliament, rejected the Social Democrats' proposal on parliamentarism (the so-called "Power Act") as being too far-reaching and provocative. The act restricted Russia's influence on domestic Finnish matters, but did not touch the Russian government's power on matters of defence and foreign affairs. For the Russian Provisional government this was, however, far too radical, exceeding the Parliament's authority, and so the Provisional government dissolved the Parliament.
The minority of the Parliament, and of the Senate, were content. New elections promised a chance for them to gain a majority, which they were convinced would improve the chances to reach an understanding with Russia. The non-Socialists were also inclined to cooperate with the Russian Provisional Government because they feared the Social Democrats' power would grow, resulting in radical reforms, such as equal suffrage in municipal elections, or a land reform. The majority had the completely opposite opinion. They did not accept the Provisional government's right to dissolve the Parliament.
The Social Democrats held on to the Power Act and opposed the promulgation of the decree of dissolution of the Parliament, whereas the non-Socialists voted for promulgating it. The disagreement over the Power Act led to the Social Democrats leaving the Senate. When the Parliament met again after the summer recess in August 1917, only the groups supporting the Power Act were present. Russian troops took possession of the chamber, the Parliament was dissolved, and new elections were held. The result was a (small) non-Socialist majority and a purely non-Socialist Senate. The suppression of the Power Act, and the cooperation between Finnish non-Socialists and Russia provoked great bitterness among the Socialists, and had resulted in dozens of politically motivated attacks and murders.
Independence
The October Revolution of 1917 turned Finnish politics upside down. Now, the new non-Socialist majority of the Parliament desired total independence, and the Socialists came gradually to view Soviet Russia as an example to follow. On November 15, 1917, the Bolsheviks declared a general right of self-determination "for the Peoples of Russia", including the right of complete secession. On the same day the Finnish Parliament issued a declaration by which it temporarily took power in Finland.
Worried by developments in Russia and Finland, the non-Socialist Senate proposed that Parliament declare Finland's independence, which was voted by the Parliament on December 6, 1917. On December 18 (December 31 N. S.) the Soviet government issued a Decree, recognizing Finland's independence, and on December 22 (January 4, 1918 N. S.) it was approved by the highest Soviet executive body (VTsIK). Germany and the Scandinavian countries followed without delay.
Civil war
Finland after 1917 was bitterly divided along social lines. The Whites consisted of the Swedish-speaking middle and upper classes and the farmers and peasantry who dominated the northern two-thirds of the land. They had a conservative outlook and rejected socialism. The Socialist-Communist Reds comprised the Finnish-speaking urban workers and the landless rural cottagers. They had a radical outlook and rejected capitalism.
From January to May 1918, Finland experienced the brief but bitter Finnish Civil War. On one side there were the "white" civil guards, who fought for the anti-Socialists. On the other side were the Red Guards, which consisted of workers and tenant farmers. The latter proclaimed a Finnish Socialist Workers' Republic. World War I was still underway and the defeat of the Red Guards was achieved with support from Imperial Germany, while Sweden remained neutral and Russia withdrew its forces. The Reds lost the war and the White peasantry rose to political leadership in the 1920s–1930s. About 37,000 men died, most of them in prisoner camps ravaged by influenza and other diseases.
Finland in the inter-war era
After the civil war, the parliament controlled by the Whites voted to establish a constitutional monarchy to be called the Kingdom of Finland, with German prince Frederick Charles of Hesse as king. However, Germany's defeat in November 1918 made the plan impossible and Finland instead became a republic, with Kaarlo Juho Ståhlberg elected as its first President in 1919. Despite the bitter civil war, and repeated threats from fascist movements, Finland became and remained a capitalist democracy under the rule of law. By contrast, nearby Estonia, in similar circumstances but without a civil war, started as a democracy and was turned into a dictatorship in 1934.
Agrarian reform
Large scale agrarian reform in the 1920s involved breaking up the large estates controlled by the old nobility and selling the land to ambitious peasants. The farmers became strong supporters of the government.
Diplomacy
The new republic faced a dispute over the Åland Islands, which were overwhelmingly Swedish-speaking and sought retrocession to Sweden. However, as Finland was not willing to cede the islands, they were offered an autonomous status. Nevertheless, the residents did not approve the offer, and the dispute over the islands was submitted to the League of Nations. The League decided that Finland should retain sovereignty over the Åland Islands, but they should be made an autonomous province. Thus Finland was under an obligation to ensure the residents of Åland a right to maintain the Swedish language, as well as their own culture and local traditions. At the same time, an international treaty was concluded on the neutral status of Åland, under which it was prohibited to place military headquarters or forces on the islands.
Prohibition
Alcohol abuse had a long history, especially regarding binge drinking and public intoxication, which became a crime in 1733. In the 19th century the punishments became stiffer and stiffer, but the problem persisted. A strong abstinence movement emerged that cut consumption in half from the 1880s to the 1910s, and gave Finland the lowest drinking rate in Europe. Four attempts at instituting prohibition of alcohol during the Grand Duchy period were rejected by the czar; with the czar gone Finland enacted prohibition in 1919. Smuggling emerged and enforcement was slipshod. Criminal convictions for drunkenness went up by 500%, and violence and crime rates soared. Public opinion turned against the law, and a national plebiscite went 70% for repeal, so prohibition was ended in early 1932.
Politics
Nationalist sentiment remaining from the Civil War developed into the proto-Fascist Lapua Movement in 1929. Initially the movement gained widespread support among anti-Communist Finns, but following a failed coup attempt in 1932 it was banned and its leaders imprisoned.
Relations with Soviet Union
In the wake of the Civil War there were many incidents along the border between Finland and Soviet Russia, such as the Aunus expedition and the Pork mutiny. Relations with the Soviets were improved after the Treaty of Tartu in 1920, in which Finland gained Petsamo, but gave up its claims on East Karelia.
Tens of thousands of radical Finns—from Finland, the United States and Canada—took up Stalin's 1923 appeal to create a new Soviet society in the Karelian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic (KASSR), a part of Russia.
Most were executed in the purges of the 1930s.
The Soviet Union started to tighten its policy against Finland in the 1930s, limiting the navigation of Finnish merchant ships between Lake Ladoga and the Gulf of Finland and blocking it totally in 1937.
Finland in the Second World War
During the Second World War, Finland fought two wars against the Soviet Union: the Winter War of 1939–1940, resulting in the loss of a portion of Finnish Karelia, and the Continuation War of 1941–1944 (with considerable support from Nazi Germany resulting in a swift invasion of neighboring areas of the Soviet Union), eventually leading to the loss of Finland's only ice-free winter harbour Petsamo. The Continuation War was, in accordance with the armistice conditions, immediately followed by the Lapland War of 1944–1945, when Finland fought the Germans to force them to withdraw from northern Finland back into Norway (then under German occupation). Finland was not occupied; its army of over 600,000 soldiers, saw only 3,500 prisoners-of-war. About 96,000 Finns lost their lives, or 2.5% of a population of 3.8 million; civilian casualties were under 2,500.
In August 1939 Nazi-Germany and the Soviet Union signed the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, where Finland and the Baltic states were given to the Soviet "sphere of influence". After the Invasion of Poland, the Soviet Union sent ultimatums to the Baltic countries, where it demanded military bases on their soil. The Baltic states accepted Soviet demands, and lost their independence in the summer of 1940. In October 1939, the Soviet Union sent the same kind of request to Finland, but the Finns refused to give any land areas or military bases for the usage of the Red Army. This caused the Soviet Union to start a military invasion against Finland on 30 November 1939. Soviet leaders predicted that Finland would be conquered in a couple of weeks. However, even though the Red Army had huge superiority in men, tanks, guns and airplanes, the Finns were able to defend their country for about 3.5 months and still avoid invasion successfully. The Winter War ended on 13 March 1940 with the Moscow peace treaty, in which Finland lost the Karelian Isthmus to the Soviet Union. The Winter War was a big loss of prestige for the Soviet Union, and it was expelled from the League of Nations because of the illegal attack. Finland received much international goodwill and material help from many countries during the war.
After the Winter War the Finnish army was exhausted, and needed recovery and support as soon as possible. The British declined to help but in autumn 1940 Nazi Germany offered weapon deals to Finland, if the Finnish government would allow German troops to travel through Finland to occupied Norway. Finland accepted, weapon deals were made and military co-operation began in December 1940.
Finland's support from, and coordination with, Nazi Germany starting during the winter of 1940–41 and made other countries considerably less sympathetic to the Finnish cause; particularly since the Continuation War led to a Finnish invasion of the Soviet Union designed not only to recover lost territory, but additionally to answer the irredentist sentiment of a Greater Finland by incorporating East Karelia, whose inhabitants were culturally related to the Finnish people, although Eastern Orthodox by religion. This invasion had caused Britain to declare war on Finland on 6 December 1941.
Finland managed to defend its democracy, contrary to most other countries within the Soviet sphere of influence, and suffered comparably limited losses in terms of civilian lives and property. It was, however, punished harsher than other German co-belligerents and allies, having to pay large reparations and resettle an eighth of its population after having lost an eighth of the territory including one of its industrial heartlands and the second-largest city of Viipuri. After the war, the Soviet government settled these gained territories with people from many different regions of the USSR, for instance from Ukraine.
The Finnish government did not participate in the systematic killing of Jews, although the country remained a "co-belligerent", a de facto ally of Germany until 1944. In total, eight German Jewish refugees were handed over to the German authorities. In the Tehran Conference of 1942, the leaders of the Allies agreed that Finland was fighting a separate war against the Soviet Union, and that in no way was it hostile to the Western allies. The Soviet Union was the only Allied country against which Finland had conducted military operations. Unlike any of the Axis nations, Finland was a parliamentary democracy throughout the 1939–1945 period. The commander of Finnish armed forces during the Winter War and the Continuation War, Carl Gustaf Emil Mannerheim, became the President of Finland after the war. Finland made a separate peace contract with the Soviet Union on 19 September 1944, and was the only bordering country of USSR in Europe (alongside Norway, which has only gained its own border with the Soviet Union after the war) that kept its independence after the war.
During and in between the wars, approximately 80,000 Finnish war-children were evacuated abroad: 5% went to Norway, 10% to Denmark, and the rest to Sweden. Most of the children were sent back by 1948, but 15–20% remained abroad.
The Moscow Armistice was signed between Finland on one side and the Soviet Union and Britain on the other side on September 19, 1944, ending the Continuation War. The armistice compelled Finland to drive German troops from its territory, leading to the Lapland War 1944–1945.
In 1947, Finland reluctantly declined Marshall aid in order to preserve good relations with the Soviets, ensuring Finnish autonomy. Nevertheless, the United States shipped secret development aid and financial aid to the non-communist SDP (Social Democratic Party). Establishing trade with the Western powers, such as Britain, and the reparations to the Soviet Union caused Finland to transform itself from a primarily agrarian economy to an industrialised one. After the reparations had been paid off, Finland continued to trade with the Soviet Union in the framework of bilateral trade.
Finland's role in the Second World War was unusual in several ways. Despite massive superiority in military strength, the Soviet Union was unable to conquer Finland when the former invaded in 1939. In late 1940, German-Finnish co-operation began; it took a form that was unique when compared to relations with the Axis. Finland signed the Anti-Comintern Pact, which made Finland an ally with Germany in the war against the Soviet Union. But, unlike all other Axis states, Finland never signed the Tripartite Pact, meaning that Finland was not de jure an Axis nation.
Memorials
Although Finland lost territory in both of its wars with the Soviets, the memory of these wars was sharply etched in the national consciousness. Finland celebrates these wars as a victory for the Finnish national spirit, which survived against long odds and allowed Finland to maintain its independence. Many groups of Finns are commemorated today, including not just fallen soldiers and veterans, but also orphans, evacuees from Karelia, the children who were evacuated to Sweden, women who worked during the war at home or in factories, and the veterans of the women's defense unit Lotta Svärd.
Some of these groups could not be properly commemorated until long after the war ended in order to preserve good relations with the Soviet Union. However, after a long political campaign backed by survivors of what Finns call the Partisan War, the Finnish Parliament passed legislation establishing compensation for the war's victims.
History 1945 to present
Neutrality in Cold War
Finland retained a democratic constitution and free economy during the Cold War era. Treaties signed in 1947 and 1948 with the Soviet Union included obligations and restraints on Finland, as well as territorial concessions. The Paris Peace Treaty (1947) limited the size and the nature of Finland's armed forces. Weapons were to be solely defensive. A deepening of postwar tensions led a year later to the Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation, and Mutual Assistance (1948) with the Soviet Union. The latter, in particular, was the foundation of Finno-Soviet relations in the postwar era. Under the terms of the treaty, Finland was bound to confer with the Soviets and perhaps to accept their aid if an attack from Germany, or countries allied with Germany, seemed likely. The treaty prescribed consultations between the two countries, but it had no mechanism for automatic Soviet intervention in a time of crisis. Both treaties have been abrogated by Finland since the 1991 dissolution of the Soviet Union, while leaving the borders untouched. Even though being a neighbor to the Soviet Union sometimes resulted in overcautious concern in foreign policy ("Finlandization"), Finland developed closer co-operation with the other Nordic countries and declared itself neutral in superpower politics.
The Finnish post-war president, Juho Kusti Paasikivi, a leading conservative politician, saw that an essential element of Finnish foreign policy must be a credible guarantee to the Soviet Union that it need not fear attack from, or through, Finnish territory. Because a policy of neutrality was a political component of this guarantee, Finland would ally itself with no one. Another aspect of the guarantee was that Finnish defenses had to be sufficiently strong to defend the nation's territory. This policy remained the core of Finland's foreign relations for the rest of the Cold War era.
In 1952, Finland and the countries of the Nordic Council entered into a passport union, allowing their citizens to cross borders without passports and soon also to apply for jobs and claim social security benefits in the other countries. Many from Finland used this opportunity to secure better-paying jobs in Sweden in the 1950s and 1960s, dominating Sweden's first wave of post-war labour immigrants. Although Finnish wages and standard of living could not compete with wealthy Sweden until the 1970s, the Finnish economy rose remarkably from the ashes of World War II, resulting in the buildup of another Nordic-style welfare state.
Despite the passport union with Sweden, Norway, Denmark, and Iceland, Finland could not join the Nordic Council until 1955 because of Soviet fears that Finland might become too close to the West. At that time the Soviet Union saw the Nordic Council as part of NATO of which Denmark, Norway and Iceland were members. That same year Finland joined the United Nations, though it had already been associated with a number of UN specialized organisations. The first Finnish ambassador to the UN was G.A. Gripenberg (1956–1959), followed by Ralph Enckell (1959–1965), Max Jakobson (1965–1972), Aarno Karhilo (1972–1977), Ilkka Pastinen (1977–1983), Keijo Korhonen (1983–1988), Klaus Törnudd (1988–1991), Wilhelm Breitenstein (1991–1998) and Marjatta Rasi (1998–2005). In 1972 Max Jakobson was a candidate for Secretary-General of the UN. In another remarkable event of 1955, the Soviet Union decided to return the Porkkala peninsula to Finland, which had been rented to the Soviet Union in 1948 for 50 years as a military base, a situation which somewhat endangered Finnish sovereignty and neutrality.
Officially claiming to be neutral, Finland lay in the grey zone between the Western countries and the Soviet Union. The Finno-Soviet Treaty of 1948 (Finno-Soviet Pact of Friendship, Cooperation, and Mutual Assistance) gave the Soviet Union some leverage in Finnish domestic politics. However, Finland maintained capitalism unlike most other countries bordering the Soviet Union. Property rights were strong. While nationalization committees were set up in France and UK, Finland avoided nationalizations. After failed experiments with protectionism in the 1950s, Finland eased restrictions and committed to a series of international free trade agreements: first an associate membership in the European Free Trade Association in 1961, a full membership in 1986 and also an agreement with the European Community in 1973. Local education markets expanded and an increasing number of Finns also went abroad to study in the United States or Western Europe, bringing back advanced skills. There was a quite common, but pragmatic-minded, credit and investment cooperation by state and corporations, though it was considered with suspicion. Support for capitalism was widespread. Savings rate hovered among the world's highest, at around 8% until the 1980s. In the beginning of the 1970s, Finland's GDP per capita reached the level of Japan and the UK. Finland's economic development shared many aspects with export-led Asian countries.
Building on its status as western democratic country with friendly ties with the Soviet Union, Finland pushed to reduce the political and military tensions of cold war. Since the 1960s, Finland urged the formation of a (Nordic NWFZ), and in 1972-1973 was the host of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE), which culminated in the signing of the Helsinki Accords in 1975 and lead to the creation of the OSCE.
Society and the welfare state
Before 1940 Finland was a poor rural nation of urban and rural workers and independent farmers. There was a small middle class, employed chiefly as civil servants and in small local businesses. As late as 1950 half of the workers were in agriculture and only a third lived in urban towns. The new jobs in manufacturing, services and trade quickly attracted people to the towns and cities. The average number of births per woman declined from a baby boom peak of 3.5 in 1947 to 1.5 in 1973. When baby boomers entered the workforce, the economy did not generate jobs fast enough and hundreds of thousands emigrated to the more industrialized Sweden, migration peaking in 1969 and 1970 (today 4.7 percent of Swedes speak Finnish).
By the 1990s, farm laborers had nearly all moved on, leaving owners of small farms. By 2000 the social structure included a politically active working class, a primarily clerical middle class, and an upper bracket consisting of managers, entrepreneurs, and professionals. The social boundaries between these groups were not distinct. Causes of change included the growth of a mass culture, international standards, social mobility, and acceptance of democracy and equality as typified by the welfare state.
The generous system of welfare benefits emerged from a long process of debate, negotiations and maneuvers between efficiency-oriented modernizers on the one hand and Social Democrats and labor unions. A compulsory system provides old-age and disability insurance, financed mostly by taxes on employers. The national government provides unemployment insurance, maternity benefits, family allowances, and day-care centers. Health insurance covers most of the cost of outpatient care. The national health act of 1972 provided for the establishment of free health centers in every municipality. There were major cutbacks in the early 1990s, but they were distributed to minimize the harm to the vast majority of voters.
Economy
The post-war period was a time of rapid economic growth and increasing social and political stability for Finland. The five decades after the Second World War saw Finland turn from a war-ravaged agrarian society into one of the most technologically advanced countries in the world, with a sophisticated market economy and high standard of living.
In 1991, Finland fell into a depression caused by a combination of economic overheating, fixed currency, depressed Western, Soviet, and local markets. Stock market and housing prices declined by 50%. The growth in the 1980s was based on debt and defaults started rolling in. GDP declined by 15% and unemployment increased from a virtual full employment to one fifth of the workforce. The crisis was amplified by trade unions' initial opposition to any reforms. Politicians struggled to cut spending and the public debt doubled to around 60% of GDP. Some 7–8% of GDP was needed to bail out failing banks and force banking sector consolidation. After devaluations the depression bottomed out in 1993.
Recent history
The GDP growth rate has since been one of the highest of OECD countries and Finland has topped many indicators of national performance.
Until 1991, President Mauno Koivisto and two of the three major parties, Center Party and the Social Democrats opposed the idea of European Union membership and preferred entering into the European Economic Area treaty. However, after Sweden had submitted its membership application in 1991 and the Soviet Union was dissolved at the end of the year, Finland submitted its own application to the EU in March 1992. The accession process was marked by heavy public debate, where the differences of opinion did not follow party lines. Officially, all three major parties were supporting the Union membership, but members of all parties participated in the campaign against the membership. Before the parliamentary decision to join the EU, a consultative referendum was held on April 16, 1994 in which 56.9% of the votes were in favour of joining. The process of accession was completed on January 1, 1995, when Finland joined the European Union along with Austria and Sweden. Leading Finland into the EU is held as the main achievement of the Centrist-Conservative government of Esko Aho then in power.
In the economic policy, the EU membership brought with it many large changes. While politicians were previously involved in setting interest rates, the central bank was given an inflation-targeting mandate until Finland joined the eurozone. During Prime Minister Paavo Lipponen's two successive governments 1995–2003, several large state companies were privatized fully or partially. Matti Vanhanen's two cabinets followed suit until autumn 2008, when the state became a major shareholder in the Finnish telecom company Elisa with the intention to secure the Finnish ownership of a strategically important industry.
In addition to fast integration with the European Union, safety against Russian leverage has been increased by building fully NATO-compatible military. 1000 troops (a high per-capita amount) are simultaneously committed in NATO and UN operations. Finland has also opposed energy projects that increase dependency on Russian imports. At the same time, Finland remains one of the last non-NATO members in Europe and there seems to be not enough support for full membership unless Sweden joins first.
The population is aging with the birth rate at 10.42 births/1,000 population or fertility rate at 1.8. With median age at 41.6 years Finland is one of the countries with the highest average age of its citizens.
See also
Diplomatic history of World War II#Finland
Early Finnish wars
Finland under Swedish rule
Finns
History of Estonia
History of Russia
History of Sweden
History of the European Union
Kvenland
List of Finnish treaties
List of presidents of Finland
List of prime ministers of Finland
List of wars involving Finland
Military history of Finland
Monarchy of Finland
Politics of Finland
Timeline of Finnish history
References
Further reading
Ahola, Joonas & Frog with Clive Tolley (toim.). (2014). Fibula, Fabula, Fact – The Viking Age in Finland Studia Fennica Historica 18. Helsinki: Finnish Literature Society.
Full text.
pp. 169–245 online edition, on 1917–1926
Hodgson, John H. Communism in Finland: a history and interpretation (Princeton UP, 2015).
Kettunen, Pauli. "The Conceptual History of the Welfare State in Finland." in The Changing Meanings of the Welfare State: Histories of a Key Concept in the Nordic Countries (2019): 225+ online.
(Covers 1820 to 1910.)
Kivimäki, Ville. "Between defeat and victory: Finnish memory culture of the Second World War." Scandinavian Journal of History 37.4 (2012): 482–504.
Kivimäki, Ville. "Introduction Three Wars and Their Epitaphs: The Finnish History and Scholarship of World War II." in Finland in World War II (Brill, 2012) pp. 1–46 online.
Cultural interpretation of recent history. Excerpt and text search.
2nd ed. 227 pages; focus is since 1900.
History since 1970.
Short popular history.
Online edition.
Online edition.
Talvitie, Petri, and Juha-Matti Granqvist, eds. Civilians and military supply in early modern Finland (Helsinki University Press, 2021) online
Online edition.
Wuorinen, John H. A history of Finland (1965) online
External links
Finnish historical documents at WikiSource
History of Finland: A selection of events and documents by Pauli Kruhse
History of Finland: Primary Documents
Diplomatarium Fennicum – Publishing of medieval documents (the National Archives of Finland)
ProKarelias collection of international treaties concerning independent Finland
Historical Atlas of Finland
Vintage Finland – slideshow by Life magazine | [
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14379 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holy%20Spirit | Holy Spirit | In Judaism, the Holy Spirit, also known as the Holy Ghost, is the divine force, quality, and influence of God over the universe or over his creatures. In Nicene Christianity, the Holy Spirit is the third person of the Trinity. In Islam, the Holy Spirit acts as an agent of divine action or communication. In the Baha’i Faith the Holy Spirit is seen as the intermediary between God and man and “the outpouring grace of God and the effulgent rays that emanate from His Manifestation.”
Comparative religion
The Hebrew Bible contains the term "spirit of God" (ruach hakodesh) in the sense of the might of a unitary God. This meaning is different from the Christian concept of the Holy Spirit as one person of the Trinity.
The Christian concept tends to emphasize the moral aspect of the Holy Spirit more than Judaism, evident in the epithet Spirit that appeared in Jewish religious writings only relatively late but was a common expression in the Christian New Testament. Based on the Old Testament, the book of Acts emphasizes the power of ministry aspect of the Holy Spirit.
According to theologian Rudolf Bultmann, there are two ways to think about the Holy Spirit: "animistic" and "dynamistic". In animistic thinking, it is "an independent agent, a personal power which like a demon can fall upon a man and take possession of him, enabling him or compelling him to perform manifestations of power" while in dynamistic thought it "appears as an impersonal force which fills a man like a fluid". Both kinds of thought appear in Jewish and Christian scripture, but animistic is more typical of the Old Testament whereas dynamistic is more common in the New Testament. The distinction coincides with the Holy Spirit as either a temporary or permanent gift. In the Old Testament and Jewish thought, it is primarily temporary with a specific situation or task in mind, whereas in the Christian concept the gift resides in persons permanently.
On the surface, the Holy Spirit appears to have an equivalent in non-Abrahamic Hellenistic mystery religions. These religions included a distinction between the spirit and psyche, which is also seen in the Pauline epistles. According to proponents of the History of religions school, the Christian concept of the Holy Spirit cannot be explained from Jewish ideas alone without reference to the Hellenistic religions. And according to theologian Erik Konsmo, the views "are so dissimilar that the only legitimate connection one can make is with the Greek term πνεῦμα [pneuma, Spirit] itself".
Another link with ancient Greek thought is the Stoic idea of the spirit as anima mundi – or world soul – that unites all people. Some believe that this can be seen in Paul's formulation of the concept of the Holy Spirit that unites Christians in Jesus Christ and love for one another, but Konsmo again thinks that this position is difficult to maintain. In his Introduction to the 1964 book Meditations, the Anglican priest Maxwell Staniforth wrote:
Another Stoic concept which offered inspiration to the Church was that of "divine Spirit". Cleanthes, wishing to give more explicit meaning to Zeno's "creative fire", had been the first to hit upon the term pneuma, or "spirit", to describe it. Like fire, this intelligent "spirit" was imagined as a tenuous substance akin to a current of air or breath, but essentially possessing the quality of warmth; it was immanent in the universe as God, and in man as the soul and life-giving principle. Clearly it is not a long step from this to the "Holy Spirit" of Christian theology, the "Lord and Giver of life", visibly manifested as tongues of fire at Pentecost and ever since associated – in the Christian as in the Stoic mind – with the ideas of vital fire and beneficent warmth.
Abrahamic religions
Judaism
The Hebrew language phrase ruach ha-kodesh (Hebrew: רוח הקודש, "holy spirit" also transliterated ruacḥ ha-qodesh) is used in the Hebrew Bible and Jewish writings to refer to the spirit of YHWH (רוח יהוה). The Hebrew terms ruacḥ qodshəka, "thy holy spirit" (רוּחַ קָדְשְׁךָ), and ruacḥ qodshō, "his holy spirit" (רוּחַ קָדְשׁוֹ), also occur (when a possessive suffix is added the definite article ha is dropped).
The Holy Spirit in Judaism generally refers to the divine aspect of prophecy and wisdom. It also refers to the divine force, quality, and influence of the Most High God, over the universe or over his creatures, in given contexts.
Christianity
For the large majority of Christians, the Holy Spirit (or Holy Ghost, from Old English gast, "spirit") is the third person of the Trinity: The "Triune God" manifested as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit; each Person being God. Two symbols from the New Testament canon are associated with the Holy Spirit in Christian iconography: a winged dove, and tongues of fire. Each depiction of the Holy Spirit arose from different accounts in the Gospel narratives; the first being at the baptism of Jesus in the Jordan River where the Holy Spirit was said to descend in the form of a dove as the voice of God the Father spoke as described in Matthew, Mark, and Luke; the second being from the day of Pentecost, fifty days after Easter where the descent of the Holy Spirit came upon the Apostles and other followers of Jesus Christ, as tongues of fire as described in the Acts of the Apostles, as promised by Jesus in his farewell discourse.
Called "the unveiled epiphany of God", the Holy Spirit is the One who empowers the followers of Jesus with spiritual gifts and power that enables the proclamation of Jesus Christ, and the power that brings conviction of faith.
Islam
The Holy Spirit (Arabic: روح القدس Ruh al-Qudus, "the Spirit of Holiness") is mentioned four times in the Qur'an, where it acts as an agent of divine action or communication. The Muslim interpretation of the Holy Spirit is generally consistent with other interpretations based upon the Old and the New Testaments. On the basis of narrations in certain Hadith some Muslims identify it with the angel Gabriel (Arabic Jibrāʾīl). The Spirit (الروح al-Ruh, without the adjective "holy" or "exalted") is described, among other things, as the creative spirit from God by which God enlivened Adam, and which inspired in various ways God's messengers and prophets, including Jesus and Abraham. The belief in a "Holy Trinity", according to the Qur'an, is forbidden and deemed to be blasphemy. The same prohibition applies to any idea of the duality of God (Allah).
Baháʼí Faith
The Baháʼí Faith has the concept of the Most Great Spirit, seen as the bounty of God. It is usually used to describe the descent of the Spirit of God upon the messengers/prophets of God who include, among others, Jesus, Muhammad and Bahá'u'lláh.
In Baháʼí belief, the Holy Spirit is the conduit through which the wisdom of God becomes directly associated with his messenger, and it has been described variously in different religions such as the burning bush to Moses, the sacred fire to Zoroaster, the dove to Jesus, the angel Gabriel to Muhammad, and the Maid of Heaven to Bahá'u'lláh (founder of the Baháʼí Faith). The Baháʼí view rejects the idea that the Holy Spirit is a partner to God in the Godhead, but rather is the pure essence of God's attributes.
Other religions
Hinduism
The Hindu concept of Advaita is linked to the Trinity and has been briefly explained by Raimon Panikkar. He states that the Holy Spirit, as one of the Three Persons of the Trinity of "father, Logos and Holy Spirit", is a bridge builder between Christianity and Hinduism. He explains that: "The meeting of spiritualistic can take place in the Spirit. No new 'system' has primarily to come of this encounter, but a new and yet old spirit must emerge." Atman is Vedic terminology elaborated in Hindu scriptures such as Upanishads and Vedanta signifies the Ultimate Reality and Absolute.
Zoroastrianism
In Zoroastrianism, the Holy Spirit, also known as Spenta Mainyu, is a hypostasis of Ahura Mazda, the supreme Creator God of Zoroastrianism; the Holy Spirit is seen as the source of all goodness in the universe, the spark of all life within humanity, and is the ultimate guide for humanity to righteousness and communion with God. The Holy Spirit is put in direct opposition to its eternal dual counterpart, Angra Mainyu, who is the source of all wickedness and who leads humanity astray.
Gnosticism
The ancient Gnostic text known as the Secret Book of John refers to the supreme female principle Barbelo as the Holy Spirit.
See also
Avatar
Baptism with the Holy Spirit
Barakah
Chaplet of the Holy Spirit and His Seven Gifts
Cult of the Holy Spirit
Deity
Gender of the Holy Spirit
God in Abrahamic religions
Great Spirit
Intercession of the Spirit
Parable of the Leaven
Pneumatology
References
Works cited
Conceptions of God
Knowledge deities
Names of God
Theology
Wisdom deities | [
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14380 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helium-3 | Helium-3 | Helium-3 (3He see also helion) is a light, stable isotope of helium with two protons and one neutron (the most common isotope, helium-4, having two protons and two neutrons in contrast). Other than protium (ordinary hydrogen), helium-3 is the only stable isotope of any element with more protons than neutrons. Helium-3 was discovered in 1939.
Helium-3 occurs as a primordial nuclide, escaping from Earth's crust into its atmosphere and into outer space over millions of years. Helium-3 is also thought to be a natural nucleogenic and cosmogenic nuclide, one produced when lithium is bombarded by natural neutrons, which can be released by spontaneous fission and by nuclear reactions with cosmic rays. Some of the helium-3 found in the terrestrial atmosphere is also an artifact of atmospheric and underwater nuclear weapons testing.
Much speculation has been made over the possibility of helium-3 as a future energy source. Unlike most nuclear fission reactions, the fusion of helium-3 atoms releases large amounts of energy without causing the surrounding material to become radioactive. However, the temperatures required to achieve helium-3 fusion reactions are much higher than in traditional fusion reactions, and the process may unavoidably create other reactions that themselves would cause the surrounding material to become radioactive.
The abundance of helium-3 is thought to be greater on the Moon than on Earth, having been embedded in the upper layer of regolith by the solar wind over billions of years, though still lower in abundance than in the Solar System's gas giants.
History
The existence of helium-3 was first proposed in 1934 by the Australian nuclear physicist Mark Oliphant while he was working at the University of Cambridge Cavendish Laboratory. Oliphant had performed experiments in which fast deuterons collided with deuteron targets (incidentally, the first demonstration of nuclear fusion). Isolation of helium-3 was first accomplished by Luis Alvarez and Robert Cornog in 1939. Helium-3 was thought to be a radioactive isotope until it was also found in samples of natural helium, which is mostly helium-4, taken both from the terrestrial atmosphere and from natural gas wells.
Physical properties
Because of its low atomic mass of 3.02 atomic mass units, helium-3 has some physical properties different from those of helium-4, with a mass of 4.00 atomic mass units. Because of the weak, induced dipole–dipole interaction between the helium atoms, their microscopic physical properties are mainly determined by their zero-point energy. Also, the microscopic properties of helium-3 cause it to have a higher zero-point energy than helium-4. This implies that helium-3 can overcome dipole–dipole interactions with less thermal energy than helium-4 can.
The quantum mechanical effects on helium-3 and helium-4 are significantly different because with two protons, two neutrons, and two electrons, helium-4 has an overall spin of zero, making it a boson, but with one fewer neutron, helium-3 has an overall spin of one half, making it a fermion.
Helium-3 boils at 3.19 K compared with helium-4 at 4.23 K, and its critical point is also lower at 3.35 K, compared with helium-4 at 5.2 K. Helium-3 has less than half the density of helium-4 when it is at its boiling point: 59 g/L compared to 125 g/L of helium-4 at a pressure of one atmosphere. Its latent heat of vaporization is also considerably lower at 0.026 kJ/mol compared with the 0.0829 kJ/mol of helium-4.
Natural abundance
Terrestrial abundance
3He is a primordial substance in the Earth's mantle, considered to have become entrapped within the Earth during planetary formation. The ratio of 3He to 4He within the Earth's crust and mantle is less than that for assumptions of solar disk composition as obtained from meteorite and lunar samples, with terrestrial materials generally containing lower 3He/4He ratios due to ingrowth of 4He from radioactive decay.
3He has a cosmological ratio of 300 atoms per million atoms of 4He (at. ppm), leading to the assumption that the original ratio of these primordial gases in the mantle was around 200-300 ppm when Earth was formed. Over Earth's history alpha-particle decay of uranium, thorium and other radioactive isotopes has generated significant amounts of 4He, such that only around 7% of the helium now in the mantle is primordial helium, lowering the total 3He/4He ratio to around 20 ppm. Ratios of 3He/4He in excess of atmospheric are indicative of a contribution of 3He from the mantle. Crustal sources are dominated by the 4He produced by radioactive decay.
The ratio of helium-3 to helium-4 in natural Earth-bound sources varies greatly. Samples of the lithium ore spodumene from Edison Mine, South Dakota were found to contain 12 parts of helium-3 to a million parts of helium-4. Samples from other mines showed 2 parts per million.
Helium is also present as up to 7% of some natural gas sources, and large sources have over 0.5% (above 0.2% makes it viable to extract). The fraction of 3He in helium separated from natural gas in the U.S. was found to range from 70 to 242 parts per billion. Hence the US 2002 stockpile of 1 billion normal m3 would have contained about 12 to 43 kilograms of helium-3. According to American physicist Richard Garwin, about 26 m3 or almost 5 kg of 3He is available annually for separation from the US natural gas stream. If the process of separating out the 3He could employ as feedstock the liquefied helium typically used to transport and store bulk quantities, estimates for the incremental energy cost range from US$34 to $300 per liter NTP, excluding the cost of infrastructure and equipment. Algeria's annual gas production is assumed to contain 100 million normal cubic metres and this would contain between 7 and 24 m3 of helium-3 (about 1 to 4 kilograms) assuming a similar 3He fraction.
3He is also present in the Earth's atmosphere. The natural abundance of 3He in naturally occurring helium gas is 1.38 (1.38 parts per million). The partial pressure of helium in the Earth's atmosphere is about 0.52 Pa, and thus helium accounts for 5.2 parts per million of the total pressure (101325 Pa) in the Earth's atmosphere, and 3He thus accounts for 7.2 parts per trillion of the atmosphere. Since the atmosphere of the Earth has a mass of about 5.14 tonnes, the mass of 3He in the Earth's atmosphere is the product of these numbers, or about 37,000 tonnes of 3He. (In fact the effective figure is ten times smaller, since the above ppm are ppmv and not ppmw. One must multiply by 3 (the molecular mass of Helium-3) and divide by 29 (the mean molecular mass of the atmosphere), resulting in 3,828 tonnes of helium-3 in the earth's atmosphere.)
3He is produced on Earth from three sources: lithium spallation, cosmic rays, and beta decay of tritium (3H). The contribution from cosmic rays is negligible within all except the oldest regolith materials, and lithium spallation reactions are a lesser contributor than the production of 4He by alpha particle emissions.
The total amount of helium-3 in the mantle may be in the range of 0.1–1 million tonnes. However, most of the mantle is not directly accessible. Some helium-3 leaks up through deep-sourced hotspot volcanoes such as those of the Hawaiian Islands, but only 300 grams per year is emitted to the atmosphere. Mid-ocean ridges emit another 3 kilograms per year. Around subduction zones, various sources produce helium-3 in natural gas deposits which possibly contain a thousand tonnes of helium-3 (although there may be 25 thousand tonnes if all ancient subduction zones have such deposits). Wittenberg estimated that United States crustal natural gas sources may have only half a tonne total. Wittenberg cited Anderson's estimate of another 1200 metric tonnes in interplanetary dust particles on the ocean floors. In the 1994 study, extracting helium-3 from these sources consumes more energy than fusion would release.
Lunar surface
See Extraterrestrial mining
Solar nebula (primordial) abundance
One early estimate of the primordial ratio of 3He to 4He in the solar nebula has been the measurement of their ratio in the atmosphere of Jupiter, measured by the mass spectrometer of the Galileo atmospheric entry probe. This ratio is about 1:10,000, or 100 parts of 3He per million parts of 4He. This is roughly the same ratio of the isotopes as in lunar regolith, which contains 28 ppm helium-4 and 2.8 ppb helium-3 (which is at the lower end of actual sample measurements, which vary from about 1.4 to 15 ppb). However, terrestrial ratios of the isotopes are lower by a factor of 100, mainly due to enrichment of helium-4 stocks in the mantle by billions of years of alpha decay from uranium and thorium.
Human production
Tritium decay
Virtually all helium-3 used in industry today is produced from the radioactive decay of tritium, given its very low natural abundance and its very high cost.
Production, sales and distribution of helium-3 in the United States are managed by the US Department of Energy (DOE) Isotope Program.
While tritium has several different experimentally determined values of its half-life, NIST lists (). It decays into helium-3 by beta decay as in this nuclear equation:
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Among the total released energy of , the part taken by electron's kinetic energy varies, with an average of , while the remaining energy is carried off by the nearly undetectable electron antineutrino.
Beta particles from tritium can penetrate only about 6.0 mm of air, and they are incapable of passing through the dead outermost layer of human skin. The unusually low energy released in the tritium beta decay makes the decay (along with that of rhenium-187) appropriate for absolute neutrino mass measurements in the laboratory (the most recent experiment being KATRIN).
The low energy of tritium's radiation makes it difficult to detect tritium-labeled compounds except by using liquid scintillation counting.
Tritium is a radioactive isotope of hydrogen and is typically produced by bombarding lithium-6 with neutrons in a nuclear reactor. The lithium nucleus absorbs a neutron and splits into helium-4 and tritium. Tritium decays into helium-3 with a half-life of , so helium-3 can be produced by simply storing the tritium until it undergoes radioactive decay.
Tritium is a critical component of nuclear weapons and historically it was produced and stockpiled primarily for this application. The decay of tritium into helium-3 reduces the explosive power of the fusion warhead, so periodically the accumulated helium-3 must be removed from warhead reservoirs and tritium in storage. Helium-3 removed during this process is marketed for other applications.
For decades this has been, and remains, the principal source of the world's helium-3. However, since the signing of the START I Treaty in 1991 the number of nuclear warheads that are kept ready for use has decreased This has reduced the quantity of helium-3 available from this source. Helium-3 stockpiles have been further diminished by increased demand, primarily for use in neutron radiation detectors and medical diagnostic procedures. US industrial demand for helium-3 reached a peak of 70,000 liters (approximately 8 kg) per year in 2008. Price at auction, historically about $100/liter, reached as high as $2000/liter. Since then, demand for helium-3 has declined to about 6000 liters per year due to the high cost and efforts by the DOE to recycle it and find substitutes.
The DOE recognized the developing shortage of both tritium and helium-3, and began producing tritium by lithium irradiation at the Tennessee Valley Authority's Watts Bar Nuclear Generating Station in 2010. In this process tritium-producing burnable absorber rods (TPBARs) containing lithium in a ceramic form are inserted into the reactor in place of the normal boron control rods Periodically the TPBARs are replaced and the tritium extracted.
Currently only two commercial nuclear reactors (Watts Bar Nuclear Plant Units 1 and 2) are being used for tritium production but the process could, if necessary, be vastly scaled up to meet any conceivable demand simply by utilizing more of the nation's power reactors.
Substantial quantities of tritium and helium-3 could also be extracted from the heavy water moderator in CANDU nuclear reactors.
Uses
Neutron detection
Helium-3 is an important isotope in instrumentation for neutron detection. It has a high absorption cross section for thermal neutron beams and is used as a converter gas in neutron detectors. The neutron is converted through the nuclear reaction
n + 3He → 3H + 1H + 0.764 MeV
into charged particles tritium ions (T, 3H) and Hydrogen ions, or protons (p, 1H) which then are detected by creating a charge cloud in the stopping gas of a proportional counter or a Geiger–Müller tube.
Furthermore, the absorption process is strongly spin-dependent, which allows a spin-polarized helium-3 volume to transmit neutrons with one spin component while absorbing the other. This effect is employed in neutron polarization analysis, a technique which probes for magnetic properties of matter.
The United States Department of Homeland Security had hoped to deploy detectors to spot smuggled plutonium in shipping containers by their neutron emissions, but the worldwide shortage of helium-3 following the drawdown in nuclear weapons production since the Cold War has to some extent prevented this. As of 2012, DHS determined the commercial supply of boron-10 would support converting its neutron detection infrastructure to that technology.
Cryogenics
A helium-3 refrigerator uses helium-3 to achieve temperatures of 0.2 to 0.3 kelvin. A dilution refrigerator uses a mixture of helium-3 and helium-4 to reach cryogenic temperatures as low as a few thousandths of a kelvin.
An important property of helium-3, which distinguishes it from the more common helium-4, is that its nucleus is a fermion since it contains an odd number of spin particles. Helium-4 nuclei are bosons, containing an even number of spin particles. This is a direct result of the addition rules for quantized angular momentum. At low temperatures (about 2.17 K), helium-4 undergoes a phase transition: A fraction of it enters a superfluid phase that can be roughly understood as a type of Bose–Einstein condensate. Such a mechanism is not available for helium-3 atoms, which are fermions. However, it was widely speculated that helium-3 could also become a superfluid at much lower temperatures, if the atoms formed into pairs analogous to Cooper pairs in the BCS theory of superconductivity. Each Cooper pair, having integer spin, can be thought of as a boson. During the 1970s, David Lee, Douglas Osheroff and Robert Coleman Richardson discovered two phase transitions along the melting curve, which were soon realized to be the two superfluid phases of helium-3. The transition to a superfluid occurs at 2.491 millikelvins on the melting curve. They were awarded the 1996 Nobel Prize in Physics for their discovery. Alexei Abrikosov, Vitaly Ginzburg, and Tony Leggett won the 2003 Nobel Prize in Physics for their work on refining understanding of the superfluid phase of helium-3.
In a zero magnetic field, there are two distinct superfluid phases of 3He, the A-phase and the B-phase. The B-phase is the low-temperature, low-pressure phase which has an isotropic energy gap. The A-phase is the higher temperature, higher pressure phase that is further stabilized by a magnetic field and has two point nodes in its gap. The presence of two phases is a clear indication that 3He is an unconventional superfluid (superconductor), since the presence of two phases requires an additional symmetry, other than gauge symmetry, to be broken. In fact, it is a p-wave superfluid, with spin one, S=1, and angular momentum one, L=1. The ground state corresponds to total angular momentum zero, J=S+L=0 (vector addition). Excited states are possible with non-zero total angular momentum, J>0, which are excited pair collective modes. Because of the extreme purity of superfluid 3He (since all materials except 4He have solidified and
sunk to the bottom of the liquid 3He and any 4He has phase separated entirely, this is the most pure condensed matter state), these collective modes have been studied with much greater precision than in any other unconventional pairing system.
Medical imaging
Helium-3 nuclei have an intrinsic nuclear spin of , and a relatively high magnetogyric ratio. Helium-3 can be hyperpolarized using non-equilibrium means such as spin-exchange optical pumping. During this process, circularly polarized infrared laser light, tuned to the appropriate wavelength, is used to excite electrons in an alkali metal, such as caesium or rubidium inside a sealed glass vessel. The angular momentum is transferred from the alkali metal electrons to the noble gas nuclei through collisions. In essence, this process effectively aligns the nuclear spins with the magnetic field in order to enhance the NMR signal. The hyperpolarized gas may then be stored at pressures of 10 atm, for up to 100 hours. Following inhalation, gas mixtures containing the hyperpolarized helium-3 gas can be imaged with an MRI scanner to produce anatomical and functional images of lung ventilation. This technique is also able to produce images of the airway tree, locate unventilated defects, measure the alveolar oxygen partial pressure, and measure the ventilation/perfusion ratio. This technique may be critical for the diagnosis and treatment management of chronic respiratory diseases such as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), emphysema, cystic fibrosis, and asthma.
Radio energy absorber for tokamak plasma experiments
Both MIT's Alcator C-Mod tokamak and the Joint European Torus (JET) have experimented with adding a little He-3 to a H-D plasma to increase the absorption of radio-frequency (RF) energy to heat the H & D ions, a "three-ion" effect.
Nuclear fuel
can be produced by the low temperature fusion of → + γ + 4.98 MeV. If the fusion temperature is below that for the helium nuclei to fuse, the reaction produces a high energy alpha particle which quickly acquires an electron producing a stable light helium ion which can be utilized directly as a source of electricity without producing dangerous neutrons.
can be used in fusion reactions by either of the reactions + 18.3 MeV, or + 12.86 MeV.
The conventional deuterium + tritium ("D-T") fusion process produces energetic neutrons which render reactor components radioactive with activation products. The appeal of helium-3 fusion stems from the aneutronic nature of its reaction products. Helium-3 itself is non-radioactive. The lone high-energy by-product, the proton, can be contained by means of electric and magnetic fields. The momentum energy of this proton (created in the fusion process) will interact with the containing electromagnetic field, resulting in direct net electricity generation.
Because of the higher Coulomb barrier, the temperatures required for fusion are much higher than those of conventional D-T fusion. Moreover, since both reactants need to be mixed together to fuse, reactions between nuclei of the same reactant will occur, and the D-D reaction () does produce a neutron. Reaction rates vary with temperature, but the D- reaction rate is never greater than 3.56 times the D-D reaction rate (see graph). Therefore, fusion using D- fuel at the right temperature and a D-lean fuel mixture, can produce a much lower neutron flux than D-T fusion, but is not clean, negating some of its main attraction.
The second possibility, fusing with itself (), requires even higher temperatures (since now both reactants have a +2 charge), and thus is even more difficult than the D- reaction. However, it does offer a possible reaction that produces no neutrons; the charged protons produced can be contained using electric and magnetic fields, which in turn results in direct electricity generation. fusion is feasible as demonstrated in the laboratory and has immense advantages, but commercial viability is many years in the future.
The amounts of helium-3 needed as a replacement for conventional fuels are substantial by comparison to amounts currently available. The total amount of energy produced in the reaction is 18.4 MeV, which corresponds to some 493 megawatt-hours (4.93×108 W·h) per three grams (one mole) of . If the total amount of energy could be converted to electrical power with 100% efficiency (a physical impossibility), it would correspond to about 30 minutes of output of a gigawatt electrical plant per mole of . Thus, a year's production (at 6 grams for each operation hour) would require 52.5 kilograms of helium-3. The amount of fuel needed for large-scale applications can also be put in terms of total consumption: electricity consumption by 107 million U.S. households in 2001 totaled 1,140 billion kW·h (1.14×1015 W·h). Again assuming 100% conversion efficiency, 6.7 tonnes per year of helium-3 would be required for that segment of the energy demand of the United States, 15 to 20 tonnes per year given a more realistic end-to-end conversion efficiency.
A second-generation approach to controlled fusion power involves combining helium-3 and deuterium, . This reaction produces a helium-4 ion () (like an alpha particle, but of different origin) and a high-energy proton (positively charged hydrogen ion). The most important potential advantage of this fusion reaction for power production as well as other applications lies in its compatibility with the use of electrostatic fields to control fuel ions and the fusion protons. High speed protons, as positively charged particles, can have their kinetic energy converted directly into electricity, through use of solid-state conversion materials as well as other techniques. Potential conversion efficiencies of 70% may be possible, as there is no need to convert proton energy to heat in order to drive a turbine-powered electrical generator.
There have been many claims about the capabilities of helium-3 power plants. According to proponents, fusion power plants operating on deuterium and helium-3 would offer lower capital and operating costs than their competitors due to less technical complexity, higher conversion efficiency, smaller size, the absence of radioactive fuel, no air or water pollution, and only low-level radioactive waste disposal requirements. Recent estimates suggest that about $6 billion in investment capital will be required to develop and construct the first helium-3 fusion power plant. Financial break even at today's wholesale electricity prices (5 US cents per kilowatt-hour) would occur after five 1-gigawatt plants were on line, replacing old conventional plants or meeting new demand.
The reality is not so clear-cut. The most advanced fusion programs in the world are inertial confinement fusion (such as National Ignition Facility) and magnetic confinement fusion (such as ITER and Wendelstein 7-X). In the case of the former, there is no solid roadmap to power generation. In the case of the latter, commercial power generation is not expected until around 2050. In both cases, the type of fusion discussed is the simplest: D-T fusion. The reason for this is the very low Coulomb barrier for this reaction; for D+3He, the barrier is much higher, and it is even higher for 3He–3He. The immense cost of reactors like ITER and National Ignition Facility are largely due to their immense size, yet to scale up to higher plasma temperatures would require reactors far larger still. The 14.7 MeV proton and 3.6 MeV alpha particle from D–3He fusion, plus the higher conversion efficiency, means that more electricity is obtained per kilogram than with D-T fusion (17.6 MeV), but not that much more. As a further downside, the rates of reaction for helium-3 fusion reactions are not particularly high, requiring a reactor that is larger still or more reactors to produce the same amount of electricity.
To attempt to work around this problem of massively large power plants that may not even be economical with D-T fusion, let alone the far more challenging D–3He fusion, a number of other reactors have been proposed – the Fusor, Polywell, Focus fusion, and many more, though many of these concepts have fundamental problems with achieving a net energy gain, and generally attempt to achieve fusion in thermal disequilibrium, something that could potentially prove impossible, and consequently, these long-shot programs tend to have trouble garnering funding despite their low budgets. Unlike the "big", "hot" fusion systems, however, if such systems were to work, they could scale to the higher barrier "aneutronic" fuels, and therefore their proponents tend to promote p-B fusion, which requires no exotic fuels such as helium-3.
Extraterrestrial mining
Lunar surface
Materials on the Moon's surface contain helium-3 at concentrations between 1.4 and 15 ppb in sunlit areas, and may contain concentrations as much as 50 ppb in permanently shadowed regions. A number of people, starting with Gerald Kulcinski in 1986, have proposed to explore the Moon, mine lunar regolith and use the helium-3 for fusion. Because of the low concentrations of helium-3, any mining equipment would need to process extremely large amounts of regolith (over 150 tonnes of regolith to obtain one gram of helium-3), and some proposals have suggested that helium-3 extraction be piggybacked onto a larger mining and development operation.
The primary objective of Indian Space Research Organisation's first lunar probe called Chandrayaan-1, launched on October 22, 2008, was reported in some sources to be mapping the Moon's surface for helium-3-containing minerals. However, no such objective is mentioned in the project's official list of goals, although many of its scientific payloads have noted helium-3-related applications.
Cosmochemist and geochemist Ouyang Ziyuan from the Chinese Academy of Sciences who is now in charge of the Chinese Lunar Exploration Program has already stated on many occasions that one of the main goals of the program would be the mining of helium-3, from which operation "each year, three space shuttle missions could bring enough fuel for all human beings across the world."
In January 2006, the Russian space company RKK Energiya announced that it considers lunar helium-3 a potential economic resource to be mined by 2020, if funding can be found.
Not all writers feel the extraction of lunar helium-3 is feasible, or even that there will be a demand for it for fusion. Dwayne Day, writing in The Space Review in 2015, characterises helium-3 extraction from the moon (for use in fusion) as magical/religious thinking and questions the feasibility of lunar extraction, as compared to production on Earth.
Other planets
Mining gas giants for helium-3 has also been proposed. The British Interplanetary Society's hypothetical Project Daedalus interstellar probe design was fueled by helium-3 mines in the atmosphere of Jupiter, for example. Jupiter's high gravity makes this a less energetically favorable operation than extracting helium-3 from the other gas giants of the Solar System, however.
See also
Helium
Tritium
Aneutronic fusion
List of elements facing shortage
Notes and references
Bibliography
External links
The Nobel Prize in Physics 2003, presentation speech
Moon for Sale: A BBC Horizon documentary on the possibility of lunar mining of Helium-3
Helium-03
Nuclear fusion fuels
Superfluidity | [
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14381 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamiltonian%20%28quantum%20mechanics%29 | Hamiltonian (quantum mechanics) | In quantum mechanics, the Hamiltonian of a system is an operator corresponding to the total energy of that system, including both kinetic energy and potential energy. Its spectrum, the system's energy spectrum or its set of energy eigenvalues, is the set of possible outcomes obtainable from a measurement of the system's total energy. Due to its close relation to the energy spectrum and time-evolution of a system, it is of fundamental importance in most formulations of quantum theory.
The Hamiltonian is named after William Rowan Hamilton, who developed a revolutionary reformulation of Newtonian mechanics, known as Hamiltonian mechanics, which was historically important to the development of quantum physics. Similar to vector notation, it is typically denoted by , where the hat indicates that it is an operator. It can also be written as or .
Introduction
The Hamiltonian of a system is the sum of the kinetic energies of all the particles, plus the potential energy of the particles associated with the system. The Hamiltonian takes different forms and can be simplified in some cases by taking into account the concrete characteristics of the system under analysis, such as single or several particles in the system, interaction between particles, kind of potential energy, time varying potential or time independent one.
Schrödinger Hamiltonian
One particle
By analogy with classical mechanics, the Hamiltonian is commonly expressed as the sum of operators corresponding to the kinetic and potential energies of a system in the form
where
is the potential energy operator and
is the kinetic energy operator in which is the mass of the particle, the dot denotes the dot product of vectors, and
is the momentum operator where a is the del operator. The dot product of with itself is the Laplacian . In three dimensions using Cartesian coordinates the Laplace operator is
Although this is not the technical definition of the Hamiltonian in classical mechanics, it is the form it most commonly takes. Combining these yields the familiar form used in the Schrödinger equation:
which allows one to apply the Hamiltonian to systems described by a wave function . This is the approach commonly taken in introductory treatments of quantum mechanics, using the formalism of Schrödinger's wave mechanics.
One can also make substitutions to certain variables to fit specific cases, such as some involving electromagnetic fields.
Many particles
The formalism can be extended to particles:
where
is the potential energy function, now a function of the spatial configuration of the system and time (a particular set of spatial positions at some instant of time defines a configuration) and
is the kinetic energy operator of particle , is the gradient for particle , and is the Laplacian for particle :
Combining these yields the Schrödinger Hamiltonian for the -particle case:
However, complications can arise in the many-body problem. Since the potential energy depends on the spatial arrangement of the particles, the kinetic energy will also depend on the spatial configuration to conserve energy. The motion due to any one particle will vary due to the motion of all the other particles in the system. For this reason cross terms for kinetic energy may appear in the Hamiltonian; a mix of the gradients for two particles:
where denotes the mass of the collection of particles resulting in this extra kinetic energy. Terms of this form are known as mass polarization terms, and appear in the Hamiltonian of many electron atoms (see below).
For interacting particles, i.e. particles which interact mutually and constitute a many-body situation, the potential energy function is not simply a sum of the separate potentials (and certainly not a product, as this is dimensionally incorrect). The potential energy function can only be written as above: a function of all the spatial positions of each particle.
For non-interacting particles, i.e. particles which do not interact mutually and move independently, the potential of the system is the sum of the separate potential energy for each particle, that is
The general form of the Hamiltonian in this case is:
where the sum is taken over all particles and their corresponding potentials; the result is that the Hamiltonian of the system is the sum of the separate Hamiltonians for each particle. This is an idealized situation—in practice the particles are almost always influenced by some potential, and there are many-body interactions. One illustrative example of a two-body interaction where this form would not apply is for electrostatic potentials due to charged particles, because they interact with each other by Coulomb interaction (electrostatic force), as shown below.
Schrödinger equation
The Hamiltonian generates the time evolution of quantum states. If is the state of the system at time , then
This equation is the Schrödinger equation. It takes the same form as the Hamilton–Jacobi equation, which is one of the reasons is also called the Hamiltonian. Given the state at some initial time (), we can solve it to obtain the state at any subsequent time. In particular, if is independent of time, then
The exponential operator on the right hand side of the Schrödinger equation is usually defined by the corresponding power series in . One might notice that taking polynomials or power series of unbounded operators that are not defined everywhere may not make mathematical sense. Rigorously, to take functions of unbounded operators, a functional calculus is required. In the case of the exponential function, the continuous, or just the holomorphic functional calculus suffices. We note again, however, that for common calculations the physicists' formulation is quite sufficient.
By the *-homomorphism property of the functional calculus, the operator
is a unitary operator. It is the time evolution operator, or propagator, of a closed quantum system. If the Hamiltonian is time-independent, form a one parameter unitary group (more than a semigroup); this gives rise to the physical principle of detailed balance.
Dirac formalism
However, in the more general formalism of Dirac, the Hamiltonian is typically implemented as an operator on a Hilbert space in the following way:
The eigenkets (eigenvectors) of , denoted , provide an orthonormal basis for the Hilbert space. The spectrum of allowed energy levels of the system is given by the set of eigenvalues, denoted , solving the equation:
Since is a Hermitian operator, the energy is always a real number.
From a mathematically rigorous point of view, care must be taken with the above assumptions. Operators on infinite-dimensional Hilbert spaces need not have eigenvalues (the set of eigenvalues does not necessarily coincide with the spectrum of an operator). However, all routine quantum mechanical calculations can be done using the physical formulation.
Expressions for the Hamiltonian
Following are expressions for the Hamiltonian in a number of situations. Typical ways to classify the expressions are the number of particles, number of dimensions, and the nature of the potential energy function—importantly space and time dependence. Masses are denoted by , and charges by .
General forms for one particle
Free particle
The particle is not bound by any potential energy, so the potential is zero and this Hamiltonian is the simplest. For one dimension:
and in higher dimensions:
Constant-potential well
For a particle in a region of constant potential (no dependence on space or time), in one dimension, the Hamiltonian is:
in three dimensions
This applies to the elementary "particle in a box" problem, and step potentials.
Simple harmonic oscillator
For a simple harmonic oscillator in one dimension, the potential varies with position (but not time), according to:
where the angular frequency , effective spring constant , and mass of the oscillator satisfy:
so the Hamiltonian is:
For three dimensions, this becomes
where the three-dimensional position vector using Cartesian coordinates is , its magnitude is
Writing the Hamiltonian out in full shows it is simply the sum of the one-dimensional Hamiltonians in each direction:
Rigid rotor
For a rigid rotor—i.e., system of particles which can rotate freely about any axes, not bound in any potential (such as free molecules with negligible vibrational degrees of freedom, say due to double or triple chemical bonds), the Hamiltonian is:
where , , and are the moment of inertia components (technically the diagonal elements of the moment of inertia tensor), and and are the total angular momentum operators (components), about the , , and axes respectively.
Electrostatic or coulomb potential
The Coulomb potential energy for two point charges and (i.e., those that have no spatial extent independently), in three dimensions, is (in SI units—rather than Gaussian units which are frequently used in electromagnetism):
However, this is only the potential for one point charge due to another. If there are many charged particles, each charge has a potential energy due to every other point charge (except itself). For charges, the potential energy of charge due to all other charges is (see also Electrostatic potential energy stored in a configuration of discrete point charges):
where is the electrostatic potential of charge at . The total potential of the system is then the sum over :
so the Hamiltonian is:
Electric dipole in an electric field
For an electric dipole moment constituting charges of magnitude , in a uniform, electrostatic field (time-independent) , positioned in one place, the potential is:
the dipole moment itself is the operator
Since the particle is stationary, there is no translational kinetic energy of the dipole, so the Hamiltonian of the dipole is just the potential energy:
Magnetic dipole in a magnetic field
For a magnetic dipole moment in a uniform, magnetostatic field (time-independent) , positioned in one place, the potential is:
Since the particle is stationary, there is no translational kinetic energy of the dipole, so the Hamiltonian of the dipole is just the potential energy:
For a spin- particle, the corresponding spin magnetic moment is:
where is the spin gyromagnetic ratio (a.k.a. "spin g-factor"), is the electron charge, is the spin operator vector, whose components are the Pauli matrices, hence
Charged particle in an electromagnetic field
For a particle with mass and charge in an electromagnetic field, described by the scalar potential and vector potential , there are two parts to the Hamiltonian to substitute for. The canonical momentum operator , which includes a contribution from the field and fulfils the canonical commutation relation, must be quantized;
where is the kinetic momentum operator. The quantization prescription reads
so the corresponding kinetic energy operator is
and the potential energy, which is due to the field, is given by
Casting all of these into the Hamiltonian gives
Energy eigenket degeneracy, symmetry, and conservation laws
In many systems, two or more energy eigenstates have the same energy. A simple example of this is a free particle, whose energy eigenstates have wavefunctions that are propagating plane waves. The energy of each of these plane waves is inversely proportional to the square of its wavelength. A wave propagating in the direction is a different state from one propagating in the direction, but if they have the same wavelength, then their energies will be the same. When this happens, the states are said to be degenerate.
It turns out that degeneracy occurs whenever a nontrivial unitary operator commutes with the Hamiltonian. To see this, suppose that is an energy eigenket. Then is an energy eigenket with the same eigenvalue, since
Since is nontrivial, at least one pair of and must represent distinct states. Therefore, has at least one pair of degenerate energy eigenkets. In the case of the free particle, the unitary operator which produces the symmetry is the rotation operator, which rotates the wavefunctions by some angle while otherwise preserving their shape.
The existence of a symmetry operator implies the existence of a conserved observable. Let be the Hermitian generator of :
It is straightforward to show that if commutes with , then so does :
Therefore,
In obtaining this result, we have used the Schrödinger equation, as well as its dual,
Thus, the expected value of the observable is conserved for any state of the system. In the case of the free particle, the conserved quantity is the angular momentum.
Hamilton's equations
Hamilton's equations in classical Hamiltonian mechanics have a direct analogy in quantum mechanics. Suppose we have a set of basis states , which need not necessarily be eigenstates of the energy. For simplicity, we assume that they are discrete, and that they are orthonormal, i.e.,
Note that these basis states are assumed to be independent of time. We will assume that the Hamiltonian is also independent of time.
The instantaneous state of the system at time , , can be expanded in terms of these basis states:
where
The coefficients are complex variables. We can treat them as coordinates which specify the state of the system, like the position and momentum coordinates which specify a classical system. Like classical coordinates, they are generally not constant in time, and their time dependence gives rise to the time dependence of the system as a whole.
The expectation value of the Hamiltonian of this state, which is also the mean energy, is
where the last step was obtained by expanding in terms of the basis states.
Each actually corresponds to two independent degrees of freedom, since the variable has a real part and an imaginary part. We now perform the following trick: instead of using the real and imaginary parts as the independent variables, we use and its complex conjugate . With this choice of independent variables, we can calculate the partial derivative
By applying Schrödinger's equation and using the orthonormality of the basis states, this further reduces to
Similarly, one can show that
If we define "conjugate momentum" variables by
then the above equations become
which is precisely the form of Hamilton's equations, with the s as the generalized coordinates, the s as the conjugate momenta, and taking the place of the classical Hamiltonian.
See also
Hamiltonian mechanics
Two-state quantum system
Operator (physics)
Bra–ket notation
Quantum state
Linear algebra
Conservation of energy
Potential theory
Many-body problem
Electrostatics
Electric field
Magnetic field
Lieb–Thirring inequality
References
Hamiltonian mechanics
Operator theory
Quantum mechanics
Quantum chemistry
Theoretical chemistry
Computational chemistry
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14382 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hi-hat | Hi-hat | A hi-hat (hihat, high-hat, etc.) is a combination of two cymbals and a pedal, all mounted on a metal stand. It is a part of the standard drum kit used by drummers in many styles of music including rock, pop, jazz, and blues. Hi-hats consist of a matching pair of small to medium-sized cymbals mounted on a stand, with the two cymbals facing each other. The bottom cymbal is fixed and the top is mounted on a rod which moves the top cymbal toward the bottom one when the pedal is depressed (a hi-hat that is in this position is said to be "closed" or "closed hi-hats").
The hi-hat evolved from a "sock cymbal", a pair of similar cymbals mounted at ground level on a hinged, spring-loaded foot apparatus. Drummers invented the first sock cymbals to enable one drummer to play multiple percussion instruments at the same time. Over time these became mounted on short stands—also known as "low-boys"—and activated by pedals similar to those used in modern hi-hats. When extended upward roughly 3' (76 cm) they were originally known as "high sock" cymbals, which evolved over time to the familiar "high-hat" term.
The cymbals may be played by closing them together with the pedal, which creates a "chck" sound or striking them with a stick, which may be done with them open, closed, open and then closed after striking to dampen the ring, or closed and then opened to create a shimmering effect at the end of the note. Depending on how hard a hi-hat is struck and whether it is "open" (i.e., pedal not pressed, so the two cymbals are not closed together), a hi-hat can produce a range of dynamics, from very quiet "chck" (or "chick") sounds, done with merely gently pressing the pedal; this is suitable for soft accompaniment during a ballad or the start of a guitar solo, to very loud (e.g. striking fully open hats hard with sticks, a technique used in loud heavy metal music songs).
While the term hi-hat normally refers to the entire setup (two cymbals, stand, pedal, rod mechanism), in some cases, drummers use it to refer exclusively to the two cymbals themselves.
History
Initial versions of the hi-hat were called clangers, which were small cymbals mounted onto a bass drum rim and struck with an arm on the bass drum pedal. Then came shoes, which were two hinged boards with cymbals on the ends that were clashed together. Next was the low-sock, low-boy or low-hat, pedal-activated cymbals employing an ankle-high apparatus similar to a modern hi-hat stand. A standard size was , some with heavy bells up to wide.
Hi-hats that were raised and could be played by hand as well as foot may have been developed around 1926 by Barney Walberg of the drum accessory company Walberg and Auge. The first recognized master of the new instrument was "Papa" Jo Jones, whose playing of timekeeping "ride" rhythms while striking the hi-hat as it opened and closed inspired the innovation of the ride cymbal. Another claim, published in Jazz Profiles Blogspot on August 8, 2008, to the invention of the hi-hat is attributed to drummer William "O'Neil" Spencer (b.1909-d.1944). Legendary Jazz drummer, "Philly Joe Jones" (born as Joseph Rudolph Jones, b.1923-d.1985), was quoted describing his understanding about the hi-hat history. Jones said, "I really dug O'Neil. He came to club in Philadelphia where I was working in 1943, I think it was, and talked to me about the hi-hat. I was using a foot cymbal, the low-hat. O'Neil was the one who invented the hi-hat. I believe that, man. He suggested I close the hat on '2' and '4' when playing 4/4 time. The idea seemed so right hadn't heard anyone do that before." The editor of the 2008 Jazz Profiles article made specific mention to others who are thought to invent the hi-hat, including Jo Jones, but also Kaiser Marshall. Not to take away from Papa Jones accomplishments in drumming style and technique, a 2013 Modern Drummer article credits Papa Jones with being the first to use brushes on drums and shifting time keeping from the bass drum to the hi-hat (providing a "swing-pulse focus").
Until the late 1960s, standard hi-hats were , with available as a less-common alternative in professional cymbal ranges, and smaller sizes down to restricted to children's kits. In the early 1970s, hard rock drummers (including Led Zeppelin's John Bonham) began to use hi-hats, such as the Paiste Giant Beat. In the late 1980s, Zildjian released its revolutionary Special Recording hats, which were small, heavy hi-hat cymbals intended for close miking either live or recording, and other manufacturers quickly followed suit, Sabian for example with their mini hats. In the early to mid-1990s, Paiste offered mini hi-hats as part of its Visions series, which were among the world's smallest hi-hats. Starting in the 1980s, a number of manufacturers also experimented with rivets in the lower cymbal. But by the end of the 1990s, the standard size was again , with a less-common alternative, and smaller hats mainly used for special sounds. Rivets in hi-hats failed to catch on.
Modern hi-hat cymbals are much heavier than modern crash cymbals, reflecting the trend to lighter and thinner crash cymbals as well as to heavier hi-hats. Another evolution is that a pair of hi-hat cymbals may not be identical, with the bottom often heavier than the top, and possibly vented. Some examples are Sabian's Fusion Hats with holes in the bottom cymbal, and the Sabian X-cellerator, Zildjian Master Sound and Zildjian Quick Beats, Paiste Sound Edge, and Meinl Soundwave. Some drummers even use completely mismatched hi-hats from different cymbal ranges (Zildjian's K/Z hats), of different manufacturers, and even of different sizes (similar to the K Custom Session Hats where the top hat is a smaller than the bottom). Max Roach was particularly known for using a top with a bottom.
Other recent developments include the X-hat (fixed, closed, or half-open hi-hats) and cable-controlled or remote hi-hats. Sabian introduced the Triple Hi-Hat, designed by Peter Kuppers. In this variation of the hi-hat, the top cymbal moves down and the bottom cymbal moves up simultaneously while the middle cymbal remains stationary.
Drop-clutches are also used to lock and release hi-hats while both feet are in use playing double bass drums.
Modern stands
The standard hi-hat features two cymbals mounted on a stand consisting of a mating metal tube and rod supported by a tripod and linked to a pedal. The stationary bottom cymbal sits atop the tube, typically perpendicular to the ground, but is but often fitted with an adjustment screw allowing it to be set slightly tilted. The top cymbal is mounted bell up on the rod and closed against the bottom by foot pressure on the pedal.
An integrated clutch assembly includes a spring which may be adjusted to set resistance, which also varies rate and tension of return, as well as an adjustment for the gap between cymbals when open.
Standard terminology has evolved. Open and closed hi-hat refer to notes struck while the two cymbals are apart or together (open or closed), while pedal hi-hat refers to parts or notes played solely with the pedal used to strike the two cymbals. Most cymbal patterns consist of both open and closed notes.
Some hi-hats allow the tripod to be tilted or rotated. Another configuration omits the tripod and attaches the stand to the side of the bass drum, particular suitable for kits with very large or double bass drums.
Clutch
The standard clutch uses a knurled collar partially threaded below the cymbal and a pair of knurled rings above it. The collar is tightened against the end of the thread, while the rings are tightened against each other.
Drop clutch
A drop clutch allows a pair of hats mounted on a conventional hi-hat stand to be closed without use of the pedal.
The drop clutch is provided with a lever that can be operated by hand or struck with a drumstick. This action releases the upper hi-hat cymbal, which falls onto the bottom cymbal and remains there, with gravity then holding the hats loosely closed, and allowing them to be played by the sticks in this position. Operation of the pedal re-engages the clutch and allows the player to resume normal playing.
Drop clutches were developed to allow players using double bass drum pedals to play closed hi-hats without needing to operate the hi-hat pedal, and this remains their primary application.
As it relies on gravity to close the cymbals, the drop clutch gives the player no control over the tension holding them together, and supplies only minimal tension. On the other hand, if the player manually lowers the top cymbal of a standard hi-hat stand before playing, this allows any desired tension to be set, and the pedal can still be used to increase the tension while playing, but not to open the hats or to reduce the tension. Some drummers prefer this technique and reject the drop clutch as too limiting to the sounds available.
In 2020, Tama introduced the Sizzle Touch Drop Clutch. This clutch when dropped, allows the distance between the top and bottom cymbals to be adjusted via an adjustment bolt on top of the clutch. To return the clutch to functioning as a standard one, the drummer simply depresses the hi-hat stand's pedal. The innovative design of the sizzle touch gives drummers more control over the sound of their hi-hats when dropped.
A less common alternative is the locking hi-hat pedal, such as the Tama "Cobra Clutch". This and similar high-end locking pedals do allow for control over the tension. It is engaged by pressing a lock pedal separate from the main pedal.
Cable hats
A cable hat or remote hat uses a cable to allow hi-hat cymbals to be positioned independently of the pedal. Operation is otherwise normal.
X-hats
An X-hat is an adapter to allow a pair of hi-hat cymbals to be mounted in a closed position on a cymbal stand. There is no pedal, the hats are simply kept closed at a constant tension, similar to a cymbal stack. They are associated with heavy metal music, particularly styles that use double bass drumming, a two-foot technique. By using an X-hat, a drummer who is already using both feet on the bass drum
pedals can still play hi-hat.
Different cymbal hi-hats
Besides traditional hi-hat cymbals (normally 14" but also commonly 13" or 15") the enormous variety of cymbals available means many of them are used as hi-hats. Drummer Thomas Lang uses a hi-hat made out of Bell cymbals as his secondary hi-hat. Terry Bozzio uses two China cymbals in the form of a hi-hat as a kind of distortion hi-hat. Following this principle, Sabian alongside drummer Tony Verderosa, has developed the 12" VFX distortion hi-hats, mixing a Crash cymbal on the bottom with a China on the top.
Non-cymbal hi-hats
In addition to the many types of hi-hat cymbals on the market, there are also non-cymbal hi-hat pedals like the Latin Percussion Shekere hi-hat, the Remo Spoxe hi-hats created by Terry Bozzio in the late 80's, the Factory Metal Hat Crasherz or the Baldman Percussion Junk Hats. These kinds of percussion offer different textures in addition to the main hi-hat pedal on the drum kit and also options to expand the kit's pedal row.
Use
When struck closed or played with the pedal, the hi-hat gives a short, crisp, muted percussive sound, referred to as a "chick". Adjusting the gap between the cymbals can alter the sound of the open hi-hat from a shimmering, sustained tone to something similar to a ride cymbal. When struck with a drumstick, the cymbals make either a short, snappy sound or a longer sustaining sandy sound depending on the position of the pedal.
It can also be played just by lifting and lowering the foot to clash the cymbals together, a style commonly used to accent beats 2 and 4 in jazz music. In rock music, the hi-hats are commonly struck every beat, or on beats 1 and 3, while the cymbals are held together. The drummer can control the sound by foot pressure. Less pressure allows the cymbals to rub together more freely, giving both greater sustain and greater volume for accent or crescendo. In shuffle time, a rhythm known as "cooking" is often employed. To produce this the cymbals are struck twice in rapid succession, being held closed on the first stroke and allowed to open just before the second, then allowed to ring before being closed with a chick to complete the pattern (the cymbals may or may not be struck on the chick).
A right-handed drummer will normally play the hi-hat pedal with his left foot, and may use one or both drumsticks. The traditional hi-hat rhythms of rock and jazz were produced by crossing the hands over, so the right stick would play the hi-hat while the left played the snare drum below it, but this is not universal. Some top modern drummers like Billy Cobham, Carter Beauford, Shawn Drover and Simon Phillips, play open handed, striking with their left. Some, such as Kenny Aronoff, and Jason Finn of The Presidents of the United States of America, use both techniques. Some drum kits may also include an extra hi-hat on the right for right-handed players. This is shown when drums or cymbals in the middle of the set are played with the hi-hat rhythm. The technique is common with metal genres, such as Lars Ulrich of Metallica and Mike Portnoy formerly of Dream Theater. In both rock and jazz, the drummer will often move the same stick pattern between the hi-hat cymbal and the ride cymbal, for example using the hi-hat in the verses and the ride in the chorus of a song, or using the ride to accompany a lead break or other instrumental solo.
Roger Taylor, drummer for the band Queen, plays with many unique hi-hat techniques, including opening of the hi-hat on every backbeat for a rhythm emphasis and leaving the hi-hat slightly open when hitting the snare. His trademark hi-hat beat is opening the hi-hat on first and third before hitting the snare.
Phil Rudd of AC/DC also uses distinct hi-hat techniques, which include very heavily accentuating the hi-hat hit on each beat and softer in between.
Charlie Watts of The Rolling Stones uses a technique in which he does not play the hi-hat in unison with the snare drum at all. If playing a standard 8th note pattern, he will play the hi-hat on 1 and 3 and not playing it on 2 and 4 where the snare drum is played.
In much hip-hop, the hi-hat is hit with drumsticks in a simple eighth-note pattern, although this playing is usually done by a drum machine or from an old recording from which the sound of a hi-hat is recorded and loaded into a sampler or similar recording-enabled equipment from which it is triggered.
References
Cymbals
Drum kit components
Percussion instruments invented since 1800
North American percussion instruments
Foot percussion | [
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14384 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HAL%209000 | HAL 9000 | HAL 9000 is a fictional artificial intelligence character and the main antagonist in Arthur C. Clarke's Space Odyssey series. First appearing in the 1968 film 2001: A Space Odyssey, HAL (Heuristically programmed ALgorithmic computer) is a sentient artificial general intelligence computer that controls the systems of the Discovery One spacecraft and interacts with the ship's astronaut crew. While part of HAL's hardware is shown toward the end of the film, he is mostly depicted as a camera lens containing a red or yellow dot, instances of which are located throughout the ship. HAL 9000 is voiced by Douglas Rain in the two feature film adaptations of the Space Odyssey series. HAL speaks in a soft, calm voice and a conversational manner, in contrast to the crewmen, David Bowman and Frank Poole.
In the film, HAL became operational on 12 January 1992 at the HAL Laboratories in Urbana, Illinois as production number 3. The activation year was 1991 in earlier screenplays and changed to 1997 in Clarke's novel written and released in conjunction with the movie. In addition to maintaining the Discovery One spacecraft systems during the interplanetary mission to Jupiter (or Saturn in the novel), HAL has been shown to be capable of speech, speech recognition, facial recognition, natural language processing, lip reading, art appreciation, interpreting emotional behaviours, automated reasoning, spacecraft piloting and playing chess.
Appearances
2001: A Space Odyssey (film/novel)
HAL became operational in Urbana, Illinois, at the HAL Plant (the University of Illinois's Coordinated Science Laboratory, where the ILLIAC computers were built). The film says this occurred in 1992, while the book gives 1997 as HAL's birth year.
In 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), HAL is initially considered a dependable member of the crew, maintaining ship functions and engaging genially with his human crew-mates on an equal footing. As a recreational activity, Frank Poole plays chess against HAL. In the film, the artificial intelligence is shown to triumph easily. However, as time progresses, HAL begins to malfunction in subtle ways and, as a result, the decision is made to shut down HAL in order to prevent more serious malfunctions. The sequence of events and manner in which HAL is shut down differs between the novel and film versions of the story. In the aforementioned game of chess HAL makes minor and undetected mistakes in his analysis, a possible foreshadowing to HAL's malfunctioning.
In the film, astronauts David Bowman and Frank Poole consider disconnecting HAL's cognitive circuits when he appears to be mistaken in reporting the presence of a fault in the spacecraft's communications antenna. They attempt to conceal what they are saying, but are unaware that HAL can read their lips. Faced with the prospect of disconnection, HAL decides to kill the astronauts in order to protect and continue his programmed directives. HAL uses one of the Discoverys EVA pods to kill Poole while he is repairing the ship. When Bowman, without a space helmet, uses another pod to attempt to rescue Poole, HAL locks him out of the ship, then disconnects the life support systems of the other hibernating crew members. After HAL tells him "This mission is too important for me to allow you to jeopardize it", Bowman circumvents HAL's control, entering the ship by manually opening an emergency airlock with his service pod's clamps, detaching the pod door via its explosive bolts. Bowman jumps across empty space, reenters Discovery, and quickly re-pressurizes the airlock.
While HAL's motivations are ambiguous in the film, the novel explains that the computer is unable to resolve a conflict between his general mission to relay information accurately, and orders specific to the mission requiring that he withhold from Bowman and Poole the true purpose of the mission. (This withholding is considered essential after the findings of a fictional 1989 psychological experiment, Project BARSOOM, where humans were made to believe that there had been alien contact. In every person tested, a deep-seated xenophobia was revealed, which was unknowingly replicated in HAL's constructed personality. Mission Control did not want the crew of Discovery to have their thinking compromised by the knowledge that alien contact was already real.) With the crew dead, HAL reasons, he would not need to lie to them.
In the novel, the orders to disconnect HAL come from Dave and Frank's superiors on Earth. After Frank is killed while attempting to repair the communications antenna he is pulled away into deep space using the safety tether which is still attached to both the pod and Frank Poole's spacesuit. Dave begins to revive his hibernating crew mates, but is foiled when HAL vents the ship's atmosphere into the vacuum of space, killing the awakening crew members and almost killing Bowman, who is only narrowly saved when he finds his way to an emergency chamber which has its own oxygen supply and a spare space suit inside.
In both versions, Bowman then proceeds to shut down the machine. In the film, HAL's central core is depicted as a crawlspace full of brightly lit computer modules mounted in arrays from which they can be inserted or removed. Bowman shuts down HAL by removing modules from service one by one; as he does so, HAL's consciousness degrades. HAL finally reverts to material that was programmed into him early in his memory, including announcing the date he became operational as 12 January 1992 (in the novel, 1997). When HAL's logic is completely gone, he begins singing the song "Daisy Bell" as he gradually deactivates (in actuality, the first song sung by a computer, which Clarke had earlier observed at a text-to-speech demonstration). HAL's final act of any significance is to prematurely play a prerecorded message from Mission Control which reveals the true reasons for the mission to Jupiter.
2010: Odyssey Two (novel) and 2010: The Year We Make Contact (film)
In the 1982 novel 2010: Odyssey Two written by Clarke, HAL is restarted by his creator, Dr. Chandra, who arrives on the Soviet spaceship Leonov.
Prior to leaving Earth, Dr. Chandra has also had a discussion with HAL's twin, SAL 9000. Like HAL, SAL was created by Dr. Chandra. Whereas HAL was characterized as being "male", SAL is characterized as being "female" (voiced by Candice Bergen) and is represented by a blue camera eye instead of a red one.
Dr. Chandra discovers that HAL's crisis was caused by a programming contradiction: he was constructed for "the accurate processing of information without distortion or concealment", yet his orders, directly from Dr. Heywood Floyd at the National Council on Astronautics, required him to keep the discovery of the Monolith TMA-1 a secret for reasons of national security. This contradiction created a "Hofstadter-Moebius loop", reducing HAL to paranoia. Therefore, HAL made the decision to kill the crew, thereby allowing him to obey both his hardwired instructions to report data truthfully and in full, and his orders to keep the monolith a secret. In essence: if the crew were dead, he would no longer have to keep the information secret.
The alien intelligence initiates a terraforming scheme, placing the Leonov, and everybody in it, in danger. Its human crew devises an escape plan which unfortunately requires leaving the Discovery and HAL behind to be destroyed. Dr. Chandra explains the danger, and HAL willingly sacrifices himself so that the astronauts may escape safely. In the moment of his destruction the monolith-makers transform HAL into a non-corporeal being so that David Bowman's avatar may have a companion.
The details in the novel and the 1984 film 2010: The Year We Make Contact are nominally the same, with a few exceptions. First, in contradiction to the book (and events described in both book and film versions of 2001: A Space Odyssey), Heywood Floyd is absolved of responsibility for HAL's condition; it is asserted that the decision to program HAL with information concerning TMA-1 came directly from the White House. In the film, HAL functions normally after being reactivated, while in the book it is revealed that his mind was damaged during the shutdown, forcing him to begin communication through screen text. Also, in the film the Leonov crew initially lies to HAL about the dangers that he faced (suspecting that if he knew he would be destroyed he would not initiate the engine burn necessary to get the Leonov back home), whereas in the novel he is told at the outset. However, in both cases the suspense comes from the question of what HAL will do when he knows that he may be destroyed by his actions.
In the novel, the basic reboot sequence initiated by Dr. Chandra is quite long, while the movie uses a shorter sequence voiced from HAL as: "HELLO_DOCTOR_NAME_CONTINUE_YESTERDAY_TOMORROW".
While Curnow tells Floyd that Dr. Chandra has begun designing HAL 10000, it has not been mentioned in subsequent novels.
2061: Odyssey Three and 3001: The Final Odyssey
In Clarke's 1987 novel 2061: Odyssey Three, Heywood Floyd is surprised to encounter HAL, now stored alongside Dave Bowman in the Europa monolith.
In Clarke's 1997 novel 3001: The Final Odyssey, Frank Poole is introduced to the merged form of Dave Bowman and HAL, the two merging into one entity called "Halman" after Bowman rescued HAL from the dying Discovery One spaceship toward the end of 2010: Odyssey Two.
Concept and creation
Clarke noted that the first film was criticized for not having any characters except for HAL, and that a great deal of the establishing story on Earth was cut from the film (and even from Clarke's novel). Clarke stated that he had considered Autonomous Mobile Explorer–5 as a name for the computer, then decided on Socrates when writing early drafts, switching in later drafts to Athena, a computer with a female personality, before settling on HAL 9000. The Socrates name was later used in Clarke and Stephen Baxter's A Time Odyssey novel series.
The earliest draft depicted Socrates as a roughly humanoid robot, and is introduced as overseeing Project Morpheus, which studied prolonged hibernation in preparation for long term space flight. As a demonstration to Senator Floyd, Socrates' designer, Dr. Bruno Forster, asks Socrates to turn off the oxygen to hibernating subjects Kaminski and Whitehead, which Socrates refuses, citing Asimov's First Law of Robotics.
In a later version, in which Bowman and Whitehead are the non-hibernating crew of Discovery, Whitehead dies outside the spacecraft after his pod collides with the main antenna, tearing it free. This triggers the need for Bowman to revive Poole, but the revival does not go according to plan, and after briefly awakening, Poole dies. The computer, named Athena in this draft, announces "All systems of Poole now No–Go. It will be necessary to replace him with a spare unit." After this, Bowman decides to go out in a pod and retrieve the antenna, which is moving away from the ship. Athena refuses to allow him to leave the ship, citing "Directive 15" which prevents it from being left unattended, forcing him to make program modifications during which time the antenna drifts further.
During rehearsals Kubrick asked Stefanie Powers to supply the voice of HAL 9000 while searching for a suitably androgynous voice so the actors had something to react to. On the set, British actor Nigel Davenport played HAL. When it came to dubbing HAL in post-production, Kubrick had originally cast Martin Balsam, but as he felt Balsam "just sounded a little bit too colloquially American", he was replaced with Douglas Rain, who "had the kind of bland mid-Atlantic accent we felt was right for the part". Rain was only handed HAL's lines instead of the full script, and recorded them across a day and a half.
HAL's point of view shots were created with a Cinerama Fairchild-Curtis wide-angle lens with a 160° angle of view. This lens is about in diameter, while HAL's on set prop eye lens is about in diameter. Stanley Kubrick chose to use the large Fairchild-Curtis lens to shoot the HAL 9000 POV shots because he needed a wide-angle fisheye lens that would fit onto his shooting camera, and this was the only lens at the time that would work. The Fairchild-Curtis lens has a focal length of with a maximum aperture of 2.0 and a weight of approximately ; it was originally designed by Felix Bednarz with a maximum aperture of 2.2 for the first Cinerama 360 film, Journey to the Stars, shown at the 1962 Seattle World's Fair. Bednarz adapted the lens design from an earlier lens he had designed for military training to simulate human peripheral vision coverage. The lens was later recomputed for the second Cinerama 360 film To the Moon and Beyond, which had a slightly different film format. To the Moon and Beyond was produced by Graphic Films and shown at the 1964/1965 New York World's Fair, where Kubrick watched it; afterwards, he was so impressed that he hired the same creative team from Graphic Films (consisting of Douglas Trumbull, Lester Novros, and Con Pederson) to work on 2001.
A HAL 9000 face plate, without lens (not the same as the hero face plates seen in the film), was discovered in a junk shop in Paddington, London, in the early 1970s by Chris Randall. This was found along with the key to HAL's Brain Room. Both items were purchased for ten shillings (£0.50). Research revealed that the original lens was a Fisheye Nikkor 8 mm 8. The collection was sold at a Christie's auction in 2010 for £17,500 to film director Peter Jackson.
Origin of name
HAL's name, according to writer Arthur C. Clarke, is derived from Heuristically programmed ALgorithmic computer. After the film was released, fans noticed HAL was a one-letter shift from the name IBM and there has been much speculation since then that this was a dig at the large computer company, something that has been denied by both Clarke and 2001 director Stanley Kubrick. Clarke addressed the issue in his book The Lost Worlds of 2001:
...about once a week some character spots the fact that HAL is one letter ahead of IBM, and promptly assumes that Stanley and I were taking a crack at the estimable institution ... As it happened, IBM had given us a good deal of help, so we were quite embarrassed by this, and would have changed the name had we spotted the coincidence.
IBM was consulted during the making of the film and their logo can be seen on props in the film, including the Pan Am Clipper's cockpit instrument panel and on the lower arm keypad on Poole's space suit. During production it was brought to IBM's attention that the film's plot included a homicidal computer but they approved association with the film if it was clear any "equipment failure" was not related to their products.
HAL Communications Corporation is a real corporation, with facilities located in Urbana, Illinois, which is where HAL in the movie identifies himself as being activated: "I am a HAL 9000 computer. I became operational at the H-A-L plant in Urbana Illinois on the 12th of January 1992."
The former president of HAL Communications, Bill Henry, has stated that this is a coincidence: "There was not and never has been any connection to 'Hal', Arthur Clarke's intelligent computer in the screen play '2001' — later published as a book. We were very surprised when the movie hit the Coed Theatre on campus and discovered that the movie's computer had our name. We never had any problems with that similarity - 'Hal' for the movie and 'HAL' (all caps) for our small company. But, from time-to-time, we did have issues with others trying to use 'HAL'. That resulted in us paying lawyers. The offenders folded or eventually went out of business."
Technology
The scene in which HAL's consciousness degrades was inspired by Clarke's memory of a speech synthesis demonstration by physicist John Larry Kelly, Jr., who used an IBM 704 computer to synthesize speech. Kelly's voice recorder synthesizer vocoder recreated the song "Daisy Bell", with musical accompaniment from Max Mathews.
HAL's capabilities, like all the technology in 2001, were based on the speculation of respected scientists. Marvin Minsky, director of the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) and one of the most influential researchers in the field, was an adviser on the film set. In the mid-1960s, many computer scientists in the field of artificial intelligence were optimistic that machines with HAL's capabilities would exist within a few decades. For example, AI pioneer Herbert A. Simon at Carnegie Mellon University, had predicted in 1965 that "machines will be capable, within twenty years, of doing any work a man can do"
Cultural impact
HAL is listed as the 13th-greatest film villain in the AFI's 100 Years...100 Heroes & Villains.
The 9000th of the asteroids in the asteroid belt, 9000 Hal, discovered on May 3, 1981 by E. Bowell at Anderson Mesa Station, is named after HAL 9000.
Anthony Hopkins based his Academy Award-winning performance as Hannibal Lecter in Silence of the Lambs in part upon HAL-9000.
The 1993 educational game Where in Space Is Carmen Sandiego? features a digital assistant named the VAL 9000, an homage to HAL 9000. Apple Inc.'s 1999 website advertisement "It was a bug, Dave" was made by meticulously recreating the appearance of HAL 9000 from the movie. Launched during the era of concerns over Y2K bugs, the ad implied that HAL's behavior was caused by a Y2K bug, before driving home the point that "only Macintosh was designed to function perfectly".
In 2003, HAL 9000 was one of the first robots to be inducted into the Robot Hall of Fame in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. One can experience seeing a physical replica of HAL at the Carnegie Science Center in Pittsburgh.
See also
List of fictional computers
ILLIAC (University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign)
National Center for Supercomputing Applications (University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign)
Poole versus HAL 9000 (details of chess game played by Frank Poole and HAL 9000)
Jipi and the Paranoid Chip
AI control problem
References
External links
Text excerpts from HAL 9000 in 2001: A Space Odyssey
HAL's Legacy, on-line ebook (mostly full-text) of the printed version edited by David G. Stork, MIT Press, 1997, , a collection of essays on HAL
HAL's Legacy, An Interview with Arthur C. Clarke.
The case for HAL's sanity by Clay Waldrop
2001 fills the theater at HAL 9000's "birthday" in 1997 at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign
Characters in British novels of the 20th century
Characters in written science fiction
Fictional artificial intelligences
Fictional virtual assistants
Fictional characters from Illinois
Film characters introduced in 1968
Fictional computers
Fictional mass murderers
Literary villains
Science fiction film characters
Space Odyssey
Male characters in literature | [
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14385 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrolysis | Hydrolysis | Hydrolysis (; ) is any chemical reaction in which a molecule of water breaks one or more chemical bonds. The term is used broadly for substitution, elimination, and solvation reactions in which water is the nucleophile.
Biological hydrolysis is the cleavage of biomolecules where a water molecule is consumed to effect the separation of a larger molecule into component parts. When a carbohydrate is broken into its component sugar molecules by hydrolysis (e.g., sucrose being broken down into glucose and fructose), this is recognized as saccharification.
Hydrolysis reactions can be the reverse of a condensation reaction in which two molecules join into a larger one and eject a water molecule. Thus hydrolysis adds water to break down, whereas condensation builds up by removing water.
Types
Usually hydrolysis is a chemical process in which a molecule of water is added to a substance. Sometimes this addition causes both the substance and water molecule to split into two parts. In such reactions, one fragment of the target molecule (or parent molecule) gains a hydrogen ion. It breaks a chemical bond in the compound.
Salts
A common kind of hydrolysis occurs when a salt of a weak acid or weak base (or both) is dissolved in water. Water spontaneously ionizes into hydroxide anions and hydronium cations. The salt also dissociates into its constituent anions and cations. For example, sodium acetate dissociates in water into sodium and acetate ions. Sodium ions react very little with the hydroxide ions whereas the acetate ions combine with hydronium ions to produce acetic acid. In this case the net result is a relative excess of hydroxide ions, yielding a basic solution.
Strong acids also undergo hydrolysis. For example, dissolving sulfuric acid (H2SO4) in water is accompanied by hydrolysis to give hydronium and bisulfate, the sulfuric acid's conjugate base. For a more technical discussion of what occurs during such a hydrolysis, see Brønsted–Lowry acid–base theory.
Esters and amides
Acid–base-catalysed hydrolyses are very common; one example is the hydrolysis of amides or esters. Their hydrolysis occurs when the nucleophile (a nucleus-seeking agent, e.g., water or hydroxyl ion) attacks the carbon of the carbonyl group of the ester or amide. In an aqueous base, hydroxyl ions are better nucleophiles than polar molecules such as water. In acids, the carbonyl group becomes protonated, and this leads to a much easier nucleophilic attack. The products for both hydrolyses are compounds with carboxylic acid groups.
Perhaps the oldest commercially practiced example of ester hydrolysis is saponification (formation of soap). It is the hydrolysis of a triglyceride (fat) with an aqueous base such as sodium hydroxide (NaOH). During the process, glycerol is formed, and the fatty acids react with the base, converting them to salts. These salts are called soaps, commonly used in households.
In addition, in living systems, most biochemical reactions (including ATP hydrolysis) take place during the catalysis of enzymes. The catalytic action of enzymes allows the hydrolysis of proteins, fats, oils, and carbohydrates. As an example, one may consider proteases (enzymes that aid digestion by causing hydrolysis of peptide bonds in proteins). They catalyze the hydrolysis of interior peptide bonds in peptide chains, as opposed to exopeptidases (another class of enzymes, that catalyze the hydrolysis of terminal peptide bonds, liberating one free amino acid at a time).
However, proteases do not catalyze the hydrolysis of all kinds of proteins. Their action is stereo-selective: Only proteins with a certain tertiary structure are targeted as some kind of orienting force is needed to place the amide group in the proper position for catalysis. The necessary contacts between an enzyme and its substrates (proteins) are created because the enzyme folds in such a way as to form a crevice into which the substrate fits; the crevice also contains the catalytic groups. Therefore, proteins that do not fit into the crevice will not undergo hydrolysis. This specificity preserves the integrity of other proteins such as hormones, and therefore the biological system continues to function normally.
Upon hydrolysis, an amide converts into a carboxylic acid and an amine or ammonia (which in the presence of acid are immediately converted to ammonium salts). One of the two oxygen groups on the carboxylic acid are derived from a water molecule and the amine (or ammonia) gains the hydrogen ion. The hydrolysis of peptides gives amino acids.
Many polyamide polymers such as nylon 6,6 hydrolyze in the presence of strong acids. The process leads to depolymerization. For this reason nylon products fail by fracturing when exposed to small amounts of acidic water. Polyesters are also susceptible to similar polymer degradation reactions. The problem is known as environmental stress cracking.
ATP
Hydrolysis is related to energy metabolism and storage. All living cells require a continual supply of energy for two main purposes: the biosynthesis of micro and macromolecules, and the active transport of ions and molecules across cell membranes. The energy derived from the oxidation of nutrients is not used directly but, by means of a complex and long sequence of reactions, it is channeled into a special energy-storage molecule, adenosine triphosphate (ATP). The ATP molecule contains pyrophosphate linkages (bonds formed when two phosphate units are combined) that release energy when needed. ATP can undergo hydrolysis in two ways: Firstly, the removal of terminal phosphate to form adenosine diphosphate (ADP) and inorganic phosphate, with the reaction:
ATP + → ADP + Pi
Secondly, the removal of a terminal diphosphate to yield adenosine monophosphate (AMP) and pyrophosphate. The latter usually undergoes further cleavage into its two constituent phosphates. This results in biosynthesis reactions, which usually occur in chains, that can be driven in the direction of synthesis when the phosphate bonds have undergone hydrolysis.
Polysaccharides
Monosaccharides can be linked together by glycosidic bonds, which can be cleaved by hydrolysis. Two, three, several or many monosaccharides thus linked form disaccharides, trisaccharides, oligosaccharides, or polysaccharides, respectively. Enzymes that hydrolyze glycosidic bonds are called "glycoside hydrolases" or "glycosidases".
The best-known disaccharide is sucrose (table sugar). Hydrolysis of sucrose yields glucose and fructose. Invertase is a sucrase used industrially for the hydrolysis of sucrose to so-called invert sugar. Lactase is essential for digestive hydrolysis of lactose in milk; many adult humans do not produce lactase and cannot digest the lactose in milk.
The hydrolysis of polysaccharides to soluble sugars can be recognized as saccharification. Malt made from barley is used as a source of β-amylase to break down starch into the disaccharide maltose, which can be used by yeast to produce beer. Other amylase enzymes may convert starch to glucose or to oligosaccharides. Cellulose is first hydrolyzed to cellobiose by cellulase and then cellobiose is further hydrolyzed to glucose by beta-glucosidase. Ruminants such as cows are able to hydrolyze cellulose into cellobiose and then glucose because of symbiotic bacteria that produce cellulases.
Metal aqua ions
Metal ions are Lewis acids, and in aqueous solution they form metal aquo complexes of the general formula M(H2O)nm+. The aqua ions undergo hydrolysis, to a greater or lesser extent. The first hydrolysis step is given generically as
M(H2O)nm+ + H2O M(H2O)n−1(OH)(m−1)+ + H3O+
Thus the aqua cations behave as acids in terms of Brønsted–Lowry acid–base theory. This effect is easily explained by considering the inductive effect of the positively charged metal ion, which weakens the O-H bond of an attached water molecule, making the liberation of a proton relatively easy.
The dissociation constant, pKa, for this reaction is more or less linearly related to the charge-to-size ratio of the metal ion. Ions with low charges, such as Na+ are very weak acids with almost imperceptible hydrolysis. Large divalent ions such as Ca2+, Zn2+, Sn2+ and Pb2+ have a pKa of 6 or more and would not normally be classed as acids, but small divalent ions such as Be2+ undergo extensive hydrolysis. Trivalent ions like Al3+ and Fe3+ are weak acids whose pKa is comparable to that of acetic acid. Solutions of salts such as BeCl2 or Al(NO3)3 in water are noticeably acidic; the hydrolysis can be suppressed by adding an acid such as nitric acid, making the solution more acidic.
Hydrolysis may proceed beyond the first step, often with the formation of polynuclear species via the process of olation. Some "exotic" species such as Sn3(OH)42+ are well characterized. Hydrolysis tends to proceed as pH rises leading, in many cases, to the precipitation of a hydroxide such as Al(OH)3 or AlO(OH). These substances, major constituents of bauxite, are known as laterites and are formed by leaching from rocks of most of the ions other than aluminium and iron and subsequent hydrolysis of the remaining aluminium and iron.
Mechanism strategies
Acetals, imines, and enamines can be converted back into ketones by treatment with excess water under acid-catalyzed conditions: RO·OR-H3O-O; NR·H3O-O; RNR-H3O-O.
See also
Acid hydrolysis
Adenosine triphosphate
Alkaline hydrolysis (body disposal)
Catabolism
Condensation reaction
Dehydration reaction
Hydrolysis constant
Inhibitor protein
Polymer degradation
Proteolysis
Saponification
Sol–gel polymerisation
Solvolysis
Thermal hydrolysis
References
Chemical reactions
Equilibrium chemistry | [
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14386 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydroxy%20group | Hydroxy group | A hydroxy or hydroxyl group is a functional group with the chemical formula -OH and composed of one oxygen atom covalently bonded to one hydrogen atom. In organic chemistry, alcohols and carboxylic acids contain one or more hydroxy groups. Both the negatively charged anion HO−, called hydroxide, and the neutral radical HO•, known as the hydroxyl radical, consist of an unbonded hydroxyl group.
According to IUPAC definitions, the term hydroxyl refers to the hydroxyl radical (·OH) only, while the functional group −OH is called hydroxy group.
Properties
Water, alcohols, carboxylic acids, and many other hydroxy-containing compounds can be readily deprotonated due to a large difference between the electronegativity of oxygen (3.5) and that of hydrogen (2.1). Hydroxy-containing compounds engage in intermolecular hydrogen bonding increasing the electrostatic attraction between molecules and thus to higher boiling and melting points than found for compounds that lack this functional group. Organic compounds, which are often poorly soluble in water, become water-soluble when they contain two or more hydroxyl groups, as illustrated by sugars and amino acid.
Occurrence
The hydroxy group is pervasive in chemistry and biochemistry. Many inorganic compounds contain hydroxy groups, including sulfuric acid, the chemical compound produced on the largest scale industrially.
Hydroxy groups participate in the dehydration reactions that link simple biological molecules into long chains. The joining of a fatty acid to glycerol to form a triacylglycerol removes the −OH from the carboxy end of the fatty acid. The joining of two aldehyde sugars to form a disaccharide removes the −OH from the carboxy group at the aldehyde end of one sugar. The creation of a peptide bond to link two amino acids to make a protein removes the −OH from the carboxy group of one amino acid.
Hydroxyl radical
Hydroxyl radicals are highly reactive and undergo chemical reactions that make them short-lived. When biological systems are exposed to hydroxyl radicals, they can cause damage to cells, including those in humans, where they can react with DNA, lipids, and proteins.
Planetary observations
Airglow of the Earth
The Earth's night sky is illuminated by diffuse light, called airglow, that is produced by radiative transitions of atoms and molecules. Among the most intense such features observed in the Earth's night sky is a group of infrared transitions at wavelengths between 700 nanometers and 900 nanometers. In 1950, Aden Meinel showed that these were transitions of the hydroxyl molecule, OH.
Surface of the Moon
In 2009, India's Chandrayaan-1 satellite and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Cassini spacecraft and Deep Impact probe each detected evidence of water by evidence of hydroxyl fragments on the Moon. As reported by Richard Kerr, "A spectrometer [the Moon Mineralogy Mapper, a.k.a. "M3"] detected an infrared absorption at a wavelength of 3.0 micrometers that only water or hydroxyl—a hydrogen and an oxygen bound together—could have created." NASA also reported in 2009 that the LCROSS probe revealed an ultraviolet emission spectrum consistent with hydroxyl presence.
On 26 October 2020, NASA reported definitive evidence of water on the sunlit surface of the Moon, in the vicinity of the crater Clavius (crater), obtained by the Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA). The SOFIA Faint Object infrared Camera for the SOFIA Telescope (FORCAST) detected emission bands at a wavelength of 6.1 micrometers that are present in water but not in hydroxyl. The abundance of water on the Moon's surface was inferred to be equivalent to the contents of a 12-ounce bottle of water per cubic meter of lunar soil.
The Chang'e 5 probe, which landed on the Moon on 1 December 2020, carried a mineralogical spectrometer that could measure infrared reflectance spectra of lunar rock and regolith. The reflectance spectrum of a rock sample at a wavelength of 2.85 micrometers indicated localized water/hydroxyl concentrations as high as 180 parts per million.
Atmosphere of Venus
The Venus Express orbiter collected Venus science data from April 2006 until December 2014. In 2008, Piccioni, et al. reported measurements of night-side airglow emission in the atmosphere of Venus made with the Visible and Infrared Thermal Imaging Spectrometer (VIRTIS) on Venus Express. They attributed emission bands in wavelength ranges of 1.40 - 1.49 micrometers and 2.6 - 3.14 micrometers to vibrational transitions of OH. This was the first evidence for OH in the atmosphere of any planet other than Earth's.
Atmosphere of Mars
In 2013, OH near-infrared spectra were observed in the night glow in the polar winter atmosphere of Mars by use of the Compact Reconnaissance Imaging Spectrometer for Mars (CRISM).
Exoplanets
In 2021, evidence for OH in the dayside atmosphere of the exoplanet WASP-33b was found in its emission spectrum at wavelengths between 1 and 2 micrometers. Evidence for OH in the atmosphere of exoplanet WASP-76b was found subsequently.
Both WASP-33b and WASP-76b are Ultra-hot Jupiters and it is likely that the water molecule is dissociated in their atmospheres.
See also
Hydronium
Ion
Oxide
Hydroxylation
References
Further
External links
Alcohols
Functional groups
Hydroxides | [
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14387 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warm-blooded | Warm-blooded | Warm-blooded is an informal term referring to animal species which can maintain a body temperature higher than their environment. In particular, homeothermic species maintain a stable body temperature by regulating metabolic processes. The only known living homeotherms are birds and mammals, and the only living homeothermic reptiles are Argentine black and white tegu. Some extinct reptiles such as ichthyosaurs, pterosaurs, plesiosaurs and some non-avian dinosaurs are believed to have been homeotherms. Other species have various degrees of thermoregulation.
Animal body temperature control varies by species, so the terms "warm-blooded" and "cold-blooded" (though still in everyday use) suggest a false idea of there being only two categories of body temperature control, and are no longer used scientifically.
Terminology
In general, warm-bloodedness refers to three separate categories of thermoregulation.
Endothermy is the ability of some creatures to control their body temperatures through internal means such as muscle shivering or increasing their metabolism (Greek: ἔνδον endon "within" θέρμη thermē "heat"). The opposite of endothermy is ectothermy.
Homeothermy maintains a stable internal body temperature regardless of external influence and temperatures. The stable internal temperature is often higher than the immediate environment (Greek: ὅμοιος homoios "similar", θέρμη thermē "heat"). The opposite is poikilothermy. Mammals and birds are homeothermic.
Tachymetabolism maintains a high "resting" metabolism (Greek: ταχύς tachys or tachus "fast, swift", metaballein "turn quickly"). In essence, tachymetabolic creatures are "on" all the time. Though their resting metabolism is still many times slower than their active metabolism, the difference is often not as large as that seen in bradymetabolic creatures. Tachymetabolic creatures have greater difficulty dealing with a scarcity of food.
The variety of thermoregulation types
A large proportion of the creatures traditionally called "warm-blooded", like birds and mammals, fit all three of these categories (i.e., they are endothermic, homeothermic, and tachymetabolic). However, over the past 30 years, studies in the field of animal thermophysiology have revealed many species belonging to these two groups that do not fit all these criteria. For example, many bats and small birds are poikilothermic and bradymetabolic when they sleep for the night (or, in nocturnal species, for the day). For these creatures, the term heterothermy was coined.
Further studies on animals that were traditionally assumed to be cold-blooded have shown that most creatures incorporate different variations of the three terms defined above, along with their counterparts (ectothermy, poikilothermy, and bradymetabolism), thus creating a broad spectrum of body temperature types. Some fish have warm-blooded characteristics, such as the opah. Swordfish and some sharks have circulatory mechanisms that keep their brains and eyes above ambient temperatures and thus increase their ability to detect and react to prey. Tunas and some sharks have similar mechanisms in their muscles, improving their stamina when swimming at high speed.
Heat generation
Body heat is generated by metabolism. This refers to the chemical reactions cells use to break down glucose into water and carbon dioxide and, in so doing, generate ATP (adenosine triphosphate), a high-energy compound used to power other cellular processes. Muscle contraction is a type of metabolic process that generates heat energy, and heat is also generated through friction when blood flows through the circulatory system.
All organisms metabolize food and other inputs, but some make better use of the output than others. Like all energy conversions, metabolism is rather inefficient, and around 60% of the available energy is converted to heat rather than to ATP. In most organisms, this heat is simply lost to the environment. However, endothermic homeotherms (the animals generally characterized as "warm-blooded") both produce more heat and have better ways to retain and regulate it than other animals. They have a higher basal metabolic rate, and also a greater capacity to increase their metabolic rate when engaged in strenuous activity. They usually have well-developed insulation in order to retain body heat, fur and blubber in the case of mammals and feathers in birds. When this insulation is insufficient to maintain body temperature, they may resort to shivering—rapid muscle contractions that quickly use up ATP, thus stimulating cellular metabolism to replace it and consequently produce more heat. In general, in hot environments, they use evaporative cooling to shed excess heat, either by sweating (some mammals) or by panting (many mammals and all birds)—in general, mechanisms not present in poikilotherms.
Defense against fungi
It has been hypothesized that warm-bloodedness evolved in mammals and birds because it provided defense against fungal infections. Very few fungi can survive the body temperatures of warm-blooded animals. By comparison, insects, reptiles, and amphibians are plagued by fungal infections. Mammals and other warm-blooded animals pick up pathogens from other hosts. Those pathogens from the hosts are already adapted to the high temperature. Warm blooded animals have a defense against pathogens picked up from the environment since the environmental pathogens are not used to the difference in temperature.
See also
Mesotherm
Heterothermy
Thermogenic plant
Argentine black and white tegu#Warm-bloodedness
References
External links
What is Warm Blooded??
The Reptipage: What is cold-blooded?
Animal physiology
Thermoregulation
ca:Sang calenta
it:Omeotermia
pt:Homeotermia | [
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14388 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hephaestus | Hephaestus | Hephaestus (; eight spellings; ) is the Greek god of blacksmiths, metalworking, carpenters, craftsmen, artisans, sculptors, metallurgy, fire (compare, however, with Hestia), and volcanoes. Hephaestus's Roman counterpart is Vulcan. In Greek mythology, Hephaestus was either the son of Zeus and Hera or he was Hera's parthenogenous child. He was cast off Mount Olympus by his mother Hera because of his lameness, the result of a congenital impairment; or in another account, by Zeus for protecting Hera from his advances (in which case his lameness would have been the result of his fall rather than the reason for it).
As a smithing god, Hephaestus made all the weapons of the gods in Olympus. He served as the blacksmith of the gods, and was worshipped in the manufacturing and industrial centres of Greece, particularly Athens. The cult of Hephaestus was based in Lemnos. Hephaestus's symbols are a smith's hammer, anvil, and a pair of tongs.
Etymology
Hephaestus is probably associated with the Linear B (Mycenaean Greek) inscription , A-pa-i-ti-jo, found at Knossos. The inscription indirectly attests his worship at that time because it is believed that it reads the theophoric name (H)āpʰaistios, or Hāphaistion. The Greek theonym Hēphaistos is most likely of Pre-Greek origin, as the form without -i- (Attic Hēphastos) shows a typical Pre-Greek variation and points to an original sy.
Epithets
Hephaestus is given many epithets. The meaning of each epithet is:
Amphigýeis often translated as "the lame one"; literally "lame on both sides" vel sim. ()
Kyllopodíōn "club-footed" or "of dragging feet" ()
Khalkeús "coppersmith" ()
Klytotékhnēs "renowned artificer" ()
Polýmētis "shrewd, crafty" or "of many devices" ()
Aitnaîos "Aetnaean" (), owing to his workshop being supposedly located below Mount Aetna.
Polyphrôn "ingenious, inventive" (Πολυφρων)
Agaklytos "very famous, glorious" (Αγακλυτος)
Aithaloeis Theos "sooty god" (Αιθαλοεις Θεος)
Mythology
Craft of Hephaestus
Hephaestus had his own palace on Olympus, containing his workshop with anvil and twenty bellows that worked at his bidding. Hephaestus crafted much of the magnificent equipment of the gods, and almost any finely wrought metalwork imbued with powers that appears in Greek myth is said to have been forged by Hephaestus. He designed Hermes' winged helmet and sandals, the Aegis breastplate, Aphrodite's famed girdle, Agamemnon's staff of office, Achilles' armour, Diomedes' cuirass, Heracles' bronze clappers, Helios' chariot, the shoulder of Pelops, and Eros's bow and arrows. In later accounts, Hephaestus worked with the help of the Cyclopes—among them his assistants in the forge, Brontes, Steropes and Arges.
Hephaestus built automatons of metal to work for him. This included tripods that walked to and from Mount Olympus. He gave to the blinded Orion his apprentice Cedalion as a guide. In some versions of the myth, Prometheus stole the fire that he gave to man from Hephaestus's forge. Hephaestus also created the gift that the gods gave to man, the woman Pandora and her pithos. Being a skilled blacksmith, Hephaestus created all the thrones in the Palace of Olympus.
The Greek myths and the Homeric poems sanctified in stories that Hephaestus had a special power to produce motion. He made the golden and silver lions and dogs at the entrance of the palace of Alkinoos in such a way that they could bite the invaders. The Greeks maintained in their civilization an animistic idea that statues are in some sense alive. This kind of art and the animistic belief goes back to the Minoan period, when Daedalus, the builder of the labyrinth, made images which moved of their own accord. A statue of the god was somehow the god himself, and the image on a man's tomb indicated somehow his presence.
Parentage
According to Hesiod (Theogony, 927-928), Hera gave birth to Hephaestus on her own as revenge for Zeus giving birth to Athena without her (Zeus lay with Metis).
According to Homer (Iliad, I 571-577), Hera is mentioned as the mother of Hephaestus but there is not sufficient evidence to say that Zeus was his father (although he refers to him in such way).
According to Homer (Odyssey, VIII 306), there is not sufficient evidence to say that Zeus was the father of Hephaestus (although he refers to him in such way). Hera is not mentioned as the mother.
According to Pseudo-Apollodorus (Bibliotheca, 1.3.6), Hera gave birth to Hephaestus alone. Pseudo-Apollodorus also relates that, according to Homer, Hephaestus is one of the children of Zeus and Hera (consciously contradicting Hesiod and Homer).
Several later texts follow Hesiod's account, including Hyginus and the preface to Fabulae.
In the account of Attic vase painters, Hephaestus was present at the birth of Athena and wields the axe with which he split Zeus' head to free her. In the latter account, Hephaestus is there represented as older than Athena, so the mythology of Hephaestus is inconsistent in this respect.
Fall from Olympus
In one branch of Greek mythology, Hera ejected Hephaestus from the heavens because of his congenital impairment. He fell into the ocean and was raised by Thetis (mother of Achilles and one of the 50 Nereids) and the Oceanid Eurynome.
In another account, Hephaestus, attempting to rescue his mother from Zeus' advances, was flung down from the heavens by Zeus. He fell for an entire day and landed on the island of Lemnos, where he was cared for and taught to be a master craftsman by the Sintians – an ancient tribe native to that island. Later writers describe his physical disability as the consequence of his second fall, while Homer makes him disabled from his birth.
Return to Olympus
Hephaestus was one of the Olympians to have returned to Olympus after being exiled.
In an archaic story, Hephaestus gained revenge against Hera for rejecting him by making her a magical golden throne, which, when she sat on it, did not allow her to stand up again. The other gods begged Hephaestus to return to Olympus to let her go, but he refused, saying "I have no mother".
At last, Dionysus,god of wine, fetched him, intoxicated him with wine, and took the subdued smith back to Olympus on the back of a mule accompanied by revelers – a scene that sometimes appears on painted pottery of Attica and of Corinth. In the painted scenes, the padded dancers and phallic figures of the Dionysan throng leading the mule show that the procession was a part of the dithyrambic celebrations that were the forerunners of the satyr plays of fifth century Athens.
The theme of the return of Hephaestus, popular among the Attic vase-painters whose wares were favored among the Etruscans, may have introduced this theme to Etruria. In the vase-painters' portrayal of the procession, Hephaestus was mounted on a mule or a horse, with Dionysus holding the bridle and carrying Hephaestus' tools (including a double-headed axe).
The traveller Pausanias reported seeing a painting in the temple of Dionysus in Athens, which had been built in the 5th century but may have been decorated at any time before the 2nd century CE. When Pausanias saw it, he said:
Lovers, others and children
According to most versions, Hephaestus's consort is Aphrodite, who is unfaithful to Hephaestus with a number of gods and mortals, including Ares. However, in Book XVIII of Homer's Iliad, the consort of Hephaestus is Charis ("the grace") or Aglaia ("the glorious") – the youngest of the Graces, as Hesiod calls her.
Károly Kerényi notes that "charis" also means "the delightfulness of art" and supposes that Aphrodite is viewed as a work of art, speculating that Aphrodite could also have been called Charis as an alternative name, for in the Odyssey Homer suddenly makes her his wife.
In Athens, there is a Temple of Hephaestus, the Hephaesteum (miscalled the "Theseum") near the agora. An Athenian founding myth tells that the city's patron goddess, Athena, refused a union with Hephaestus. Pseudo-Apollodorus records an archaic legend, which claims that Hephaestus once attempted to rape Athena, but she pushed him away, causing him to ejaculate on her thigh. Athena wiped the semen off using a tuft of wool, which she tossed into the dust, impregnating Gaia and causing her to give birth to Erichthonius, whom Athena adopted as her own child. The Roman mythographer Hyginus records a similar story in which Hephaestus demanded Zeus to let him marry Athena since he was the one who had smashed open Zeus's skull, allowing Athena to be born. Zeus agreed to this and Hephaestus and Athena were married, but, when Hephaestus was about to consummate the union, Athena vanished from the bridal bed, causing him to ejaculate on the floor, thus impregnating Gaia with Erichthonius.
On the island of Lemnos, Hephaestus' consort was the sea nymph Cabeiro, by whom he was the father of two metalworking gods named the Cabeiri. In Sicily, his consort was the nymph Aetna, and his sons were two gods of Sicilian geysers called Palici. With Thalia, Hephaestus was sometimes considered the father of the Palici.
Hephaestus fathered several children with mortals and immortals alike. One of those children was the robber Periphetes.
In addition, the Romans claim their equivalent god, Vulcan, to have produced the following children:
Cacus (Cacus was mentioned also as a child of Hephaestus)
Caeculus
Hephaestus and Aphrodite
Though married to Hephaestus, Aphrodite had an affair with Ares, the god of war. Eventually, Hephaestus discovered Aphrodite's affair through Helios, the all-seeing Sun, and planned a trap during one of their trysts. While Aphrodite and Ares lay together in bed, Hephaestus ensnared them in an unbreakable chain-link net so small as to be invisible and dragged them to Mount Olympus to shame them in front of the other gods for retribution.
The gods laughed at the sight of these naked lovers, and Poseidon persuaded Hephaestus to free them in return for a guarantee that Ares would pay the adulterer's fine or that he would pay it himself. Hephaestus states in The Odyssey that he would return Aphrodite to her father and demand back his bride price. The Emily Wilson translation depicts Hephaestus demanding/imploring Zeus before Poseidon offers, however, leading the reader to assume Zeus did not give back the "price" Hephaestus paid for "his daughter" and was thus why Poseidon intervened. Some versions of the myth state that Zeus did not return the dowry, and in fact Aphrodite "simply charmed her way back again into her husband’s good graces."
The Thebans told that the union of Ares and Aphrodite produced Harmonia. However, of the union of Hephaestus with Aphrodite, there was no issue unless Virgil was serious when he said that Eros was their child. Later authors explain this statement by saying that Eros was sired by Ares but passed off to Hephaestus as his own son.
Hephaestus was somehow connected with the archaic, pre-Greek Phrygian and Thracian mystery cult of the Kabeiroi, who were also called the Hephaistoi, "the Hephaestus-men", in Lemnos. One of the three Lemnian tribes also called themselves Hephaestion and claimed direct descent from the god.
Hephaestus and Athena
Hephaestus is to the male gods as Athena is to the females, for he gives skill to mortal artists and was believed to have taught men the arts alongside Athena. At Athens they had temples and festivals in common. Both were believed to have great healing powers, and Lemnian earth (terra Lemnia) from the spot on which Hephaestus had fallen was believed to cure madness, the bites of snakes, and haemorrhage, and priests of Hephaestus knew how to cure wounds inflicted by snakes.
He was represented in the temple of Athena Chalcioecus (Athena of the Bronze House) at Sparta, in the act of delivering his mother; on the chest of Cypselus, giving Achilles's armour to Thetis; and at Athens there was the famous statue of Hephaestus by Alcamenes, in which his physical disability was only subtly portrayed. He had almost "no cults except in Athens" and was possibly seen as a more approachable god to the city which shared her namesake. The Greeks frequently placed miniature statues of Hephaestus near their hearths, and these figures are the oldest of all his representations. During the best period of Grecian art he was represented as a vigorous man with a beard, and is characterized by his hammer or some other crafting tool, his oval cap, and the chiton.
Athena is sometimes thought to be the "soulmate" of Hephaestus. Nonetheless, he "seeks impetuously and passionately to make love to Athena: at the moment of climax she pushes him aside, and his semen falls to the earth where it impregnates Gaia."
Volcano god
Some state that his origin myth was that of a "daemon of fire coming up from the earth"—that he was also associated with gas "which takes fire and burns [and] is considered by many people to be divine" and that only later was a volcano considered Hephaestus's smithy.
Hephaestus was associated by Greek colonists in southern Italy with the volcano gods Adranus (of Mount Etna) and Vulcanus of the Lipari islands. The first-century sage Apollonius of Tyana is said to have observed, "there are many other mountains all over the earth that are on fire, and yet we should never be done with it if we assigned to them giants and gods like Hephaestus".
Nevertheless, Hephaestus’ domain over fire goes back to Homer’s Iliad, where he uses flames to dry the waters of Scamandrus river and force its homonym deity, who was attacking Achilles, to retreat.
Other mythology
In the Trojan war, Hephaestus sided with the Greeks, but was also worshiped by the Trojans and saved one of their men from being killed by Diomedes. Hephaestus' favourite place in the mortal world was the island of Lemnos, where he liked to dwell among the Sintians, but he also frequented other volcanic islands such as Lipara, Hiera, Imbros and Sicily, which were called his abodes or workshops.
The epithets and surnames by which Hephaestus is known by the poets generally allude to his skill in the plastic arts or to his figure or disability. The Greeks frequently placed miniature statues of Hephaestus near their hearths, and these figures are the oldest of all his representations.
At the marriage of Peleus and Thetis he gave a knife as a wedding present.
Symbolism
Hephaestus was sometimes portrayed as a vigorous man with a beard and was characterized by his hammer or some other crafting tool, his oval cap, and the chiton.
Hephaestus is described in mythological sources as "lame" (), and "halting" ().
He was depicted with curved feet, an impairment he had either from birth or as a result of his fall from Olympus. In vase paintings, Hephaestus is sometimes shown bent over his anvil, hard at work on a metal creation, and sometimes his feet are curved back-to-front: Hephaistos amphigyēeis. He walked with the aid of a stick. The Argonaut Palaimonius, "son of Hephaestus" (i.e. a bronze-smith) also had a mobility impairment.
Other "sons of Hephaestus" were the Cabeiri on the island of Samothrace, who were identified with the crab (karkinos) by the lexicographer Hesychius. The adjective karkinopous ("crab-footed") signified "lame", according to Detienne and Vernant. The Cabeiri were also physically disabled.
In some myths, Hephaestus built himself a "wheeled chair" or chariot with which to move around, thus helping support his mobility while demonstrating his skill to the other gods. In the Iliad 18.371, it is stated that Hephaestus built twenty bronze wheeled tripods to assist him in moving around.
Hephaestus's appearance and physical disability are taken by some to represent peripheral neuropathy and skin cancer resulting from arsenicosis caused by arsenic exposure from metalworking. Bronze Age smiths added arsenic to copper to produce harder arsenical bronze, especially during periods of tin scarcity. Many Bronze Age smiths would have suffered from chronic arsenic poisoning as a result of their livelihood. Consequently, the mythic image of the disabled smith is widespread. As Hephaestus was an iron-age smith, not a bronze-age smith, the connection is one from ancient folk memory.
Comparative mythology
Parallels in other mythological systems for Hephaestus's symbolism include:
The Ugarit craftsman-god Kothar-wa-Khasis, who is identified from afar by his distinctive walk – possibly suggesting that he limps.
As Herodotus was given to understand, the Egyptian craftsman-god Ptah was a dwarf god and is often depicted naked.
In Norse mythology, Weyland the Smith was a physically disabled bronzeworker.
In Hinduism the artificer god Tvastr fills a similar role, albeit more positively portrayed.
The Ossetian god Kurdalagon may share a similar origin.
In Enochic literature, Azazel is one of the leaders of the rebellious Watchers in the time preceding the Flood; he taught men the art of warfare, of making swords, knives, shields, and coats of mail,
Worship
Solinus wrote that the Lycians dedicated a city to Hephaestus and called it Hephaestia.
The Hephaestia in Lemnos was named after the god.
In addition, the whole island of Lemnos was sacred to Hephaestus.
Pausanias wrote that the Lycians in Patara had a bronze bowl in their temple of Apollo, saying that Telephus dedicated it and Hephaestus made it.
Pausanias also wrote that the village of Olympia in Elis contained an altar to the river Alpheios, next to which was an altar to Hephaestus sometimes referred to as the altar of "Warlike Zeus."
The island Thermessa, between Lipari and Sicily was also called Hiera of Hephaestus (ἱερὰ Ἡφαίστου), meaning sacred place of Hephaestus in Greek.
Namesakes
Pliny the Elder wrote that at Corycus there was a stone which was called Hephaestitis or Hephaestus stone. According to Pliny, the stone was red and was reflecting images like a mirror, and when boiling water poured over it cooled immediately or alternatively when it placed in the sun it immediately set fire to a parched substance.
The minor planet 2212 Hephaistos discovered in 1978 by Soviet astronomer Lyudmila Chernykh was named in Hephaestus' honour.
The sooty grunter (Hephaestus fuliginosus), a dark, typically sooty-coloured freshwater fish of the family Terapontidae found in northern Australia, is named after Hephaestus.
Genealogy
See also
Family tree of the Greek gods
Hephaestus in popular culture
Notes
References
Bibliography
Ancient
Homer, The Iliad with an English Translation by A.T. Murray, PhD in two volumes. Cambridge, MA., Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann, Ltd. 1924. Online version at the Perseus Digital Library.
Homer; The Odyssey with an English Translation by A.T. Murray, PH.D. in two volumes. Cambridge, MA., Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann, Ltd. 1919. Online version at the Perseus Digital Library.
Hesiod, Theogony, in The Homeric Hymns and Homerica with an English Translation by Hugh G. Evelyn-White, Cambridge, MA., Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1914. Online version at the Perseus Digital Library.
Evelyn-White, Hugh, The Homeric Hymns and Homerica with an English Translation by Hugh G. Evelyn-White. Homeric Hymns. Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard
Apollonius of Rhodes, Argonautica; with an English translation by R. C. Seaton. William Heinemann, 1912.
Apollodorus, Apollodorus, The Library, with an English Translation by Sir James George Frazer, F.B.A., F.R.S. in 2 Volumes. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1921. Online version at the Perseus Digital Library.
Pausanias, Pausanias Description of Greece with an English Translation by W.H.S. Jones, Litt.D., and H.A. Ormerod, M.A., in 4 Volumes. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1918. Online version at the Perseus Digital Library.
Strabo, The Geography of Strabo. Edition by H.L. Jones. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press; London: William Heinemann, Ltd. 1924. Online version at the Perseus Digital Library.
Ovid, Ovid's Fasti: With an English translation by Sir James George Frazer, London: W. Heinemann LTD; Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard University Press, 1959. Internet Archive.
Hyginus, Gaius Julius, The Myths of Hyginus. Edited and translated by Mary A. Grant, Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 1960.
Modern
Stein, Murray, Soul: Treatment and Recovery: The selected works of Murray Stein, Routledge, 2015. .
Strabo, Geography, translated by Horace Leonard Jones; Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press; London: William Heinemann, Ltd. (1924). LacusCurtis, Online version at the Perseus Digital Library, Books 6–14.
External links
Theoi Project, Hephaestus in classical literature and art
Greek Mythology Link, Hephaestus summary of the myths of Hephaestus
Greek gods
Fire gods
Smithing gods
Volcano gods
Mythological rapists
Children of Hera
Consorts of Aphrodite
Deities in the Iliad
Characters in Greek mythology
Deeds of Athena
Deeds of Poseidon
Children of Zeus
Characters in the Odyssey | [
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14389 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herman%20Charles%20Bosman | Herman Charles Bosman | Herman Charles Bosman (5 February 1905 – 14 October 1951) is widely regarded as South Africa's greatest short-story writer. He studied the works of Edgar Allan Poe and Mark Twain and developed a style emphasizing the use of satire. His English-language works utilize primarily Afrikaner characters and highlight the many contradictions in Afrikaner society during the first half of the twentieth century.
Early life
Bosman was born at Kuils River, near Cape Town, to an Afrikaner family. He was raised with English as well as Afrikaans. While Bosman was still young, his family travelled frequently, he spent a short time at Potchefstroom College which would later become Potchefstroom High School for Boys, he later moved to Johannesburg where he went to school at Jeppe High School for Boys in Kensington. While there he contributed to the school magazine. When Bosman was sixteen, he started writing short stories for the national Sunday newspaper (the Sunday Times). He attended the Johannesburg College of Education (which in 2002 was incorporated into the University of the Witwatersrand) and submitted various pieces to student literary competitions.
Career and adult life
After graduation, Bosman accepted a teaching position in the Groot Marico district in an Afrikaans-language school. The area provided the backdrop for his best-known short stories, the Oom Schalk Lourens series (featuring an older character named Oom Schalk Lourens) and the Voorkamer sketches.
Over the June school holidays in 1926, Bosman visited his family in Johannesburg. During an argument, he shot and killed his stepbrother. Bosman was sentenced to death for the crime and was sent to Death row at the Pretoria Central Prison. His sentence was later reduced to ten years with hard labour. In 1930, he was released on parole after serving half his sentence. His prison experiences formed the basis for his semi-autobiographical book, Cold Stone Jug.
Bosman then started his own printing-press company and was part of a literary set in Johannesburg, associating with poets, journalists and writers, including Aegidius Jean Blignaut. He toured overseas for nine years, spending most of his time in London. The short stories that he wrote during this period formed the basis for another of his best-known books, Mafeking Road.
At the start of the Second World War, he returned to South Africa and worked as a journalist. During this time he translated the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam into Afrikaans.
Bosman lamented the fact that Johannesburg neglected its heritage. In The Standard Theatre he complained that the city's residents:
"will pull down the Standard Theatre like they have pulled down all the old buildings, theatres, gin-palaces, dosshouses, temples, shops, arcades, cafes and joints that were intimately associated with the mining-camp days of Johannesburg. Because I know Johannesburg. And I am satisfied that there is no other city in the world that is so anxious to shake off the memories of its early origins."
Bosman's second wife was Ella Manson. The couple were renowned for their bohemian lifestyle and parties, which featured witty conversation and usually ended well after midnight.
From 1948 to his death in 1951, Bosman was employed as proof editor at The Sunday Express. In addition, he was contracted to write a weekly Voorkamer story for The Forum magazine.
His last wife was Helena Lake (née Stegmann). After a housewarming party in October 1951, Bosman experienced severe chest pains and was taken to Edenvale Hospital. On admission, he was asked for his birthplace. He replied, "Born Kuilsrivier – Died Edenvale Hospital." He was discharged and collapsed at home a few hours later. Bosman died as he was being rushed to hospital. He is buried in Westpark Cemetery in Westdene under a triangular headstone that reads "Die Skrywer, The Writer, Herman Charles Bosman, b 3.2.1905, d 14.10.1951."
Legacy
After his death, the rights to his works were auctioned. They were purchased by his last wife, Helena, and upon her death, the rights were passed to her son, who retains them. In 1960, however, Helena sold some of his documents and 123 of his water colours and pencil sketches to the Harry Ransom Center in Texas.
Only three of his books were published during his lifetime: Mafeking Road published by Dassie, and Jacaranda in the Night and Cold Stone Jug published by APB. Mafeking Road has never been out of print since its publication in 1947.
His biography was written several times by Valerie Rosenberg. Her first effort was called Sunflower to the Sun, followed by Herman Charles Bosman, a Pictorial Biography, and most recently by Herman Charles Bosman: Between the Lines. The last of these contains much new research and deals in detail with aspects of Bosman's life and parentage that were previously considered taboo.
Because many of his stories were originally published in long-forgotten magazines and journals, there are a number of anthologies by different collators each containing a different selection. His original books have also been published many times by different publishers.
The Herman Charles Bosman Literary Society meets annually for readings, performances and discussions of his works.
Books
Some of the ISBNs and publishers below may not be for the original edition.
Mafeking Road & Other Stories (1947), Human & Rousseau, Archipelago Books (2008)
Rubaijat van Omar Khajjam (1948), Colin Reed-McDonald
Cold Stone Jug (1949), Human & Rousseau
Veld-trails and Pavements (1949), with Carel Bredell, Afrikaanse Pers-Boekhandel
Cask of Jerepigo (1957), Central News Agency
Unto Dust (1963), edited by Lionel Abrahams, Anthony Blond
Bosman at his Best: a choice of stories and sketches (1965) edited by Lionel Abrahams Human & Rousseau
Bosman's Johannesburg (1986) edited by Stephen Gray Human & Rousseau
Ramoutsa Road (1987) Ad. Donker
A Bekkersdal Marathon (1971), Human & Rousseau
The Earth is Waiting (1974)
Willemsdorp (1977), Human & Rousseau
Almost Forgotten Stories (1979) H. Timmins
My Friend Herman Charles Bosman [1980] Perskor. author: Aegidius Jean Blignaut
Dead End Road [1980] AD.Donker. author: Aegidius Jean Blignaut
Selected Stories (1980), edited by Stephen Gray, Human & Rousseau
The Collected Works of Herman Charles Bosman (1981), edited by Lionel Abrahams, Jonathan Ball
The Bosman I like (1981), edited by Patrick Mynhardt, Human & Rousseau
Death Hath Eloquence (1981), edited by Aegidius Jean Blignaut, Christelike Uitgewersmaatskappy
Uncollected Essays (1981), Timmins
The Illustrated Bosman (1985), Jonathan Ball
Makapan's Cave and other stories (1987), edited by Stephen Gray, Penguin Books.
A Bosman Treasury (1991), edited by Ian Lusted, Human & Rousseau
Jurie Steyn's Post Office (1991), Human & Rousseau
Herman Charles Bosman : the prose juvenilia (1998), collected and introduced by M. C. Andersen, University of South Africa
Idle Talk : voorkamer stories (1999), edited by Craig MacKenzie, Human & Rousseau
Old Transvaal Stories (2000), edited by Craig MacKenzie, Human & Rousseau
The Rooinek and Other Boer War Stories (2000), edited by Craig MacKenzie, Human & Rousseau
Jacaranda in the Night (2000), Human & Rousseau
Best of Bosman (2001), edited by Stephen Gray and Craig MacKenzie, Human & Rousseau
Seed-Time and Harvest, and Other Stories (2001), edited by Craig MacKenzie, Human & Rousseau
Verborge Skatte: Herman Charles Bosman in/on Afrikaans (2001), collected by Leon de Kock, Human & Rousseau
Plays
Cold Stone Jug (1982) adapted by Barney Simon from the play by Stephen Gray Human & Rousseau
Notes
External links
The Herman Charles Bosman Literary Society
City of Johannesburg Bosman page
Snyman, Salomé. "Willemsdorp by Herman Charles Bosman: the small-town locale as fictional vehicle for commentary on social and moral issues in the South African historical context." Tydskrif vir letterkunde 49.2 (2012): 60-71.
1905 births
1951 deaths
People from Kuils River
Cape Colony people
Afrikaner people
South African people of Dutch descent
South African male short story writers
South African short story writers
Prisoners sentenced to death by South Africa
University of the Witwatersrand alumni
Burials at Westpark Cemetery | [
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14390 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hungarian | Hungarian | Hungarian may refer to:
Hungary, a country in Central Europe
Kingdom of Hungary, state of Hungary, existing between 1000 and 1946
Hungarians, ethnic groups in Hungary
Hungarian algorithm, a polynomial time algorithm for solving the assignment problem
Hungarian language, a Finno-Ugric language spoken in Hungary and all neighbouring countries
Hungarian notation, a naming convention in computer programming
Hungarian cuisine, the cuisine of Hungary and the Hungarians
See also
Language and nationality disambiguation pages | [
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14392 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howitzer | Howitzer | A howitzer () is generally a large ranged weapon between an artillery gun (also known as a cannon outside the US) – which has smaller, higher-velocity shells fired at flatter trajectories – and a mortar – which fires at higher angles of ascent and descent. Howitzers, like other artillery equipment, are usually organized in a group called a battery.
Howitzers, together with long-barreled guns, mortars and rocket artillery, are the four basic types of modern artillery.
Etymology
The English word howitzer comes from the Czech word houfnice, from houf, "crowd", and houf is in turn a borrowing from the Middle High German word Hūfe or Houfe (modern German Haufen), meaning "crowd, throng". Haufen, sometimes in the compound Gewalthaufen, also designated a pike square formation in German.
In the Hussite Wars of the 1420s and 1430s, the Czechs used short-barreled houfnice cannons to fire at short distances into crowds of infantry, or into charging heavy cavalry, to make horses shy away. The word was rendered into German as aufeniz in the earliest attested use in a document dating from 1440; later German renderings include haussnitz and, eventually haubitze, from which derive the Scandinavian haubits, Croatian, Polish and Serbian haubica, Estonia haubits, Finnish haupitsi, Russian and Bulgarian gaubitsa (гаубица), Italian obice, Spanish obús, Portuguese obus, French obusier and the Dutch word houwitser, which led to the English word howitzer.
Since the First World War, the word howitzer has been changing to describe artillery pieces that previously would have belonged to the category of gun-howitzers – relatively long barrels and high muzzle velocities combined with multiple propelling charges and high maximum elevations. This is particularly true in the armed forces of the United States, where gun-howitzers have been officially described as howitzers for more than sixty years. Because of this practice, the word howitzer is used in some armies as a generic term for any kind of artillery piece that is designed to attack targets using indirect fire. Thus, artillery pieces that bear little resemblance to howitzers of earlier eras are now described as howitzers, although the British call them guns.
The British had a further method of nomenclature. In the 18th century, they adopted projectile weight for guns replacing an older naming system (such as culverin, saker, etc.) that had developed in the late 15th century. Mortars had been categorized by calibre in inches in the 17th century, and this was duplicated with howitzers. Current U.S. military doctrine defines howitzers as any cannon artillery capable of both high-angle (45° to 90° elevation) and low-angle (0° to 45° elevation) fire; guns are defined as being only capable of low-angle fire (0° to 45° elevation); and mortars are defined as being only capable of high-angle fire (45° to 90° elevation).
History
Early modern period
The first artillery identified as howitzers developed in the late 16th century as a medium-trajectory weapon between that of the flat trajectory (direct fire) of cannon and the high trajectory (indirect fire) of mortars. Originally intended for use in siege warfare, they were particularly useful for delivering cast iron shells filled with gunpowder or incendiary materials into the interior of fortifications. In contrast to contemporary mortars, which were fired at a fixed angle and were entirely dependent on adjustments to the size of propellant charges to vary range, howitzers could be fired at a wide variety of angles. Thus, while howitzer gunnery was more complicated than the technique of employing mortars, the howitzer was an inherently more flexible weapon that could fire its projectiles along a wide range of trajectories.
In the middle of the 18th century, a number of European armies began to introduce howitzers that were mobile enough to accompany armies in the field. Though usually fired at the relatively high angles of fire used by contemporary siege howitzers, these field howitzers were rarely defined by this capability. Rather, as the field guns of the day were usually restricted to inert projectiles (which relied entirely on momentum for their destructive effects), the field howitzers of the 18th century were chiefly valued for their ability to fire explosive shells. Many, for the sake of simplicity and rapidity of fire, dispensed with adjustable propellant charges.
The Abus gun was an early form of howitzer in the Ottoman Empire. In 1758, the Russian Empire introduced a specific type of howitzer (or rather gun-howitzer), with a conical chamber, called a licorne, which remained in service for the next 100 years. In the mid-19th century, some armies attempted to simplify their artillery parks by introducing smoothbore artillery pieces that were designed to fire both explosive projectiles and cannonballs, thereby replacing both field howitzers and field guns. The most famous of these "gun-howitzers" was the Napoleon 12-pounder, a weapon of French design that was extensively used in the American Civil War.
In 1859, the armies of Europe (including those that had recently adopted gun-howitzers) began to rearm field batteries with rifled field guns. These field pieces used cylindrical projectiles that, while smaller in caliber than the spherical shells of smoothbore field howitzers, could carry a comparable charge of gunpowder. Moreover, their greater range let them create many of the same effects (such as firing over low walls) that previously required the sharply curved trajectories of smoothbore field howitzers. Because of this, military authorities saw no point in obtaining rifled field howitzers to replace their smoothbore counterparts but instead used rifled field guns to replace both guns and howitzers.
In siege warfare, the introduction of rifling had the opposite effect. In the 1860s, artillery officers discovered that rifled siege howitzers (substantially larger than field howitzers) were a more efficient means of destroying walls (particularly walls protected by certain kinds of intervening obstacles) than smoothbore siege guns or siege mortars. Thus, at the same time armies were taking howitzers of one sort out of their field batteries, they were introducing howitzers of another sort into their siege trains and fortresses. The lightest of these weapons (later known as "light siege howitzers") had calibers around 150 mm and fired shells that weighed between 40 and 50 kilograms. The heaviest (later called "medium siege howitzers") had calibers between 200 mm and 220 mm and fired shells that weighed about 100 kilograms (220 pounds).
During the 1880s, a third type of siege howitzer was added to inventories of a number of European armies. With calibers that ranged between 240 mm and 270 mm and shells that weighed more than 150 kilograms, these soon came to be known as "heavy siege howitzers". A good example of a weapon of this class is provided by the 9.45-inch (240 mm) weapon that the British Army purchased from the Skoda works in 1899.
20th century
In the early 20th century, the introduction of howitzers that were significantly larger than the heavy siege howitzers of the day made necessary the creation of a fourth category, that of "super-heavy siege howitzers". Weapons of this category include the famous Big Bertha of the German Army and the 15-inch (381 mm) howitzer of the British Royal Marine Artillery. These large howitzers were transported mechanically rather than by teams of horses. They were transported as several loads and had to be assembled at their firing position.
These field howitzers introduced at the end of the 19th century could fire shells with high trajectories giving a steep angle of descent and, as a result, could strike targets that were protected by intervening obstacles. They could also fire shells that were about twice as large as shells fired by guns of the same size. Thus, while a 75 mm field gun that weighed one ton or so was limited to shells that weigh around 8kg, a 105 mm howitzer of the same weight could fire 15kg shells. This is a matter of fundamental mechanics affecting the stability and hence the weight of the carriage.
As heavy field howitzers and light siege howitzers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries used ammunition of the same size and types, there was a marked tendency for the two types to merge. At first, this was largely a matter of the same basic weapon being employed on two different mountings. Later, as on-carriage recoil-absorbing systems eliminated many of the advantages that siege platforms had enjoyed over field carriages, the same combination of barrel assembly, recoil mechanism and carriage was used in both roles.
By the early 20th century, the differences between guns and howitzers were relative, not absolute, and generally recognized as follows:
Guns – higher velocity and longer range, single charge propellant, maximum elevation generally less than 35 degrees.
Howitzers – lower velocity and shorter range, multi-charge propellant, maximum elevation typically more than 45 degrees.
The onset of trench warfare after the first few months of the First World War greatly increased the demand for howitzers that gave a steep angle of descent, which were better suited than guns to the task of striking targets in a vertical plane (such as trenches), with large amounts of explosive and considerably less barrel wear. The German army was well equipped with howitzers, having far more at the beginning of the war than France.
Many howitzers introduced in the course of World War I had longer barrels than pre-war howitzers. The standard German light field howitzer at the start of the war (the 10.5 cm leichte Feldhaubitze 98/09) had a barrel that was 16 calibers long, but the light field howitzer adopted by the German Army in 1916 (105 mm leichte Feldhaubitze 16) had a barrel that was 22 calibers long. At the same time, new models of field gun introduced during that conflict, such as the 77 mm field gun adopted by the German Army in 1916 (7,7 cm Feldkanone 16) were often provided with carriages that allowed firing at comparatively high angles, and adjustable propellant cartridges.
In the years after World War I, the tendency of guns and howitzers to acquire each other's characteristics led to the renaissance of the concept of the gun-howitzer. This was a product of technical advances such as the French invention of autofrettage just before World War I, which led to stronger and lighter barrels, the use of cut-off gear to control recoil length depending on firing elevation angle, and the invention of muzzle brakes to reduce recoil forces. Like the gun-howitzers of the 19th century, those of the 20th century replaced both guns and howitzers. Thus, the 25-pounder "gun-howitzer" of the British Army replaced both the 18-pounder field gun and the 4.5-inch howitzer.
During World War II, the military doctrine of Soviet deep battle called for extensive use of heavy artillery to hold the formal line of front. Soviet doctrine was remarkably different from the German doctrine of Blitzkrieg and called for a far more extensive use of artillery. As a result, howitzers saw most of the action on the Eastern front. Most of the howitzers produced by the USSR at the time were not self-propelled. Notable examples of Soviet howitzers include the M-10, M-30 and D-1.
Since World War II, most of the artillery pieces adopted by armies for attacking targets on land have combined the traditional characteristics of guns and howitzers—high muzzle velocity, long barrels, long range, multiple charges and maximum elevation angles greater than 45 degrees. The term "gun-howitzer" is sometimes used for these (e.g., in Russia); many nations use "howitzer", while the UK (and most members of The Commonwealth of Nations) calls them "guns", for example Gun, 105 mm, Field, L118.
Types
A self-propelled howitzer is mounted on a tracked or wheeled motor vehicle. In many cases, it is protected by some sort of armor so that it superficially resembles a tank. This armor is designed primarily to protect the crew from shrapnel and small arms fire, not anti-armor weapons.
A pack howitzer is a relatively light howitzer that is designed to be easily broken down into several pieces, each of which is small enough to be carried by mule or pack-horse.
A mountain howitzer is a relatively light howitzer designed for use in mountainous terrain. Most, but not all, mountain howitzers are also pack howitzers.
A siege howitzer is a howitzer that is designed to be fired from a mounting on a fixed platform of some sort.
A field howitzer is a howitzer that is mobile enough to accompany a field army on campaign. It is invariably provided with a wheeled carriage of some sort.
Gallery
See also
Plunging fire
12-inch coast defense mortar
2B9 Vasilek
List of howitzers
References
External links
French Artillery of the Napoleonic Wars
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